The Illustrated Storybook will be available for purchase, however, it is undecided if it will be published by Image of the Mind Studios or whether another publisher will take on that task. If you see this presentation and think you may like to acquire a copy of the Illustrated Storybook, please let me know with an email. The design of the Storybook is intended to directly synchronize with the stage play, the puppet show and the musical album. We intend to have a companion CD with the music which will follow along with the story, and so this will be included with the Illustrated Storybook.
Here is a summary of how this artwork came into existence. By the way, we are setting up an exhibition of this artwork at IMS Studios in Southampton Pennsylvania for inclusion in the Backers Audition for the Broadway Stage Musical, so if you are a potential investor, you are welcome to take a tour of our facility. We are currently engaged in sculpting puppets which are in the likeness of the artwork you see here, for use in the traveling puppet show, television special, and parade float. In that sense, meaning the parade float, we are also expecting to implement animatronics into the puppetry, for we also expect to put animatronic puppetry into the stage show.
So Jency came to work with me on designing the artwork after I finally convinced her that what I was talking about was real. She began coming into the studio to discuss what we needed and gradually we developed a very effective way of working together. I served as the Art Director and would provide her with aspects of the story which needed to be illustrated. We established our goal as illustrating the storybook and I determined that the work we produced would also need to serve multiple purposes. By that I meant that we were looking forward to creating an animated film as well as a storybook. So because of that, the artwork needed to be segmented so that I could apply it to other purposes, such as advertising and product packaging as well.
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| This was the first sketch which Jency proposed for Gnomeville |
We attempted to illustrate a few scenes, but I could see clearly that that was too difficult as resulted in drawings that were quite good but diverged from the needs of the story. So in order to shape the illustration more specifically to the emerging story I determined that we would work on smaller pieces of the illustrations and not attempt to express the story, but rather concentrate on the look of the characters and the environment as separate items to focus on.
I say the story was emerging because I was at that time still writing the Libretto and music and alterations in the story were occurring. The approach of doing the artwork in separate segments worked out well, because I was able to build the scenes, based on the story as I knew it, while Jency was able to focus on the aesthetics of the art without trying to conceptualize the story. It was far easier for me to ask her to draw Zach resting on his walking stick than to explain to her the larger aspect of the scene. Of course I would explain what was going on in his head at the moment, just as I would in directing an actor, but the larger picture would only clutter the work at that moment.
So, Jency would draw a sketch of the scene I ask of her. After a period of trial and error, she started passing the sketch by me before if became too developed, just to make sure it was going in the right direction. After she had either a rough drawing or a more finished sketch, depending on how we needed to move forward, I would then scan that sketch into HP Photosmart. That file would remain as the raw scan, but that would then be opened in Photoshop, where I would process it according to it's needs. Some of the sketches were very rough and others were more refined. I found that rough sketches were sufficient if I was not going to use a black & white of that particular image for illustration. If it needed more refinement I would send it back to her until we got it right.
When I worked on an image in Photoshop, I would remove rough sketch lines or erasures, increase the exposure, brightness or contrast accordingly so that the image would print well on watercolor stock. I then created a b&w print which went back to Jency for watercolors. After she finished coloring the image I would rescan it and then process it again, sometimes enhancing the color or contrast, depending on what needed to be done for optimum printing.
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| Here is an example of how some of the finished drawings were assembled (Brad the Fiddle player is Shawn and Zebby playing his flute is me) |
From there I would assemble the pieces of the scenes, inserting the characters into the backgrounds, which sometimes were only a close up of a larger background. We also took to creating different appendages of heads for the characters and I would assemble them to create the emotional content. This is a precursor to the animation we expect to pursue. I have acquired some animation programs, but we have yet to have attempted to learn to use them. I look forward to creating an animated film which retains the aesthetics of the watercolor drawings.
The result is a collection of hundreds of images of both the scenes from the adventure and the characters. I present some of that artwork here for your review. Signed and numbered prints of this artwork is available and you are welcome to make inquiry about that. Note that you may reserve an edition number for any release if you would like to build a collection of like numbers editions. Your purchase of edition numbers will go a long way in helping us to finance this production.
At this point I do not have very many images here with me, but I will be preparing a flash drive so that I may post them using this computer. So image will begin to appear as I can do so.
