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For those attending next week’s Comic Con International in lovely San Diego, California, here is my schedule of events:

*** BE SURE TO STOP AT SIMON & SCHUSTER (booth 1128) TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF The Battle for WondLa LIMITED EDITION SKETCHBOOK!

Thursday, July 24th
10:00 am -10:30 am
Booth 1119
Book signing – Mysterious Galaxy Book Store presents Tony DiTerlizzi. Many of my titles will be available for purchase or bring your books and cards to be signed.

12:00 pm-1:00 pm
Room 32AB
Fairy Tale Remix — Toto, I’ve a feeling these aren’t your typical fairy tales… From cyborg Cinderellas to swashbuckling pirates, fairy tales are just full of possibilities for retelling and reimagining. A fantastic line up of authors will discuss how they take very well-known stories (such as Rapunzel, The Wizard of Oz, Tam Lin) and remix them for a new audience, and how they create their very own fairy tales! Moderated by Shannon Hale (Ever After High series), this panel featuring Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles series), Katherine Harbour (Thorn Jack), John Peck (Charming Series), Cornelia Funke (Mirrorworld Series), Tony DiTerlizzi (Search for WondLa), Ben Tripp (The Accidental Highwayman), and Danielle Page (Dorothy Must Die) will give insight to the fairy tales of old, and new!

1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
Autograph Area AA09
Group Signing: Fairy Tale Remix
*I’ll have the FREE WondLa III sketchbooks on hand for the signing after the panel discussion.

Friday, July 25th
3:00 pm-4:00 pm
Room 7AB
Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight — Ralph McQuarrie’s art for the original Star Wars trilogy is introduced to a new generation of young readers in Star Wars: The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight. Join New York Times bestselling author Tony DiTerlizzi as he talks about the conceptualization of this project and the process, challenges, and privileges of writing to the works of a legend; along with Troy Alders (Art Director, Lucasfilm), J.W. Rinzler (Executive Editor, Lucasfilm), and Joanne Chan (Children’s Book Editor, Lucasfilm).

*We will have a promotional postcard wallet of amazing McQuarrie art that we will be giving out at the panel, so stop on by!

PS –For those not attending this year’s comic con who wish to nab one of the limited edition The Battle for WondLa sketchbooks, fear not. Stuart Ng Books (on of my favorite places to spend my royalty checks) will be selling them after the convention.

The Battle for WondLa tour is over, and though I am exhausted from travel, I also feel honored, blessed and inspired.

My tour began in Southern California where I visited the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles with WondLa’s audiobook reader and award-winning actress, Teri Hatcher.

From LA, I traveled east visiting bookstores in Phoenix, Kansas City, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Milwaukee and even in my town in Western Massachusetts. I spoke at numerous schools and connected with scores of readers. We chatted mostly about stories and some of our favorite books and characters.

In a couple of stops, authors came to support me–like Adam Gidwitz (below, center) posing with Topher Bradfield (left) after my event at Austin’s premier indie shop, BookPeople.

To be honest, travel wears me down and it is tough being away from home, my wife and daughter. But the families who took the time to come and see me speak validated why I do this and inspired me (especially when my public event fell on a school night). I don’t usually stop to ponder how many lives my books touch, so I was often overwhelmed with emotion by the turnouts at my events. I was moved by the kind words and wonderful gifts given to me after readers had waited in a long line to have their book signed.

So, for today’s “Friday Fan Art”, I thought I’d share some of the amazing drawings, and other goodies, that were given to me while on the road. Check out Aeden (above), who delivered a whole mess of artwork from Spiderwick to WondLa.

Them there was Medelyn who brought me this lovely sketch of Eva Nine at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville.

At Little Shop of Stories, near Atlanta, recent art school grad, Katie, gave me this wonderful watercolor of Eva and Rovee.

I love Austin and was blown away by the talent during my visit to BookPeople. This is a Bull Goblin, from The Spiderwick Chronicles, made from felt!

In fact, Tomoko, one of the booksellers at BookPeople created this beautiful image from the climax of A Hero for WondLa.

In Milwaukee, I was given “Christopher the Cupboard Pixie” from Janice who runs an Etsy shop called Sew Sweet Monsters. Christopher now watches over my books in the studio,

Back in Mass, Rob and his son, Ben, are both artist. They gave me drawings of their favorite characters from the WondLa books.

These little tokens of appreciation will all be cherished. It is surreal and inspiring to see others celebrate my characters through their art.

Thank you for coming out and making this tour so memorable for me. I hope to see you again, next time.

Keep dreaming, keep drawing.

I’ve finally received my May tour dates to support the fantastic finale to the WondLa trilogy.

