dantat.com

Mystery Drawing....

OK, well it's probably not much of a mystery anymore (Yes, Dee, you were correct) but it's still coming along nicely.

Meanwhile I'm still working away at Bobby VS. Girls with author, Lisa Yee. Here's another free sample.

I realized that now that I'm in the groove of black and white art again that my drawing skills are rather sketchy at best. I don't draw long beautiful thick and thin lines like Egon Schiele or Picasso, but rather, sketchy lines molding lines into forms and shape. I also noticed that drawing is much like riding a bike. If you don't do it often then you get rusty, but with constant practice you'll remember how it's done and you'll be popping wheelies in no time.

Make a font out of your own handwriting!

This is too cool. Now people will get promotional mailers and think they're personalized....

A drawing in progress.

I'm actually working on a handful of projects at once and I figured I'd share with you the process of one of the projects from beginning to end. It's not due till the 27th of this month so I'll be working on bits and pieces of it every day and sharing the progress.

NOTE: You may already know what this piece is for by the looks of the characters

DAY 1: Lay in Sketch (to flesh out the composition) and rendering of the first character

Render of first character....

DAY 2

Nazi Zombies ahead!!!

Come on.... It's FUNNY!

NINJA COMIC! *CHOP*CHOP*

So I have started a simple comic strip for myself to help with pacing and story structure of the comic medium. For anyone who wants to seriously do a comic I highly recommend this exercise. If any of you have read Scott McClould's books on comics "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics" then you will understand that simple and clear communication is the key to good storytelling. A well structured comic should be able to tell a story without words which is one of the many reasons why I chose to draw a ninja (who is practically a stick figure) The idea of this exercise came to me when I realized that this upcoming picture book I'm working on "Oh No!" is laid out very much like a comic, and though it is a picture book I find that paneling will allow for me to put in even MORE visual gags and so forth. One could say that David Wiesner's work such as "Sector 7" and "Flotsam" are wordless comics so what I'm doing isn't exactly new.

Click on the images to see a larger view....

and here's the second....

I'll post these comics along as I go with my blog and, eventually (when I have time) I will archive them on my site. Meanwhile, you'll just find them on my Facebook page photo album found here.

What? Not on Facebook? Well, you better join up if you want to see where the whole children's publishing industry is hanging out at these days!

OH NO!

I'm starting to get into the groove of thumbnailing out some new page sketches for a picture book I'm starting for Hyperion Books (I'm too lazy to say Disney-Hyperion). So much so that what originally started out as a character design sketch for a picture book suddenly became a whole promotion poster for a picture book that is over a year away from being released. This is one of those stories where you feel like you were just born to do and the thumbnails I'm doing so far are really exceeding my own expectations even in this early stage. I will say that the work will be much different than what you probably expect from my other picture book work. There will be much more involvement in terms of details and LARGE CROWDS.

I hope I know what I'm getting myself in to....

A Fresh Start

Howdy folks,

So for 2009 I decided to be a little bit more proactive in terms of updating the title page to my website, but, as all of us know who own our own real estate in the world wide web UPDATING your own personal site is a huge pain in the butt which is why I try to use every means to make the updating process more simplified and bring the savings to you and you can continue to listen to me rant. I recently updated the title page of Dantat.com and even brought back the old music from years ago. Please let me all know if it works and what you think because I know a lot of us enable pop up blockers and so forth.

Now, yesterday, was an amazing day wouldn't "most" of you agree? Prior to this day I never really focused that much on politics let alone an inaugural ceremony, but I have to say it was amazing and I've never seen the American people so genuinely excited and optimistic. I do have my worries though, that many people are comparing Obama to Lincoln an FDR and Kennedy when he hasn't even been president for 24 hours. I imagine this country will be expecting a quick fix for our nations follies and the reality of it all is that we're not going to get out of this for quite some time and they will blame it all on our new Chief.

Relax people. We can still be very optimistic, but It's still going to be a long four years.

NOW GET BACK INTO THE LIMO OBAMA! THAT CAR IS BULLETPROOF FOR A REASON!!!

