THE IDEA

Cut every illustration down to its elements you should have a black and white image, and you will most likely see some triangles. Cut a story down and you should have a sentence or two for a synopsis. Well, cut an idea down, and you sometimes start with something that grows into a different shape. Like an acorn that ends up growing into an oak tree; the oak tree looks nothing like its originator.

The Rockwall Goblins Sort of started that way. It was out of another book, The Secret Magics of Maine that these creatures and concept came.
The Secret Magics of Maine was a practice in making new myths. Not modern myths but myths that would sit by the Norse creation of the world and not seem like it was a flamingo in a flock of penguins. The book was an exploration of the small-unexplained moments that make my home state of Maine “worth a visit worth a life time.” In the research of this book I asked anyone I could ‘what makes Maine special?’ I came up with a pretty grand list of things. And some never made it to that book. One that I thought was worth thinking about but was cut was “noticing that all the apples of a tree have turned red overnight.”

Most idea just sit in the back of my brain, and wait till I can act on them. My first storyboard for this book was completed back in the summer of 2002. I took initial photographs for this book that fall. And then I ran into too many things to overcome. Mostly I didn’t have the artistic maturity to take on what this book demanded. And then after that I didn’t really touch this project until 2006. I kept this drawing as a reminder of the project.

I finished two other books and learned a lot. After finishing the book The Commute on Sea-Line I spent time looking over the project and brushed off the dust. I felt like I had learned enough to produce a book with such a high standard of art. I was going to undertake a book that was going to explain how apples turn red. I was going to make it dark, atmospheric, and without text and then life got in the way. Now it is the end of 2008 and I have tree books that are fighting for my attention.  These postings are an attempt to not forget the book but also in the slow process of explaining the smaller steps of Making a children’s book I hope to discover the charm and magic that in need to finish the book.

In the next installment I am going to walk through my storyboards and the shortcomings of my own artistic talent when it comes to this project.

The Next Installment: Thumbnails and Storyboards