A short meeting of the minds

This week I made a short trip to Toronto to see Annie, who had gone home to take a well-deserved break, and to see Pikto, a well-regarded printing press in Toronto's Distillery District. Pikto had printed several of my photobooks and my cookbook in the past, and we were considering using them to print the final version of The Prince.

How to get your holiday cards

In other news, Phu has been working hard to make our holiday cards available for sale!! If you're interested in having your own The Prince-themed cards to send to your friends and family this holiday season, please check them out at www.etsy.com/shop/phuvan. We have 4 designs, all printed on sturdy cardstock, and blank on the inside for you to personalize.

2 of our 4 holiday card designs, featuring the prince and his newly-named buddy, Schrödinger the cat:

www.etsy.com/shop/phuvan

Thanks to all our friends and family for your support! :)

Winning cat name

Thanks to everyone for voting a name for The Prince's cat friend! We now have a name for the little guy. 

Now presenting...

Cat naming contest!

Annie wanted me to post this week since it's my turn. Since she had not only done amazing work drawing the cards, but also started writing the post, I didn't want to steal her thunder.

So... I've decided instead to just post what she had written below:

--Phu

Though he has been the Prince's companion throughout the book and you have seen him on the holiday cards, we have yet to give him a name. Surely he wouldn't just want to be known as "honey" or "darling" or "cute thing," so it's about time we name him. We recently asked you for name suggestions, and we've compiled some of them below - we'd love to hear from you about what name you think best fits our cat friend!

Holiday cards

Although we'll be releasing The Prince in 2014, we prepared some goodies in time for this holiday season! In addition to finishing up pencils for the last few pages of the book, we've been working on some festive greeting cards featuring our main character and his feline companion.

The origins of The Prince

The Prince had a rather long journey before he ever came alive under Annie's pencil (pen ? quill ? charcoal nib ?).

(cue water-ripple flashback movie effect)

The year was 2004. I was in college at the University of Washington, which is in Seattle, and not St. Louis. The other common misconception is that typical UW students looked like this:

This is completely untrue. These would be students of The Evergreen State College, 70 miles to the south. Actually, I lied. These are what you get if you typed "hippies" into Google Image Search and take the 3rd result. In any case, UW students looked like this:

From sketch to final product

Some of you have asked me about my illustration process, so I thought I'd do a post on it. The following is a step-by-step description of my process, which I mostly figured out by doing what amateurs do best - looking things up on the internet.

You may have gotten a glimpse of some pages from the book - like the page with the castle - in the video from our first post. Here is how it was made:

1) The pencil sketch

When we first started, Phu sent me the text of his story along with ideas for the illustrations. This page is about halfway through the book, and represents a turning point in the story. I wanted to draw a castle under a foreboding sky with dramatic clouds. When drawing things that I have a hard time imagining, I turn to the the same resource I use for literature searches and advice on whether garlic cloves are safe to eat after they've been in my fridge for so long they start sprouting: Google. 

Google, please google "clouds perspective."

Meet the author !

I realized I haven't properly introduced myself in my first post. Who is this stranger writing a children's story book ?

Well, I'm a PhD student at CarnegieMellon in Pittsburgh. My lab is in the department of Biological Sciences, and I spend a lot of time building things, so some people call me an engineer.

"That has nothing to do with writing children's books !!!", you say. You're right ! I guess it's more informative to say I like trying new things.

My first love is photography. The photo below was taken at my 3rd birthday party, in Saigon. My attempt at photographing my friends was quickly abandoned when the cake arrived, and the party was a quiet, sedate affair. At least that's the version my parents told. Since my report cards from this period regularly included the phrase "Phu is sociable but also incorrigibly disruptive", I feel the reality may have been a bit different.

  I'm not sure what camera I'm looking at here, 

but my Dad took this photo with his Canonet. 

No fruit or child-friendly beverage was harmed during this production.

This will go for millions on e-bay someday

I told my mom about this project and she found some old drawings to demonstrate how far my fine motor skills have come. My grade 1 teacher had our class write and draw stories that she compiled each month into a newsletter for our parents to display on the fridge with pride (or with concern, depending on spelling ability, subject matter, etc). She also had us make books which she published like an O.H.* using a dot matrix printer, laminating machine, and staples.

I think this one was about a girl who went rollerblading down a big hill, got in trouble with her mom, cried, and then she woke up because it was all a dream, obviously. I am still awaiting congratulatory call from the Newbery Medal award committee...

*original hipster

Meet the illustrator!

Greetings! This is Annie, I'm doing the illustrations for The Prince. I first met Phu through our mutual friend and my classmate, Sara (look out for her in a future video!). When he first approached me about this project, I was a bit nervous. My drawing CV up until that point included such prestigious publications as: my journal; margins of lecture notes; thank-you cards. I've always liked to draw on my own, but this sounded like a much bigger project than I'd ever done before.

Some pre-The Prince drawings

Riding the subway

Welcome to The Prince !

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the blog for "The Prince" ! This is a children's book I wrote with illustrations by my good friend Annie. We will start a KickStarter campaign to print our book, you can see our video announcement below:

 

To give you some ideas of the book, we will post the story of how the book comes to be, new art as Annie creates them, and photos of KickStarter goodies as they are made. Stay tuned !