HOOT! (the owl illustration project that never got off the ground)

For the past 5 months I have been entrenched in my latest picture book project (Goldenlocks and the Three Pirates for publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux) and during this time I have very little extra time to also take on other peripheral illustration projects. So when I do, they are projects which are not tedious or too big, and I feel I can handle the time it will take to complete them....

This post is about an assignment I recently took on from a design & branding firm here in NYC... whose client is in the clean energy field. The thrust of the project was for me to design an owl character who would appear on the client's new web site to act as an informational guide to their services. Once I designed the character the project was to also create five illustrations depicting the owl in various actions relative to five aspects of the client's provided service features. Here are the preliminary color sketches I presented...

sketch #01 crayon and digital color

sketch #02 crayon and digital color

-at this stage it was decided that the owl would be RED color.... one of five colors to be strictly used within a limited palette chosen by the design firm as part of the visual architecture of the client's web site...

sketch #03 crayon and digital color

sketch #04 crayon and digital color

sketch #05 crayon and digital color

The above sketches, 1 thru 5, are the initial character sketches I created.... #05 being the finalized version most like by the design firm at this stage. (This is all before anything is shown to the client)

sketch #06 crayon and digital color

sketch #07 crayon and digital color

sketch #08 crayon and digital color

sketch #09 crayon and digital color

The above sketches, 6 thru 9, are side versions created because the design firm now wanted to explore the concept of the owl looking more minimal and graphic, kind of like the google map locator icon...

sketch #10 crayon and digital color

sketch #11 crayon and digital color

sketch #12 crayon and digital color

The above sketches, 10 and 11 are additional side versions created because the design firm then wanted to explore the concept of the owl looking more naturalistic yet still stylized... Sketch #12 was sort of a hybrid between the naturalistic representation and the earlier initial sketch #05...

sketch #13 crayon and digital color

Above sketch #13 was created as the "final" sketch... because after seeing all the various versions the design firm felt that the final look should return back to looking more like the owl did in my initial sketches, using #03 as the reference to work off of.... 

So sketch #13 was the character version presented to the client as what they felt should be the look of the owl.

Long story short... the client rejected the entire look and thrust of the proposed newly designed web site presented by the design firm, and so the owl character as a concept was tossed out with the bath water...

Moral of the story for all you green-behind-the-ears young illustrators: 

always make sure and have your client sign an assignment agreement contract with you before even starting the project. And make sure that the contract has a kill-fee clause in place defining exactly how much your fee will be in the case of the project being terminated after you have completed the sketch stage. Which, of course, I did. 

Visit stevensalerno.com to view my various portfolio sections.

Characters for new children's picture book...

Thus far in my career I have illustrated twenty children's picture books... My first illustrated picture book was released back in 2000, Chicken Chuck -written by Bill Martin Jr., and my most recent picture book released just this past June by Disney's Hyperion Books is BOOM! -written by Mary Lyn Ray. (I've also illustrated three of my own titles, Coco the Carrot, Little Tumbo, and Harry Hungry!)

To see a list of all my published picture books, click here. To see a post on the making of my most recent picture book, BOOM!, click here.

visit stevensalerno.com and click KIDS' BOOKS

(above: the main character, Margot)
The usual process when working on a children's picture book is that a publisher obtains a story from an author, and then they (the editor, the art director, or design director) may feel my illustration style is a good match, so they contract me to illustrate the book. Once the contractual negotiations are settled, I get started with creating all the character sketches, and scene sketches for the entire story. Once I get approval on the final sketch stage from the publisher I proceed with creating all the final illustrations, cover art, etc... The entire time from when I first see the story, settle the contract, and complete all the sketches and final artwork is usually about six months... though I am working on other projects at the same time. Then the art director/designer may take another six months designing the book... In all it probably takes about 18 months from when an editor obtains a story to when the physical printed book actually becomes available in stores and on-line.

visit stevensalerno.com and click KIDS' BOOKS

(above: three of Margot's friends, Roger, Vincent, and Otto)

Not only am I always available to be contracted for picture book projects when editors are lining up author's stories with just the right illustrator... but I am also always writing my own stories and submitting them to the small circle of editors I have worked with at various publishing houses over the years. 

I recently had submitted one of my stories to a certain editor... a very minimally worded story, with just one sentence per spread. Rather than just submitting a text manuscript only to the editor (which I normally do) in this instance I sent a pdf of the entire story illustrated with my sketches. I did this because the images drive the story line, and for the text to make sense the editor had to see visuals too. And because my intention for the book is to have very minimally conceived images (just simple black line and one color) the sketches I provided were quite close to how the finished illustrated book might look.

visit stevensalerno.com and click KIDS' BOOKS

(above: Margot's friend, Melinda)

Long story short, the editor loved it.... but with a very big caveat. They were questioning the essence of the plot. They felt it was too thin and did not have enough depth. In other words, "we love it, but can you change it?" I felt the editor's concerns ultimately were valid, so I did change the plot. I rewrote the story, adding a significant plot twist. There is now a visual "surprise" to the plot which is important for the reader to not see coming... And to know if this "surprise" in the story will work effectively, I decided to not tell the editor ahead of time about any of the changes I was making to the story plot, so that when I re-submit the story again, they can experience the story in the same manner a young reader would. I felt this would be a terrific litmus test for the editor to experience.

