sugar plums on leno

Thanks to the ever fabulous Amy Gordon for the Hulu clip clipping tip.

scholastic lucky books

A fun little promotional video on the Scholastic site. Sugarplum Ballerinas starts about 2:14.

UVSC (uvu) Forum on Children's Literature

Children's Literature Forum 2009

Go to that link and you will see that I am one of the presenters or speakers or whatever we are called. I'll be there Friday March 13 and talking mostly about illustrating chapter books. I've never done a big important presentation like this before, so hopefully it won't be horrible and painful for those attending. If anyone attends my presentation... oh no. The paranoia has set in.

chibi/anime nick

Finally! Something not from years ago. This is a project that's still in progress, but here are some samples of the character art. It's been fun to take an existing character (see bottom sample) and then turn him into a sort of anime-type style. I don't know anything about anime or manga but when we were designing the game, and the main character Nick was going to be doing some crazy martial arts stuff, I figured transforming him into an anime type character was really the only way to go.

Then I was supposed to make some icons for happy and unhappy, and instead of a plain ol' boring smiley face, why not make a crazy big-eyed chibi version of Nick? Naturally! Too much fun making those big shiny goopy eyes.

hamm & facebook

About a month ago I wrote about my anti-Facebook stance. Well, a couple weeks ago, after being reassured it wasn't scary, I decided to face down my paranoia and fear of social networking sites and signed up for Facebook. I've never been terribly skilled or interested in networking (that's why I have a rep!) but it's turning out to be pretty cool. So I figured I better mention my turnaround if people find me on Facebook after my mild dissing of said site. :)

Also, I thought I'd give a little illustration world update. I always seem to be mentioning that I'm too busy for this, too busy for that, but all I seem to post are random things I did years ago. Mostly that is because I'm never quite sure what I'm allowed to post or not, so I tend to err on the safe side. But to give a taste of what's coming up, I have two more Whoopi chapter books as well as two picture books coming out this year. I'll post more on each as it comes closer to their release dates.

To continue with the celebrity theme - above is a sample I did (5 years ago) for a possible book written by soccer star Mia Hamm. Didn't get the project, but here is the sample for you to enjoy! This is from back in the day when I actually did a pencil drawing first and scanned it.

missing links and abandoned sketches

I was doing a search for some elf reference and my little elf illustration came up a few times, and I noticed that the links are all broken. I moved web servers about a month ago, and I guess I didn't quite transfer everything, so most of the pictures posted at the old baronesss blog are gone. Sorry about that. I'll get to fixing it sometime, but that might not be for awhile. Too many other things higher up on the priority list.

When I was looking to see if I had a handy backup available (didn't) I found this little sketch. It was going to be for a logo for a kids organization in Brooklyn. The job sort of fizzled and never went anywhere, and I forgot about it until now. I kind of like the kids. Maybe I'll finish it someday.

Wat Tambor (he's a Star Wars dude)

I've been scouring old archived dvd's and hard drives trying to find an old photo I need to an upcoming book catalog. As a result, I've been stumbling across a lot of old random bits of art. I just found this little Flash illustration I had completely forgotten about.

A few years back I worked at a little place called Lucas Learning. I came on about a year before Star Wars Episode 1, and worked on related products for several years. Let's just say, while I absolutely loved working there, I don't ever need to see that movie ever again. I also had access to a lot of random background information to characters that were onscreen for maybe 3 seconds. I used to be able to tell you the names of all 24 pod racers and where they came from and who wanted to kill whom, and who was into karaoke (seriously).

Anyway, above is one of those random background dudes from Star Wars. I had to look him up just now to remember who he was, and I guess not so surprised to see he even has his own action figure. Go Wat Tambor.

Click on the button on his chest for a surprise!

NAACP Image Award Nomination

Found out today that Plum Fantastic has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work - Youth/Teens.

Congratulations to Whoopi and Deborah and all the folks at Jump at the Sun!

new year's resolutions

Happy New Year!

So one of my resolutions for the new year is to go nuts selling stuff on eBay. I'm hoping to move before the end of the year, and it would be ever so lovely to downsize quite a bit before having to pack everything. Earlier today I set up my own little table-top photo studio and tried to remember how to use my camera.

I've learned that I still need to figure out the whole depth of field/aperture stuff but I think I've got the lighting working pretty well. Also, I need to steam the fabric and get rid of all the wrinkles. (How tacky!) But mostly I learned that I really need to do a better job of dusting my belongings! Ouch.

