Dec 6, 2010

How It Started

So here's how the idea for this book started: Confession - This isn't my first book-for-a-charity attempt. I was working on another book I wanted to do for charity (I'll eventually go back to it) and was trying to figure out what charity I wanted to support. (Below is a bad  photo of one of the pages. That book is for another time; another blog. But I WILL finish it!)
Back to this book - For some reason water came to mind. It's one of those things you take for granted and if you've ever seen images or videos of the water some people actually drink, it's deeeeee-sgusting. It's like Fear Factor except nobody wins any prizes and there's no Joe Rogan. Anyways, I felt the story should tie back to the type of charity so it's somewhat cohesive. I liked that idea so I quickly sketched the character below and a star was born (or soon to be star...I hope).

The original thought was to write the story then I would get my friends (some of which are reading this right now) to each illustrate a different page. My pie-in-the-sky wish was to get some of my favorite illustrators (outside of my friends) such as Amanda Visell, Johnny Yanok, Don Clark (from Invisible Creature), etc to do a page also. I've been lucky to meet some of them. Others are friends, or relatives of friends, and some I would just contact out of the blue (no pun intended) to see what would happen. So if there was going to be 32 pages, then there would be 32 illustrators. Kinda cool.

I quickly texted my buddy and first illustrator on my list, JP Coovert with the idea to get his thoughts since he's kinda in the biz. He liked it and was down to do help. He'll play a bigger role eventually but I'll ruin a surprise right now and let you know that's not the route I'm taking. He suggested that I illustrate the whole thing for two reasons - 1) He liked my style and, more importantly, 2) we both agreed that all of the different illustration styles would distract from the story.

That's too many words in a row so that's where I'll leave you for now. Till next time! Oh yeah, you can check JP's stuff here: http://www.jpcoovert.com/

Word!

2 comments:

  1. Dude. Cool. Have you heard of Kickstarter? http://www.kickstarter.com/

    Could be good for motivation. Basically you set out to make something creative and ask for donations that would collect towards a set amount then you offer - oh crap - I just read the fine print and they don't do charity. Ah well, maybe a good idea for another project another day.

    Anyway, I'll be tuning in.

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  2. That's a really cool site! No worries! I have plenty of other ideas in the queue that could use a kickstart! I'd love to see you throw a project up there. Let me know when you have a new book out by the way. I want to collect them all!

    Thanks for following man! Talk to you soon.

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