When
my editor at Hyperion suggested that I create a book based on the Aesop fable,
"The Boy Who Cried Wolf", I had to admit I was a bit stumped. I always
thought that the fable meant well and had a pretty good moral (don't lie!),
but the main character was fairly one dimensional. In many versions of the fable
he just keeps crying "wolf!" until the wolf shows up and eats him.
Yuck! So I started thinking about the story from other angles. Inspired by Kurosawa's
cinematic masterpiece "Rashomon" and Gregory
Maguire's novel "Wicked", I decided to tell my story from another
point of view. I realized that the most interesting character in this tale is
the wolf. That quickly led to me developing a grumpy old wolf who has retired
to the mountains of China. With arthritis setting in, the wolf's days of hunting
have passed and he has set himself to growing vegetables in a small garden.
Why China you ask? Well for one, I lived in Asia for 18 months and I find that
part of the world beautiful, both visually and culturally. Secondly, I felt
that the cherry blossoms, the clothing and the landscape would make a wonderful
contrast to the character of the wolf. As soon as our unsuspecting boy cried
out "Wolf! Wolf!" my story began.
Because
I am a visual storyteller, the first thing I needed to do was create a painting
that set the tone for this book. (see painting on right) Inspired by the paintings
of Arthur Rackham and N.C. Wyeth, I wanted to create a book that had a timeless
quality. I took this, along with my manuscript, to my editor and we discussed
ideas about how to strengthen the story and what the layouts would look like.
The next thing I did was thumbnail out the entire story. (click on the thumbnails
to see them larger).
Once
I established the thumbnails (some changed as I continued to massage the story),
I then began to create the final artwork for the book. The first thing I did
was blow up the sketch to the size of the final art. That allowed me to determine
if I needed to make any changes to the composition. You can see from the sketch
I had to change the style of his jacket. My editor quickly pointed out that
the jacket in the sketch was a traditional Japanese jacket. After further research
I came up with a final design for the jacket, which is covered with a traditional
Chinese symbol for longevity. I thought that would be appropriate for our aging
wolf! Once I got all the details right, I made a tonal pencil drawing on Strathmore
bristol paper. Once the drawing was complete I scanned it into my computer and
digitally painted the colors using Adobe Photoshop.