Anyway, probably in a few weeks or so I'll have a store up on eBay. I may have the occasional bit of art to sell, so I'll be sure to post on the blog whenever that happens, otherwise it's mostly going to be normal house stuff. Oh - and btw, the above items are not for sale, they were just handy for taking some photos.

season's greetings and stuff

Once again, I didn't quite get it together to send out Christmas Cards, much less paint something new for a card.... so I grabbed some pieces from a job I did last year for Home Depot and made this nice little seasonal salutation for y'all. I think I did the lines in Flash and then colored everything in Photoshop. I had to make elf heads and bodies and hands and arms all interchangeable for the ad people to set them up however they wanted. I never did see the final set up, but it was supposed to be a big end cap for cleaning supplies, hence in my files these are called the Swiffer Elves. :-)

Have a wonderful season of festivities, and I wish a wonderful new year to you all!
-Maryn

interesting internet facts

So every once in a while, it's fun to Google your own name to see what comes up. It's interesting, and maybe a touch creepy. Taking a little break from some sketches, I thought I'd see what came up. I learned some interesting things.

1. Apparently there is another Maryn Roos out there with a Facebook account. I don't have the time or inclination to deal with Facebook or MySpace or sites like that, and the whole friend thing makes me uncomfortable. But I wonder who the other Maryn Roos is. I wonder if she's the good version, and that makes me the evil bizarro Maryn.

2. Apparently I have a middle name, and it is Boyde. Huh. When I little, I was always self-conscious over the fact I didn't have a middle name. I have kid drawings where I wrote different middle names all the time. Guess I was trying them out. The favorite that seemed to stick was Rosie, and all through college I would sign my paintings M. Rosie Roos. The Boyde bit isn't that out there though - my dad's middle name was Boyde, so somehow it's gotten attached to me. I actually get junk mail for Maryn B Roos all the time.

3. I stumbled across an illustration I did earlier this year in someone else's portfolio. (It's all legit - no worries.)

4. A website all about wine sells my books.

And that's enough of that diversion for the evening. Back to work so I can enjoy some free time over the holidays! Also, above are some illustrations from The Can Dance, a book for Imagine Learning. Can't have a post without a picture of something...

*bonus points if you can correctly guess the actual city used for the map in the top illustration.

Friendly Miscellany

Hey - finally something not Sugar Plum related! And some of it even seasonally relevant!

Above is an illustration I did for the December issue of The Friend magazine - always a great job. The initial illustration was done in Flash. Different layers were then imported into Photoshop. Once in Photoshop, I did a bit more shading to the solid areas than I have before. I think I like how it turned out. I like the flatter style as well though (see below).





This batch is from another article from The Friend. I think this was from the August issue maybe? I forgot. Done the same way - initially in Flash, then the layers are taken into Photoshop. A few touch-ups are added like rosy cheeks, plus a shadow is added by way of the Layers Blending Options. And finally a nice texture is put over the top of the whole thing.

And btw, moral of the story, in case you didn't piece it together: Stealing is Bad! :-)

rachel ray and toeshoe troubles

I suppose I should post something other than Sugar Plum Ballerinas news, but I don't really have any other news at the moment. Halloween is over, I'm loaded up with work as usual, and I'm trying to learn how to live in a world without dairy. Hallelujah there's no lactose in Diet Coke....

A bit short notice, Whoopi Goldberg will be on Rachel Ray promoting Sugar Plum Ballerinas on Tues, Nov 11.

And the cover for the second Sugar Plum book: Toeshoe Troubles, can now be seen at amazon.com (or if you're really clever, you can see it in this very same blog!) For those who read the first book (it is a really cute book - go buy it!) that's Brenda on the cover, with her snotty cousin Tiffany.

#3 on the new york times

Just got the word, Plum Fantastic has debuted at #3 on next week's NYT bestseller list, in the children's paperback category.

How cool!

Also in Sugar Plum Ballerina news, book #2: Toeshoe Trouble, is planned for May 2009 release, and the third book to follow Winter 2010.

And finally, Barnes and Noble has a short little video interview with Whoopi Goldberg at their site. It shows a few of the interior illustrations.

sugar plums in the news

They have a clip of Whoopi's interview, and the first chapter of the book posted at Good Morning America's website.

She didn't mention the book on The View on Tuesday like I'd been told, but have since heard that will happen today, plus audience giveaway!

Edit:
Sugar Plum mention on The View:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUdU_4V1-Oc

more sugar plums

So I thought I'd have my own little media blitz here at the ol' blog, and post some more about the Sugar Plum books.

I'm often asked how I got hooked up with these books, and how Whoopi Goldberg became my BFF. First of all, I'm sure she's a lovely woman, but alas, as we have never met, no friendship bracelets have been exchanged. All of my interaction is with the fine folks at Jump at the Sun Publishing, an imprint of Hyperion Books, owned by Disney, who also owns ABC, on which airs Ms. Goldberg's show The View. Not sure any of that was important, but it's interesting, isn't it?

