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A web-comic blog for children, updated every single weekday with new comic stories and artwork by Nathan Hale.
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If you've ever clicked through the PORTFOLIO link on my main page, you've seen my agent's site Shannon Associates. You've probably also noticed that the images in that portfolio have not been updated for...quite a while.
For the past few years, I've been so busy creating graphic novels, that I've neglected my work portfolio. I wish the graphic novels paid all of my bills--they don't. In fact, most years, at least half (sometimes more) of my income comes from illustration only--not projects I've written. Book covers, interior art for chapter books, textbooks, products--you name it.
Unfortunately, my illustration work has been a bit dry lately, due in large part to my non-up-to-date portfolio.
So I'm creating some new pieces--custom pieces--for my portfolio. Here is step one of an illustration of a Yeti chasing a skiing kid.
These are two things I've never done an illustration of: a skier and a Yeti.
This is black Prismacolor pencil. I'm trying some new techniques--the next step will be some watercolor washes. That'll be up tomorrow.
This drawing was shown to me after a school visit about Napoleon, Jefferson, and the Louisiana Purchase. It is by a 4th grader who enjoyed the assembly.
If you can't read it, it says, "I have bought ze moon! YAAAA!
I like the little pistol pocket. Who am I kidding, I like EVERYTHING about this.
Here's the Provost!
Fun news this week. ONE DEAD SPY has climbed to #3 on the New York Times Hardcover Graphic Novel list! Number THREE! That's only two spots away from the top! If you have been waiting for a good week to pick up ONE DEAD SPY, this would be that week. Do it!
And along with that fantastic news, it's official: Hazardous Tales books #5 and #6 have been ordered by the publisher. The Research Babies are eyeball deep in research right
right now.
It's a big week!
I happen to be traveling at the moment and I don't have access to my scanner or my handy-dandy computer drawing system. My plan was to draw some blog posts with my iPad this week, but I'll start that tomorrow. Today, I'm giving you a rare peek into my school visit presentation.
Since getting into graphic novels and US history, my school visit audience is usually 3rd-8th graders. I don't visit many K-2nd grade classes anymore--which I did when I was doing mostly picture books. Today was fun, though, because I got to do my old picture book presentation. The finale is a group effort where the students help me draw a monster, or, since it was St. Patrick's day, a leprechaun.
I have a marker and an oversized piece of paper on an easel. I start with the head, and take suggestions for each monster part down to the feet, and then we name him/her/it. Since these are leprechauns, they all have the classic hat and belt--and a last name starting with "Mc".
These are what three separate groups of 2nd graders came up with:
Fishy McShamrock has chickens for arms, and fish tails for feet.
Gorilla McDonald has "wavey" fingers, and also "wavy" feet.
Fanae McWilliker has five arms and frogs for hands. We couldn't figure out how she eats with frog hands, or if she feeds herself by letting the frogs eat.
I've done this drawing exercise with kids for years. It's very strange to see the shifts in specific body part requests. Four years ago, there was not a SINGLE monster that didn't get a "Uni-brow". Kids were insane for the "uni-brow." More recently, it's been mustaches. Today's had a strange similarity, pointy noses and zig-zag mouths. All three groups, not knowing what the other groups had chosen, asked for those two traits. I drew them differently, so the monsters--I mean leprechauns--would be different when seen together.
Another odd similarity is animals for limbs. I was stunned at the weirdness of "chickens for arms", and then the third group asked for "frogs for hands."
I don't know what any of it means. But it's interesting.
As I'm posting these leprechauns, there are a few hundred 2nd graders who are writing stories about them for homework. The frogs for hands issue is now theirs to work out.
One Dead Spy is now on it's second week on the NYT bestseller list. We've moved up to #4! And Batman got his revenge (a Batman book has jumped to #3).
Along with our celebration, we'd like to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who bought ONE DEAD SPY--you put us on this list!
This is the New York Times best-seller list for graphic novels (hardcover).
Look at number 5.
Another day of Dark Souls with me and Uly.
What is Dark Souls, you might ask, and why am I making posts about it here on my blog about children's fiction? It's a Playstation game--and it's my favorite video game series of the last decade.
It's Japanese, it's incredibly difficult and frustrating--just like the games I played as a kid. There's very little dialogue, no cut-scenes, no story arc, just grueling dungeons that test your skill and patience. My son and I have fairly difference tastes, but we can agree on this. This is our favorite game series ever.
My son's been sick with a cold for the past two days, he stayed home from school, so we have logged some serious hours passing the controller back and forth.
For long-time blog-readers, the long-ago Land Of Doom story (about surviving children's book publishing) was partially inspired by the first game in this series, Demon's Souls.
I'll do one more for Friday, then we'll move onto more wholesome topics. I know kid-lit fans are big fans of violent video games.
