Hey Dudes!
After I finished my children's book I fell into a (small) black hole. In fact, I didn't draw anything since late October. I simply felt that I had to take some holiday from myself. But doing this made me feel depressed because I didn't draw. So, I decided to distract myself with playing guitar and doing household. But yesterday (the house is kinda clean and my guitar skills are kinda good again) I grabbed a biro and doodled some shitty lines. Here's the result. After all the children's stuff it felt really good to do a picture with some "mature content" though I didn't feel grown up at all.
Cheers, Robert
Boys and Girls!
I definitely finished the book. If you speak German, you can read the text. Otherwise you simply may enjoy the pictures.
It's been a long ride from the start to the finished product and I had mixed feeling on my way. I didn't know where this will go but I tried to see the whole thing as an experiment. And the further I got the more I could see a colored book with tiny monsters in it. Sure, there are some aspects in the pictures and especially in my workflow that I wish to change but all in all I'm very happy how it turned out. It's not easy for me to tell myself: "Don't do anything else. Draw these pictures." Mostly I succeeded and I hope I can apply the experiences I had here on all my coming projects.
Currently, I'm looking for a publisher who wants to release the book. I guess this will take some time cuz publishers are overrun by tons of scripts. I'll inform you if I have some news for you.
In the meanwhile I will start something new. The sky isn't the limit.
Cheers, Robert
Hey Folks!
I am happy. Happy that I reached one of the last milestones. I'm a little late but better later than never. By now, I finished all of the pictures for the children's book. It wasn't easy because I had some troubles around, there were the book fair on one hand (I guess you read the report), then I was off some days and had to work for my company and my daughter on the other hand. Additionally my motivation left me some days. I don't know why but it often happens when I'm close to the end of some project. Then I'm totally thrilled to start some new stuff and leave the nearly finished thing behind. That's shit and I hope I can suppress this silly behavior someday.
However, here are the final pictures. Some were tough again, like the party, the landscape or the pumpkin picture. I had to trial and error a lot with the colors but I'm happy with the most. Now, I'm gonna edit the text one last time and create a cover so that I hope to complete the book within the beginning of the next week.
Cheers, Robert
Dear dudes and dudettes!
Today I'll give you a little travel report about my visit at this year's book fair in Frankfurt.
Everyone loves to get up very early, so do I and swung my ass out of the bed at 4 am. Shower, coffee, car, looking for a free parking lot, I was hitting Wuppertal central station at 5.45 am and waited for the ICE. Good luck, the train drivers didn't strike that day, after they caused a massive chaos some days before. I entered the train punctual and had a very nice journey via Cologne along the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, crossing Loreley until I arrived only with a delay of 10 minutes at Frankfurt central station.
After a short drive with the city train I entered the book fair. I had a fix date with one publisher in the morning and some loose dates where I could show my portfolio at noon and in the afternoon. The first date was like a real first date. Slightly nervous I had a short talk with a reader from a Berlin based publisher. She liked my stuff, gave some positive feedback and wanted to see the finished product including the text. I felt a little eased after that good start of that day.
After that date I had to check out some publishers who couldn't tell me in advance if and when they did a consultation for illustrators. I got the dates and even skipped one great publisher because they were unfriendly on the phone and didn't answer me.
Last year I've been in Frankfurt on a public day. That was kinda uncool in two ways. First, there weren't any contact persons on the publisher's booths anymore and second, the halls were overrun by thousands of peoples so that I felt I had to wade through marmalade. This year everything was cool, the booths were crowded with competent persons and there was a pleasant mass of peoples. And of course, this year I had to show something.
And so I spent most of the day standing in line with other illustrators (and some writers) and waited for showing my portfolio. I often received positive feedback, some critique and two publishers told me that my book wouldn't fit in their portfolio. At the end of the day I had a hand full of potential publishers that liked to see the finished product to forge an opinion. In between I checked out some publishers that weren't on my radar because they're too small or off-topic, visited the digital innovation area as well as the guest visitor's hall which was occupied by Finland this year.
At 6 pm I had closing time and hit a bistro near the central station to satisfy my hunger. At 8 pm I entered my train back home. At 10.30 pm I was back. Totally dished but happy. The next days, I'll have to finish the children's book, that means color the remaining pages, lay out the text, create a cover and so on. And then see what's happening next.
Cheers, Robert
Hey!
Tomorrow I'm going to visit the book fair in Frankfurt. I'm totally exited! My portfolio is packed and my info material is ready to catch some publisher's attention. This will be a short night.
Cheers, Robert
Folks!
Here's a picture you can file under "things I do, when your kid doesn't let you sleep on sunday morning". Done with a fresh Pentel Sign Pen in my sketchbook.
Cheers, Robert
Hey Dudes!
Two weeks ago I've been on a concert with my old buddies from THE.SPINES. It was a little strange to see them live without me. I hired myself for selling the merch this evening where I did this tiny picture in just some minutes.
Cheers, Robert
Boys and Girls!
Today I can give you the first seven colored pictures of my children's book. I activated my personal turbo-boost to quicken the process a little. In fact, I digged out my old Intous 3 Tablet and sent my Bamboo on vacation. The Intous has a much better performance which allows me to work faster. After I developed and determined the color scheme in the beginning of the last week, I colored the pictures in the free corners of my life. I'm not really sure if I'll leave all the colors how they're now but I guess the result is near to the 80%-perfection I want to reach.
For me, it's unusual to see this tiny monster-world in colors for I have seen it in black and white so many months. But I really like how the thing is turning out. I'm totally thrilled to see the finished book and with a little luck I'm hopefully going to find a suitable publisher. Let's do some more!
Cheers, Robert
