Content Creators…I’d rather not.

The other day one of the Google founders talked about the opportunities for ‘content creators’ in regards to using their You Tube service. (Of course, it’s always about the possibilities that await you IF you use this or that of a companies’ tools and products and platforms and…) And while my first reaction is to agree that the possibilities of global distribution are unparalleled, something about the way he said ‘content creators’ unnerved me. Made me want to wash my hands…or make sure I never have that on an ID tag at an event.

Content Creators…Logically I can understand that. And I ‘get it’, as the kids say…Wait. I’m too old to know what the kids say. Plus I’d just be texting this or Tweeting it if I knew. Anyway, I’m probably as likely as anyone to be defined as a content creator. Work across mediums, work across genres, work across platforms..check, check, check.

But I didn’t like to hear myself called that. And I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s my 20th century ego. Maybe it’s delusions of grandeur. Maybe I’m just too neurotic. But maybe it’s another use of language to separate humans from what they do. To abstract it to another degree. After all, maybe a ‘content creator’ is more likely to let Google take their ‘content’ and use it to build Google’s business, while a ‘writer’ might expect to be paid by said company for that activity.

I don’t have an answer to this dilemma. Not sure I can competently recite the question. But there is something unnerving to the description and the casualness with which it is championed.

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Illustrator’s Day in November in Los Angeles

I will be speaking in Los Angeles for the SCBWI sponsored Illustrator’s Day in November. But I won’t be speaking about illustrating. I’ll be sharing my favorite under-10-minute cookie recipes.

OK. That’s not true. While I WILL be speaking at the SCBWI’s Illustrator’s Day and I do have favorite under-10-minute cookie recipes, I will not be combining said activities. Instead I will be talking about iPad Apps and what they offer illustrators and writers. Not just from a ‘sell your book as an app’ POV but from a marketing POV and some technical information about the process. I’ll be sharing the stage with one of the developers who helped me create the Cave Bear and Duck App for the iPad, which has enjoyed a steady pace of downloads over the past year. That’s probably because it’s FREE for the iPad so go get it. I mean it’s one thing for me to say it’s the BEST free iPad read-along comic book app ever. But quite another for Walter Jenorjustky to say it. And he did. “It’s the best free read-along comic book iPad app ever.” – Walter Jenorjustky *.

But THERE will be two great illustrators speaking. Peter Reynolds and Dan Krall. I’ve never met Peter but I have visited his bookstore in Massachusetts. He got like a hundred bucks off me when I stopped there…But Dan Krall used to knock books out of my hands in the hall in Jr. High. Maybe that was a different Dan Krall? Well, I think it’s him. I hope he demands my lunch money ’cause jokes on him – I’ll have no lunch money on me. Dad said just ignore him and he’ll stop trying to take my lunch money and in time maybe he will also stop drawing so darn well…

Anyway, see you in November in LA for Illustrator’s Day!

* – Walter Jenorjustky is a quiet person who mainly does reviews of my work when I ask him. For this he receives several Oreo Cookies. He lives beside the Willamette River near West Linn in a small house that’s inviting and not-so-inviting at the same time. He does not have an iPad but often pretends he can use a large flat stone as one.

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Q&A Monday

I sometimes receive emails from this blog with legitimate questions. Not the ones offering to sell me something. Or asking that I wire money to some exotic locale. Why not make blog content of these questions!? It’s like Thanksgiving leftovers. In a good way. Plus I can correct the spelling that was in my original response.

Q: Do you draw on the computer?

A: Yes. Well, not ON the computer, but using the computer. I have been doing this since it wasn’t cool. Since art directors used to say, “We don’t want digital work.” Which wasn’t that long ago. But I do almost all my sketches using good old pencil and paper. Then scan them in and use Photoshop. I mix in lots of textures I’ve scanned and brushes I make in Photoshop.

Q: You don’t talk about illustration much. (On this illustration blog).

