A 7 year tradition of making cards still has gone unbroken with this years installment of Watier Productions Santa Card. I hope you all enjoy the art and please have a safe holiday.

Seasons Greetings.

Matt

Happy Holidays 2009 by *mattwatier on deviantART

I have what seemes like the longest time been in love with telling stories.  I have been a part of 30 plus plays either working backstage or singing and dancing alone in the front lime light.  I have built interactive digital stories that used the now defunked Director Program.   And ever since I have graduated college back in 2001 I have written and illustrated children’s books.
–>> Continue reading My Oldest Love

This book has had a lot of changes. One that I find most shocking is the main characters of the book have completely changed. Well to illustrate the point I could easily point to the title and how it changed.
–>> Continue reading Lost Art 1

The Rockwall is an ongoing children book  with me right now. Where I am in relation to the posts doesn’t always match up with what I am currently working on. Right now I am currently working on the final paintings for the book.
–>> Continue reading Illustrations from the final Sections of The Rockwall”

I have to start with an apology. This post will have no great photos, or to be a bit more honest I am not sure that any of these thumbnails will even be readable to the casual viewer. The drawing in my storyboards usually look like a mad game of Pictionary so let me decipher both the squiggly lines and my thoughts behind them. Let me walk you through the primordial ooze of The Rockwall in this installment  of my posts on Children’s Book Design and reveal some of the “Thumbnails and Storyboards” that make up the book.
–>> Continue reading THUMBNAILS AND STORYBOARDS

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.
–>> Continue reading THE IDEA

I once heard a fellow story creator quote a small girl who asked “how do you make all the chaos of ideas in your head into such straight lines of text?” This is the true seed kernel of this blog. The first thing I have to share is that this project was not, in any stretch of the imagination, straightforward. It did not start with an idea and then smoothly transition into a final project. Like many project of such a wide scope there was an evolution of thought. To prove my point this book when it was in its infancy was Code Named The Rockwall Goblins
–>> Continue reading WHAT IS IN A NAME