Making comics again
Late Night with Seth Meyers
So last week I got an email from Ellen Waggett, the production designer of Late Night with Seth Meyers. Writer Ben Warheit had written a crazy rant about AI and the singularity and car crime and would I like to do a big Waldo-y spread of what a giant Car Jail would look like?
Would I?
WOULD I?
My spouse and I love the show and are big Corrections fans, so going HAM on show jokes was a dream come true.
Brooklyn Book Festival
Join me on Children’s Day at the Brooklyn Book Festival for CELEBRATE YOURSELF WITH INFOGRAPHICS 2:00pm an activity inspired by LIFE LOG by Lea Redmond!
There's No Such Thing As Vegetables!
Jarrett Dapier and I got to talk with Elizabeth Denham, the activist who fought the censorship of our book in her hometown of Spanish Fort, AL, on her podcast (click image for link).
PW Article: Confronting Cultural Illiteracy: LGBTQ Books 2022
PW spoke with creators of LGBTQ+ books that’ve been banned or challenged about the wave of bigoted censorship sweeping the country.
“The recent spate of challenges to books with LGBTQ content has been met with equally vocal resistance from booksellers, librarians, parents, and other advocates. Caught in the middle are the people who create the books. George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, a YA essay collection revolving around themes of identity and family, was, according to the ALA, the third most challenged book of 2021; it was cited for LGBTQ content, profanity, and because it was considered sexually explicit. “It’s never easy to wake up to Google alerts mischaracterizing your work as something that it isn’t or seeing it used as a pawn for political partisanship,” Johnson says. “It only makes me want to create more stories in the world—find newer, cooler mediums to tell my stories.”
Another author, Jarrett Dapier, had a virtual presentation of his picture book Mr. Watson’s Chickens cancelled when the school librarian told the principal that the story features a gay couple. The principal then suggested offering parents the choice to opt out of the event, which Dapier found unacceptable. The presentation was rescheduled, the author says, after the school agreed to his terms: he insisted that the principal not send the opt-out letter, and that “teachers would not change their approach to the book or point out the characters’ relationship in anything but a positive, normal light, if they did at all.”
PW spoke with Johnson, Dapier, and other authors and illustrators about their challenged titles, the importance of writing books with LGBTQ themes, and how they and others in the publishing ecosystem can best serve readers.”
Jarrett Dapier (author of Mr. Watson’s Chickens) and I joined in:
(click image for full article)
What's Happening with Mr. Watson's Chickens
Last week a public elementary school in IL suddenly canceled a virtual visit with Jarrett Dapier, the author of Mr. Watson’s Chickens (which I illustrated). As I understand it, the school was concerned that inviting an author to read a book that centers queer characters would result in a homophobic backlash. The administration is currently working with Jarrett to reschedule. I want to talk about what’s happening because it’s larger than our one book and this one school.
This is happening as part of the vicious and organized attacks on schools against LGBTQIA2+ people - as creators, as characters, as students and teachers, as human beings. It’s part of a bigger and focused movement trying to erase the voices of LGBTQIA2+ folks and people of color in schools. These attacks frighten school administrators into preemptively doing the anti-LGBTQIA2+ movement’s hateful work. This school has been terrorized into choosing who to appease and who to sacrifice.
But hate can’t be appeased.
This is bigotry at work. This is wrong. This is harmful. Homophobia and transphobia hurt everyone they touch, but especially threaten LGBTQIA2+ folks by getting people to act as if our essential humanity is in some way debatable, inappropriate or dangerous. Censoring queer content doesn’t make us exist any less, but it does turn us into targets.
We have the right to exist in our stories, survive in our neighborhoods, and be safe in our schools. Whose stories get told and whose stories are silenced shows who can live openly and who has to hide. It certainly shows students and teachers who their community is willing and unwilling to protect.
If you think it’s not happening in your community, I want to say: this fight is everywhere and this fight is now. If bigots are loud, we all have to be even louder and bigger and bolder in asserting that LGBTQIA2+ people are people. Your teachers and schools need your support in affirming this and holding the line against hate, because they can’t do it alone.
