How the Storybook was born

It's been a long road definitely. Not as long as some. ::Points to the still in process fma book:: But long none the less. I guess the real reason I wanted to do the book was because it's been a while since I fell in love with a novel. Usually I read them and move on to the next.

That, however, wasn't the case with this book. The characters kinda get into your head and soon it was the most important thing on my drawing board. I wanted to give something back and in my own way contribute to the wonderful characters and stories.

The first story I came up with was the Hide and Seek story. But I decided I also wanted to do a storybook, because storybooks are fun. I ended up making a lot of changes since I started, but I'm not going to ruin the story just yet, so I'm not going to tell you what they are.

I want to share a little about what I do when I start a book. Starting books is easy.

First I have to decide how many pages a book is going to be and once I've come up with that, I start on the script outline. Once I've got that done I write the actual script and send it to my proofreader while I work on the art.

I print out a couple of layout sheets and begin sketching thumbnails page by page. I usually know what I want to see before I start.



After I've finished the thumbs and decided on what style it's going to be in, I begin penciling the book, one page at a time. I try to get a few done in a sitting, that way I can keep my rhythm. There are times I will switch from penciling to coloring and back, just to break the monotony and to see how things are looking. If something doesn't look as good in full pencils as it does in the thumbnails, I go back to the script and re-read the page and try to come up with a different composition.

Kinda simple, but it works for me.