Disney and Peet later clashed over the direction of the script and storyboards Peet was developing. Peet, who’d go on to become a prolific children’s book author and illustrator, wanted the film to stay true to Kipling’s dark themes of survival challenge and man’s destruction of wild habitat.
Disney wanted music, laughs, sunshine, loveable characters “and a little heart.”
This Disney produced documentary smacks in the beginning of hagiography, but it shifts gears to tell a fascinating “process story”, rich with interviews and the artwork in all its stages and permutations. I hope you enjoy this part 1 video.
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Discover a most empowering free secret for making good drawings.
See photos of the 2012 Regional Conference, Something for Everybody put together by the Austin Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Children's book illustrator Bill Peet worked up the first storyboard for the Disney telling of Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book."
Dumbo didn’t come from a children’s book exactly.
It came from a little paper toy that carried a little story with pictures inside it. Written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl, Dumbo was actually the prototype for Roll-A-Book — a scroll that unfurled into a little panorama with only eight drawings and just a few lines of text. It sold for a few pennies as an impulse item at grocery and drugstore checkout lines.
OK, so it was sort of a book. (And we thought alternative books were spawned by the iTunes store and Amazon Kindle.)
Disney’s head of merchandise licensing Kay Kamen showed the product to Disney, who “immediately grasped its possibilities and heartwarming story and purchased the rights to it,” according to Wikipedia.
Two of the studio’s best writers were brought in to re-craft the yarn, Hollywood style. Today the film is regarded as the last of the “Golden Age” animated features and considered by some to be the best of the Disney cartoons.
Important characters developed for the movie were Dumbo’s mother and the black crows, who act like surrogate fathers to Dumbo.
“They’re the ones who give Dumbo hope,” the video tells us.
Timothy Mouse replaced the Red Robin ally from Abeson’s tiny tale.
It was not a lavish production. Most of the animation staff was still laboring away on Bambi, an expensive project that was taking years. So the studio’s older top animators, the teachers of the staff, were assigned to it.
Shortcuts were found. Backgrounds were painted in watercolor, as opposed to the usual gouache and oil paint. Compositions were simplified, streamlined. The film was even 40 minutes shorter than the usual feature and it wound up costing less than $1 million.
Despite all the economizing, Dumbo was vastly informed by the culture — music, architecture, design and even the literature of the day, the video documentary tells us.
“The richness of all the arts in the world were brought into the Disney studios,” a narrator says.
Visual influences came from circus posters, muscular American regional art (Grant Woods and Thomas Hart Benton) and the symbolic imagery of the German Expressionist cinema and surrealist painters like Salvador Dali.
The Pink Elephants on Parade musical sequence of the film was even said to be a parody of Surrealism.
Dumbo turned out to be the most financially successful Disney film of the 1940s. It rescued the company from its steep losses on Pinocchio and Fantasia.
Disney animator and children's book author-artist Bill Peet
Here’s a post from animator Michael Sporn’s ‘s great blog about animator (and children’s book author-illustrator) Bill Peet who worked with the brilliant animator Bill Tytla to shape many of the best sequences in Dumbo. You’ll find a wealth of illustrations from Peet’s storyboards and the finished painted cels.
We have winners!
Congratulations to Toria, Pam, Doug and Cornelia, who answered correctly that Mickey’s original first name was Mortimer. They’ve received the Dauntless Design session from the Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! course.
Disney changed his mouse’s name from Mortimer to Mickey at the suggestion of his wife, who told him that the character looked nothing like a Mortimer.
New Facebook timeline page
Check out the pictures and resources posted on our new Facebook timeline page How to Illustrate a Children’s Book. New things go up there almost every day.
]]>The “Secret Lives” documentary proves absorbing. Insights into this creative giant of American arts and entertainment are gleaned through a glass darkly.
Don’t forget last week’s Trivia contest. We’ll pick a winner this Wednesday (May 2) from those who leave a comment providing the correct answer to the question, what was Disney’s original name for Mickey Mouse?
The winner will be sent a link to the complete video lesson, Dauntless Design the Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! online course in children’s book illustration.
A big thank you to all of you who have already submitted responses!
]]>He really did have a pet mouse while working at Laugh-O-Gram, his commercial animation studio in Kansas City.
