Following are two samples of the artwork for her book.

The Crow eats an egg.

Jimmy dissaproves.

Original illustration Stromple will be based upon.

I am very fortunate to be working with the very talented children’s book author Stacey Geist. Stacey is publishing her first children’s book “Stromple and the Super-Huge Temper Tantrum.” She has asked me to create a puppet to help her market her book. The puppet will be a great way for her to introduce children to the main character of her book. As part or our collaboration on this puppet, Stacey has agreed to allow me to document the process of making the puppet, from beginning to end.

To give you some background information, please visit Stacey’s blog: Stromple’s Spot. Stacey has chronicled her  journey through the publishing of her book. The blog isn’t just fascinating, it’s informational and a great resource for anyone considering publishing. She shares her experiences and knowledge openly and honestly.  Now to the puppet.

Here are the original sketches that I submitted to Stacey:

Sketch of final puppet

These sketches are very preliminary but give me a plan of attack. To build the puppet, I will use foam with a skin of fleece. I will be using the cut and tuck method. That means I will shape the foam up into the basic shape I want and then cut and re-glue it together to get the curves that will define Stromple. This is a great method to use if you are doing a single puppet. It does require some knowledge, but comes easier once you get the hang of it.

It’s important to note that although the puppet’s appearance might change from the original illustration in order for the mechanics to work right, the final product will retain all character and be an accurate representation of Stromple.

The red lines indicate where I will make cuts and folds and in some instances, reveal the underlying structure. The notes are notes to myself, however I felt they were important to share in order to understand the process a little better.

I will collaborate closely with Stacey on all aspects of the puppet as client input is very important to me. I look forward to building this wonderful character and sharing my experiences. 

The next step will be mouth construction.

Structure and note's to myself for Stromple Puppet.

I ripped my pants. One of my favorite pair of pajama pants that is. It started out as a small hole with a little draft in the seat and ended up in a good laugh. I can’t resist a good laugh! I communicated with Keeley about the the hole in a way only her and I could understand. The way married couples do. This left Samuel, my son, out of the loop on what was happening so he had no idea I knew of the hole. Keeley told Samuel as I pretended not to hear. Playing dumb comes natural to me. He was having a bad day and needed a good laugh. He waited until my back was turned and I was distracted. He gripped both sides of the hole and *RIP.* What started as a small hole was now an open gash. He couldn’t stop laughing. When he finally did, I simply replied. “you mean I have had a hole in my pants? No wonder every time I tooted I heard the sound of a flag flapping.” This sent him into more fits of laughter. I think there is a moral here. Maybe take one for the team? No. When life gives you a problem, the best cure is laughter? Maybe. No, I think what I think the moral is this: Toot jokes are super funny to a six year old.”

I have put a lot of work into my freelance design business this week, mostly by working on the website. I have optimized, socialized, prioritized, adwordatized, tednerized, designatized and etceteraized www.duckofalltrades.com with one goal in mind: Create a self maintaing site that I can easily update with new content as needed that meets the needs of my target audience. I’m hoping to get it to a point where I can focus less on the business side of DoAT and more on design. I want the site to take care of itself.

When I last left you, I realized how little time people actually spent on my site.  Most people were clicking on one page and then leaving. I set out to fix this problem by directing searchers to new front pages that are designed to draw their attention in more and be targeted to what they are looking for. The results are a success so far. On an average, people are staying 2-4 times longer and clicking through more of the pages. Traffic wise, I’m still averaging about the same as before. I’m hoping to increase this next week. I have a few ideas on how to do this. I’m trying to be creative about it. Should be fun. I am thinking it will be better to push this site and use ite as a launching pad to my other endeavors. I want to create something people care about.

I should have numbers to share with you next week. Right now it is still too early for them to be significant. I can tell that this site has been successful so far. Readership has doubled every other day! I already get more people on this site than the DoAT site. I have been using AdWords to advertise DoAT now for about two weeks. So far I have had little success. When I say little, I mean none. My click through ratios are HORRIBLE. On an average, they are .04%. What does this mean? Out of every 100 people that view my ad, only .04% click on the ad and go to my site. That isn’t even a whole person! That’s like a whole person’s pet gerbil. So out of 100 people, 1 pet gerbil goes to my site. Gerbils don’t need design or illustration. I think they just like to play with mice.

The hardest part of being an artist is knowing when to put then paintbrush down. When to stop? I thought I was at this point with Moo-pig. Apparently not. I had an idea yesterday that I just had to try out. Originally I had planned to do the book in black and white. Then it turned to black and white with a splash of blue. Yesterday I had the idea of adding in more color to see how it works; a pig color/texture for Moo-pig and only Moo-pig. The idea? In Moo-pig’s world, she seems out of place, not real. She isn’t one thing, she isn’t the other. But visually, she could be colorful and real in an otherwise black and white world. She is herself and that is what makes her real. Might work, I’m playing around with the idea. Here are two images. One with her in black and white and one with her in pig color. What do you think?

