a follow up

Hello fellow readers,

I want to thank you all for your comments on the blog and to those who wrote to me privately. Your encouraging words mean a lot!

The anonymous poster has revealed him or herself to me and explained what his or her intentions were. There was no malicious intent. I’ve come to realize (and perhaps this needed to be beat into my head) that there are certain in-house things that I just can’t discuss and/or post. It didn’t occur to me that posting part of the actual letter would be problematic especially since it was a form letter. I don’t want to come across as a snotty, hard to work with person because I really think I’m not (if my editors are out there and disagree please say so!). From now on I’ll ask before putting part of a letter on here.

My intention of the letter, as I explained to the anonymous poster, was to inform and educate those who haven’t experienced that part of the publishing process. I got my first book deal a year after graduating from RISD. I was pretty young and naive and didn’t know how publishing worked. I was DESPERATE to learn the ins and outs. But where to go? Who to ask? There wasn’t much out there in the way of books—they say the basics. Onliine forums were much better but there was still some mystery to solve. That’s why I talk a lot about some publishing things that perhaps I shouldn’t. I think people need to know!

You all have convinced me to continue posting. I will admit that sometimes I don’t trust myself. I can be very impulsive. Hopefully I can stay within limits but continue to talk about things that I think are important. Of course, I will also continue to post stupid comments because I have a talent for the stupid.

I will end by sharing this commercial with all of you. It was created by my friend Mike who used to live in NYC but moved to CA. I think we illustrators and writers can learn a lot by watching short animations such as this one. Short animations have to be clever and have the right amount of information contained just as a picture book does. Good animations also utilize unique visual perspectives to tell the story (look closely at the sideways perspective in Mike’s ad from the head’s POV). My friend Julia went to RISD as an animation major (her animation is amazing!) and now she’s crossing over to kids’ books. Look at Mo Willems who is also a cartoon guy turned book author. Then there are the kids’ books that become cartoons…

Without further ado—

Pioneer ad by Mike Overbeck