Wednesday, June 25, 2014

"… and the Prince understood, and the Prince was happy."

Very few of you know this, but these are the last words in "The Prince". As you read them, copies of the book (and bag/card)  are on their way to our KickStarter supporters.


Our state-of-the-art distribution center, aka Phu's floor.

We apologize again for the delay, just as the Prince's clothes became tattered and he grew weary during his journey (*spoiler*!) , Annie and I encountered some setbacks bringing our story to you. But just as the story ends happily (*more spoiler!!*), we are so thrilled to have had support from all of you. We thank you, and wish you all the happiness in the world.

Best regards,

--Phu & Annie

At last !!!

PS: Many people have requested to buy the book after we have finished the KickStarter, so we have put it on Etsy, the same place where The Courtyard Kitchen was sold: https://www.etsy.com/shop/phuvan

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The Prince and The Kickstarter: WE DID IT!!!

So... the KickStarter exceeded all of our expectations.

Me reacting to our KickStarter passing $1000: goggles and helmet protected me from the shock. I'm told Annie responded similarly.
People we know corralled their spouses, family and friends to support us (the Thorson and Lear families were particularly well-represented). You have our many thanks: 1,299 to be exact:


I'm told at this moment an army of dedicated craftsmen are putting the final touches on boxes of freshly-printed copies of The Prince to be rushed to your doors.

Speaking of printing, we researched about half a dozen printing companies for The Prince. While we could print very cheaply through comic book presses, we felt that The Prince should be well-made with thick archival paper, full-bleeds and decent binding, even if our small printing run made the book a bit more expensive. So we decided to stay with Pikto, the Toronto-based press who did a consistently outstanding job with my previous photobooks and cookbook.

Now that our successful Kickstarter campaign has ended, and we've finished all the illustrations, we'll be working on fulfilling the orders that you've made! Some previews of what's coming to your doorstep in the near future...




Please stay tuned in the next few days as we ship out copies of The Prince. And again, thank you !

--Phu & Annie

Friday, May 16, 2014

Colouring The Prince

First of all, Phu and I want to thank you for all your generous support! It has only been 3 days, and we have already reached our Kickstarter goal! We've been working hard on this book for a long time, and it's awesome to know people interested and eager to have a copy! ...seriously, Phu has been so excited that he was sending me hour-by-hour text message updates every time another person pledged to our campaign. We are super excited :)

Yay!

Secondly, I wanted to do another process post. This project has been a learning experience with many firsts. So far, I've written about the pencil drawings and inking, and I wanted to update this blog with some more detail about the digital side of these illustrations. This will get a bit technical, so if you don't care for the details, don't feel guilty about just scrolling through the pictures.

Monday, May 12, 2014

KickStarted !

Hi everyone,

After more than a year's worth of hard work (Annie sketching, inking and coloring and me making snarky blogposts), we are finally ready to pitch The Prince to family, friends, and strangers on the Internet !

Without further ado, please come check out our KickStarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1823550875/the-prince-an-illustrated-childrens-book

Our KickStarter goodies. Unfortunately, you can't get our cat, Schrodinger. It's against the rules :(

The cover, featuring our iconic castle at night.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

And the winner is...

Thank you for everyone who voted in our mug contest, including apparently, two members of the Toronto Maple Leafs :P

We apologize for the delay. Originally the contest was only supposed to take 1 week, but ended up taking a bit longer than that. Mostly I've been writing my PhD thesis while horribly sick with what people tell me is the flu. It actually felt like this:
A common problem with writing theses while sick.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Prince mug giveaway, and Friends of the Prince

Hi everyone,

As Annie works hard to finish inking The Prince, I circulated an early draft of the illustrations among our friends and the response was overwhelmingly positive. A big thanks to everyone who proofread this early copy, especially while I took some stalker-like photos for our upcoming KickStarter videos:



Sunday, March 2, 2014

Completing the inking phase!

This weekend, I officially finished inking and scanning in all 20 pages of The Prince. In celebration of this, Phu threw a small dinner party with friends. We feasted like princes and princesses.

I've already done a couple of pages in full colour, and in the coming weeks, I'll be working on finishing up the rest. Look for an upcoming post/tutorial on how to go from inks to digitally-coloured pages in Photoshop!

Too blurry to see what's going on?
Stay tuned for actual pages in glorious 1200dpi!

Monday, February 10, 2014

Tools of an amateur illustrator

First of all, I want to say thanks to everyone who came out to the auction last weekend to raise money for the Birmingham Free Clinic and Women's Center Clinic! We participated in the silent auction and had a number of bids on our print.


