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