A few months ago, I got to be part of a panel on graphic novel format and storytelling with Greg Pizzoli, Drew Brockington and Andrea Colvin, and I shared some annotated spreads from Kondo & Kezumi Visit Giant Island (by David Goodner). You can see the talk here:
Anyway, I totally meant to post a longer ig live or something stream explaining all these, but the fall was busier than I’d thought. Still might do the talk, but in the meantime, here are the slides:
A Day At the Bookstore
Illustrating Sharko & Hippo
Sharko and Hippo is a glorious pun-run of a picture book packed with silliness, wordplay and shark exasperation and it’s coming out from HarperCollins next Tues (9/29/20). Written by Elliott Kalan (Horse Meets Dog), it was a lot of fun to illustrate! Here’s some behind-the-scenes of how I illustrated this:
The manuscript Every illustration job starts the same: I get a manuscript. It looks a lot like a blank slate, images wise, doesn’t it? A number of people have asked how collaborative illustrating a picture book is and whether the author and illustrator heavily consult each other before starting. Usually, the answer is no - and that’s by design. A picture book is a full equal partnership between the two, so when I get the manuscript there might be a few art notes or suggestions, but largely I’m get free rein to come up with the art in response to the story. Then the art director/designer and I revise hash out the illustrations between us. I print out the manuscript, and sit down and read and re-read it, adding notes of story beats, things I want to emphasize, emotional changes, any images that pop into my head, etc.
2. Visual Narrative Outline I map out every book with a rough thumbnail contact sheet of all the pages. This lets me hash out rough sequences or important images and track narrative arcs in the whole stories. Then this gets taped above my desk so I can consult it until the book is done. For eg. you see the spreads lined with brown marker and 1, 2, 3 below? Those are marking the 3 distinct stages of escalating exasperation/humor in the story (1 = slow build of the Sharko & Hippo patter dynamic 2 = the back and forth quickens and escalates, gets more absurd, Shako loses his cool even more 3 = rapid fire comedy, height of absurdity, Sharko at his most frustrated, have to build the story to a fever pitch here before the resolution diffuses all the tension.) Bonus fun: how many different ways can you draw a shark freaking out without repeating poses?
3. Thumbnails and sketch dummy I start noodling out the story in a rough pencil thumbnail dummy. This gets revised many times before I send it to the art director, Donna Bray, and we revise it further after that.
4. Visual Research & Noodling Sharko & Hippo were inspired by the funny patter between Chico and Harpo Marx, of the Marx Brothers. It’d been ages since I last saw a Marx Brothers movie, so I watched sequences from a few to see their expressions/banter/body language. Sharko and Hippo didn’t need to look exactly like the Marx Brothers, but I wanted them to be in their DNA. Also, it was really fun reconnecting with those movies - and if you’ve never seen one, if you’ve seen Looney Tunes or any number of 20th century comedy you’ll be watching things with a strong Marx Brothers influence. I was surprised just how dang warm the interaction between Chico and Harpo is when they play piano in The Big Store. So much of their comedy is about timing and slapstick and a push-me-pull-you power dynamic but it’s built on top of this close sibling working relationship. Also, doing comedy while playing piano = chef’s kiss. Chico talks a big, aggro game, but Harpo (who doesn’t talk) knows exactly how much he can get away with, and his big weird expressions are fantastic. Readers are gonna know that while Sharko is losing his marbles, Hippo’s expressions show who’s really calling the shots.
5. Time to learn what hippos and sharks look like! And how to make them stand up. And what they’ll wear. And how their mouths and eyes work. I can simplify and cartoon their characters so much better if I understand the specifics of how their bodies work.
6. Lineup Reference - gotta keep those characters looking the same on every page!
7. Make that book! I print out my pencil roughs on big pieces of Bistol so I can ink over them. The pencils are light cyan so I can scan the inkwork and use Photoshop levels to “erase” the blue lines. Usually I ink with mechanical pencil, but I used Sumi Ink and nibs to have a chunkier, more expressive line.
8. Color that book! I watercolored natural elements like the lake and trees and digitally colored the rest, a method I picked after running some tests. Then: color flat and come up with a palette and BAM - off to the races.
9. Boom! A Book!
Mount Moriah Cemetery
Kirkus Best Picture Books of 2019
PW Best Picture Books of 2019
Big (Lap-Sized) News!
ACCIDENT! is now available as a lap-sized board book! Large, stay-flat pages perfect for side by side searching for ridiculous mistakes and tough enough for littler kids enjoying it on their own.
Korean & Chinese editions, y'all!
I am SO EXCITED these exist!
Fuse 8 Review
Betsy Bird of Fuse 8 (at School Library Journal) wrote an incredibly in-depth review of Crab Cake that’s left me speechless. Here it is:
Lansdowne Friends School
Had SO much fun meeting the fantastic kids and educators at Lansdowne Friends School! So many great questions and comments about the sea, pollution, writing, helping, and accidents. Teacher Steve (Teare) was all-around awesome bringing me in and co-facilitating all day - and today he has me ded because he sent his classes’ Crab art and my heart has exploded.
photos © Lansdowne Friends School
Gideon and I are in a comic!
Interview with Discover Nikkei
It's here!
Also:
even more events coming up: