Ouch! A little sensitive are you?

Recently I was reading some online reviews of the books I’ve worked on. Never a great idea. But the Internet exists if for no other reason than to make you more neurotic.

Anyway, I found one concerning The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot. An illustrator had left a comment like, ” It looks OK. Basically he just ripped off the minions from Despicable Me.”

Ouch! I have to admit, the alien kids do look similar. But the sad part, or good part, is I designed that book long before that movie came out. And here’s the story about that.

I started designing the aliens as soon as the contract came in. I was really excited. My first drafts had all three eyed-alien kids and that crazy multi-eyed robot. I was into lots of eyes…I tried making the characters blue, but I didn’t like it. So I defaulted to a yellow-green/acid-green coloring for them because that coloring looked great atop all the deep-space backgrounds the book featured. And they are aliens…come on. I’m not the most original colorist.

So I turned in my first designs, I got notes back and the art director asked what I thought about each of the aliens having a different number of eyes so kids can more easily tell them apart. Cool idea. I did that and was soon moving forward painting the roughs.

About halfway through the book I went to Apple Trailers one day and – nearly wet my pants when I saw the first full trailer for Despicable Me that featured the Minions. I believe that the earliest teaser trailers didn’t have the minions in them. Well, I freaked out. Looked online for anything about them and started alternative character designs. I wrote the editor and art director, who had seen the roughs, telling them I would have to change everything because my characters look similar to these other characters in a new movie.

The art director wrote back saying, don’t bother changing them. They loved my characters as they were. The characters in the book are kids, they are not minions. And there are lots of characters with similar traits in books and films.

And so that’s how I became a big, fat, plagiarist…not.

Read Full Post »

The Book That Eats People, still hungry…

I had a wonderful Skype call with The Boone Trail Elementary School in North Carolina the other morning. I always forget to write about these type of things. Of course the time difference created a very early morning for me, but they put up with my sipping tea while we talked. It was a little before 6 a.m. my time when we video chatted. And I bet I looked like it was a little before 6 a.m. when we chatted!

The kids asked great questions and we talked about The Book That Eats People. They had a call with John Perry, the author, a few days earlier and that prompted them to make the video below. It’s hosted on Facebook. I think the link will work, but I have no idea if you need to be signed into Facebook to see it.

They also had a copy of The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot which they were excited to discuss.

It’s wonderful to see how much fun kids have with these books. I really appreciate them getting in touch and I sent off some materials for the class to share.

Just remember – ALWAYS BE NICE TO BOOKS!

EDIT. I had the wrong video up here! So sorry to all the schools involved. But it’s nice to have so many Book That Eats videos popping up!

Read Full Post »

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot – THE BEST BOOK EVER

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot has been chosen as the best book ever printed by the Louisville Courier-Journal.

OK. Maybe not THE BEST BOOK EVER PRINTED. But one of the best children’s books for 2011. I added the BEST BOOK EVER part. But you know, in this day and age it’s all about marketing.

Below is the review and here is a link to the site so you can read it yourself and see that I am not making this up. (As my daughter often accuses me of doing about things like monsters, invisible sharks and potatoes that can talk)

It’s great that the book has found an audience that enjoys the story and the characters that Margaret conceived of. And I’m as pleased as an alien from Mercury that the Lousiville Courier-Journal liked it too.

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot by Margaret McNamara (ages 4-8, 40 pp., Schwartz & Wade, $16.99). In this updated version of the Three Little Pigs, Bork, Gork and Nklxwcyz (Nickel-witz? Sorry, even book reviewers don’t know everything) are aliens whose Mama decides it’s time for them to find planets of their own. Stick together, she says, and watch out for the Big Bad Robot. Of course they split up, and, true to the source material, the third little alien builds the strongest house, the one where they all end up when the Big Bad Robot destroys the homes of the first two. Illustrator Mark Fearing’s aliens are great. His renditions of the planets are based on NASA photographs; although they aren’t named in the story, it’s clear the aliens start out on Mercury and bypass Venus (“too hot”) and Earth (“too crowded”) before Bork settles on Mars, Gork claims Saturn and Nklxwcyz makes his home on Neptune.

Read Full Post »

Robot Coloring!

sample coloring page from The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot

Click HERE to download 4 pages from The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot in line art style. Print out the PDF for Sci-fi coloring fun for all ages.

Read Full Post »

Back to The Bean

I will be reading The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot at Green Bean Books in Portland (1600 NE Alberta Street, to be exact…) on Sunday, November 20th at 2pm. So stop by, buy a book at this great indy book store and I’ll sign it, draw in it, whatever you want. And I can sign anyone’s name. So if you don’t want me to sign it, I’ll sign as Abraham Lincoln, or William Shakespeare, or Roald Dahl…whatever makes you happy.

Green Bean Books, Sunday, November 20th. 2pm. Maybe I’ll bring candy. I’m just saying…

Read Full Post »

Tor gets Three Little Aliens

A nice write-up about the latest picture book I illustrated at Tor.

Read Full Post »

Krazy Kontest Daze!

To celebrate the release of the picture book I Illustrated, The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot, I’m having a contest!

I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. How exactly do I want the contest to work?

I thought about asking people to draw a character from the book and mail it in, or scan a drawing and email it to me. I even considered some sort of outer space trivia game. But, as Steve pointed out in an email, there’s something kind of gonzo-1970′s-FM-radio about just giving stuff away to the 9th caller, or in this case, the person whose email comes in at a particular position.

So here are the rules, and they must be followed, as they are THE rules…

Rule 1- Your email must have the subject line:”The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot is an awesome book!”

Rule 2- You can only enter from a particular email address twice (two times). Any emails from a particular email address that comes in after the second one will be deleted by my staff of trained circus bears.

Rule 3- You CAN enter from multiple email addresses. So if you have a Yahoo email and a Google email and a Comcast email address, you could enter twice from each account. Why you would spend your valuable time doing that, well, speak to your psychiatrist about that…

Rule 4- All ages may play. Heck, you can even enter for your nephew. I don’t care.

Rule 5- All emails must be received between 12:00 AM on September 28th and 12:00 AM, October 3rd.

PS. All emails will be deleted after the contest. I won’t sell them, trade them for tea or give them to the folks who keep emailing me about social service jobs.

THE PRIZES-

The 10th email received wins – A new car! Wait. No. That’s from my previous job working on The Price is Right. The email I receive 10th wins – the one of a kind statue I made of the adorable character Nklxwcyz from the book. (and no, that’s not a spelling mistake, that’s the way his name is spelled!) The statue is made from sculpey, oven cured and hand painted by me. I’ll sign the bottom and include an original pencil sketch from the book.

The email I receive 35th wins- a copy of the book signed by me and an original pencil sketch from the book.

And if I get this many emails… The email I receive 125th wins – an approximately 13×11 Epson art print from the book, signed by me. And whatever old DVD’s I have laying around and want to get rid of.

So when the time is right, send away to: aliencontest@gmail.com.

My trained circus bears made me add this legal jargon.
All decisions final. I will personally count the emails and be the decider and chief. If I do not receive enough emails to give anything away, that just means I get to save the postage. What I mean to say is, I will give away the items as long as I reach whatever total sets the gift gears in action. So as long as I get 35 qualifying emails, I will award the prize for the 35th. If I don’t get 125 emails, I will not give away the prize for the 125th email, as I won’t have one.

The pencil sketches mentioned above are development art I do for the books. I draw in pencil, work out character designs ETC before scanning them in and finishing them digitally. They are a peculiar artifact of an otherwise digital methodology. ( I did get a BFA so I can write stuff like that about how I work…).

I look forward to seeing your emails!

Read Full Post »

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot and Earthling!

The picture book, The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot will magically appear in stores and on book shelves on September 27th. It always seems like ‘so long ago’ when a book you work on finally comes out. But I guess that’s because it was about a year ago that I finished it up. I was so young WAY back then.

Speaking of things that take a long time, I get the final proof from the printer for my graphic novel this week. Really, any minute now. That’s been about 3 years of work with Chronicle Books and two years before they were involved! I’m very happy that Jarrett Krosoczka provided a back-of-book-blurb for Earthling! Jarrett K. is of course, the mastermind behind the hilarious Lunch Lady series of graphic novels and many distinguished picture books. And he has an awesome website, so visit it.

YOU COULD WIN THIS…WELL, IF YOU WANT TO…I MEAN I WON’T MAKE YOU TAKE IT…

I will be announcing a contest, I think, or a giveaway shortly for a statue I made of one of the characters from The Three Little Aliens book and a signed copy of the book with one of the original pencil sketches I used to build the digital final art. I just need to decide what exactly I will ask of people to be involved. It may be as simple as emailing me and I will pick the 25th email.

Read Full Post »

Society of Illustrators – Original Art Show

I was recently told that the book I illustrated, The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot, has been included in the Society of Illustrators of New York show called: Original Art: The Fine Art of Children’s Book Illustration.

I’m happy that the book stood out enough to be accepted into this prestigious show. I have to give a lot of thanks to the art director on the project, Lee Wade, who pushed me to find the right visual tone for the book. It’s such a pleasure to get notes that are helpful and educational. They help take a project to the next level. And of course thanks to the author, Margaret McNamara for writing a picture book that held so much possibility for out-of-this-world illustration fun.

I’m getting the page I selected printed, framed and ready to ship. The book comes out September 27th.

Read Full Post »

The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot

A nice mention of the next picture book I illustrated. The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot comes out in September.

Read Full Post »