Writer seeks illustrator for fantasy picture book (50 illustrations to start)

rnollman

I produced a young-adult fantasy novel in 1999 called Jonathan and the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Glasses. I got a call from a large literary agency in New York from a young woman, a former editor at Simon and Schuster, who was interested in my book. She told me that she was convinced that she could get the book published. A full year went by and she called me to tell me that she was giving up on trying to promote the book.

Recently I have reworked the book for a younger audience (4 to 10-year-olds) and am in the process of breaking it up into a series of smaller picture books, I have added placeholders for 50 illustrations for the first five chapters which may become Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the series. 

I am seeking an illustrator for the first 50 illustrations for Volume 1 and Volume 2 for now. The next milestone would be to complete Volumes 3 and 4 which I estimate would require 50 more illustrations and cover five more chapters.

The total number of chapters in the book is 26. 

If you are interested, I can send you the first five chapters of the books with the illustration placeholders. We can collaborate or we can talk about a price per illustration or some other means of compensation. It would also be helpful if you provide appropriate samples of your work. 

I am seeking very rich and detailed illustrations, with lots of bright, crisp daytime images and detailed sunrise, sunset, and night scenes. Many of the scenes involve multiple characters. If you want to talk outside of the forum, my email address is:

(email removed by mod)

I have attached a sample of my own artwork to give you an idea of the quality that I am looking for in the illustration. I considered doing my own illustrations but decided against it as it is beyond my skillset even using DAZ software.

Catherine3678ab

I'm pretty sure D/S does not make renders like your artwork. Did some doodling on my little laptop which I prefer to limit to 10 min or less per render ... so I still have little laptop.

50 x 10 min = 500 divided 60 = 8.33+ So 8.5 hours x oh let's say $20, would be $170 ... and that's just the rendering time. Obviously on little laptop, we are not talking about big scenes rendering in 10 min. Anyhow, for rendering, that works out to about $3.50 Canadian dollars [I like rounding up]. atm that's about USD2.75 per image. [plus for set up of course, and any additional products that need to be acquired. I have too many Gs of content. More inclined to work with the idea of playing with what I've got already, but that's me.}

And no thanks I'm not after the job, there are people in here who maybe interested ... and it'll likely cost a tad more {'cause they know what they're doing hopefully}.

Just a friendly tip: never publish your email address "as is" ... there are these web crawlers which love to catch email addresses by the millions per hour. Each address [years ago] was worth about 5 cents each ... and spam occurs, big time.

Another tip from another author/artist is to start with a character base that you can age, be it younger or older. The figure I was doodling with is a composite so various ages/characters can be dialed up or down, producing a character that can age, and/or have brothers and a father with similar characteristics. Just an idea.

rnollman

Catherine,

Thanks for your input. I am not sure if I will get any responses. I am thinking of doing the illustrations myself. The problem is the learning curve for DAZ is just too steep. 

Catherine3678ab

rnollman said:

Catherine,

Thanks for your input. I am not sure if I will get any responses. I am thinking of doing the illustrations myself. The problem is the learning curve for DAZ is just too steep. 

Oh you might get some response ... depends if the right people come by you know. 

And several people are quite willing to answer questions on how to do different things with D/S. Even different ways to do the same thing!

............

Your posted image has vanished! If you go to Edit your first post, and then put a space or a period somewhere, then save, it might reappear.

eta: and now it's back again lol ... {quirky forum}

 

WendyLuvsCatz

you might want to look at Mediachance's Dynamic AutoPainter to give your renders a similar arty look

Catherine3678ab

I'm curious about "Jonathan and the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Glasses" ... like is this a boy with special glasses through which he sees the world?

rnollman

I have a process that works much better than Mediachance's Dynamic AutoPainter (I just looked at their website) to give my images the same look and feel. I like crisp images with very sharp detail. I created a preliminary image (attached below) of Benjamin, Jonathan's older brother receiving the package with the glasses. I need to add some colorful advertising to the packages and clean it up a bit. I found a DAZ product I want to use for the glasses that is perfect.

Yes, in the first few chapters, Benjamin and Jonathan test out the power of the glasses in the neighborhood. But as the story goes on, Jonathan realizes that the glasses have much greater power than either of them realize -- the power to transform his world.

Cris Palomino

Email was sent removed. Not a good idea to publish personal information. Those interested can contact you by PM.

Catherine3678ab

rnollman said:

I have a process that works much better than Mediachance's Dynamic AutoPainter (I just looked at their website) to give my images the same look and feel. I like crisp images with very sharp detail. I created a preliminary image (attached below) of Benjamin, Jonathan's older brother receiving the package with the glasses. I need to add some colorful advertising to the packages and clean it up a bit. I found a DAZ product I want to use for the glasses that is perfect.

Yes, in the first few chapters, Benjamin and Jonathan test out the power of the glasses in the neighborhood. But as the story goes on, Jonathan realizes that the glasses have much greater power than either of them realize -- the power to transform his world.

 Glasses that can transform Jonathan's world. Thanks for answering my question.

 

 

Catherine3678ab

You might find some interesting guidelines on YouTube from illustrators.

i.e.

And there's even on online bookmaker, "BookBildr" advertising on YouTube.

 

nonesuch00

rnollman said:

I produced a young-adult fantasy novel in 1999 called Jonathan and the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Glasses. I got a call from a large literary agency in New York from a young woman, a former editor at Simon and Schuster, who was interested in my book. She told me that she was convinced that she could get the book published. A full year went by and she called me to tell me that she was giving up on trying to promote the book.

Recently I have reworked the book for a younger audience (4 to 10-year-olds) and am in the process of breaking it up into a series of smaller picture books, I have added placeholders for 50 illustrations for the first five chapters which may become Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the series. 

I am seeking an illustrator for the first 50 illustrations for Volume 1 and Volume 2 for now. The next milestone would be to complete Volumes 3 and 4 which I estimate would require 50 more illustrations and cover five more chapters.

The total number of chapters in the book is 26. 

If you are interested, I can send you the first five chapters of the books with the illustration placeholders. We can collaborate or we can talk about a price per illustration or some other means of compensation. It would also be helpful if you provide appropriate samples of your work. 

I am seeking very rich and detailed illustrations, with lots of bright, crisp daytime images and detailed sunrise, sunset, and night scenes. Many of the scenes involve multiple characters. If you want to talk outside of the forum, my email address is:

(email removed by mod)

I have attached a sample of my own artwork to give you an idea of the quality that I am looking for in the illustration. I considered doing my own illustrations but decided against it as it is beyond my skillset even using DAZ software.

Based on your own artwork I suggest you do your own illustrations and/or go to a stock photography site and buy enough photo that are appropriate for your book's illustrations and then you put them through the filters you need and collage them into composite images; or take those stock images to an AI image filter site & feed them through the appropriate filters until you get want you like, and then again, collage them.

 

Novica

The style of those images can easily be done using Photoshop plug-ins found at Envato graphic river (dot net)  Creative Retouch, Grandiose 2, Grandiose 3, and all the Cartoon ones (Cartoonizer, etc) have one click solutions then you can easily adjust the layers. Just a thought.