My presentation includes drawing and discussing how the WondLa books came to be. Attendees will receive the third limited edition WondLa sketchbook for free. And, of course, I will sign just about any book (or gaming materials) that you bring – though different stores have different signing policies, so its best to check with them beforehand.

As well, Angela and I will both be attending the LA Times Festival of Books in April at the USC campus. Though The Battle of WondLa will not be available for sale then, I will be signing all my previous titles. Hopefully I’ll see you there!

PS – I am hoping to add some additional dates for our local friends in Massachusetts, so stay tuned…

If you’ve been following this blog for the past couple of months, you know I have been sharing much of my process for the upcoming cover to the third and final book in the Wondla trilogy,  The Battle for WondLa.

Entertainment Weekly has finally revealed the cover to the finale to WondLa, due out in stores next May. As well, we’ve shot a little video to show a bit of my process in creating the cover. Let me know what you think.

The final stages of creating the artwork for The Battle for WondLa dust-jacket required me to set down my pencils, pens and paper and grab a mouse, Wacom stylus and keyboard.

As proud as I am of my inking capabilities, I never create the perfect ink drawing. Cleanup is required. Nowadays I correct errors in Photoshop, but way-back-when I would “white-out” the part I wanted to fix in white acrylic paint, then redraw over it. You can see this technique here in a piece from The Spiderwick Chronicles. Look closely at Byron’s wings.

Because India ink is so vibrant, it requires A LOT of white paint in order to mask the error and provide a decent background to re-ink upon. In the end, you are drawing on a bumpy surface of blobbed on paint. I am heartened when I learn that even the most accomplished ink-masters dealt with whiting out mistakes. Here’s a close-up of an original Garth Williams drawing from Charlotte’s Web.

The yellowing of the paper has made his corrections more apparent. Charles Dana Gibson would meticulously patch in a new piece of board to fix his inking mishaps. Once the piece is photographed for reproduction the white-out (or the seams from the patch) would vanish and give the appearance of a perfect ink drawing in the final reproduction. With a home art studio housing new(ish) technology, I now scan my ink drawings and upload them directly into the art director’s ftp folder. This allows for digital cleanup and fixes with incredible freedom.

My first exercise that I run it through is the mirror flip. A common practice in art school, it simply requires looking at a reflection of your artwork. With the image in reverse, errors become more apparent. Let me show you:

This is a scan of the finished ink drawing from Chapter 6 of The Wyrm King from Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles. Can you see error in the drawing? I couldn’t while I was working on it, so I’ll give you a clue: It has to do with Nick, the boy in the lower left wearing the seaweed cap.

Here is a close-up of Nick scanned for print (a 600 dots per inch [dpi] bitmap).

Now I shall mirror-flip it in Photoshop. The error becomes more apparent in this reversed image – the axis of his eyes are off (among other facial features). A quick digital fix will show how subtle tweaks to line art can make a big difference.

In Photoshop, not only can I erase dust, ink droplets and spatter, I can also alter the drawing itself. Here I am nudging the eye back up a bit and rotating it slightly.

I can also erase any inconsistencies in the line work and redraw whatever needs to be done. Compare the original artwork (left) with the cleaned-up version (right). (Click to see a hi-res image)

And here is the final printed image.

Of course, this begs the question: Why not just ink the whole thing digitally? Because I like to have a physical piece of art when all is said and done. I want something that’s been held and made by human hands. And, despite these tweaks and cleanup, I want some of the ink blobs, smudges and errors created when by drawing by hand. That is part of the charm for me.

That in mind, I tend to err on the conservative end when cleaning up my ink drawings digitally. More often than not, the original drawing looks pretty close to the final printed image.

And here is the inked artwork of Eva for the cover to The Battle for WondLa. I got lucky on this one and it required little clean up (I fixed the pattern on the muzzle of the boomrod, removed strands of hair, and erased lines where her hand gripped the Omnipod). Now she is ready for color, but more on that next time…

Fellow Orbonians, the first draft of The Battle for WondLa is completed and with my editor. While he reads it over (along with my beta-readers), I am beginning to design the third and final cover.

But first, some “First Draft Fun Facts”:

The Search for WondLa: 221 manuscript pages, 51,000 words

A Hero for WondLa: 237 manuscript pages, 61,000 words

The Battle for WondLa: 230 manuscript pages, 59,000 words

Now, the cover.

These covers have been somewhat tricky for me. My main goal in the image is to present an intriguing world with compelling characters – all without trying to give too much of the plot away. The design went through an overhaul from the first book’s transition from hardcover to paperback (which you can read about here). The second book had a large-scale scene also intent on enticing new readers.

