Mmm-Hmm Production: Photo Shoot

This is Noah.
He’s a photographer. He’s also a friend. You can tell by the way we hunt live cheetahs together.

I told Noah about the basis for Mmm-Hmm and the package we were putting together. After some brainstorming, we decided that since it will be packaged like ice cream, some kind of ice cream shop would be the ideal setting.

This is the Franklin Fountain.

It’s a shop operated by the Berley Brothers at No. 116 Market Street in Old City in Philadelphia. They specialize in ice cream, candy, fudge, and all kinds of tasty awesomeness. After a couple of conversations with them, they generously let us use their place to snap some shots. We went there a cold morning a few days after Thanksgiving. Noah and I figured it would be a slow business day. It was snowing. But they were still busy with customers. They’re no joke.

I borrowed their old-timey style, grew a fancy mustache and we went to town. After an hour or so, we had what we needed.

Noah and the Franklin Fountain were very generous and amazing. The photos donned the author page, the wrap, the website and other collateral.

Lesson: Friends are awesome. They help you achieve your goals.

Next Step, Production: Printing

Mmm-Hmm Ideas: Evolution of Inspiration

It was decided. It was developed. Mmm-Hmm would be a collection of silly poems told in a comic story format. The book would not be just poems that have illustrations around them. It would be a grand narrative. That was the idea. Building off of my former sketches, it would follow a number of different characters who have storylines. These characters (this is the back cover):

I set to making the story, sketching out the spreads, illustrating them and optimizing them in photoshop. Piecing together the characters, the storylines, and poems to form a coherent narrative was challenging, but it was coming along.

***Bonus: The day I met Judith, I let her flip through my sketchbook. She landed on this page and asked me what on earth it was that she was looking at. I said, it’s a robot ninja kicking a giant in the nuts, causing the people he ate to explode through his mouth. She said, that’s exactly what she thought it was.

While I was completing the story, the narrative began to have a distinct feel to it. It was fun and silly. All of that fun starts when it pops out of an ice cream man’s cart on the title page in the beginning (it’s above). After some discussion with Judith, we decided that the cover of the book would look like a piece of fun from that same ice cream cart. We also love sprinkles.

Judith and I love the idea of a book as an art piece. We discussed how to make a paperback book more artful and a wrap came to be the answer. We would treat the book like a tasty treat to be unwrapped and devoured.
This thing was coming into being before our very eyes. We had developed an idea. We had themed the design. It was time to make it real. Time to stop pushing those pixels and start producing. We would need help for that.

Lesson: The step after inspiration is action. When you’re making an idea real, it can be trying at times, but just keep pushing through. Persistence goes a long way and you can make it all come together in the end.

Next Step, Production: Photo Shoot

Mmm-Hmm Ideas: Beginning Sketches

Ever since I was little, I did illustrated notes for people. Like this valentine I did for Judith a few years back.

I liked the reaction it provoked. I like the smiles they spread. So, I decided to make a book. I decided I would sell that book. I didn’t know how at the time, but I wanted to go through the process of taking a project from beginning to end. Making all the decisions, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Should be fun, right?

I collected all the goofy rhymes I had and sketched them into book spreads with a bunch of characters. For first version, the whole book looked similar to this page:
It was embarrassing now that I think about it. And sometimes looking at that makes me shudder, but it’s all a part of the process.

After showing a few friends, I came to the conclusion that it needed to be different than every other illustrated rhyme book. It couldn’t be just typeset words with an illustration around it. The text should be integrated into the illustration. Or at least hand drawn. The second version was just that.

Better. But I felt I could press it further by adding small storylines (comic strips) and characters that interacted with one another like they were performing the rhyme. I did a third version.

I knew I was finally getting somewhere. Taking all the knowledge I gained from these versions, I was about to get going on Mmm-Hmm. I knew it was something that would work as a concept.

When looked at individually, these sketches could be viewed as failures, because to be honest: they didn’t work. But they are actually the foundation for Mmm-Hmm. They helped me realize that.

Lesson: Ideas and inspiration come from anywhere and everywhere. You’re surrounded. Inside and out.

Catch them any way you can. Put them on paper, in pixels, in paint or music. Do what works for you. Do a bunch of versions and always build it better. Most of the time, ideas aren’t going to come out the way you want or expect. Just keep them moving and make them become something that works for you.

Next up, Ideas: Evolution of Inspiration

Mmm-Hmm: Introduction

Back in 2010, I made this book. By “made” I mean I wrote and illustrated and then self-published it.

It’s called Mmm-Hmm : Your Secret Stash of Tasty Illustrated Rhymes. I took silly rhymes I wrote and set them to a comic strip storyline about the quest for fun. It’s like a Broadway musical in print. That’s how I sold it.

Also, there are a few components (patches, bookmarks, etc.) that go along with it – a package of sorts. And I’ve got to say that it is pretty awesome.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll show how it was all brought into being. I’ll break down the creative process as such: Idea, Production, Selling, and Summation.

To take a peek, check out this sample. Click here if you’d like to buy a print copy.

Next up, Idea: Beginning Sketches

Topography of typography: A literary map of Cape Town

In Judith’s other life (her daylight one, when she’s not moonlighting as half of judith+kevin) she’s editor of a local community paper for Cape Town, City Views. Every month is an opportunity to show a different side to the city – Cape Town as a trendsetting city, an African city, a diverse city.

This year’s June edition – in celebration of the return of Cape Town Book Fair – was Cape Town as a literary city, and she asked if I could do an illustration for the cover.

Succinctly speaking, she wanted a literary map of Cape Town, filled with quotations from significant writers who’ve lived and worked here over the years.

It would be a Cape Town built of people’s experiences, reactions, emotions, and dreams. A topography of typography.

