How to use this Page

It was recently pointed out to me via email, courtesy of illustrator and concept artist Tanja Wooten , that there was a mispelling on my web site.I could only offer the following explanation:I once had, among my wretched crew, a viking lad aboard for keeping track of just that sort of thing, by name of Sven the Spellchecker. Unfortunately, he was also known as Sven the Seasick, and was also

Check out more Maurice Sendak video interviews on Rosenback Museum's YouTube page:

Check out Patricia Newman's sizable collection of author profiles. From her site: "I’ve interviewed all of these fantastically talented children’s authors and illustrators for a monthly column I write that appears in regional parenting magazines. Please read their profiles and then read their work!"

How have I not been following Tony DiTerlizzi's blog? He and co-author Holly Black are releasing a cool edition of the Spiderwick Chronicles with lots of "special features" much the way DVD movies do. Brilliant.

Anyone out there ever buy online space on either of these two sites?

www.childrensillustrators.com
www.picture-book.com

I'm curious if it's worth the money.

For any illustrator wanting to put together an online portfolio, you'll be amazed at the options you have available to you. Fortunately for me, I have enough knowledge of web design that I can fumble my way around Dreamweaver and build a decent site myself. But for those without the benefit of such knowledge, and without the mullah to pay someone else to do it, there are a few options out there that aren't a bad second choice.

Deviant Art
You can set a portfolio up completely for free, which is nice. You manage it through the browser, which is also nice. The downside? You have very little control over how it looks other than the placement of the different sections. But you know what? The main reason people come there is to check out your art, right? So keeping it simple with a plain white or dark gray background is just fine.

You'll also have to have the deviant art name in your URL (as in ingvard.daportfolio.com), but that's not a big deal really. I keep my main work on my site, but I also decided to post older stuff on a DA site.

carbonmade
I don't have any personal experience with this one, but it looks slick and operates pretty much the same way.

A few other places to check out on your own (you can probably find more just by searching under "online portfolio"):

Behance Network
Coroflot

For further reading, check out this article on Smashing Magazine on creating the successful online portfolio.

Let's say you have a little web knowledge and want to get a little tricky with the navigation of your gallery (though be warned, some of these may or may not be discouraged in the aforementioned article!)

Slideshow Pro
It costs about $40 and require you know a little bit of how to get around in Flash. I am definitely a beginner when it comes to Flash, and I could figure it out with a little reading of the tutorial. There's additional software if you're looking to manage a huge, circulating portfolio (like for a professional photographer or something), but that's probably not necessary.

Lightbox
This one's free (though he does take donations, so why not drop the guy a few bucks for his work?) This is what I used for my current site, and I've seen it used plenty of other times. It requires a small amount of tinkering with your HTML, but again, I'm a novice at that stuff, and as long as I followed the simple directions, I got it up and running with no problem.

Plogger
This is also free, and probably geared toward regular Joes who want to put all their vacation photos on their family web site, but it can definitely be used for illustrators. I requires a little more tinkering, but it allows you to manage everything through a web browser, and let's you create multiple albums (and sub-albums, etc.) and move things around pretty easily.

If I think of anymore (I know I'm forgetting something), I'll be sure to post it.

Having started flirting with the use of another name (albeit my middle name) for promotional purposes, I've started thinking a lot about pen names and alternate identities. I don't know of too many in the kidlit world, outside of maybe Lemony Snicket and the "authors" of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, but I'm willing to bet there's more than I'm aware of.

Finally! After piddling with it for who knows how long, I've finally launched a redesign of my illustration web site. Check it out!

http://www.sean-ashby.com/

Now, the first thing you may have noticed is that it's a big redesign. One of the things I wrestled with was whether or not to use my rather distinct middle name, Ingavrd, as a sort of "alter-ego" or keep using my given name and surname (Sean Ashby). My head said, Use your given name, dummy. You may not have a lot of equity built up for it yet, but if you use some silly nom de plume you're stuck with it. Plus, people will be confused by the change, etc. etc.

But my gut wanted to do something different. There was this guy, this character, this larger than life viking named Ingvard the Terrible that was fighting to get out. I wrestled with this for a while, and finally decided to give it a shot. Like I said, I don't have a whole lot invested in Sean Ashby, per se, and I still use my name on the site.

