One Fishy Story

The average time I've had to work on picture books is nine months. During that period there's very little time for anything else as it's very non-stop. Perhaps the second most fulfilling part of working on these (aside from finishing them), is getting the array of pages in pencil form all completed and approved by the publisher. It is at this point you become a proverbial hermit, dying to show the publisher each individual page once they're done, but you know it'd be best to complete them all first. With Trout, Trout, Trout (A Fish Chant)! the biggest trick was to arrange April Pulley Sayre's poetry of fish names in a visual order near the individual fishies so that children would still follow the prose left to right accordingly (and this was very tricky as fish like to swim around the page a great deal!).

But then when the color pages come together you really start to get chills. I love a great picture book as much as any kid, but when you actually start to see your own pages come together and you realize they're on their way to actually becoming a bound entity, one gets a little giddy - so much so I have a tendency to hide things in the pages for fun. I put my kids' names in the pictures, there's an illo of a piranha from my first book, Gopher Up Your Sleeve, by Tony Johnston, in there, just to name a few things. Another fun thing is with the "Cavefish;" if you look at the cave-drawing in his cave, you'll see that the monster fish is the same shape the Starhead Topminnows take on the next set of two pages...

One Fish, Two Fish...375 fish!

For the children's book, Trout! Trout! Trout (A Fish Chant), by April Pulley Sayre, This spread was my biggest challenge to date...as I was going to have to assemble, produce a pencil for approval, then replicate (fish for fish) almost 400 small, cloned Starhead Topminnows to create this monster of a "bigger" fish chasing after a Northern Pike. Seemed simple enough?

The background was the easiest, if the images in the foreground were going to be a hunk of eye-candy, I wanted the background very clear of other, unnecessary items.

Then I created two different little fish, with slight variations. I'd literally move the pupils on all of them to make sure each minnow was eyeballing the bigger fish. Then I was ready to assemble.

I put the initial sketches in a cepia brown color, and began cloning the minnows on top of where they needed to be.

About 380 fish later I was able to turn, maneuver, and place each fish so they matched the pencil exactly. Shading and highlights for depth would come later.

At one point, I even broke my own rule...it happens, and I added something unnecessary; I got to thinking an old, underwater buoy chain might look neat, complete with later added seaweed.

See? Started to add detail to the Pike here, sans highlights.

But the chain was rejected, and I agreed with the art director and editor. It was not necessary. But tons of multiples of bubbles and motion blurs were.