And when Universal Studios, his cartoon film distributor snatched away the rights to the Oswald the Rabbit character, which he’d developed with his animator partner Ubbe Iwerks, he started making doodle sketches of Oswald’s replacement — an innocent, irreverently childlike mouse.
Iwerks re-drew and simplified the character to make him easier to animate. But although the final artwork on the screen was Iwerks’ — the personality and “soul” of the mouse came from its creator, Walt Disney.
The first two cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse could not even find distribution. But when Disney and Iwerks added music and a voice to the third animated short, Steamboat Willie Mickey became an “overnight” sensation.
Mickey’s recorded voice, by the way, was actually Disney’s — and he continued to provide Mickey’s distinct vocals until 1947.
Mickey continued to lead the way for short sound cartoons through the 1930s and 1940s. Metaphorically speaking, he still leads.
Trivia question of the day: Mickey was not the first moniker picked for the mouse. Do you know Mickey’s original name?
Leave your answer in a comment.
We’ll randomly pick one of the comments (it must contain the correct answer) next Wednesday, May 2, 2012.
The winner will be sent the link to the complete video lesson, Dauntless Design from Dynamic Drawing and Design — a module of the Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! course in children’s book illustration.
]]>They were learning about a new venue for their narrative art: A new kind of book for iPads, iPhones and other touch screen gadgets.
Such books combine elements of an illustrated storybook, e-book, game app and toy for a new kind of reading and learning that engages with your fingertips.
Videos shown on this post today are not InteractBook brand books and were not made with InteractBuilder. They were made by other book app publishers. But they give an idea of the interactive book experience. We’ll see some InteractBook examples in the next post, including winning entries of the InteractBuilder Contest that concluded in October.
Saturday’s class was the first in a series of eight Saturday sesions.
The classes, which are free, amount to a complete training on InteractBuilder.
This software is presently offered at no charge to individual “book builders”, developer and company founder Ezra Weinstein said Saturday.
You’ll learn enough in the class series to be able to build your own digital book on your PC or Mac — and in plenty of time to enter your creation in the 2nd InteractBook Contest, he said.
He announced the new contest in Saturday’s class. Deadline: April 1, 2012.
First prize: a new iMac and an iPad2, so the winning author-illustrator can go into digital book production on a grand scale (with a little help, maybe from the online InteractBuilder Publisher’s Community.)
(Note: Although you can download the software and build an InteractBook on your computer, you need an iPad or an iPhone to test how it will function on the interactive tablets and devices — their sensitive touch screens are key to the interactive book experience.)
The company is working on a simulator for the PC, however.
Also it expects to have the InteractBuilder software ready to work for Android tablets (such as the Kindle Fire) sometime next year, Weinstein said.
“I knew I was behind in tech knowledge. I just never dreamed how very far behind,” said a student after the two hour introductory class Saturday.
The series of trainings aims to bridge the knowledge gap and inspire illustrators and writers to think about a new kind of content — unfamiliar and perhaps even a bit unfathomable to those of us who grew up with paper books, but not mysterious or strange to a new generation of young readers.
On Saturday Ezra showed how to assemble a page with text and images (created in tools like Photoshop and Gimp) and bring it to captivating interactive life using the InteractiveBuilder dashboard.
He introduced the building blocks for structuring the reading experience of an InteractBook: Elements, Intersections, Interactions and Behaviors.
He also explained how the publishing business model would work for creators.
For example, if your book sells for U.S. $1 on Apple iTunes in the InteractBooks store, Apple will get its cut — 30 percent.
InteractBooks, as publisher would take 21 percent.
The author-illustrator would receive what’s left — 49 percent.
Grandpa and Rufus from "It's Time for Carrots"
Illustrators could generate additional revenues from the sale of bookshelf designs and shelf “decorations.” Think: Stickers. Virtual bracelet charms. Pokemon. Hello Kitty.
A book would not have to begin and end its life as strictly InteractBook virtual property, either.
“You own the copyright so you are free to take your book to other delivery platforms — e-books, audio books, paper books.” Weinstein said. “In fact, we encourage you to do so.”
And he offered an editorial tip to book builders: “Try not to distance the reader from the story” with all the distracting interactive features one of these books can offer, he said.
“You could put a your activity or little game at the end of the book, or something in the middle. We feel that the story is the most important thing.”