Moo-pig in color

Moo-pig black and white

Finally, it was Moo-Pig’s turn…

I have had an over abundance of ideas as of late. So many that I don’t know how to begin to explore them all. I have nimbly jumped from one project to the next, pushing myself creatively. In the process, I have discovered a large part of me that had been lost. I have been bounced around the design world over the years so much that at some point I lost the creative fire that drove me. I began to focus on survival.  I never realized this until recently when I began reflecting on my work. Not the kind of work we do because we have to, but the work we do because we want to and need to. Sadly, it dawned on me that my best work was in the past. Not by a few days, nor weeks, nor months, but years past. When was the last time I did something I could pass to my kids or share with my wife? Two months ago, if I told you about my latest book, I would have to go back 5 years. I guess sometimes we get so focused on survival that we forget the things that allowed us to survive in the first place. I began this year hoping to get this spark back…to rekindle my creative fire. I figured it would be a year long process, at least. Who knew it would take only a month? I have a Moo-Pig to thank for this. Speaking of which…

Work is continuing on Moo-Pig. I’m hoping to have it wrapped up by the end of next month. Above is the newest sketch. I can see the finish line at this point and look forward to sprinting towards the end.

Moo-Pig contains mainly spreads. To make things easier, I have counted in spreads rather than pages. This is from spread 12. There will be a total of 15 spreads. As you can see, I have begun adding in color, but very minimally.  The idea here is that this is a story of black and white and the illustrations are meant to reflect that. I’m hoping this adds drama for the sparing use of blue.

I am still undecided about what to do with this project in the end. When I started Duck of All Trades, it has always been a goal of mine to self publish. Moo-Pig may be the perfect candidate for that. With it’s use of two colors, it would be inexpensive, at least by children’s book’s standards, to print.  I have also thought of making it available through an e-book. I own the site moo-pig.com and could easily set up a site around this book for all to enjoy. If I decide to submit it to publishers, I will keep it updated here. 

In other news, I have began to work on yet another secret project. More to come in a few weeks. All I can say for now is it has to do with “Sockets” and their odors.

I’m happy to say that after a year, I haven’t failed. My business has shown progress with slow and steady growth and I have successfully changed 875 diapers, 342 which have been rather unpleasant in the smell department. OK, so that’s an estimate. You don’t seriously think I keep track of diapers, right? However, I now realize that it won’t be enough to not fail. I need to thrive, to find my voice and find an audience. I have put a number of measures in place to allow this. I have been tracking stats more seriously for my site. I have it optimized and streamlined. I have started using Adwords to help promote my site and attract new visitors. Most importantly, I have realized what a SMALL window the web is. Most users I have view my site for less than 30 seconds. Most click off after one page. A quick exit. To me, this is scary. How do you sell a customer in less than 30 seconds and after a one brief glance. This is a question I have struggled with lately. It isn’t an easy thing to do. The tough thing about the web is if a viewer isn’t immediately impressed, they can look elsewhere with the click of a mouse.

My remedy for this is working on making my website more relevant. The website as we know it is dead. The web is no longer an album, such as the Beatles’ “Seargent Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band,” meant to be listened to from beginning to end. It is a streamlined collection of all their greatest hits in MP3 format and the surfer has the power to go to any song, fast forward, rewind and skipping to only the parts they want to hear. Like it or not, google and other search engines have led to this. So what works? Relevancy. Controlling what the viewer sees through that small window by using more specific keywords and giving the mythical search engine crawlers what they need: better site maps. Also, I have tailored my AdWords to point potential clients to the information they want, not to what I think they may want after they give me a chance. That way if they only give me 30 seconds of their time, it is 30 seconds dedicated to something that might interest them. I also plan to add more visuals. You can learn much more about a picture at a moments glance than a grouping of words.

So will it succeed? I can guarantee that it won’t fail, at least not in my mind. You see, I believe the only way to fail is to not learn. If you are walking along and you trip because your shoe laces are untied, have you failed? Not if you get up, realize that if you tie them, you won’t trip again and then keep them tied. When you learn from a mistake, that’s not a failure. That is a growth. Eventually you learn to tie double knots and it is smooth sailing from there. More importantly, have I succeeded? I see that answer everyday when my daughter surprises me with what she has learned in her short time on earth or when I pick my son up from school and find out he has made another 100 on his spelling test. That is all the success I need as a father to inspire the success I will need as a new business owner trying to find his way.