A: See above question! Actually I’ve been accused of this before. And you are right. I don’t mean this blog as a How To so much as it is, just about whatever I want it to be. I spend most of my working life developing stories; writing and illustrating them. So it ends up about that process and generally things I find interesting. I am mostly inspired by the story side of things. Drawing for me is directly connected to the narrative experience. Because of this and my stay-at-home-dadishness I do very little art that is not on deadline. When I have free time, I usually play video games…no. I usually write stories. Which I send to my agent and he patiently reads them and explains whey they won’t sell. Then I do it again. It’s a good relationship. He leaves me with hope and really, what more can you ask for!? Honestly having others read your work and offer honest appraisals about what you do best is very helpful. If you find people who will do that for you, treat them well. BTW my hobbies are hiking, swimming and the improper use of punctuation marks!

And the final one for today!

Q: Do you draw or write a story first?

A: This came from a student asking for a school paper or some such thing. It’s a good question. But as with most answers to art issues, what I do is just what I do. It’s not the ‘right way’ to do it. I almost always write first. I tend to think of a character or a situation and form a rough outline. I write this out. Sometimes the time between when I am thinking of the story and actually sitting down to write it is a long time. In that case I often start some drawings or doodles. These can greatly effect the story. So even if I write it out first, the drawings and doodles and roughs will help shape the story. Sometimes change it entirely.

Happy Monday!

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West Linn Public Library

I’ll be speaking, drawing, answering questions, asking questions and doing some sketching at the West Linn public library on February 4th on the topic of creating book covers. Discussing what a good book jacket design is and isn’t.

We will be doing some hands-on thumb-nailing and discussing different methods to create final art and design for a cover. The event is focused on the book, The Wizard of Earthsea. Which, as I have written about on this blog, was the book that turned me into a reader, or as much of a reader as I have become. And a few years ago I tracked down a paperback copy of The Wizard of Earthsea I remember first getting from my Jr. High library. I remembered the cover.

I’ll also bring some covers I have recently worked on (for some books yet to be released) and I’ll bring the visual history of the development of the cover for The Book That Eats People.

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It’s come to this…

shot and processed on my iPhone.

It’s come to this, posting pictures of my cat.

I eat lunch most days (well, summer days anyway) on the back porch and most often I am joined by our cat, Ravi.

He always makes himself present at the table. Here’s to Ravi. The cat who likes to lunch.

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new art – old idea

I’ve tossed an idea around for about 7 years now. Its plot has stayed relatively unchanged. But the location, characters, story, even what the villains and protagonists ARE has changed radically.

At its core it is about what growing up means. And more importantly what the trade-offs are when it happens. As a kid, growing up seems like the best thing EVER. As a grown up (well at least an old person) I can’t imagine why exactly I thought that. The beginning of dinner is far better than washing the dishes, isn’t it? I’m also geting kind of obsessed with how my memories of childhood are starting to fade more quickly. What I recall now are rather odd moments. Moments that are very etherial, very emotive at capturing how being a child felt, but these moments are almost always not the big moments you’d think they would be. Not a birthday party or a Christmas morning, but things like what the driveway felt like on my bare feet, after a summer rain, when I would run down to the get the mail. Odd..

So as I have been hard at work on Earthling! I have two or three side projects that I can scribble ideas down for. And this story finally came together.

It seems that procrastinating on a big project always helps another along. It actually helps both projects. Right now, doing roughs, can get tedious and mechanical. If I take an hour or two a day and break away to something else it really helps me approach the pages with fresh eyes and enthusiasm again. So here’s a page I drew and colored from the new story. It’s taken the form of a graphic novel right now. I deleted the text out as I am still developing the structure and characters and hey, I don’t want to give everything away!

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SCBWI article

I wrote an article for the SCBWI newsletter from the Los Angeles chapter. Here is the home for the local SCBWI chapter, which features a link to the Spring 2010 Kite Tales newsletter. (Here is a direct link to the PDF.) Now that I reread it, it seems a bit too serious and humorless. I didn’t want it to be that way.

In the article I talk about how I use  the computer to draw and paint. I don’t consider my digital work an extension of any one traditional method. I’m not doing ‘digital’ watercolors. Or ‘digital oil painting’. It’s a unique, mixed media approach that creates a new technique. It does some things well and other things not so well. And as in any medium, the skill and creativity of the artisan can make a difference.

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Does this idea suck?