Anyway, my wife and I decided we wanted to do some furniture rearranging and realized that our old TV has had 3 dark lines running across the screen which drove us nuts. So, we splurged (we meaning ME) and got ourselves a nice 46 inch Samsung which was on sale at Best Buy (because anything larger than 50 inches just seems obnoxious)

Now, I can watch the season premiere of LOST tonight in full illuminated glory.

On to business news...

Most of you may (or my not) know that I've been working on a chapter book series with my partner in crime and kinda sorta neighbor LISA YEE on a new chapter book series. I thought I'd share this back cover art that I worked on...

I share this with you because I usually don't work with photo reference and for this piece I really wanted to nail down the goldfish. (The Fish Fud container, I thought, was a particularly silly touch on my part)

Simon and Schuster is making be do a redesign for the cover of "The Return of the Homework Machine"  (which is no sweat off my back) and Dan Gutman has recently completed yet another middle grade book which they will now have be doing interiors for.

A word to all of you who are interested in children's publishing... Chapter book work is AWESOME.

I will be in a couple gallery shows in April. One will be at Gallery 1988 on the theme of TV shows and the other will be at Gallery Nucleus which will be in the theme of the Street Fighter video games. I'll keep you all posted.

Lastly, I will be starting new sketches on a new picture book from Hyperion written by Mac Barnett called "Oh No!" NOTE: If there is anyone who can write Japanese please contact me.

Now Shhh! LOST is coming on in less than 11 hours! I need to find out where that island went!

What's goin' on?

Hey.... so...... How ya doin'? Things are going pretty well around here. I had a piece in a  gallery show last week...

my piece didn't sell but at least I got to hang out with some old friends from art school I hadn't seen in a while....

(From Left to right: Me, Joey Spiotto, Ryan Sanchez, Tom Jackson, Peter Brown )

There were also some supposed 'celebrities' who came to the opening....

Peter, as some of you reading this may know is a children's book author/ilustrator. I asked if he could bring the galley of his new book "The Curious Garden"...

We had a nice big get together at my place where we finally opened our holiday bottle of Lemoncello given to us by Rhea Perlman and Danny Devito (Thank you Otto Undercover series)....

and then we consumed this monstrosity. A 28 inch pizza....

Did I mention I got this nifty HD digital camera? Complete with my custom art? The plan is to do more book trailers and more goofy video spots...

Lastly, if you're on Facebook you may have noticed I've been doing more color caricatures as of late. The recent ones I did are for a chapter book I'm doing with Lisa Yee under Arthur A Levine Books ...

(From left to right: moi, Arthur, and Lisa)

So that's it! Gotta run.

My (Belated) New Year Blog

Happy 2009 folks! So my New Year blog is a week late I know, but I went on a nice vacation and I actually got into a groove where I didn't want to go back to work. So on with my blog....

2008 was a busy year! It was also my first full year as a freelancer and I have to say that after initially being completely stressed out about my future it worked out better than I had imagined.
        I completed
                7 chapter books
                3 picture books
                2 book covers 
                a 10 piece gallery show             
                and over a dozen education book spots

                AND I' proud to say that I completed the text and thumbnails for my massive 267 page graphic novel which I have been working on for YEARS               

                AND my wife and I had our second son.

WHEW!

So far for 2009.....
        I'm working on...
                2 chapter books
                and 1 picture book

                with time to complete my 267 page graphic novel.

    Oh, and possibly making a huge addition to the old house.

It will be interesting to see what amazing things this year will bring to me but I look forward to any new projects that will come my way.

I can't say I have any resolutions other than to work harder, write more, and stress less.

With the ongoing recession I think that's already a tall order.

A Holiday Gift to Myself

Yeah, yeah, I know that everyone should be relaxing during the holidays, but I swore to myself that I would finish all the tumbnails to my graphic novel outline and so I have (with one hour to spare in Christmas) and have thus declared it to be a present to myself. AND I wish to share it with all of you.... Ever wonder what 253 pages worth of thumbnails looked like? Wonder no further (I haven't done this much drawing since art school)

Happy  Holidays!