Snowy Valentine: My 1st Children's Book: (part 2)

Last week I talked about Snowy Valentine's origins as a hand drawn book called Mouse & Cardinal gift to my wife. Taking that seven page story and extending it into something more like 30 pages is the subject of this week's post. On a trip to Mackinac Island for our fourth wedding anniversary (2007) I wrote the new plan for the book. Instead of pacing around a small area like the mouse did in my original story, the rabbit would make a trip around to all the other forest critters to see what they were doing for their beloveds on Valentine's Day.

To extend the animal cast I included a cardinal to honor the original story as well as keeping the Fox as a threat to our hero. I added a frog, to pay homage to Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows, a raccoon in honor of Jesse Glenn's character from Cats Trio, and a grouping of Porcupine children because I thought it would be really adorable. Each character would either suggest a gift or describe the gift they were giving their beloved (none of which seemed to fit for the Rabbit to give his bride).

Once I had the cast in order, and Harper Collins approved the outline, I worked up page layouts for the scenes. I added Lorem Ipsum text (placeholder text in latin) to give me an ide of how much space the text would take up so I could plan for it in the final inks. Here are a few of the pages with the pencil layouts I submitted to Harper Collins along with the final inks once they were approved. The original inks are 12" square for single pages and 12" x 24" for the two-page-spreads.

Next Week: Part 3: Coloring with textures & Cover designs.

Snowy Valentine is available now through Amazon or can be ordered by your local bookstore.

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