Wild Child -first review from Publishers Weekly

cover art for WILD CHILD, written & illustrated by Steven Salerno
(Abrams Books for Young Readers, August 2015)

WILD CHILD
written & illustrated by Steven Salerno
Abrams Books for Young Readers, $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-4197-1662-1
release date: Aug. 4, 2015/ available now online at Barnes & Noble, and Amazon

Publishers Weekly 
picture book review (May 25, 2015)

“The jungle can be a scary place,” begins Salerno, and his battle royale of an opening scene proves it, as an elephant and rhino point sharp tusks at each other, a gorilla swats at a vulture, snakes and leopards hiss, and a lion and crocodile leap into the fray. But the arrival of a “wild child” who is “Constantly grabbing, pinching, and pooping!” and “Forever pulling, kicking, and crying!” has these kings and queens of the jungle desperate to soothe the ill-tempered babe. Working in mixed-media, Salerno uses slashes of black crayon to outline his characters—it’s perhaps the perfect medium for conveying unadulterated rage, either human or animal. With fierce frowning eyebrows, a scribble of hair, and not a stitch of clothing, the wild child looks like a feral cousin to the star of Salerno’s Harry Hungry!; the animals’ attempts to sooth the child with bugs (the anteater) or roaring (the lion) only fuel its anger. Forceful writing and the improbable gracefulness Salerno bestows on this kicking, biting, punching machine make this a furiously fun read. 
Ages 4–8. (Abrams Books, Aug. 2015)

Visit stevensalerno.com to view my illustration portfolios, as well as my many picture books for children.

Illustration Safety Lesson

visit stevensalerno.com to view all illustration portfolio samples

Don't worry, the baby depicted in this illustration was a paid actor, and the "poisons" in the bottles under the sink were all fake props. In other words, no one was harmed during the making of this illustration. It was created for a magazine article which emphasized the very important point of child-proofing the home. 

Each month I create a spot illustration, or two, for Metro Creative Graphics (in NYC)... a supplier to newspaper clients of editorial images of all sorts. Metro's service is to have commissioned artists create relevant topic images which their subscriber clients can then obtain in a monthly package for reproduction use in their newspaper publications. This particular illustration posted here was indeed to illuminate the issue of dangers in the home for a small child. It was created simply... a gouache brush drawing with added color wash effects in Photoshop.

Visit stevensalerno.com to view all my various illustration samples.

Character designs for animation project... (maybe)

visit stevensalerno.com to view more character samples

See all my portfolio samples at stevensalerno.com
This project is currently being pitched to an animation company's corporate client. So, for the moment I will hold off on naming names... 

An NYC animation company recently stumbled across my illustration web site and one of the directors really liked my samples shown in the "simply done" section of my site... He called to explain they were creating a presentation to a client for the possibility of obtaining the project of several short animated segments involving the client's product/services promotions, and they needed a specific "look." The director thought my illustration style fit the look they needed. Based on his direction, and on a very short deadline, I provided several "key frame" illustration scenes involving a main character and many peripheral characters.... Posted here are a handful of the specific character types I created. These are considered sketches, though the final images will also be just simple black line and one wash of color as well... so these sketches look quite close to what the "final" art will look like. These sketches were created using just a black marker and black gouache with brush, then scanned and the color added digitally in Photoshop. 

So, now it is just wait and see if the client hires the animation company to produce the animated segments, and in turn I will be additionally engaged by the animation company to fine tune the character designs, involvement in the story boarding phase, and to create key action scene images etc...  I am busy with other children's book projects, but this potential animation character design project seems like a fun one, so if it becomes a reality, it would be fun to take some time to away from my current projects to work on it with the producer and the animation company.