Process

1

I immediately set to drawing. Judith at once set to uncovering Cape quotations with the tenacity of a crazed treasure-hunter. If it were an Olympic sport, she would win the gold, the silver, but not the bronze. The bronze would probably go to the Russians. They’re good at Olympic-level quoting.

I did a rough sketch of the city from above using the thousands of photos online, Google maps and a map book that we keep in our car. It gave us a rough idea of what features we should focus on. I drew the word “literary” at the bottom to make sure the ink from my pen was flowing and to get myself ready to hand-draw fonts. I added the feathered quill because I’m a nerd.

2

Judith started sending me quotations (complete list below) and I started putting them down in the outline. After a couple of sketches (which I will spare you the view of) it came out looking alright.

3

I cleaned up the image and set to work on four colored variations to show the different directions we could take. These variations then went to Judith and her editorial team for review.

4

They liked the darker Cape Town with the light typography of the first one, and the setting of last one. I combined what they liked and added a little book in in the water in the stead of a boat to give it a little punch. I then sent it to the printer to confirm that they would be able to produce it cleanly.

5

As it turned out, the printer couldn’t guarantee that it would come out the way I designed it. The darker design might be too much ink for the cold-press printer: When they’re doing a 50 000 quantity print run, the newsprint moves like lightning, so the text might smudge and become illegible. In the end we had to go for a design that balanced a lighter colored Cape with dark colored text – to make sure there were no smudges.

We love how the illustration came out. We hope you do too. Go check out the issue online.

With love,
j+k

Quotations:

“Hey, Morena’s walking on water to Cape Town! Ag shame! His feet must be freezing!”
– Woza Albert! By Percy Mtwa, Mbongeni Ngema and Barney Simon

“Daar kom die Alibama, die Alibama die kom oor die see”
– Traditional song

“I am building a stairway to the stars … that is why I write”
– Bessie Head

“Vul’indlela wela ma ngiyabuza”
– Brenda Fassie

“The stars say ‘tsau’”
– Antjie Krog

“We invert time
after love fall
asleep as the muezzin calls
the diligent to daybreak prayers”
– Rustum Kozain

“This child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere”
– Ingrid Jonker

“David’s story started at the Cape with Eva/Krotöa, the first Khoi woman in the Dutch castle”
– Zoe Wicomb

“A ship of ghosts patrolling just offshore along the Cape coast”
– Breyten Breytenbach

“I sing my land, in my tongue and throat I give it sound, I name it”
– Andre Brink

“Behind the house we feel the mountain’s friction against our backs”
– Ingrid de Kok

“She spreads out the grey kaross with both her arms; The breath of the wind is lost”
– Eugene Marais

“It is clean and dirty, modern and old-fashioned, plastic and enamel, with just a touch of crinoline and sedan chair”
– Richard Rive

“It struck me that our history is contained in the home we live in, that we are shaped by the ability of these simple structures to resist being defiled”
– Achmat Dangor

“During the many years of incarceration on Robben Island, we often looked across Table Mountain at its magnificent silhouette … To us on Robben Island, Table Mountain was a beacon of hope. It represented the mainland to which we knew we would one day return”
– Nelson Mandela

“This is your healing destination … the Mother City”
– Goema Captains

“We came out dancing at dawn
Chained for so long
We found that the chains was gone
But we never collected words for our freedom song
Now our misery continues on”
– Jethro Louw

“Assie sôntsie sak oo’ tafelbêg
Val my mind narrie stilte weg
Die tafeldoek is ytgelê
Wat mee’ wil ‘n mammie hê
My nostalgia is gesout
Virre trippie oppe boat
My nostalgia is gesout
Gie trig my Cape of Good Hope”
– Loit Sols

“This cape is the most stately thing and the fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth”
– Sir Francis Drake

“This is a pretty and singular town; it lies at the foot of an enormous wall, which reaches into the clouds, and makes a most imposing barrier. Cape Town is a great inn, on the great highway to the east”
– Charles Darwin

“Late one morning in June, in the thirty-first year of his life, a message was brought to Michael K as he raked leaves in De Waal Park”
– JM Coetzee

“early one new year’s morning when the emerald bay waved its clear waters against the noisy dockyard, a restless south easter skipped over slumbering Lion’s Head, danced up Hanover Street, tenored a bawdy banjo strung an ancient cello bridged a host of guitars tambourined through a dingy alley into a scented cobwebbed room and crackled the sixth sensed district into a blazing swamp fire of satin sound”
– Abdullah Ibrahim

“It was our city, the Victorian lodges with their fussy wrought-iron verandahs, the parapets with their balustrades along the rooflines of the buildings. Even the muezzin and his call to prayer from the Indian mosque around the corner, in Loop Street, called for us, in the depths of our profane world”
– Stephen Watson

“So little of the original Cape Town remains. Just the heavy star of the castle pinning down its surroundings like a brooch – or rather, a policeman’s five-point badge. How silly to imagine that anything built now will stand for years to come.”
– Henrietta Rose-Innes

“I walk down Heerengracht,
where pigeons dip their necks
like question marks into the fountain.
Then left at Long, while the sun slips
Toward the sea and the moon takes its place
above Signal Hill.
Above me, starlings clatter
like typewriters …
I step on the old silences of the city.”
– Gabeba Baderoon

“The building where I was archived has become part of a national archive”
– Albie Sachs

Hello world!

We’re still working on getting ourselves together online. But don’t be dismayed!

You can still connect with us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter …

Or, of course, you can download our first set of ebooks, Kidd McCool: Mythmaker (about a boy and his dog on a most amazing adventure) on Amazon, the Barnes&Noble online bookstore and iTunes.