Eight week online class on InteractBuilder
This Saturday, April 17, Weinstein will teach the second of the eight free classes on how to produce an interactive illustrated children’s book for the iPad, iPhone and other touch screen devices using InteractBuilder software.
The class continues live on Saturday mornings (10:00 a.m. U.S. Central Time.)
See more details, a class schedule and a replay of this past Saturday’s class here.
From idea to iTunes
Discover how author-illustrator David Tribble produced his technology themed-picture book Lord of the Scribes for the iPad, using Apple’s Fixed Layout ePub.
He shares his process in the replay of an online presentation that he gave to “Marks and Splashes” students on Monday. See more.
Learn a great way to draw
Watch the interview with illustrator Marsha Riti about her first published book on the How to Be A Children’s Book Illustrator blog.
Learn a most useful secret for good drawing and discover the Make Your Marks-Make Your Splashes! online course on how to illustrate children’s books effectively and beautifully.
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- Marsha surrounded by her colleagues from the Austin SCBWI Girllustrators at the signing of “The Picky Little Witch” by Elizabeth Brokamp at BookPeople
But it was a costume bash/book launch and the celebrated independent Austin bookseller BookPeople is always up for a party and a crowd on its second floor.
- Author-illustrator Shelley Ann Jackson and a hula girl friend.
- Illustrators Amy Farrier and Emma Virjan with Marsha.
- Illustrator Lalena Fisher and a little witch friend.
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- All of us at last week’s group critique session for the “Marks and Splashes” course learned some lessons about professional mindset from illustrator Karien Naude. She co-moderated the critique with me from her home in Johannesburg, South Africa. Read our interview with Karien and see some examples of her marvelously fresh work in this week’s How to Be a Children’s Book Illustrator blog. Check her Alice in Wonderland — drawn in ink with nylon tip pen on paper, then colored on the computer with Corel Painter software.
Social media consultant Nick Alter (left), illustrator-author Clint Young (center) and graphic designer, comics art and web consultant Erik Kuntz (right) prepare for their presentations this past weekend. On the monitor is Clint’s illustration of Mole for The Wind in the Willows: Redux by Newbery Honor author Jacqueline Kelly.
Organized by the Austin, Texas SCBWI chapter and sponsored by St. Edward’s University, it delivered on what it had promised: Authors, illustrators and other venturesome book people sharing what they’d learned in the field about unleashing stories for e-books and digital interactive book apps and iPhone game apps and animations using TED-style chalk talks — using crazy blends of traditional and digital tools.
Designer, writer, comics artist, animator, owner of SquareBearStudio.com Erik Kuntz
Creating and maintaining your web persona presented by Erik Kuntz
Deanna Roy, publisher at Casey Shay Press, an independent press based in Austin developed Dust Bunnies, a special-featured iPad/iPhone storybook app, in partnership with Polycot Labs. She also created Kids Show Kids How to Make Balloon Animals for all color e-book platforms. Deanna spoke of going beyond uploading text and covers and creating enhanced e-book content with bonus features to set your book apart. Illustrators or authors can pitch unique storybook apps to developers or have them custom custom-built. 
There’s an app for that presented by Amanda Williams. The illustrator/art director of the award winning game Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, developed by Tiger Style Games spoke of creating apps for Apple devices such as iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.
She shared the fascinating story of how a small, dedicated virtual team of programmers, designers and musicians from around the U.S. pulled together to create Spider — an experience that was new to her as an illustrator. Amanda showed examples of art for interactive game apps and some of the the tools and techniques (digital and traditional) she uses to create environments for mobile video games.
From paper to pixels; the art of the digital paintbrush was presented by animation and game concept artist Clint Young, who has worked for major entertainment companies such as LucasArts Entertainment to game-maker Bioware.
Young demonstrated how he creates his own brushes in Photoshop to produce finished art pieces that look and feel like they’ve been crafted from real paint. They’re layered for animation and ready to be delivered to an editor.
Getting discovered and why you should absolutely give your stories away for free presented by Bear James. Whether in print or on the iPad, the children’s literature marketplace is always getting more crowded. Being ignored means failure, and although no magic elixir exists for getting your stories discovered, author, illustrator and designer Bear James presented some interesting trends and unconventional solutions he’s observed from other countries, markets and the recent past.
By being savvy about new technologies, marketing, game theory and engaging with the fans, Bear aims to offer stories that continue to grow with people beyond the confines of a traditional book.
