I had gotten a bit spoiled being an employed artist for three and a half steady years until finishing my work on My Friends Tigger & Pooh for Disney last October. Suddenly I found myself with a lot of time on my hands – time to finally start developing some projects that have been festering in my brain for awhile.
Prior to coming to California in 1997 to work in animation, I worked full time as a freelancer. And as such, I worked on a lot of publishing projects. I LOVED working on books, and am very interested in getting back into it.
I recently started writing a story that hopefully will work its way into being a genuine bona fide children’s book. Writing silly ideas is so much fun, and being a visual guy, my silly words and silly pictures must go together to form the complete silly train of thought.
Of course you realize that I cannot just tell you my ideas here online as they are still just being birthed – where’s the fun in that? I like being surprised on Christmas morning, don’t you? But, I don’t think it’s giving anything away to show you some character studies I’ve been doing in my sketchbook of my main man.
So, without further ado, here are some development sketches of a young boy in a variety of poses and expressions. There’s a little inconsistency with some of the drawings because while looking for the emotions in him, I was also playing around with his look a bit. Enjoy!