Stephen's site : Halloween

Monday, January 9, 2012

2012 Tomie dePaola Award part 3

"I want to be surprised, excited and - Very jealous..."

Those words are hard to ignore, the first thing I did was look up all the different versions of the title “Chicken Licken”, “Henny Penny”, and “Chicken Little” including the specific title/text that the Mr. dePaola used was from “Chicken Licken,” by P.C. Asbjörnsen.

1) How do I make this different?
2) How do I stand out in a crowed of hundreds?
3) How do I make an established illustrator jealous?

1) So how I make this different? As an illustrator you add your own voice I have said it from time to time plus others have said it as well “I tell the story behind the story” This does not mean that you ignore what was written it is just you read between the lines add a background story to the characters. So my little story floating in my head will be different then the next illustrator.

2) How do I stand out in a crowed of hundreds? My style is different from others. However, is that enough?

The hardest one:
3) How do I make an established and respected illustrator jealous?

In October, the contest was announced, I am doodling, and coming up with the same old thing as everyone else a bunch of farm animals, and I am going over in my head the text for the contest,

“they met Turkey Lurkey” “Good morning Goosey Loosey, Duckey Daddles…”

My first good idea was to make Turkey Lurkey into a Thanksgiving Day Turkey (Tom Turkey) with a Pilgrims hat or maybe a bonnet, and then I thought maybe a parade with all the characters as balloons. As I was sketching, I came up with this.

A Halloween Party! I love Halloween!!!

That is when it all clicked the little story in my head not a party a play with the popular boy playing Turkey Lurkey, and the blushing shy girl playing Goosey Loosey.