Bear's presentation
Picture book author Lindsey Lane talks about the journey of her picture book, "Snuggle Mountain" (Clarion) illustrated by Melissa Iwai to new life as an app for an iPhone and an iPad. Below, Brad Graeber, CEO and co-founder of Powerhouse Animation (left) and freelance illustrator Joel Hickerson (right) showed how YouTube can be used to educate, promote and publicize.
Clint Young and Mr. Toad
Writer - illustrators Nicole Cortichiato and Gene Brenek
Illustrator Christy Stallop takes notes while InteractBuilder’s Richard Johnson addresses her group from his Los Angeles hotel room.
More links:
Space City Illustrators – Houston SCBWI
It’s just a small sampling of the presenters from the groundbreaking SCBWI conference.
Find more links and read about all the symposium offerings.
Oh, and (amazingly) it rained!
Dallion McGregor's logo
They don’t confuse an app with an e-book that’s read online or through a reader like the Kindle or the Color Nook, although apps sometimes are called e-books or enhanced e-books.
What they may not know is that they can produce a digital interactive book with a free software and if they publish themselves, a most affordable platform.
The developer, Texas based InteractBooks is even sponsoring a contest for the best interactive book using their InteractBuilder software. Updated versions of the builder and the app that allows fans of their interactive books to curate their InteractBook libraries on their iPad, iPodTouch or smart mobile devices are coming out, so the contest deadline has been moved out a month, to October 15.
At the end of last year I talked with company founders Ezra Weinstein and Richard Johnson as they waited for approval of their app by the Apple iTunes Store. (They got it a few days after these videos were made.) Their objective remains what it was then: To enroll as many creative people as possible making good InteractBooks for children.
It’s why they’ve been making presentations at Society of Childrn’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conferences. They’re encouraging artists, illustrators and small publishers to “bring their stories to life” with InteractBuilder tools and distribute them via iTunes and their “bookshelf”app.
Weinstein and Johnson anticipate that other uses might emerge for their publishing software. In the meantime the children’s books show off the interactive possibilities nicely.
Hence the contest. First place winner receives an IPad2, by the way.
As an art form, the interactive book lies somewhere between a linear story, animated movie and electronic game or toy. And they sell for a song. By that I mean they sell for a song’s price on iTunes (99 cents to 4.99.) The ordinary Kindle e-books tend to hover in a price range that’s more…well, bookly (2.99 to 9.99.)
Again, to be clear in the distinction, interactive digital books are not the e-books you download on a Kindle. They’re a different critter, tied to the acutely sensitive touch screen technology of the iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone and a growing number of smart devices with powerful graphics chips.
What does it take to build an InteractBook on your own?
A few things: The software which you can download from their site.
You should probably have Photoshop CS-4 or a later version.
You’ll want an unpublished children’s story — or a published one that you have (or can get) e-publishing rights to. Preferably it’s a story that’s been (or is now being) illustrated in Photoshop.
The key is pictures in Photoshop files, in layers.
This way picture elements can be isolated into separate layers and manipulated, combined with or substituted by other layers to create “behaviors” when they’re touched on the screen.
That’s what the InteractBuilder software allows you to do.
You’ll want to own an iPad — or know someone who does — to test those interactive animations on a sensitive touch screen. (It’s a bit like uploading changes to a website, then visiting the site on your browser to see the result.) There isn’t a way to test the behaviors on a PC or Mac screen yet, though there may be soon.
You’ll find some tutorial training up on the InteractBuilder site. More will be available after the version update. Students of the Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! children’s book illustration course will receive additional training from Ezra and Richard.
It will take some instruction and maybe some repeated exposures, but the process is more understandable and do-able than it first sounds. But if this all stills scares you, you can partner with a developer in the InteractBooks developers community.
Welcome to the era of digital book-making!
The major children’s book publishers are watching. Until now they’ve been the true pros in providing quality reading content for the young and distributing it through the time-honored channels of retail stores, classrooms and libraries, school and public.
Now they see feisty start-ups and aggressive alliances making end-runs around the New York centered literary establishment.
Like Ruckus Media teaming up with Rabbit Ears video and Hasbro toys and small interactive booktique Nosy Crow of England enlisting author-illustrator superstar Sandra Boynton and Disney-Pixar huddled to bring out apps based on Disney animated classics going back half a century.