So, right now, I am on the verge of presenting this "new" (revised) story to the editor. But rather than submit a pdf with the text and sketches again... I made the highly unusual decision to go ahead and fully complete all the final illustrations. I have no contract from the publisher, no advance payment... I just felt that for the editor to best be convinced that this book should be published, seeing the actual final look of the picture book via the final illustrations will (hopefully) impress them to do so. 

I did about 45 black crayon final drawings of all the characters in their poses for all the various scenes in the story. I am now scanning all these drawings into Photoshop, finalizing all the scene compositions, and adding one color digitally, plus the story text too. Next I will print out all the page spreads (I have a 9-color, large format printer in my studio) and will collate them into book form, so the editor will receive a "dummy book" of my story, but rather than containing mere sketches, it will have all the final illustrations.

visit stevensalerno.com and click KIDS' BOOKS

(above: the dog Buddy)
Posted here are some of the final crayon drawings of all the characters in the story, well except for one character... seen out of their scene context, and without the final added digital color. It is because of this very simple black-line and one-color approach for this one particular story that I went ahead and created all these final drawings... I never would have even attempted creating all the final art if the story called for more fully rendered and fully colored final illustrations as it would require far more unpaid time than I would be willing to commit to! As it was the simple final drawings I created for this speculative book project of mine took me a month to complete. Sure, it's going way out on a limb to spend the time making all these final drawings when I do not even have a firm contract at all... but I feel it is worth the effort and will ultimately work in my favor.

Note: I have purposely left out any description of the story plot, to keep it all under wraps until the day it hopefully sees the light of day as my next published children's picture book, #21.

To view all my images for kids, visit stevensalerno.com and click on the kids' books section 

The New Tinker Bell (sort of...)

If you have read any of my earlier posts, you know that I enjoy doodling in general, but sometimes I get on tangents where I doodle characters as if I'm designing new creatures for a sci-fi film project, all just for my own entertainment. Click here to visit the new portfolio section on my illustration web site named other world sketches... which is a showcase for some of the "alien'" characters I have created. 


Usually I doodle while on the phone or watching TV. (I think doing something else at the same time you doodle helps to make the images freer and less inhibited, therefore more imaginative... a kind of brain auto-pilot mode.) Using a ball point pen (so no erasing or correcting can slow you down or halt the momentum) I just make a line, usually of some aspect of a face, like the ridge of a nose, or the profile line suggesting a head, and then just wing it, allowing each progressive mark suggesting the next move. But within the first handful of lines, one cannot help to have an opinion about what just materialized on the paper, so then you begin consciously directing and shaping the image with a loose goal in mind.

In the case of this image I drew her face, and few long stands flowing back from the side of her head, and it suggested a "fairy" to me.... so I purposely pushed the image, making her a kind of fairy-nymph, part woman, part insect... maybe the counterpart to Tinker Bell, but on another planet. I placed the character on a leaf for scale, suggesting she is just a handful of inches tall, and made her appear as if she is mysteriously levitating a small egg-like orb in front of her. 

Another web commercial project with Voicewalk in LA

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit my web site. 

Last year I worked with the web animation production studio in Los Angeles named Voicewalk, on a web commercial for client InSight Direct's launch of their new product: VaZing. (see previous post on this project) 

These past few weeks I teamed up with Voicewalk again on another animatic web commercial, this time for client PureSafety. Working with Voicewalk's team of creative director Saul Ives, writer Monica Bowers and animation director Martin Guitar. We moved through the storyboard stages quickly, in part due to now all having worked together before it allowed me to execute a bit more efficiently by having a better understanding how Voicewalk will manipulate my images in the animation process. 

With my "regular" work for print illustration: magazines, advertising, children's books... I usually work with inks, paints etc... and (most of the time) then scan it all into Adobe Photoshop wherein I add digital effects in layers to come up with the final image result. But with these web commercial projects, it requires that I create all the final images as digital vector images, so I create them entirely in Adobe Illustrator. 

My process is this: I take the final storyboard sketch of a scene (in an Adobe Photoshop jpeg format) and open it in Adobe Illustrator, making it a bottom layer named "sketch." Then I stack new layers on top of the locked sketch layer and begin drawing the final image directly on my Wacom 12 x 12 digital drawing tablet. Usually the layers are set up knowing ahead what elements within the image scene that are to be animated, and therefore need to be on a separate layer. The final image is closely based on the sketch layer underneath... and is executed very simply, using various brush tools, shape fills, shape merges, and the only effect I use are gradations between two or three colors. 

Posted above are a few examples of some of the very rough thumbnail storyboards, revised storyboards, and their corresponding final vector images. You can view the final animated web commercial by clicking here.

Susan Boyle.... (what a caricature!)

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit stevensalerno.com

As you can see by visiting my web site, there are not any samples of celebrity caricatures... but I do indeed create caricatures, I just don't choose to promote them on my site. Over the years, for various magazines, I have done caricatures of famous people: Ronald Reagan, George Bush #'s 1 & 2, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bette Midler, Mr. Rogers, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Speilberg, Bill Gates, Pamela Anderson, Julia Childs, and others...

Recently, like 100 million others, I have seen the images of singer Susan Boyle ,the competitor on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent" and just could not resist creating a caricature of her... What a face! From her distinctive hair style, prominent eyebrows, double chin, etc... it was a breeze to accentuate her features. (in case you are wondering what the #1432 is doing in the drawing... that is the competitor tag # she was wearing during the talent competition.)

Posted here is my relatively quick drawing of Susan Boyle I created in Adobe Illustrator on my Wacom digital tablet, and then opened in Adobe Photoshop to add a layer of simple color wash.

Click here to view a previous post on doing caricatures...