Our Dark Souls II special edition arrived. We stayed up way too late playing.
First boss: Defeated
Today is a big day for my son and I. The sequel to our favorite video game, Dark Souls, comes out! Here we are, wearing our in-game armor, waiting for the UPS truck to bring our Special Edition Dark Souls II.
Uly's wearing the Havel armor and the Dark Knight Greatsword. I've got the Elite Knight armor gear and my trusty Lightning Shotel.
It's rare that I do fan art, but today's a special day.
It's an oldie, but a goodie. MEET THE SPY, this was only seen by a few when the HAZARDOUS TALES series launched back in Summer of 2012.
We launched Rapunzel and watched to see if other publishers would print large too. They did not. Everybody went smaller--this was right when the Wimpy Kid books started blowing up. That size, or thereabouts, became the golden size for middle-grade books.
One theory was that kids thought of large books as picture books--in other words, large books were for little kids, little books were for large kids. Middle-graders want to be anything but "little kids."
The middle-grader graphic novel shelf shrank to fit the smaller-sized books. Some of these shelves were too small for Rapunzel.
So, when the time came for reprinting a new edition of Rapunzel's Revenge (and Calamity Jack) we decided to go smaller. I was excited for a new edition, and suggested we do new covers. Not because I disliked the old covers--I just love alternate covers. Rapunzel never got an alternate paperback cover, I thought this would be a good time to repackage the books with a snappy new cover. Here's one sketch:
In the end, the alternate cover idea didn't take, and we stuck with the old, classic covers.
Now you know the story! What do you think of the new small versions?
This chimp is wondering why I'm rebooting the blog with such a boring story.
C'mon, guys, nothing is more interesting than graphic novel format sizes!
When we started Rapunzel's Revenge, I had never drawn a graphic novel, Shannon and Dean had never written a graphic novel, and Bloomsbury US had never published a graphic novel.
We had to make it up as we went.
The new generation of American middle-grade graphic novels had just started. There were a few books from Scholastic--graphic novel versions of GOOSEBUMPS, and the Babysitters Club, as well as reprints of Jeff Smith's BONE series. Kazu Kibiushi's first AMULET: The Stone Keeper had just come out. And BABYMOUSE was just two or three books along. All of those books were totally different sizes. See here:
Scholastic's books were somewhere between the American and European size--but many of them were black and white (like Manga). Scholastic learned pretty quickly that kids wanted COLOR. The BONE reprints, originally done in black and white, were soon brought out in color versions. BABYMOUSE was Manga-sized, black and white, but with one extra color (pink!). Amazingly, the one extra color worked! It worked so well, in fact, that many middle-grade graphic novels have since followed that format: Lunch Lady, Dragonbreath, and a little series you might have heard of called Hazardous Tales.
So, before we started Rapunzel, we had to decide what size the book would be--and if it would be in color. After finishing the inks, I admit, I sent an email requesting the book be black and white. Can you imagine Rapunzel's Revenge with no color? Size-wise, I wanted to go as big as possible--having long been a fan of the super-sized European-style comics (think Tintin and Asterix). Shannon and Dean's script had a lot to say, and I had a lot of scenery I wanted to draw. We went as big as the publisher allowed: not quite as big as the Europeans, but a bit larger than the Scholastics titles.
We went full color, bigger and thicker than a standard American comic book, but not quite as thick as a Manga. Essentially, we created our own new size and format--a size and format nobody else was using.
Some of you may have seen the new SMALLER versions of the Rapunzel's Revenge paperback. Pretty neat, right? Highly portable.
For the next few posts, I'll explain the reasons we went with a smaller version of the book. Nothing shocking or exciting, really just a look at graphic novels and their sizing. It should be interesting.
Really, I just wanted an excuse to draw a tiny Rapunzel.
Tiny with a huge head. Can you imagine if the whole book were drawn in this style?
And we're back!
After being out of the blog-o-sphere since last summer, I'm jumping back in! Wish me luck. I'm going to attempt to maintain my old pace of every weekday.
This blog has brought me a lot of joy--and more than a few contracts (including the one for the Hazardous Tales books!) So back to business!
{Hey, gang! The following was created for an Amazon.com blog post about Donner Dinner Party, a Kindle Content Nomination for the Month of January!}
The first time I did historical research for a graphic novel wasn’t for a
Hazardous Tales book—it was for a fairy tale:
Rapunzel’s Revenge, written by Newbery Honor author Shannon Hale and her husband Dean. This wasn’t a standard re-telling of the fairy tale; it was a re-boot—heavy on the
boot, because it took place in the Old West.
Even though our Old West was a fantasy kingdom, I wanted it to look and feel authentic. I looked at costumes, buildings, carts, firearms, and scenery, and then incorporated that visual research into the drawings. That dash of period-correct detail went a long way towards making the world of Rapunzel’s Revenge feel like a real place.
