On Monday I picked up my illustrations, along with stitched-together scans for Adan's book.

Digital Pickle's Yelp profile doesn't do it justice. Apparently a bad manager ran the Pasadena location into the ground. But their new staff is doing an excellent job, in my opinion. The scans look great and my illustrations were returned to me in better shape than I brought them in; I received my art back wrapped in plastic and in a sturdy paper bag with my name written on it in silver ink!

Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that our home computer isn't up to task for digital production. I first started noticing the issue when I put Adobe Flash onto the system. The program freezes and dies often and takes almost 10 minutes to load. When I tried to upload the high resolution TIF files from Digital Pickle, my computer had a brain fart and keeled over.

So, after spending an entire day of uploading the files to a cloud server from my work computer, I spent most of my evening downloading said files onto my home computer.

It's been a hurdle every step of the way, but we're getting there!

Graphic Novels

As I wrap up production on Adan's book, I will begin a new project of epic proportions. Involving Benny the Baboon.

Everyone will need to keep their eyes peeled for our graphic novel, based on the Benny the Baboon musical. Initially, we are going to start publishing online. I'm shooting for a November start-date. Eventually, we will publish actual books for our Baboon-loving fans out there to take home and read to their baboon loving children. Who doesn't want to teach their kids about the lovingly violent ways of the baboon?

Iif anyone knows someone willing to help us out, we are looking for a digital painter for the project. Pro Bono, of course (or "Pro Baboon-o" nyuck nyuck). My painting skills are limited, especially when it comes to the use of a computer, so we are going to need to find someone to really make this world pop!

Additionally, if anyone would like to suggest some graphic novels that I can study for research, I'll be glad to take suggestions! :)

Done

Last weekend I worked on another page of my book for Adan.

And suddenly it was done. Like, the entire book.

I was very surprised, since this is something that I've been working on for close to two years. The completion sneaked up. The entire experience has me inspired to complete other "large" projects.

Now all I need to do is scan the illustrations and format the book.

Wow.

And here is an "on hold" sketch I had laying around here of Adan.

Tuesday night I did a piece of concept art in watercolor, a medium I have been considering using for the book. Either that or watered-down acrylics. I've been hesitant about either one because, while I know how to paint, I don't consider myself very good at it on a traditional level.

The idea that I'm not good at something I know HOW to do well is just the tip of the self-confidence iceberg. Here's a video by Ira Glass that a facebook friend posted a few weeks ago that basically reinforces a point that I have always understood about creation, but never realize applies to myself: That one has to be persistent when they create and understand that there's going to be a lot of awful stuff before one lays their golden egg.



I decided to use the concept art as a "Thank You" card for my baby shower. (Cards you can buy here.)



After looking at the painting a few days removed, I actually like the style.

My next step is to render some backgrounds, which has been a life-time challenge for me, on all artistic fronts. I've always trained myself to be a character designer or animator. My focus in life for a long time was to solely be in charge of the moving elements in animation, the characters in a book. I never had any concern for where they came from, how they came to be, or the visible background they would be laid upon during production.

Looks like I made a huge mistake.

My hiatus from this blog came quickly, I know.

I recently recovered from an illustration gig with a start-up multimedia company. The job would potentially pay, but the fact that the process itself would bulk up my portfolio was compensation enough if the contracts and talk fell through. The alternative family children's book consisted of twenty-two pages and, while colored in Adobe PhotoShop 7, was hand drawn and inked with three different Micron Archival Pens.

The job took what I saw as a devastating blow when the producer overlooked available printing dimensions and my full-page, 10"x8" color images (some meant to span over a 2-page spread) had to be shrunk to fit onto an 8"x"10" book print. I was obviously frustrated considering that the producers had worked on a pretty nice book prior to the current series and I had made the assumption that they had already looked into the printing options with Amazon's CreateSpace. Luckily for us, there will be other books in the series and I can work with the correct dimensions from the start. But in the meantime the premier book is set up to be presented in a less-than-flattering light.

The actual, human Adan can come any second now. Because of maternity leave, my time has become abundant and I've been spending it working on Adan the Tiger-related writing and drawing.



If you or anyone else is looking for something similar to this for friends or family (think of the babies!) then you can make your way over to my Etsy Shop!