I normally don’t share the “letter pages” – the left-hand side information that supplements rather than tells the story – but this drawing turned out kind of nice. It’s a pirate sub by the name of Crimson Cod and is central to a plot twist in DKJ&SS.
This latest installment in Dog King John and The Stolen Syrup depicts a Bony Express Glider.
For those of you just tuning into our program: Dog King John is story I am writing for my grandchildren, but when I finish the story I am planning on publishing a book version either through Amazon or Kickstarter. The story actually has two types of pages, with the story being told on the right-hand pages and background material presented on left-hand pages. Right now I’m only sharing the right-hand pages – a move that is both a marketing measure for the eventual book as well as a way to keep things special for the grandkids.
Spacing out the pages also gives me a chance to correct/tweak details as ideas come to me throughout the process – which makes each book I make for the kids an artists proof.
One change will be a subtitle: printed below Dog King John and The Stolen Syrup will be a line that states “a story for the precocious fifth-grader in us all.”
These members of the Monastery of the Mendicant Equine Brotherhood of Mary our Lady of Garound will figure prominently in Dog King John and the Stolen Syrup…
…where they are often referred to as “The Poor Horsemen of Notre Dame”
Latest installment – but lacking captions, logo etc. I don’t have a 11″X17″ printer/copier so I had to tile the image from multiple smaller prints – hence the are also some obvious mismatched areas I’m also trying to brainstorm a way to enhance the aerial perspective as seen out the window without the linework washing out completely in some places.
This post is not exactly reeking in Christmas-osity but I wanted to share the latest installment of Dog King John & the Stolen Syrup.
Merry Christmas wishes to you all!
Page 3 of the ‘Dog King John and the Stolen Syrup” narrative…
Title page for the aforementioned book I’m writing for my grandchildren. As you can see here and in other images from the book the linework and type are not perfect – and there’s a reason for that. I’m producing this in the “old-school” manner much like we did forty years ago. I’m using my computer strictly as a stat camera/typositor – all the drawings are done with pencil, pen and template as is the line work and graphic devices. I’m placing the type by hand and designing “by eye”.
You’ll also occasionally see stray construction lines that I’ve left in.
Some people dress in period costume and live in restored villages as a means of “living history”. This project it my way of doing so as well.
Page 2 of the Dog King John book.
Page-numbering in this book is a little different. Pages that are numbered (1,2,3 etc.) tell the story of the syrup hijacking. Pages that are lettered (A,B, C etc.) show maps, diagrams, historical notes and other information that expand on the story. I’ll post the numbered pages but I’m holding back the lettered pages to keep the project special for my grandkids – they’ll be the only ones completely “in the know”, at least for the time being.
As I’ve written before I take great delight in my role as “papa” (AKA grandfather, abuelo, old geezer) and even though six out of my seven grandchildren live far away I work hard to keep in contact with them. One of the ways I do that is by regularly sending drawings to them as postcards, starting out with one a month to my sole grandson and eventually expanding to a half-dozen every two or three months.
With these particular sketches have fun and let my imagination run wild – for example for my granddaughter Hazel I went through a six month run using yetis as a theme. The Yeti is/was Hazel’s own personal boogey-man and over the span of that half-year I worked to change the yeti’s image from something scary to a comedic figure.
Lately I’ve been using the cards as a design forum for my book project Dog King John and The Stolen Syrup. I want to keep the details consistent so I’m using these drawings to work out details before working on the actual book art .
…some of the cards are just cards though. The younger grandkids don’t really understand the book-thing – for them I come up with something quasi-educational like the “fourteen-flounder” card above
Preliminary rendering of Dog King John’s personal airship The Golden Hound.
Strictly speaking the gas cells on The Golden Hound are much too small to support a gondola and engines the size of these, but physical science works a little differently in the upcoming book Dog King John and the Stolen Syrup. Lift is provided not by helium or hydrogen but by fly-drogen , a gas that is not only not inert, it definitely has an altitude attitude.
David R. Deitrick, Designer 