Animalogy's original and revised cover

Here's a behind-the-scenes-look at the development of a book cover. The first cover was considered too hard to read from a distance by the marketing folks at Sylvan Dell Publishing. Normally when I hear the marketing department wants changes all sorts of red flags go up. But I really trust this publisher, they just know how to do things right so I was happy to work with them on cover revisions. We took one of the interior spreads and made a few adjustments and now it's our new cover for Animalogy. It actually wraps around the back which you don't see here. I think it's a stronger cover and hopefully easier to read. Most people still judge a book by its cover, don't you?

The original cover art is now moved to the title page so I'm glad that artwork will still see the light of day.

Three Little Pigs, dedicated to Gracie & Konnor

Thanksgiving week I received copies of "The Three Little Pigs", illustrated by me. Odyssey Books is the publisher and I'm really happy with the reproduction of the illustrations. You just don't know how it's going to look until it's an actual printed book.

My dedication reads, "To Gracie and Konnor. Love you forever. C.M." Here's my daughter Andrea reading the book to Gracie and Konnor for the first time on Thanksgivng. This is one of the perks of being a children's book illustrator.

If you scroll back through earlier posts you can see the illustrations as I was working on them. Or better yet, go buy the book. Either way, hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Second look at a new charactor (or try try again)

It's back to the drawing board for me. I'm still working on my first endeavor as writer/illustrator and have gotten some very helpful critiques. It's great to sit here in a cabin in Colorado and thanks to the internet and Face Book I'm able to connect with generous agents, editors and publishers who have been extremely helpful and encouraging.

So I'm tweaking the illustrations at this point after several rewrites and edits. Creating a book, much like raising a kid takes a village.

Please let me know if you like this version as opposed to the earlier one posted. Or not.

First look at a new character

I just wanted to post some new images, going back to my whimsical kid look after several realistic book projects.

This is my first project as writer/illustrator so I'm sure the final product will end up being very different. I'll keep you posted as I stumble along in new territory.

Not just animals for "Animalogy", people too!

As Animalogy's illustrations are winding down a couple of new projects are gearing up - both totally different from this one.

So I'm in the process of putting final touches on the illustrations before sending to the publisher's ftp site.

For the campfire scene I used my son, Evan, along with Gracie, Konnor and Crowley for reference. It's sort of like my diary - this is what they looked like at the time I was illustrating this book.

So look for "Animalogy" August 2011 and I'll be posting a book trailer promo for it at some point too - hopefully sooner than later.

More Animals for Animalogy

It's way past time for a new post, so here's more illustrations for "Animalogy" by Marianne Berkes.

I'm not posting these in order, nor do I draw them in order. I skip around while illustrating, doing a harder illustration, then an easier one, maybe revising another rough before going to the next color spread, all the while trying to keep the momentum going.

All in all this is a fun project to work on. It's the only picture book I've illustrated where I'm not that concerned about continuity because it's a different animal in a different environment for each page not the same characters continuing throughout the story.

It's so nice having Marianne's sparse, simple verse to illustrate - leaves lots of room for creative interpretation.