I finally finished 'The Pirates next Door' (starring the 'Jolley Rogers'). I barely slept over the bank holiday weekend and got all the files to Templar for Tuesday morning, including a nice big poster for the back of the dust jacket (see below, in progress on my messy desk) and a family tree for another part of the fold-out jacket. Luckily, the magical interweb allows me to upload files from my spare-room-office in the Welsh hills, to a friendly computer in Templar's Dorking office. Isn't technology brilliant?
I took a day off on Wednesday, to dismantle a rotten shed my dad had moved from house to house since the 1970s. With the help of my friend David, we attempted to build a new one, only to disturb a bees nest in the process, and realise that the shed floor didn't fit the wooden base. So we each had a nice big bottle of beer in the sunshine instead.
Then it was off to Hay-on Wye on Thursday for my first ever appearance at the wonderful Hay Festival. I had a lovely time and enjoyed the marvellous company of fellow children's book illustrators Adam Stower (buy 'Silly Doggy', it's lovely!) and Ed Vere ('Banana' is my one-year-old daughter's favourite book!). I dressed up as a pirate for my Friday morning event, and was not alone. Well over half of the children in the audience had dressed up too, and I had a terrific time drawing a gnarly pirate under their direction. He even ended up with some fairy wings to keep one little fairy happy. I need to wangle some photos from somewhere......
'The Pirates Next Door' is due to be published in October. More to come!
And for anyone who wants to hear an array of silly pirate voices, the 'Pirate Cruncher' with audio CD is now available from all good book stores! Oo-Arr!
8 comments:
Congratulations, Jonny! Do you know whether 'The Pirates next Door' will be released in the US?
Hi Charles! Yup, that's the plan! But i think it'll probably be in 2012, rather than October this year. As soon as I know any dates, I'll post them here....
Congrats !
Hey Jonny, I'm from Brazil, and I just love your work. If you could take a look at my blog.
Congrats man!
This looks awesome! I'm a big fan of your work... and or pirates. So what could be better! :)
Hi Jonny,
I have a question about your cintiq. I have a 12X (the smaller one) and just wondering how you set up you colour profile for it? Did you use a spyder colour profile or have you just tried to do the best settings on there? I see you have a MAC, im on PC.
Art looks great!
Cheers
thanks everyone!
And Adele... I do run a MAc (a 2008 Mac Pro) and I use a spyder2 pro to calibrate my Cintiq and an Apple Cinema Display I have behind the Cintiq.
I had some bad experiences when i first went freelance, with colours being way off what I expected when I saw them in print. They're always pretty close now (unless the client plays around with them!)between my cintiq, my epson printer and the finished product.
It's good to be confident about your colours being accurately reproduced....
Hi
I believe we have a couple of things in common. Firstly our surnames and also I am a bit of a writer. I mainly do poetry and short stories. I have sort of self published and had some copies of an anthology done at a local printers Creaky Bones. I have put some on Ebay and a site I recently found Etsy which caters for more for people that make their own items.
I live in Leicester UK.
I am now following you on twitter and will keep a lookout for your book. Congrats.
Ken
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