Dark Souls Day

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.

Meet the Spy!

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. 

The Story of Tiny Rapunzel part 3

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?

The Chimp says, "This is boring."

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!

The Story of Tiny Rapunzel part 2

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.

The Story of Tiny Rapunzel: Why Did We Shrink the Book?

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?

State of the Nathan...

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!

Double the Research! Double the Fun!

{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 right shovels. 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!