Before the bidding began

Phu plays this down, but I think it's worth sharing - when he started making and selling his photo and recipe books, he wanted to donate the profits to a local cause in the community. He got in touch with the director of the Birmingham Free Clinic, Mary Herbert, and for the past 3 years, he's been an enthusiastic supporter, forwarding proceeds from his book sales and donating items for their annual fundraising auction.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Print auction for Pittsburgh's Birmingham Clinic


Through my good friend Sara (the topic of a previous post) a few years ago I learned of the Birmingham Free Clinic in Pittsburgh and their great work with providing health care to underserved populations. I've donated a few small things in the past for their annual auction. This year, Annie wanted to donate a full-sized print of a page from The Prince for the auction.

If you're in Pittsburgh, the auction is in LR6 of Scaife Hall on the University of Pittsburgh campus, at 6:30PM on Saturday February 1st, 2013. Come bid on Penguins tickets, an iPad Mini, and other good stuff to support a good cause !



Saturday, January 11, 2014

Before The Prince, there was Crusoe

The Prince is not my first attempt at publishing a story. No, it seemed I had wanted to tell stories since I was a kid, and I wasn't slowed down by physical plausibility, logical consistency or conventionally-accepted grammar.

And thanks to my Mom's meticulous memento-keeping habits, I have proof from the fabled days of middle school:

The whole book was done in pencil, then inked in red, blue and a bit of green. Apparently this would be the first of many thrilling adventures. I can't recall exactly how long it took, but it was many weeks.  If there was a mistake in the inked version, I would rewrite the whole page.

Ah, the classic "Once upon a time" opener. You can see the corrections I made using Wite-Out correction fluid, and my teacher's corrections in pencil.

The story moves quickly. By the second paragraph our protagonist Crusoe (any relation to a much better-known character ?) already received his task of slaying the dragon of Black Mountain. Ten-year-olds do not have time to lose. Don't let the fact that his horse is named "Jolly" fool you, this story is not a peaceful one. The action picked up quickly:

Then he said, "You are a very dangerous monster, I must kill you !!!" Crusoe drew his sword and fought bravely. But the Fire Dragon was very big and strong. Crusoe's strength was giving out and he fell to the ground.

As you can see, Crusoe was a man of action, a heroic figure who conveniently announces his intentions. Though perhaps he could have benefited from a bit more aerobic training, falling to the ground from exhaustion during a fight is a little embarrassing !


Black Mountain was clearly a metaphorical name, since the mountain is not colored in. (CORRECTION-- my Mom tells me I didn't want to color in the mountain, afraid that the page will bleed though and I will get ink all over myself).
More illustration. For a proudly talkative man, Crusoe had no visible mouth. Maybe he was doing a stoic stiff-upper-lip thing. It's also a bit odd that Crusoe faced *away* from the castle even though he had just arrived there. Maybe he was checking the surroundings to make sure he wouldn't be ambushed ?

A twist !!! The Fire Dragon turns out to be a prince who had been transformed by an evil wizard-prime minister Crome who usurped the throne after the prince's father died. Crusoe traveled to confront Crome at Richmon (not to be confused with the more conventional RichmonD!).

"But Crome was transformed [into] an owl and flew away. Crusoe took a bow, an arrow, and shot it. The owl fell down and it transformed into an egg. Crusoe broke the egg and it was transformed [into] a needle. Crusoe broke the needle and Crome was dead."

I'm sure this scene would have the budget of a small city if this was adapted into a JJ Abrams movie. If it was a Peter Jackson movie, it would be a small country.


An early attempt at cartography. I think I was getting impatient with the third act and needed to explain how Crusoe could get between places so quickly. Perhaps he had learned his lesson and built up aerobic capacity? He seemed to be walking everywhere, environmentally-friendly, but slow. I'm sure it's so he can keep his horse Jolly, well... jolly and just left him/her in the stable (CORRECTION-- Mom: "It's because you couldn't draw a horse !"). There were also an angel,  more transformations, and well... more violence.

After his adventure predictably ends happily, Crusoe was invited to administer the country he had just saved. I'm sure my parents were relieved that my career aspirations included civil service and not just vigilantism and poor transportation choices.

So there you have it. Thankfully I have since left illustration in Annie's much more capable hands, and my narrative skills have improved over the years.

See you next week, when Annie will write a post that will likely *not* involve dragons.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Completing the pencilling phase!

Happy new year, everyone! The end of 2013 marks the completion of the first phase of our book - the pencils for every page of The Prince are now all finished! Yay!

When Phu and I met up this weekend to discuss the book, we shared stories about our holidays. He went back to Seattle, I went back to Toronto, and we both met up with friends and family who asked how the book was coming along.

Flying out of Toronto, back to the Burgh