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The 3D trailer for CORALINE was leaked on the web over the last couple of days. Laika were not very impressed... so they gave us a nice clean, pristine version.

You want to watch the Quicktime version if you can [Edit to add, actually you want to watch the DivX version, now at the top of the page, which is really lovely and actually allows you too see textures and such], but the web goblin put up a YouTube version for those who can't.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Video_Clips/Coraline_Teaser

Dear Mr. Gaiman,


I was wondering if you have come across this:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/21/pleitgen.germany.nazi.comic.cnn

yet. I'm curious about your take on the whole issue. Do you think that something as important as the Holocaust can be depicted through a comic book? If it can be, then do you think its all a matter of people's misconception of comics as an inadequate source of serious story-telling?

A comic book aficionado,

Ronald

Given that art spiegelman's Maus won the 1992 Pulitzer prize, and is a, oddly enough, comic book about the Holocaust, I think that argument was settled 16 years ago. (Dave Sim's upcoming Secret Project is Holocaust-related, and is one of the most emotionally affecting things I've read in comic-book form.) I think any argument that states that comics (or radio or film or a musical or the novel or insert your favourite medium here...) by its nature trivialises its subject matter is foolish, shortsighted, dim, lazy and wrong. You can say "This is a bad comic." You can't say "This is bad because it's a comic."

Often, adoring fans have asked me "How do you look so good all the time?" as if my job consisted of nothing more than sipping hot coffee and having the occasional cigarette. My job is dirty work. Building a library from a completely donated collection is dirty work. Much dirtier than I anticipated. So, I invested in a white lab jacket. Now I can clean my library, organize, move boxes - and still

I would like to start delving into what makes a good jacket for a picture book. (This is by all means open for discussion) Far to often I will receive postcards and dummy books in the mail from Illustrators which give little or no thought to a jacket image. This is a mistake. In my opinion if you can illustrate a good image for the jacket summarizing the story you might have an easier time with the interior illustrations as well. Since you are able to visualize the entire story into one picture successfully. But my all means this is not always the case.
A good portion of the time Illustrators tend to try and use an image from the interior of there book. And I don't blame them after 32 to 40 pages of illustrations, I am sure they are tired of the book and the thought of one more illustration seems daunting. But I think it helps to make the book unique as possible to create an image that stands on it's own.

The first thing I suggest, and this goes for novels as well, is to think of one image or character that summarizes the story simply. I find when there is a scene of action it some times makes the jacket very busy. All of the examples below show single character composition. Basically to introduce the character and tell a little bit about the mood of the story with out giving to much away. They are what some call ICONIC covers. Iconic = simple and brand