Page 11 - With an adorable dog, even.

Hello all you lovely people! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was spent quite well, in the relative warmth of Florida, and it was a nice trip. Too much food, of course. 

This week in the studio, we're trying to get a lot of work finished before the craziness of holiday travel is upon us, and I think we'll be able to do that.

This should be a familiar page as well. The bottom panel is the first panel that we completed, I believe. It was such a struggle to get our style down, and to be cohesive, but it's been much easier since then, now that we know what we're doing. Heh. The top panel was much easier to create, since we took the tree form from the bottom and have a pretty good morgue of foliage going. We had to create that frickin' adorable beagle, though. Norman Rockwell would be proud.

Page 10 - Halfway and then some!

Wow! I was so looking forward to reporting our halfway mark, and now it's a spot in our rearview mirror. We're pretty far ahead, so hopefully we can stop working long enough to catch the blog up to where we are.

You might remember the top panel from this post, but here is the completed page. I love seeing the two panels side by side. It's a pretty darn good-looking page, if I say so myself. I love the close-up of the princess, especially with that dramatic far-away scene.

I don't have so much to say right now. It's been a lot of working over here, and my brain is a little fried. Last week was spent in Pasadena, with the Hartford Art School, and I got some great inspiration, especially with a visit to the Disney Archives. Original Eyvind Earle and Mary Blair pieces, right in front of me! So amazing. How could you not want to come back and work, honestly?

My dear counterpart just finished the quarter for the holiday break, so we're having some quality dual working time lately, and I'm taking advantage of it while I can! We'll be updating soon, though, so stay on the lookout!

Page 9 – A New Chapter

This page begins the story behind Ridley's scars. We wanted the book design to reflect both comics and children's books with these chapter breaks: the Knee, the Elbow, the Hand, the Forearm and the Forehead. A block of narrative text will connect the spot illustration to the panels underneath.

We started with the knee because EVERYONE we know has a scar on the knee. It's the price of growing up. The staging of the actors on this page is important, because we intentionally place grandfather and granddaughter apart from each other. They are cordial, but not overly affectionate. As we progress in the chapters, they will interact more.

Art-wise, I personally like their head shots–they both show a lot of personality. Maddie is cute as a button and when Ridley smiles it's like the sun peaking out of the clouds...

Page 8 - Beginning of a story

This is really the page we were working on in North Carolina...it just seemed more appropriate to talk about on the last page, given the subject matter!

I love how Ridley's face goes through the same processing as Maddie's did when she hurt her knee. And when he realizes he can turn around his hurt feelings into a special moment with his granddaughter. Again, a fairly simple page to do, but the characters are beginning to connect with one another, so we like it!

Looking at it, it seems like the ground might be a little too sparse in the middle panel. Maybe we need to add some flowers or a few more bunches of grass there. Other than that, I like it. And we get to start on the two-tier storytelling pages after page 9, which will be SO MUCH FUN. I can't wait to start drawing forests again!

Also, you can see that we've started watermarking our images. When I have more time, I'll go back and watermark the ones that are already up. The issue of watermarking has been nagging me lately and it was brought to our attention last weekend that we really should be doing it. It's the trouble with posting work online – I'm not so afraid that someone would steal it (low-res and a poor file format for printing anyway) but we'd like people to know where it came from if it shows up somewhere else. So, we're gonna try this out.

So close to halfway I can almost taste it!

Page 7 - Finding a Connection

We just keep rolling along... three more pages and we are at the halfway mark!

This page shows the first real interaction between Maddie and her grandfather. She's upset about her knee because she doesn't want to end up scarred like her grandfather. Being a child, she doesn't know what kind of impact her words have on him. However, he notices her book and sees that she is a storyteller, like him. 

This was a simple page to do, but it's one of our favorites. The interaction between the two, the quiet moment of hurt that Ridley has, the flow of the page, we are really happy with how it all turned out. I think we love it so much because this is the beginning of them finding their connection. This past weekend, we spent in North Carolina reconnecting with our "art family". It was much needed, two days of talking art and comics and board games and even a little work thrown in. Life is all about connection, it's what it comes down to. So, we're loving to see our characters start to connect as they come to life. 

We did have a scary moment where we thought we had lost the entire page, though. (We're using dropbox to share files between us now, but we need a better solution, any suggestions? I was thinking about a shared hard drive but if you have something better, let me know!) Fortunately, it magically appeared on one computer and not the other. That was a heart attack and a half! We seriously need a better solution, I'm wondering what all of you use...

We're really excited to start working on the "fun" part of the book soon...with princesses and trolls and whatnot. Looking forward to that immensely! 

Page 6 - Run away, run away!

In this page, Maddie runs terrified from her well-meaning grandfather, trips in her haste to escape, and scrapes her knee. I really love how she checks out the damage before crying. So kid-like. Her face in the center bottom panel is pretty priceless. Maddie is none too happy about that scrape on her knee, which you'll learn about in the next page.

This was a nice, simple page to get done. It's very character-driven, so the background detail is at a minimum - just enough to suggest their setting. So glad we could use that willow tree again, though. I really like it!

In studio news, we spoke to our publisher at Archaia and it looks like we are going to have an April release. Even though we'll be done with this issue in about a month (if we can keep our current schedule going), he wants to make sure it is marketed properly before it comes out. Which is great! Also, both of our birthdays are in April, so it's fitting that this project's birthday will be in April, too. It seems like a long time, but we'll be bringing you LOTS of good stuff before then! And this blog serves as a great tool to keep on target.

Page 5 - The Granddaddy of all Dragons

Maddie, deep in her sketchbook, narrates a thrilling tale of evils dragons, eviller ogres and the fair princess and noble woodsman. And then her grandfather says hello.

This page sets up the relationship between granddaughter and grandfather. And this relationship isn't as warm as Maddie's relationship with her grandmother.

I like how dapper Ridley is, and how the sun shines behind him. Also, the children's drawings are kind of adorable--I wish I could draw like that! The sun should never be sad...