The poor emperor is trying to contain his true feelings.
This spread is from THE EMPEROR’S NEW GIFT. Throughout the story, little cutouts reveal portions of the action contained behind a thin color film. The reader can see through the veil, but not everything is important to the main character, the little girl. The book’s design/concept is just as important to the story as the text. Whether or not the story is successful, I’m very pleased with my experiment between image and text. In the end the emperor breaks through the boundaries of his viewpoint and joins the girl, his daughter, on her colorful side.
Who doesn’t like to share their climbing tree. Although, whose tree is it?
There are all kinds of color challenges when dealing with sequential artwork in picture books. Hopefully the pale cool tones of the bedtime scene hold enough contrast to the warmer tones of the daytime scene. In THE WARMEST PLACE OF ALL, (coming out fall 2009) The text plays with the idea of being cold, warm, then cold again before finding the warmest place of all. When developing the characters and page layout I also made plans for warm/cool color tone changes. You can find the first page of the book on my website. I tried to show a warm sunset without losing the cold feeling of the snow. Although most of my art is very vibrant I’m planning a paler palette for the book I’m currently working on. There is something about pale colors that make images more intimate and create atmosphere. I hope to explore this idea more in my artwork.