The venerable publishers noticed when ex-Pixar designer William Joyce with his Shreveport, Louisiana based Moonbot Studios scored a touchdown with his iPad hit The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (based on Joyce’s animated short film.)
They’re watching their old market friends, brick and mortar bookstores around the country close and Wal-Mart sell Amazon Kindles (a big tip-off that e-readers have gone mainstream and will be with us for a while) and Toys R Us just starting to sell iPads (a sign that young families with children have accepted the revolutionary technology in kids’ playrooms.)
They’re watching e-book sales trounce sales of print books at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and – amid all the upheavals — how those sales have started pulling up their own profits.
What a crazy, exciting and yes, scary time to be a children’s book publisher — big or small, old or new. Or an illustrator creating art for one.
InteractBooks' Richard Johnson and Ezra Weinstein
Late-breaking news: The InteractBuilder 2.0 version software has just been released and an introductory training session has been set for 9 a.m. this Saturday, September 10. Register for a virtual seat in the classroom here. Learn to build a digital book with interactive behaviors — and enter the contest!
Think I’m exaggerating?
From Publishers Weekly, August 26:
“The Penguin Young Readers Group is expanding its line of enhanced e-books and releasing a series of apps based on such contemporary bestselling picture books as Judy Schachner’s SkippyJon Jones and Jacky Davis and David Soman’s Ladybug Girl and on classic works like The Night Before Christmas and Peter Rabbit. In November the series will also feature a simultaneous print/app release of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp, based on a wildly popular YouTube video. See the story.
A book’s new life as a PicPocket app
Here’s a great account of an out-of-print picture book’s journey to new life as an app for the iPhone and iPad — by the book’s author Lindsey Lane in the blog Cynsations. Lane explains how Snuggle Mountain, illustrated by Melissa Iwai, originally published by Clarion, metamorphosed into an interactive product by her, Iwai and PicPocket Books.
St. Edward's University - Austin, Texas
A digital publishing “symposium” in Austin
Lindsey Lane and Ezra Weinstein are among the featured presenters at a special symposium to be hosted Saturday, October 8 by the Austin chapter of SCBWI and St. Edward’s University, Storytelling in the Digital Age: Embrace the Change.
It’s just the one day with the following discussions on the agenda:
SCBWI and Digital Storytelling with Lin Oliver, SCBWI Executive Director, via Skype
Creating and Maintaining Your Web Persona presented by Erik Kuntz
Standing Out in the E-book Crowd: Storybook Apps, Enhanced Content, and Digital Marketing Extras presented by Deanna Roy
Your Story as Electrons: Breathing Life into Words in the Digital Age presented by P.J.Hoover
There’s an App for That presented by Amanda Williams
How Do They Do That?: Creating Digital Books presented by Meridith Blank Taylor
From Oop to App: The Transformation of Picture Books to Apps presented by Lindsey Lane
Paper to Pixels: The Art of the Digital Paintbrush presented by Clint Young
xtranormal: The Storyteller’s Dream Software presented by Zack Gonzales
YouTube and the Science Behind Visual Learning presented by Joel Hickerson
Storytelling in the Digital Age: Imagine presented by Ezra Weinstein
The Indie and Age of Digital Storytelling presented by BookPeople
Children’s Book Illustrators and Technology presented by the Girllustrators
Social Media 101 presented by Nick Alter
Getting Discovered: Why You Should ABSOLUTELY Give Your Stories Away for Free presented by Bear James
Our Uncovered Cover contest winner!
Artist Susan Sorrell Hill, a student in the Marks and Splashes course has won the Undercover Cover Show and Tell Contest with her make believe children’s book cover for the Grimm’s fairy tale The Girl with the Silver Hands.
The Undercover Cover blog by children’s book editor Heidi Kellenberger has been touted by NPR’s Fresh Air, School Library Journal and the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog.
“Each of these artists contributed totally distinctive and book-worthy work,” Kellenberger writes. The winning selections were based on the number of comments received, ratings and Facebook likes.
Congratulations, Susan! (See hers and all of the other fabulous imagined covers here!)
It’s back to school with you!
An online course on illustrating children’s books, Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! shows you how to draw nearly anything, unlock beautiful design and color in your art and what to do, step by step when you land that assignment to illustrate a story for a book, magazine or digital product. You can read more about the course here.
