Giovanni and Scampi

So, here it is. I thought I would actually start a more "main stream" blog. I already had one going with my .mac account on my website, but I never really got much traffic. We'll see how this one does.
I uploaded the final print files for our new book on the 5th of April 2010, which is one week ago from today. I really meant to keep a better blog of the whole creative process but, I didn't.

The background:
December 2009. Our first book ("Our" being Aaron T. Watene and myself), "Wailoa and Kukui" was on the boat coming from Shenzhen, China due any day. Aaron and I had discussed what our next book would be considering we sold enough books to justify the cost of an additional book. The 2nd book was going to be a collaborative book with the famous Giovanni Shrimp truck, a landmark culinary icon on the North Shore of Oahu. It also happens to be the neighbor to Aaron's prime selling location. In my research, having a collaboration book, where there are more than one invested party is a good marketing strategy. Not only are we invested in the success of the book, but the collaborating party is also concerned that it be successful. That was and is our thinking in choosing this story for our 2nd book.

Now on to the story:

January 1st; the 1st sketch
After a few days of research as to how best to give a bottom-dwelling crustacean a personality, I drafted the first sketch of Scampi. Here he is riding his first wave. Using this sketch, I of course was able to visualize how the rest of the story would unfold, through the illustrations.


January 2nd; my goal this time around was to create the entire book in sketches before committing too much time to the illustrator versions.


January 2nd: I was also keeping the book laid out in inDesign (page layout program) using the sketches as place holders.


January 4th:


January 5th: I was on fire here. Completing 1-2 sketches per day!


January 6th


January 7th: I was looking forward to "learning" how best to create the crashing waves in illustrator. Vector waves are traditionally not done very well. I'm happy to report that I did have some create vector waves, stay tuned for some of the finished "proof"


January 8th: I particularly loved the pose that Scampi was making, kind of a arms out flying motion!


January 9th: I loved how I put him in the deep jungle, kind of a Raiders of the Lost Ark thing with the Tiki statues around him. That part was shot in Kauai you know...


January 16th: Aaron and I had some financial issues we needed to work out during this dry spell. It is hard for anyone to be creative when they lose their motivation. I eventually got back on track, but never got quite back on the same pace as before.


January 17th:


January 18th:


January 20th:


January 21st: I love this sketch. All the diverse groups that come through as tourists. You gotta love Hawaii for that!


January 22nd: The final illustration.

That sums up the month of sketching. During this process, I was able to do very little else. The sketches would take 6-8 hours each day. The process of sketching and shading or rendering doesn't usually take that long, but the amount of research to come up with the unique backdrops, and putting the thought into making each page interesting and unique does take a lot of thought and planning.

If you've read this far, you deserve a medal. I will post more blog entries showing the finished pages in the near future. There is still a lot more to write about!

Wailoa & Kukui

Since publishing my first book “Lucky the Rubber Ducky”, I have wanted to learn more about the publishing process. I decided to go out completely on my own and become and independent publisher and publish my own work. I put together this blog to document each step I took along the way.

Sometime in mid August of 2009 I received a strange e-mail from someone I did not know. Aaron Watene, who had been given my name and information from an aunt of mine. He was contacting me to see if I would be willing to provide some sketch samples for a manuscript of a children’s book he wanted to get illustrated. After discussing with him for a bit on the type of illustrations I did, and what he had in mind, I put together the first few sketches ...

After seeing the sketches, he and I came to an agreement, that we would proceed. I continued to create sketches for each page of the book. Since my previous experience publishing hadn’t really prepared me for anything but illustrating, I soon learned that the sketches needed to be in proportion to the finished pages, and that the page count needed to be 32, total pages. I used Adobe’s inDesign to layout the proposed pages and using these tools allowed me to visualize which parts of the story would be most dynamic as illustrated pages. Soon after creating the sketches, I began rendering the first few full color pages...

The full color rendering was met with great enthusiasm from Aaron and his “critics”. So I proceeded to sketch the remaining pages, rendering a few here and there. In the meantime, I had never printed a children’s book before, I had only ever supplied the illustrations. I had no idea who or where to get the printing done, high quality-lowest cost. While watching TV one evening I saw a commercial for Alibaba.com. I immediately went online and researched what they offer. Within a few minutes I had created an inquiry and sent it through that service to 20+ book printers in Asia, some in India, most in China and Hong Kong. I received some very favorable quotes and sort of committed to one of the vendors in Shenzhen, China. Since the book wasn’t completely finished, I couldn’t fully commit. Then I went to work with zeal to finish the sketches and final renderings before October 1st, 2009.

Once the sketches and complete renderings were done, I began contacting the printer again and preparing the final print files for him. Part of the final print files included purchasing an ISBN number with barcode. The reason I needed this on the book, was for future sales. Retail book sellers like Amazon, or Barnes and Noble will not sell a book without one. Having one also makes the book available to anyone with access to the system. Only publishers can get one, and having published my previous book, set me up already as a publisher. All the while I was arranging and researching the ocean freight shipper, TopOcean. The printer was hard at work printing the books. The whole printing of all 2,000 books only took him about a week to be completely done. The printer kept me updated on the status of the book by sending me photos periodically to show the progress.

We were in early December by this time, and had our hopes up that we might be able to get the books by Christmas. Once I arranged the shipment with the shipper the estimate of delivery was Dec 29th, close! As it turns out however, just because the ship with the books on it reached port on the 29th, does not mean the books will be available. There is much that goes on once a shipment from a foreign company is imported, it must clear customs, after being off-loaded or “devanned” from the ship. So, today is the day that we are expecting the books. It has been a lot of hassle and inconvenience, more that I anticipated dealing with the shipper, and the trucking company delivering the shipment. That is really the only disappointment.