Fatty Legs and A Stranger At Home Book Trailer

We were very fortunate to score the book trailer with the beautiful, haunting song "Say Your Name" by the internationally known musician, Keith Secola.

Christy Jordan Fenton, Keith Secola, Mark Holmes and myself worked on producing the trailer. 

The trailer was premiered by at the Native American Music Awards ceremony in October of 2011.

You can watch the trailer on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG5kJeUaxKw

The Next Step In Making Wolf Song: The 32 Page Storyboard Layout.

Now that I have worked out the major scenes for the book I will start on designing art to fit a 32-page book using page spreads and vignettes. It's  a lot like a comic strip where I can plan more detailed sequence of events but still the art will be rough so I can feel free to make changes without investing a too much time as I will make many changes to the rough sketches as I go along.

This is also the part of the process where I think about how the images flow across the pages and work with the story copy. I will do this a many times in the process of the book to get the right feel for the book because it must work as a whole. I want to vary the layouts so the book is interesting and dynamic page-to-page.

Here is a 32 page a blank storyboard template. You can download this image to work on your own books.

After the storyboard is worked out, I make a small rough book dummy, which I will demonstrate later in my blog.

Rough Storyboards for Wolf Song

I roughed in (please note ROUGHED) the main scenes for Wolf Song. I will be re-drawing and re-composing a lot of it but it is so important to take that big step from words to pictures. Once the images are roughed in you can analyze the pacing, drama and weed out receptiveness or dull moments. At this point I will tease out the style and tone of the book. 

A Gold IPPY Award for A Stranger At Home

A Stranger at Home has won the Gold award in the IPPY (Independent Publishers) Book Awards, Multicultural Non-Fiction Juvenile, Teen, YA category. Three Cheers to Christy and Margaret for an amazing story!!!

Wolf Song Drawing Test

I am now to posting some of the drawing tests I am working on for the book Wolf Song. Here is a quick sketch of the Wolf and Girl which I will also do a rough painting for color and mood. If you are interested in reading the story  (which is very much in-progress) you can go to my pages section and click on Wolf Song.

Book Of The Year Award 2011 Finalist

A Stranger At Home made the Book Of The Year Award 2011!

Wolf Song

I am in the throws of creating a new picture book called Wolf Song. I re-told a Native American folk tale about a lonesome wolf. Since it is a picture book I kept the story to about 1,100 words and there is some wiggle room to edit down to 1000 words (the high end of picture book copy.) I am now creating art for the story. When the dummy and some finished paintings are done I plan on sending it out to editors.
People often ask me how do I make a storybook dummy so I decided as the process goes along I will post my progress.
1. Story done.
2. Next thing to do are the book thumbnails.