Now we come to the final chapter in Eva Nine’s ascension to a true heroine and so I want to depict her teetering on the edge of two worlds: that of a passive character versus a character of action. Or it is the transition of an individual naive to the world around them to one who is cognizant of their surroundings. Essentially, a symbolic image of the child-Eva becoming a young adult.

I have to start with reacquainting myself with Eva. Sure, I scribble sketches of her in scenes throughout the writing process like the sketch above done back in January in my Moleskine journal.  However, I still need to draw her portrait to mark the transformation she is going through from book to book – like this image of Eva as she appears near the end of book three:

Then I am off to find inspiration. Émile Bayard‘s iconic image of Cosette sweeping from Victor Hugo’s 1862 classic, Les Misérables, gives me a despairing feeling that I hope to capture in this third cover.

You can see Bayard’s influence on this sketch of Eva, here.

So I continue to explore and pursue the perfect cover image: one that entices readers while accurately exhibiting the mood and tone of the story and one that satisfies my artistic vision. Its a tricky act to be sure, but one I thoroughly enjoy doing.

For my loyal readers following the adventures of Eva Nine and company, I can finally reveal the title of the third and final book in the WondLa trilogy.

The Battle for WondLa plot picks up shortly after the end of the second story, A Hero for WondLa. The story has been outlined thoroughly and I am in the process of writing the first draft, which I hope to complete this spring. In all, the writing and illustrating will take most of this year putting the release date for Battle early in 2014.

That’s a long wait, I know. But I want this finale to be exciting and deliver what has been promised in the first two installments. You will see a return of most of the main characters from both books. This includes fleshing out of smaller characters that were introduced already in the previous stories, like Caruncle from book 1:

“A grotesque, lump-faced, heavyset character strolled over to Eva. Striking cobalt blue wattles hung near its tusked snout in front of large mustard eyes. Its heavy natty jacket was worn and frayed, and it dragged on the ground, concealing most of the creature.”

–The Search for WondLa, page 361

Yes, the adjectives do go on a bit here. That is because I didn’t have time (or the page space) to add an illustration of Caruncle. I had sketched him out early on and used the sketch as my point of reference when I was writing him in.

Besides revisiting some familiar faces, there will be a new character introduced as well. And sadly, there will also be a some characters that don’t make it to the end of Eva’s story. Hopefully in the end, it will make for some entertaining and imaginative reading.

Thank you all for your kind praise, interest and words of encouragement. It keeps me going. Look for more WondLa news here soon!

Just as was done with The Search for WondLa back in 2010, Simon & Schuster has printed a limited edition sketchbook featuring some of the designs that went into the illustrations for A Hero for WondLa.

Throughout the year, I handed out these 32-page, 2-color softcover sketchbooks at my various appearances. If you missed me, fear not, for I have sent a signed bundle of books over to my pal Stuart Ng.

These were printed in an edition of 2000. The first sketchbook is long gone (in fact, I only have a few copies here in the studio for my library), so once Stuart sells out of his stock, that will be it until we release the third sketchbook next fall to coincide with the release of the third WondLa book.

The sketchbook was put together by my good pal, John Lind, and designed right here in the studio. It was tough choosing my favorite sketches to jam into the 5 x 7-inch presentation, but we did it. And I hope you enjoy it.

This week we received some Wondlaful drawings inspired by the WondLa trilogy from magnificent Maine.  Neil is an aspiring writer and artist who gains much inspiration from reading books and looking at other artist’s illustrations (I definitely know what he means by that). Check out this awesome profile series Neil has created featuring some of our favorite Orbonian residents.

Nice work, Neil.  You’ve done a great job capturing some of our most beloved friends (and foe).  I love how you’ve included Eva’s messy hairstyle, Rovender’s furrowed brow, and Besteel’s sinister grin!

Though it is important to draw inspiration from artist’s one admires, it is equally important to develop your own ideas.  Here, Neil has rendered his own illustration – depicting a girl in front of a large mysterious house.  Is she just arriving at the house or has she just left in a hurry?  Is there anyone or anything else in the house?  Is she frightened and if so why?  One intriguing picture has the potential for so many different stories and here Neil has tactfully given us just enough information to get those storyboard gears rolling.  When you look at Neil’s drawing what do you see?

Keep writing, keep drawing, keep dreaming.

For those attending next week’s Comic Con International in lovely San Diego, California, here is my schedule of events:

BE SURE TO STOP AT SIMON & SCHUSTER (booth 1128) TO RECEIVE A FREE COPY

OF THE A Hero for WondLa LIMITED EDITION SKETCHBOOK!

