No Fits Nilson News

Received this comp up of the No Fits, Nilson! cover yesterday. Super excited to see this book come together. Also they asked me to give a story about my inspiration for the book in some form for the marketing team. So I sent this little comparsion chart.

The marketing team thought this was pretty funny and asked me to do a more kid friendly version for the catalogue. So I did this one.

The book won't be out until next June so it will be nice to see the catalogue when it comes out. And in case you aren't a Mighty Boosh fan, the "Jazz Trance" is a reference to this.

SO NICE, THEY NAMED IT TWICE

(LtoR Front row: OA Advisor Laurent Linn, Carson Ellis, Carin Berger, Leonard Marcus, OA Chair Sophie Blackall, and OA Assistant Chair Brian Floca

Back Row: Me, OA Advisor Marcia Leonard, Christy Ottaviano, Raul Colon, and Dan Santat)

This past Wednesday I had the privilege of joining ten other amazing children's book professionals at the Society of Illustrators in New York to form the jury for the 2012 Original Art Show in October. With 550 books submitted we had our work cut out.

Stacks of 25 books on each table. We voted from 10am after much coffee until 12:30 when the Society prepared a delicious lunch for us. It was interesting to have so many books to look at at once. After a while you could detect mini-trends and patterns emerge from the mass. At 1:30 we were back at until the final medal decisions were made at 6pm.  

I did some record shopping to wind down and saw my Evans Pyramid cover on the wall at Academy Records.

Then it was on to Greenpoint for a surprise 40th/moving to LA party for Grady McFerrin (See photo below when he was 35) with the rest of the current and former Pencil Factory crew.

It seemed everyone had a friend but him, he didn't even have an umbrella

Stop Snoring, Bernard! Blog

Getting a separate Stop Snoring Bernard! blog off the ground in anticipation of the book release in the Spring. Its going to be all things Bernard, behind the scenes, sneak peeks of upcoming Bernard projects and any other relevant news. Check it out here. Updates to come soon.

Stop Snoring, Bernard!

Well, the F& G's are finally here. Pub date is officially 4/12/11. Here are a few sneak peeks. I'm extremely happy with the printing job and the paper.

THANK YOU'S

I went up to New York for the Society of Illustrator's Book show on Friday. I was lucky to get one piece in, a spread from Stop Snoring Bernard! While I was there, I had some meetings with a few editors and art directors of children's books. All in all it was a good day and I even made it home despite the blizzard that happened in Philly. I have a lot to be thankful for and I started by making these Thank You cards that went in the mail today.

COLLABORATION

I'm very excited to announce that the Sheldon Fogelman Agency will be representing me in the children's book market. Sean McCarthy is the agent that I will be working with. I'm excited and honored to be joining a roster of illustrators/writers that include Mo Willems and Jerry Pinkney.

BERNARD! V.2

My forthcoming book Stop Snoring, Bernard! was held up recently for some minor changes to the story. This resulted in a couple new spreads and redoing a couple of the original ones. The new version now includes 20% more tears, a stolen zoo tuk-tuk and 80% more warm fuzzies.

Here they are drying in the studio before I pack them up for FEDEX.

STOP SNORING, BERNARD

I am excited to announce that I have just finished the first children's book that I have written and illustrated. It's titled Stop Snoring, Bernard! and it will be published by Henry Holt in the Spring of 2010. Can't wait. Here is a sneak peek of the cover. MY layout, so it's not official.

Above is one of the original spreads that I made to pitch the book. It doesn't appear in the book exactly like that, but you can see how it morphed into the cover.

I will have more sketches and Bernard related materials up here when I have more time.