And as you may have noticed, the blog has been affected, too. Although, for some stupid reason, I can't change my profile picture. Blogger is bugging out on me for some reason, but at least it's a viking character, albeit not the new one. [UPDATE: I decided to just get rid of the old pic, and upload my own to get around that problem.]

I'll also be adding a bunch of old work to a Deviant Art site—ingvard.daportfolio.com—that will link from the portfolio page of my site. I may even decide to buy a URL that reflects the Ingvard name, but I haven't quite decided.

So, now that it's up, what's next? Promote the dumb thing. For starters, I'll be making the rounds at various web sites to post the news. Then I think I'll also print up a round of postcards to mail to all the people that I just sent sample sheets to a month or so ago (sample sheets with the old look on it). And as soon as I get the dough, I think I'm going to buy a slot on picture-book.com, which has nothing to do with the new site, but hopefully it will draw some traffic.

Phew! Glad it's done. Feels like I finished some massive home-improvement project, like remodeling a bathroom. You know, without having to spend all that time going back and forth to Home Depot...

The new site is coming along pretty well. I've been working on doing some illustrations just for the site (the home, about and contact pages), and thought about posting them here as I finished them, buuuuut, I've decided to wait until the whole thing is finished. (Like it would spoil anything for all 2 people who read this thing).

As I was cruising the blogosphere, lamenting the lack of any male bloggers when it came to sites about kidlit, I came across this one! Not only that, The Graphic Classroom is focused solely on graphic novels and extols the virtues of using them in the classroom.

From the author: "I am now a full time graduate student in the college of education at Missouri State University. I am getting my Masters of Science in Education – Elementary Education.

"I know that reading is a problem for many students today. I feel strongly that comics and graphic novels can be one way that we can combat this problem. Graphics novels should be in every public school library and classroom library. That is why I am choosing to write my thesis on using comics and graphic novels in the elementary classroom."

Aaaaw, yeah! Consider it bookmarked.

From the site: "What Book Got You Hooked? invites readers everywhere to celebrate unforgettable books from childhood and help provide new books to the children who need them most. First Book asks visitors to share the memory of the books that made them readers and then vote for the state to receive 50,000 new books from First Book, helping to get more kids hooked on reading."

For me, it was "Bunnicula" by James Howe.

Enjoying these podcasts from HarperCollins, including Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, Avi, Bruce Hale and more.

I have begun to descend the slippery slope of re-designing my portfolio web site (and you can be sure that, once finished, this blog will look different, too). Now, while I have been intending to do this for a long time, I've started down a slightly different path than the one I had intended. And I'm a little nervous about it.

You see, I've had this sort of alter ego for some time now (I think I've mentioned this before). Once in a while, just for fun, I'll go by my middle name, Ingvard, which I got from my Danish mother. This Ingvard character is an old fashioned viking, who goes by the formidable name of "Ingvard the Terrible". I've always liked the idea of this guy, but I never knew what to do with him: write a story with him, draw a comic...

Lately, as I've been thinking about redesigning my web site, I was trying to decide what kind of look to give it. My thoughts wandered into viking territory, and this larger than life character popped up once again. So, while I've always thought my given name, Sean Ashby, was my "brand", both as an author and an illustrator, I needed to market that name they way you would a traditional product. So where did this Ingvard guy come in? Was my subconscious suggesting I use it as a sort of nom de plum, a la Daniel Handler's Lemony Snicket persona?

That possibility, frankly, scares me a little. I guess that, whenever I imagined myself as a published author, etc., I imagined doing it under my own name. I guess people do it all the time; Charlie Sheen, I believe was born Carlos Esteves, and he and his father Martin Sheen changed their names when they got into acting because they felt no one would hire a latino actor with such a foreign name (their brother, Emilio Esteves, however decided to keep his name and did just fine).

I don't know. I'm not saying that I'm going to do that, but my gut is trying to push me in a certain direction, and it's fighting with my mind. I just wish I knew what that direction was.

So who knows. I'll play with this new website design that features the whole viking look and see where it takes me. Many times, following your gut makes things easier, and ends up being the right thing to do, but that doesn't make it any less scary.

Teaching Authors

From the site: "We are six children's book authors with a wide range (and many years) of experience teaching writing to children, teens, and adults. Here, we will share our unique perspective as writing teachers who are also working writers.

