Work in progress

Thank you to everyone who passed on their best wishes on the news of our big move. It's exciting stuff!

But, now it's back to earth for a little while....
Today I got serious about making a start on the new book brief I have been given. I wanted to share a bit more detail about this process, and thought I'd start at the beginning!

Click the below link to get all of the details.

So, how did this all come about? This particular publisher contacted me via email. I have not worked with them before, but they had seen my page on The Style File website and contacted me directly.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am not the only illustrator working on this brief, but obviously only one of us will be selected to follow it through to publication.

As, always, the first place I start with this sort of project, is to RESEARCH. I checked out the publishers website to see the type of books they have already published, but I also wanted to get an idea of range of authors and illustrators they already publish. Obviously they have some great talents already on their books, but this has actually given me more confidence to understand that they must be looking for something totally new and different to what they had done before -OBVIOUSLY!

The next stage of my research was to hit the book stores and check out what has already been done on this topic or theme. When I read the brief I was initially not convinced that it had not already been done before, but I was surprised to see that no-one had in fact taken the proposed angle on this theme before. I often read about looking for "gaps in the market" and this was a bit of a lesson for me that there are still new ways of approaching things!

Part of this brief included mentioning 4 illustrators who they wanted us to check out for an idea of the approach they would like us to take, so obviously I also spent some time looking through some of their work.

As funny as it sounds, I then just let things mull over in my brain for a few days - and then hit the bookstores again! This time looking for things to inspire some of the ideas I have for where to start on this project.

So, today it was time to just get stuck into it. I surrounded myself with illustrations and books of some of my favourite illustrators to get me in the mood to start drawing, and once I started, I could not stop! I am already loving this project. I have so many ideas, that I actually wish it was a done deal for me so that I could run them past the publisher to get some direction on which way to go with it!

In the absence of this luxury, I just ploughed through a few different approaches, and will look at them again with fresh eyes later in the week - in the hope of getting a clearer perspective on which idea will be the strongest approach to present.

I have until the end of this month to present my ideas, and I'd have to say I wish I could work on it all week (and not go into my full time job!) As much as I love my job, I am feeling really inspired to just focus on this new project! Regardless of whether I get the chance to see this job through to the end, it's already reminded me of how strongly I NEED to get more active in this arena!

I'll try to keep you posted on my progress!