Thursday, July 12
10:30am-11:30am
Books and Hollywood: Literary Franchises in Television and Film— Authors discuss their work transitioning across various mediums, from screenwriters to novelists turning popular books into hit TV series and Hollywood films. How does the creative process differ when writing a screenplay as compared to a novel? Authors describing the process of adapting novels for the big screen include Rebecca Serle (When You Were Mine), Margaret Stohl (co-author of the Beautiful Creatures series), Scott Speer (Immortal City), Tony DiTerlizzi (The Search for WondLa series), Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz (Colin Fischer), Mike Richardson (president of Dark Horse), and Mark Frost (The Paladin Prophecy). Moderated by Geoff Boucher (Los Angeles Times). Room 24ABC

7:00pm-8:00pm
The Scoop at Simon & Schuster!— Get the inside word on Simon & Schuster’s upcoming books and the chance to win exclusive prizes. Lucille Rettino (director of marketing), Carolyn Swerdloff (marketing manager), Chrissy Noh (senior marketing manager), Liesa Abrams (associate marketing manager), and Anna McKean (publicity manager) give you the scoop on upcoming books from exciting authors, including Cassandra Clare, Tonya Hurley, Tony DiTerlizzi, Orson Scott Card, and Brandon Mull. Hear what is going on with S&S’s hot properties — Star Trek and The Smurfs — and get a chance to win exclusive giveaways. All attendees will receive a limited edition T-shirt for Becca Fitzpatrick’s Hush, Hush. Room 9
*Note: this panel is with Simon & Schuster staff only. Tony will not be attending.

Saturday, July 14
3:00pm-4:00pm
Book signing– Mysterious Galaxy Book Store presents Tony DiTerlizzi. Many of Tony’s titles will be available for purchase or bring your books and cards to be signed. Booth 1119

Sunday, July 15<

Saniya Soni and I talked at length about the WondLa trilogy at Hicklebee’s during last month’s tour.

You can read her interview here.

…and, in case you missed it, Sahil Abbi interviewed me back in 2010 for the launch of WondLa held at Books of Wonder in New York City. Thank you, TIME magazine!

This week’s Friday Fan Art is from Paige, an artist whom I met on tour that found creative inspiration from the WondLa series. 

It is a huge compliment for me to receive artwork from artists (at any technical level) who have been inspired by my work. Especially to strengthen technical ability. I learned so much copying artists that I admire. In fact, I still continue to do so as an exercise in style and technique.

The piece above is from a young up-and-coming artist, Paige, whom I met while on tour. Paige likes to work with digital media as well as more traditional methods such as drawing and painting. She told me she was inspired to draw a scene not illustrated in The Search for WondLa:

The cerulean creature with backward-bending legs held up his palm. “I am Rovender Kitt, an old creature in a new world.”

“I am Eva… Eva Nine,” said Eva with a smile, mimicking his gesture. “I am a new creature in an old world.”

- Pg. 102, Chapter 10, The Search for Wondla

Well done, Paige. There is some beautiful line work here (I especially like the Art Nouveau design motif).  I wish the best of luck to you and hope that you continue to create.  Whether you are an old creature or new, my message is the same:

Keep drawing, keep dreaming.

This year marked a decade of touring for my books (the first tour being for The Spider & the Fly back in the fall of 2002). And, though the travel hasn’t become less stressful, I still love coming to a bookstore, school or library and talking books. I can’t thank you all enough for making it all worth the while.

Each tour has a million magic moments packed into 2-3 weeks. I try to take as many pictures as I can to record it all, but it is fruitless. I have to rely that my memory will hold and savor all the warm handshakes and bright smiles that I encountered while crossing the country.

Of course, some of these memories are not so cheery. The day A Hero for WondLa was released was also the day my cell phone was abuzz with the sad news of Maurice Sendak’s passing. Though I knew Maurice’s health was in decline, this was hard news to hear. My mind whorled with memories and questions and I reached out to those whom I knew were close with him to offer condolences.

That night, at a Santa Monica Barnes & Noble, I stood in front of a crowd consisting of Hollywood friends, and even some old art buddies from my gaming days, and read Where the Wild Things Are in honor of Maurice. Everyone cheered and joined in. It was glorious and saddening.

From Los Angeles I worked my way up to San Francisco and visited old friends, like Valerie and her staff at Hicklebees. This is an unforgettable independent book store that actively supported the launch of Spidewick way-back-when.

At Books Inc. I received one the the BEST INTRODUCTIONS EVER from the hilarious and animated store manager, Jerry Thompson. Check it out:

Though I’ve toured every year for the past decade, there are still places in the US I have yet to visit. Phoenix, Arizona was a highlight for me – not just because it was my first time there – but also I was able to visit some fans at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital and talk books thanks to my continued involvement with the Starlight Foundation.

1 Comments on Another WONDLAful Tour!, last added: 5/28/2012