A Phoenix from the Ashes...

A couple of sick days with a flu bug didn't stop me from making progress on the book this week (even if it was pretty much all in one day...)!

I began sketching up layouts for one of the longer poems which spreads over several pages (in this case it's looking like 8 of them) and these ones will likely be in color (with the help of my wife's beautiful watercolors). 

This particular poem is The Baby Elephant and the Cranky Monkey, which had another life as an animated short film I labored on for several years. The film was never finished in its intended form, so I'm rising it like a phoenix from the ashes to be re-incarnated as a long-form poem for the book. Half of the film was already told in rhyming verse anyway, so it was pretty easy to adapt...although the poem "ends" much differently. 

One of my general methods for rough layout of the pages is to cut out the snippets of the poem that are on each page, and place them on the paper to draw around them. I'm also doing mock-up layouts in the computer to help visualize it. Overall I'm happy with how this is coming together so far, and it will be nice to put this story to rest in some sort of final form. 

If you'd like to read more about the history behind the animated film (originally entitled Storytime with Nigel) behind this particular poem, visit this page on my website. >>