"In addition to discussing what we've learned about writing and the teaching of writing, we also hope to accomplish something on the blog that we can't do on our websites: facilitate conversations between writers, teachers, and librarians about the subjects we love best--writing, teaching writing, and reading."

Some days, don't you wonder where everyone is out there? I'm mean, shouldn't there be some evidence left behind when someone has actually dropped by Ye Old Blogspot Blogging Post? They say Pinging one's blog is critical---can't do without it, you know. But what does all the pinging really do, anyway? What if I didn't ping?

Found this web site called "No Flying No Tights" (great name) that posts recommended graphic novel reading for teens as well as middle grade kids. (The lists are good, but boy, the design of the site itself is, sorry to say, gawd-awful. I'll try to look past that...).

Terrible Yellow Eyes is a collection of works inspired by the beloved classic, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Over time, they'll display a growing collection of works created by invited contributing artists.

From the site: "We share a love and admiration for Sendak's work and the pieces we present here are done as a tribute to his life and legacy."

Some killer work here. Very fun.

I had a moment in church today. It was during the prelude as our organist played Ave Maria. The music was hauntingly beautiful. But what it made me think of was the masterful creativity that went into its composition, much less just the playing of it hundreds of years after it was written. It was awesome, as some might way these days.

That's when I got to thinking about my own level of creativity and what others might consider me good at doing---you know one of those moments when one might reflect on whether one's efforts might be deemed worthy. I mean, I play around on the guitar a little and I like to play with words, particularly words written in rhyme. But how does that stack up, really? Am I good at it or just mildly entertaining---a brief, perhaps clever or humorous diversion but not for so long that it becomes tiresome.

Sometimes, a series of carefully selected notes or chords or a painting or sculpture can do that; can challenge the very supposition that the things we do are a meaningful measure of a particular talent or skill or even knack.

Most days, I think I might settle for knack---either one I in fact may have or one others simply think I have.

There's a cool design company that specializes in kids called Big Blue Dot that publishes a "trend update" newsletter. Very informative for anyone in any industry related to li'l'uns...

I also found a sister site to the Reading Rockets site, called AdLit.org. From their mission statement:

Launched in late 2007, AdLit offers resources to the parents and educators of struggling readers and writers in grades 4-12. The site includes research-based articles, instructional material for classroom teachers, an Ask the Experts feature, a blog by a librarian and children's book reviewer, tips for parents, book recommendations, exclusive interviews with top authors, and a free monthly e-newsletter.

I found this blog for Chad W. Beckerman, an art director at Abrams Books for Young Readers and Amulet Books. These are the dudes who not only design the book cover, but also hire the illustrators. You know, guys like me. Just after a brief scan, I can already tell this is the kind of AD I wanna be doing projects for someday. Sigh...

I'm looking forward to catching up on his posts!

Pretty cool, my stock illustrations that I spent the last couple of months on are now officially up and live on ImageZoo.com. Weee!! Check 'em out, ooh and aaah at them. Maybe even buy one =)

Probably the last thing any author (or aspiring author) is thinking about when writing their books is what photo of themselves will they use on the back flap of the dust jacket? I'm pretty sure that most authors aren't really that comfortable getting their picture taken (otherwise they'd be models, right?), but it's almost a necessary evil. Of course, some authors don't do one at all, but as a reader, I reeeeeeally want to know the face behind the words. (I have the same problem with radio: I have to know what those voices look like.)

Cormac McCarthy

If you're lucky, you get a photographer like Marion Ettlinger to take that photo. She takes absolutely beautiful black and white portraits, all captured in natural light. Her subjects aren't posing the way a Glamorshots photo would, and they sure as heck aren't like the photo your friend/spouse/coworker took with a point-and-shoot camera with you planted up against a wall like a mug shot (I've seen both, and please, please don't ever resort to it!)

Jhumpa Lahiri

Sebastian Junger

At the very least, take a moment and puruse Marion's gallery, just for the art of it.

I've been thinking about the whole idea of a book web site and what an author could possibly put on there to help market their work since the last post. Here's the basics that most sites include:

This is a collection of short videos combining live action with animated monsters that's pretty cute/funny/cool. It's a German site, but all the videos are wordless. And you know I can't get enough monsters... Read the rest of this post