Over the years, I've done a lot of work for Jump at the Sun. One of my bigger projects with them has been a middle reader series called Willimena Rules! by Valerie Wilson Wesley. When the Sugar Plum books came along, the Jump at the Sun folks liked what I had done on the Willimena books and asked me to do some sample sketches of the main character Alexandrea (see above). Everyone approved the sketches (including Ms. Goldberg), and thus I was on the project. Pretty straightforward.

A little about the cover. The final cover, which can be seen in the previous post, started out a bit different. This sketch above was actually to be the spot on the back cover. It got moved to the front and the center girl (old version of the character Brenda) was replaced with Al.

From there is was just a matter of doing the final illustration in Photoshop using all my standard brushes, textures, etc.

sugar plum ballerinas #1

Tomorrow (Oct 21) is the official release of the first of a series of books by Whoopi Goldberg, which happen to be illustrated by me. Plum Fantastic is a really cute book, Ms. Goldberg came up with some pretty fun quirky characters, and I had a great time doing the illustrations. It's one those chapter books with the occasional b/w interior illustration (about 18 I think). There will be six books total; I'm in the midst of the second one at the moment, so watch for them over the next year or so.

Whoopi will be plugging the book this week on tv. As far as I know (these things change), she'll be talking about it Tuesday Oct 21 on The View. And on Thursday Oct 23, she'll be on Good Morning America and Regis and Kelly.

Bens and Cans

Chris, our Communications Director, graphic designer, all around makes things look good guy, just put the titles on my book covers, so thought I'd post them.

Months and months ago, I weaseled my way into writing some of the online books for our Imagine Learning paired readers activity. The way paired readers work is both relate to each other, in the sense the first prepares you with background knowledge for the second. Usually one is non-fiction and the other fiction. I was given the topics of community service and cause and effect. My first book idea was something more along the lines of that Connections show that used to be on PBS. Fantastic show. I traced the cause and effect from a plague-ridden flea 650 years ago to today's blockbuster pirate movie. Would have been fun to illustrate, unfortunately, it was way too complex for a 4th to 5th grade level book. So I started looking into the first volunteer fire company.

Once I started researching Ben Franklin's fire brigade, I found all sorts of things he did, so changed the topic to Ben's community building ideas. He created the first public library, first hospital, first fire brigade, reformed the postal service, and lots of other stuff. Good ol' Ben.

The second book - The Can Dance - is a little story about a girl who decides to have a can drive, and ultimately ends up on tv singing with her favorite pop star and her clever dancing pet duck (cause and effect!). When telling Chris about the plot, he said: "So, it's a Brady Bunch episode." And that pretty much sums it up.

it's the most wonderful time of the year...

It's that time again where I spend a lot of time day dreaming about Halloween. This year is a little different - I'll be having a Dia de los Muertos party. I'll be periodically posting about the craft projects and party decorations in my other blog: The Two-Headed Goose.

sally ann thunder ann whirlwind crockett!

Hey! It's Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett!

Back eons ago when I was in ye olde illustration school, we had an assignment to illustrate a scene from a tall tale. Somehow I stumbled across the story of Sally Ann, and illustrated her twirling her rattlesnake lasso. And no, I won't be digging that out to share. Earlier this year when we were coming up with ideas for the next batch of stories at Imagine Learning, I pitched the idea of Sally Ann. One of our writers Shar did a great job putting her own spin on the story, and I staked my claim on getting to illustrate it.

So here are a few scenes from the story. Young Sally Ann asks a panther to dance, and they become best friends. A bit older, she runs across this poor feller with his head stuck in the fork of a tree (who knows how he managed that). Turns out it's Davy Crockett! Once she saves him with her rattlesnake lasso, they get married and live happily ever after. Uh... apparently they didn't remember the Alamo.











Technical notes... done in Photoshop. I kept the characters on a separate layer from the background so I could blur out areas. Using the Gaussian Blur (in Filter > Blur...) was a great trick since I could reuse other backgrounds and copy/paste all over the place. I think it helped make the characters pop a bit more as well, so a nice added benefit of trying to save time.

I pretty much stuck with three brushes for these illos. I made a custom brush for drawing the lines. I started with a default preset spatter brush, then adjusted the spacing, size jitter and angle jitter (in the brushes palette) until I got a brush that draws a bit like a crayon. For the shading I used the non-customized spatter brushes, and then did all the touch-ups with my crayon-ish spatter brush.

I also tried making another custom brush using a round airbrush. I used that one to make all the leaves on the trees and background bushes. It didn't work exactly how I wanted, but it got the job done.

Once the illustrations were done, I put a layer of a sandstone-type texture over the top, and set it to soft light. Sweet as sugar!