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Mark Mitchell, who wrote today’s post is the author of the Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! online course on how to illustrate children’s books (in changing times) and the award-winning book for upper elementary and middle grades Raising ‘La Belle: The Story of ‘La Salle Shipwreck.’
]]>Children’s and YA author Cynthia Leitich Smith gives an incredibly generous and instructive interview to Julie Danielson at the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog about the six year gestation of her new picture book Holler Loudly, illustrated by Barry Gott (Dutton). The post includes some wonderful page spreads — original outline drawings and the finished illustrations from the book. You might want to check out Barry’s sketchedbybook tumblr page.
Here’s the cover for Holler Loudly by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Barry Gott (Dutton))
Children’s and YA author, and Cynthia’s husband Greg Leitich Smith, meanwhile has posted on the recent bumper crop of children’s and YA books by Austin, Texas authors and illustrators. He cites 22 new children’s and YA books out by Austin area authors and illustrators, most of them in the Austin SCBWI chapter, including Patrice Barton (Sweet Moon Baby: An Adoption Tale, Layla, Queen of Hearts), Don Tate (She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story), Laura Logan (Nonna Tell Me A Story) and Keith Graves (Chicken Big). Read his post here.
Don Tate writes in Hunger Mountain, the Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal of the Arts about how he approached his assignment to illustrate Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite by Anna Harwell Celenza (Charlesbridge Publishing.) Read his post and see some of Tate’s art for this picture book account of a fascinating musical collaboration.
Bruce Foster, the Houston-based paper engineer profiled in a recent How To Be A Children’s Book Illustrator post attracted a USA Today review of his work in Charles Dickens‘ A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book, illustrated by Chuck Fischer and a Dallas Morning News feature for, among his other accomplishments, his paper engineering for the official Warner Brothers’ Harry Potter, a Pop-Up Book, illustrated by Andrew Williamson.
- “Sweet Baby Moon” by Karen Henry Clark, illustrated by Patrice Barton
Nice guest post by illustrator Patrice Barton on Cynthia Leitich Smith‘s blog, Cynsations about the difference between illustrating for picture books and chapter books. Read the post here. Patrice’s latest releases are the gorgeous Sweet Moon Baby: An Adoption Tale by Karen Henry Clark and the funny, two word picture book Mine! by Shutta Crum ( both published by Knopf Books for Young Readers.) You’ll enjoy the trailer for Mine! with Patrice’s art (below.)
Make Your Splashes-Make Your Marks!
Mark Mitchell’s online course on children’s book illustration now includes monthly in-depth video interviews with successful children’s book illustrators.
"Make Your Splashes - Make Your Marks!"
They’re like having your own nosy, personal visits with the illustrators in their studios.
A tech learning track has been added to the course, with sessions coming on e-books, interactive book apps for the iPad and smart phones and digital painting software. (“No art student left behind” is how we roll around here.)
A new study buddy option on the course enrollment page lets you bring a colleague, friend, or family member into the course with you with full benefits for both of you for a tuition price that is nearly 2 for one. You’ll find the option on the enrollment form, which you can reach via the course info page.
E-publishing symposium for children’s book authors and illustrators
Read author Cynthia Leitich Smith’s interview with Austin SCBWI regional adviser Debbie Gonzales about a special October 8 symposium, Embrace the Change: Storytelling in the Digital Age that will feature good training by pathfinders in the emerging worlds of children’s book apps and e-books.
The best kind of book review is always a feature story
All right it’s not Austin related, but Vanity Fair of all magazines, chats with Maurice Sendak about his new picture book Bumble-Ardy.
Their book Harness Horses: Bucking Broncos and Pit Ponies: a History of Horse Breeds (Tundra Press) will be out this October and Jeff’s hilarious picture book, Wiener Wolf (Hyperion) will be released in July.
Mark Mitchell, who hosts this blog recently visited with them.
In this four minute clip from the interview, Jeff shares a painting tip and a few pages from his sketchbook.
In the candid 90 minute interview Jeff and Shelley reveal an incredible amount about the work and processes of a children’s book illustrator. The 2011 version of Make Your Splashes – Make Your Marks! online course features the full interview and new video visits every month with professional children’s book illustrators.
Because sometimes you can learn from a personal conversation with a working professional than you can from a whole semester of lessons.
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