The sequel,
Calamity Jack, required even more visual research. That book was set in a turn-of-the-century American city that had been destroyed by giants. Now, obviously, I didn’t have access to any cities destroyed by giants. I did, however, find a wealth of amazing photos of turn-of-the-century American cities in ruins. Giants? No--fire: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, or earthquake: the San Francisco Quake of 1906. These photos were fascinating. One book in particular,
The Earth Shook Sky Burned:A Photographic Record of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, by William Bronson, became my go-to book for Calamity Jack scenery.
San Francisco was nearly wiped off the map in 1906. 3,000 people died! I would stop drawing for hours and get lost in the photos and accounts. This was where the idea of doing historical non-fiction graphic novels first started to appeal to me.
What I didn’t realize was just how much research would be required. When researching a historical graphic novel: you have to research your subject matter twice, once for the facts, then again for the visuals.
Amulet, the publisher of the Hazardous Tales series, employs a very strict fact-checker. This guy is serious. If he sees an error in my manuscript, he lets me know--in angry red pen. I go back and double-check my sources, re-write the offending passages, and fix, fix, fix, until that fact-checker is happy. But that’s just the first half. Then I have to draw all of these historical scenes. So it’s back to the research.
In some ways,
One Dead Spy, the first
Hazardous Tales book, was the easiest for visual research, because it was pre-photography. I was able to just make up what many of the key characters looked like. Nathan Hale himself (the hero of that book, and the narrator of the series) had no official portrait. The images and statues we see of him today are romanticized versions of written accounts.
The Reeds, the main characters of
Donner Dinner Party, have remarkable portraits. My cartoon versions of them had to match the photos. Researching the scenery of the Donner journey was easy for me. I live in Utah, close to the original route.
I just finished the fourth
Hazardous Tales book:
Treaties,Trenches, Mud, and Blood, a World War One tale. That one was the most difficult research assignment yet. Getting all of the uniforms, guns, tanks, helmets, etc. for each of the countries involved was a monster. I spent a day making sure each army’s shovels were the
rightshovels. That book comes out this May.
The books may look cartoony, the facts may be interrupted by jokes, but everything in a Hazardous Tales book has been researched, fact-checked, then researched again. Double the research, double the fun!
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Holy smokes! I finished it!
Last night I finished the fourth Hazardous Tales book. Treaties, Trenches, Mood and Blood is the title. It covers the full length of WWI. This was the hardest Hazardous Tales book to complete. It is dense, dense, dense--so much information.
I think it is probably the least funny, but the most awesome book in the series so far. It'll be out in May, you'll have to tell me what you think. It can actually be pre-ordered at some online booksellers right now.
Superstar librarian Betsy Bird and infographic site noodle have teamed up to create this cool info graphic--FIND YOUR NEXT BOOK.
There are some great books on this list. I haven't read them all, but I can certainly vouch for Jonathan Stroud's Lockwood and Co. That's the audiobook currently playing in the studio. Me and the kids are LOVING it--SO SCARY!
Brought to you by: Noodle.org
I forgot to mention last post--along with the deadline dungeon, there is also a lot of touring going on in the next few weeks. Baltimore, Nashville, NYC, and a few events in my home state of Utah. I'll keep you posted on when they are as they approach. Up first, Baltimore.
I'll be drawing portraits again this year, so if you see me at the festival, come and get your likeness drawn!
Boy, oh boy. You guys, I am in tight,
tight deadline mode. The poor blog has been flat out forgotten for nearly two months now!
It's busy at the Station! This coming spring will see an all new Hazardous Tales book about WWI--not only that, but you'll be getting a
second serving of the Hangman and co. in a 20-page mini-story also being published next year. The details on the mini-story are still TOP SECRET, but it'll be very cool.
So hang in there. I only have a few weeks left to finish this crazy stuff, then we'll get back in the posting groove.
Just poking my head above ground for a minute. This blogging-free month has been a busy month for Hazardous Tales #4. Here's a sample of one 2-page spread in progress:
If all goes as planned, this book will be out next spring.
How is everyone liking DONNER DINNER PARTY? Do me a favor and post your reviews on your favorite review-posting locations--even if it's just a hand-written note on your fridge!
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haven't gotten our hands on "donner dinner party" yet, but my second grader devoured "one dead spy" this week at school and LOVED it. thanks talented guy.
Why thank you. That's an advanced second grader you have.
Our order got messed up. Just reordered it. Can't wait!
My name is Benjamin. I'm 11 years old, and I've read One Dead Spy and Big Bad Ironclad. I'm reading Donner Dinner Party right now and I really like it. I'm excited you're writing more. Maybe someday you could write about WW1 and WW2.