I’m not sure how other writers work but I tend to have 5 or 6 projects going at once. Some are similar and only one of the group will fully develop. For instance, I have 3 picture books I am actively working on. But I suspect only one has the legs to move on. If I was a corporation I would have to wonder about all that wasted time on ‘bad’ projects. Of course, how else do you get to the good ones? I suppose, maybe, perhaps…someone as amazingly prolific as Stephen King has the ability to make bigger jumps. Perhaps one of his innate abilities that was refined in his career, was to know a little faster than others that “This idea just isn’t going to work.”

I have to spend quite a bit of time on something before I can say that.

I enjoy working in a couple of different genres at once. I have a high fantasy/detective/film noir graphic novel I am editing. A middle grade, horror novel that is slowly turning into a graphic novel (once I hit upon what made the story intriguing, I realized it works better as a graphic novel). I have the sci-fi graphic novel I am working on for Chronicle Books, an animated short that will take me 10 years to finish and a few other projects that dare not speak their names.

Projects I like to call ‘cellar’ projects. These projects are probably too much of a mash-up to ever find a home at a publisher. But I am driven to complete them. Get them out of my head, so to speak. They take up a lot of time, but I enjoy the creative adventure and the opportunity to just make something that hits the beats I want to, with little concern about what demographic they are for.

What amazes me is how much time goes into projects that never quite make it. The creative process is pretty bizarre. You don’t know exactly what you are going to get. That’s why Hollywood is such a non-traditional business to try and manage. Millions of dollars on the line and still it’s filled with fickle starts-and-stops. Good ideas that never quite develop. Films that are labored over and fine tuned only to die quickly and painfully once released.

At least I get to go through the process of creation and destruction in the private on my third floor studio. Only my dogs see the fits I go through as I try and find an idea with legs. An idea that works through beginning, middle and end. It’s become obvious to me that every project I do, no matter if it finds a published home or even gets finished, is simply practice for the next idea that takes up residence in my mind at 2 in the morning and gets in the way of my life until I have no choice but to jump in with both feet and let it start eating up time.

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Amanita Design

I’m usually not a big fan of video games. I mean, I play them – when I have time…if I have time…when I USED to have time. But the standard 3D graphics have gotten stale to me. There’s something about the ‘shininess’, the surreal amount of texture detail, the hang-up on recreating reality (Look how real it looks!  Who cares? Have you ever looked at a  Van Eyck? He had hyper-surrealism/hyperrealism down in the 15th century. )

And I am not a fan of Flash as a development platform, an animation tool or whatever Adobe wants to sell it as this week. I do some work in Flash. But I rarely find it the ideal tool for anything other than hyperactive, marketing driven websites where the first thing you do is turn off the music, turn off the animation and try and find an HTML version where you can at least bookmark specific links… ANYWAY, the following post deals with a video game that’s done in Flash. So much for my cranky dislikes.

I saw this game on the Apple download page and decided to look into it and it’s really quite a cool game. The free demo works on OSX. The game play is pretty inspired. It’s not HALO – thank goodness – the body count isn’t the defining accomplishment but it’s fun to interact with, inspiring to look at and I wasted some time with it and it felt good!

The company is from the Czech Republic (Is it still called a Republic?) . Their website is here and they have some fun point-and-shoot type games (look under FLASH GAMES at the top of the page). They all feature inspired art direction, intriguing character design and innovative interaction with the scenes. Wonderful, fanciful illustrated worlds that feature a great deal of humanity in the art. They give me a real sense of seeing things from another human beings perspective. And that, for me, is usually a defining factor in what makes Art. Show me something about how you perceive the world. It doesn’t have to LOOK like the ‘real’ world. In fact,  don’t let the real world interfere if you have a strong enough vision. That’s why this work feels special to me. 99% of video games out there have no interest in presenting a point of view that resonates beyond what we precieve as ‘reality’. Even the most ridiculous, outlandish constructs in video games are rendered with the upmost care to make sure they look JUST LIKE WHAT WE SEE all the time.

This company has been doing work for quite some time and once again I am behind the times. Nothing new in discovering that. But it’s new to me and I really enjoyed it.

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7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast

There’s an interview with John Perry, author of The Book That Eats People, and me – the illustrator posted at the 7 Impossible Things website. There’s also some other art samples posted. I didn’t say anything too dumb. I think. I hope.

7 Impossible Things – The Book That Eats People

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