A Pig Named Sue
by Jeff Duckworth
Do you know Sue? She thinks she can fly.
She thinks she’s a fairy. I do not know why.
She knows of the ground, but not of the sky.
She knows of low down, but not of up high.
Sue made some wings, she made them of wood.
Held together with tape, they weren’t very good.
Then she flew far, as far as she could.
But found herself standing right where she had stood.
Dummy Book for Moo-Pig
The Dummy of Moo-Pig is finally ready to send to a potential publisher. There is a fine line when creating a dummy book. Some say not to put too much work in it as you don’t want to give an impression of a final product. However, I’m a perfectionist. I like to produce a model that an editor can hold in their hands and get a good feel for how the final product will look on a shelf. I do all the printing, binding, and cover myself. The result can be seen above. If there is interest, I will do a walkthrough of my whole dummy book process. I have a publisher picked out and will be mailing the dummy book (the one on the left) Monday.
I would love to hear comments on everyone’s experience with Dummy Books. How much is too much and can producing a “final product” hurt your chances with a publisher?
I have been working on Moo-Pig for about 4 months now. That is, the newest incarnation. This is a story that I have been working on for years. 12 years to be exact. Following is a visual evolution of the character as she appears in the newest version. I will show the image and then talk about it and what influenced my next move.
Concept 1
When I first conceived the notion of Moo-Pig, she was actually a physical blend between a cow and a pig. I dropped this idea in favor of a simpler idea: A pig whom liked to do cow things. This would eliminate any confusion for my target age group and would also eliminate the need for the “what’s a moo-pig and how did she come to be?” conversation I imagined between parents and kids. This image is the first image of Moo-Pig as a pig.
This first concept featured a bloated, fat happy looking pig. This went against the story as Moo-Pig would never fall into the bloated, fat happy looking pig category.
Concept 2
Concept 2 featured a more whimsical, playful looking pig. Though I love stylized illustrations, it didn’t work for Moo-Pig. I felt she needed to retain normalcy. The idea behind this is that she would look like a normal pig while other pigs around her would look comical. This would be a twist in that the non-funny looking pig would be non-piggish and the piggish pigs would look funnyish.
Concept 3
Concept 3 Moo-Pig more closely resembles a pig. Though there are stylized parts about her, the overall impression is “pig.” I also eliminated color. At this point it struck me that this was a story about black and white. Color was not needed. I would include one color, blue, which will make sense in the end. I kept my lines playful but made them more controlled.
Final Art for Dummy Book
This is the current state of Moo-Pig. As you can see, I refined the awkward lines in her hind legs as well as a few other places. Overall, the image is consistent with the character. My lines are still loose and lively. I tried to give her motion. I want her to appear simple so that her actions and character define who she is. At this point I also added in the blue color and simplified the shadows. Simplicity is important to me for Moo-Pig.
I am now in the process of bringing all illustrations up to this level. In the end I hope to end up with a nice dummy book I can submit for publication.
I have a business update for you this Monday, but before I get to the boring stuff, here is what is going on in family life:
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
At the ripe age of 15 months, Aubreigh has reached the terrible twos. Her worst habit? Removal of clothes. Were not just talking about one or two socks, but removing everything except her diaper (and sometimes even that). She thinks about it constantly. You can look into her eyes and see the wheels turning. She is thinking, plotting about when and what her next clothes escape attempt will be. Sometimes she is clever about it. One minute she will be fully clothed, the next she has ducked behind a chair made a few grunts to cover the sound clothes being stripped off, pops up and is in nothing but her Huggies. Sometimes she is less obvious. I call this the stop, drop and run method. This entails a sudden stop of activity as the thought enters her head followed by a sudden burst of running while sliding arms out of sleeves, kicking legs free of pants and general shimmying about until sufficient lack of clothes is achieved. This method is not as successful, usually ending in tripping over slippery pants as they fall to her knees or the dreaded “shirt over the eyes” run into the random object disaster (the ottoman or couch being the most common and comical of items to watch her bounce off of.) It does not matter how cold she is. She is going to get out of those clothes.
The reasoning? Well, quite honestly, I think it is because she can. It is a game to her to see what she can get away with. “I’ll show that daddy! He says I can’t play with electrical outlets? Fine, we will see how HE likes it when I show him that if I can’t have what I want then he won’t have a clothed baby.” Or sometimes it is just for comic effect. “I wonder if I can slip out of these pants with no one noticing….yes! I can. Now to be funny, I will pop on on the count of 3. 1…Y…5(she can’t count yet of course)…TA DA! Look Ma! No pants!” This is usually followed by either Keeley or I chasing her down as she squeals. She is the Houdini of baby clothes. She has thwarted every attempt I have made to prevent her removing them. Finally, yesterday I put on a one piece footed pair of pajamas. To further thwart her, I placed a safety pin through one side of the collar, through the zipper and through the other side of the collar. I was feeling confident when I opened the door to get her up from her nap. Of course I was greeted to Aurbeigh smiling, her clothes in a heap on the floor. The safety pin had been easily unfastened, discarded without injury and clothes shed. She proudly greeted me with a “Bye bye, Beeeby.”
Lately she has developed another funny habit. She insists that I wear my hat at all times during the day. If I don’t have it on, she finds it follows me around and yells “DAAAAAA” until I bend over and let her place it clumsily on my head. If I take it off, she quickly puts it back on. This is her way of gaining a little control. It’s her way to let me know that yes, it’s OK for her to strut around the house in her diaper like a banty rooster. But me? I am doomed to have perpetual hat hair. If she could talk, I’m sure she would simply say “Nudity for some, hats for others.”
In other news, here is the most recent sketch for Marmalade. Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Moo-Pig gets laughs, but not a blue ribbon.
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.
Moo-Pig
I am currently working on illustrating and writing a children’s picture book named Moo-Pig. This is a story that I have been working on for over 10 years. I first came up with the concept in 1997. In 1998, I made my first attempt at illustrating it and making it a book. I was in high school at the time and the illustrations were primitive at best. This was the first book I ever wrote/illustrated and is the basis of all my interest and work in children’s literature. Back then it was known as “Marmalade, the Happiest Little Moo-Pig”
The following year, I re-illustrated with a little progress, but still it was no where near where I envisioned it. I just didn’t have the skills necessary to produce this book. Not to mention the writing, which was too wordy for the project. It retained the name.
Marmalade sat dormant until 2002. I blew off the dust, opened the project up as a college assignment, and jumped in head first with the new title of “Marmalade the Moo-pig”. The results were much better. I applied full color, a reworked story based on what I had learned as a member of SCBWI, and fully re-imagined the whole book. I was very happy with my results. It was the first story I had wrote and illustrated that I felt proud of.
However, I felt it was finally time to do it, again. This story has become a measuring stick for my progress. It helps me to see how much I have grown and changed. How much my skills have improved and is a means to advance my abilities. The story is streamlined, eliminating most of the text. It uses only three colors, black/white(of the paper) and blue. I felt that this is a story of black/white and so the color needed to match it. The characters are different, the focus different, the story different, the “lesson” different. The name has been changed as well to just “Moo-Pig.” I won’t give away too much of the story but wanted to introduce the it and give a little history as I will be talking about it as work progresses. So far I’m about halfway through the page sketches, no color. This will be the last time I revisit this story and look forward to sharing it with the world. I consider this to be the most honest work I have ever done. It is a reflection of who I am and what I believe.
Pig Out Contest
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