One day a year he is Santa Claus, but the other 364 days Dan Santat works as a children’s book writer and commercial illustrator. He is also the creator of Disney’s animated hit, “The Replacements.”
Dan has written and illustrated his own books and books by other writers. His new graphic novel, SIDEKICKS came out in July and he has another wonderful picture book coming out this month that is written by Jill Esbaum titled, Tom’s Tweet which is a slapstick funny story that pays homage to the selfless act known as parenting. All in all Dan has written and/or illustrated nineteen books.
He graduated with honors from the Art Center, College of Design and lives in Southern California with his wife, two kids, a rabbit, a bird, and one cat.
For all you writers and illustrators who have wondered, what is the best way to develop and present a graphic novel, you are going to love this post.
Dan takes you through his process on developing his new graphic novel about SUPERHERO PETS!
Captain Amazing, superhero and savior of Metro City, is getting old. He’s out all hours battling arch-villains, catching thieves, and helping little old ladies cross the street. He doesn’t even have time for his house full of pets. He needs – a SIDEKICK!
Captain Amazing’s four pets agree. But each one of them thinks HE should get the sidekick spot – and a chance for one-on-one time with the Captain. Get ready for sibling rivalry royale as pets with superpowers duke it out for the one thing they all want – a super family.
It began with a simple painting. Back in art school I took a class where we had to do a series of paintings that revolved around a theme. At the time I thought I wanted to go into the animation field so I decided to work on my character design skills and flesh out simple ideas of animals doing silly things. Towards the last month of the course I painted an animal super hero, which I called The All-American Beaver. The idea of a super animal really intrigued me and so I decided to paint another superhero animal. The next week I followed up with a painting of a cat who could generate large amounts of static electricity with his fur which I properly named Static Cat. Even though the term had ended before I could explore more possibilities I was suddenly obsessed and wanted to create more.
As I was sketching the characters over and over again I really didn’t think of a solid storyline until I had sold the manuscript to my editor. All I knew for certain was that they were all starving for attention and wanted to compete for the affections of their owner to find out who would be the favorite house pet of the house. In my mind I originally thought that Fluffy would be the leader of the group. He was going to be this arrogant loudmouth who wanted to just be bossy and give orders to everyone so he could wear a costume and be famous. Roscoe was the young naive kind hearted softie with massive strength (Think Lennie from “Of Mice and Men”)
A word of
I wish I had time to look at this tonight! But now I REALLY can’t wait to REALLY look at it on Sunday!