Some how one of my favorite jobs this year I never got around to writing about… It’s for Shark Week and It was a full page in the new York Times… We were scheduled to leave for vacation at the cottage and friends and family Scheduled to all meet up there. Not going to turn this one down. Debrora Bishop Henderson is one of the best art directors I have ever worked with and certainly easily made it my favorite job. I started on sketches and got everything lined up a sorted out…. Then off to the cottage and a crazy week of biking ,canoeing, swimming, climbing and cocktails at sunsets, Bonfires and gatherings laughing and telling stories of the past year. Our family cottage is 100 years old this year…and that’s a lot of memories imbedded in those old deck boards…
The inside spread without call out is going to get a whole lot more crowded when we add in the type and other elements. But for now in your face and in the gutter. I wanted this one to feel like that . wall in the New York Natural History room I call the Wall of Bio-diversity… It’s right next to the Blue Whale….
Thumbnails always start off in the same chaotic direction… So many ideas ,so many directions looking back at them alwys brings a smile and a thought of bringing another one to life.
At the end of the week I caught a flight home to jump back on the cover and inside spread a bunch of call outs and spots……. In my first thumbnails I played around with some different ideas for how to design something really compelling in such a huge format. We went through several options but for the cover we stuck pretty close to Deb‘s original idea. One fairly ugly but endearing great white. Reminds me of one of my studio mates, Lenny…an eighty pound pitt Bull rescue pup who shows she loves you by putting your entire head in her mouth… Lovable but kind of scary at the same time.
character sketches to get just the right hero shark. Tow different options for the spread…. The first “B”was a reveal that would make the cover shark appear on the inside but dwarfed by the “girl friend”We went with “A” the wall of sharks coming at you.
tighter sketch on the approver spread….adding callouts This is primarily a science page and has to be extremely accurate. Teeth, Skin, Bones, Poop, they want it all…verifiable with reference.
I fly back to the studio to get back on My shark friends… The easiest packing I have ever done. I don’t even take a toothbrush, everything is at home where I’m heading…The Week I am home to I am only there to work… I am on task make sure everything is completed and will reproduce well. They actually pull test proofs and we adjust the contrast and saturation so it reads as perfectly as it can…. While I am working I check in on Lee at the cottage… she has a cottage full there is laughing and shrieking form the background … Me I’m working and I’ll be back up soon. All of the illustrations go really well I am trying to leave time to make sure everything is tweaked out and that there is time for any concerns to be addressed.Originally I had planned to do all white sharks but they want to add some facts about several other sharks… The main idea behind the cover is that White sharks have been discovered to be much more social than originally thought. Interestingly enough they found this out through studying Sharks POOP. Kids are certainly going to like this part of the story… So definitely have to find a place for POOP.
The week flies by and the work is fun and I have a late flight back to Toronto to finish out our vacation…We have a lot of festivities planned… and of course lots of fires to burn, cocktails to drink… another summer at Presquille’. There is a cocktail party and parade… A birthday party to celebrate the cottages Big 100. It was another great summer and White sharks made it even better. Can’t thank the folks at the times and Debora for making this job so much fun. Summers always come to an end and there’s a time to pack up and head back south… this year though we strap the canoe on the car and head north instead… sometimes you just don’t want to let summer end.