puss in boots

I remembered that the Puss in Boots book I worked on last summer is out now, so I can show you some pages!

Some projects you look back on fondly, and others not so much.  This is a not-so-much for me.  The deadlines were super tight and crazy, and my collaborators were, ahem, difficult.  Luckily for me, the feeling of being sleepless, exhausted, and SUPER stressed is a familiar one!  At CalArts I went through it once a year, getting my student films done.  We call it crunch time.  It's always totally worth it, but it sucks like crazy when you're in the midst of it.  

All that white space is where the text is.  I did have fun with the style and compositions as much as I could!  Some of my favorite children's books have really excellent use of white space, so I tried it out for myself.  

Oh my gosh you guys, I argued to much for the left hand side of this spread!  It's not good to get super married to your ideas, but I loved how that page looked in the sketch and it's still probably my favorite of the whole book.  On the right you have Humpty Dumpty having a spazz attack.  

Here's a weird thing: I have no idea what happens in this movie.  As a the illustrator, they don't tell you the story as it plays out in the film, you just have to glean what you can from the text and the reference images.  I guess this happens, at some point, for some reason!

I also exercised the use of unnatural and eccentric color!  huzzah

All in all I managed how to have fun with it, and I like how it turned out.  The book is on Amazon, where you will notice that the cover is a screencap from the movie.  I don't know why they do that (they did it with all the books for this film), when the insides of the book look nothing like it.  What I say to that is: whateverrrrr!  

Also, I found the following amusing:

I was surprised at the 'cats' part!  cats?  I didn't realize that was a "thing" of mine.  

Don't act like you don't google yourself, too.