So I've started on another new book, and this time it's Romeo and Juliet.
Following my meeting with a publisher a couple of weeks ago, I came away with notes. Since then I have zhooshed up some pages of two existing books, and now begun work on a new one, with that publisher expressly in mind. The zhooshed up pages are:
Midsummer Night's Dream: pages 20 - 24 redrawn and coloured as new pages 20 - 25
Twelfth Thing: pages 29 - 32 redrawn & coloured as Twelfth Night new pages 29 -32
Now I begin on R&J and here is my work in progress:
Monday 29 & Tuesday 30 April - Prologue and Act One written as my scribble laid-out script.
Weds May 1st - Pages 1 - 8 pencilled, 5 - 8 inked. Feels good to make a start.
Thurs May 2nd - Pages 1 - 15 pencilled and inked (and my agent chasing me!)
Fri May 3rd - Pages 16 - 20 pencils + inks.
Sat/Sun May 4/5 - Pages 1 - 18 spot-coloured in red
Mon May 6th - Pages 21 - 27 (all of Act One) pencils + inks
+ spot-coloured up to pge 20
Tues May 7th - All 27 pages of Romeo & Juliet spot-coloured and sent to Emily, along with Midsummer and Twelfth Night.
Now we wait to see what anyone thinks of it all. Gulp.
May 17, Emily forwards this from another publisher: "Apologies for the delay in coming back to you on this one, and thank you for your patience while we’ve been discussing this in-house. We think Kev is a really exciting and talented artist, but unfortunately we already have some similar Shakespeare retellings on our list, so this particular project wouldn’t be right for us. However, we would be keen in having a broader discussion with Kev about graphic novel non-fiction, to explore whether this might be an area of publishing he’d be interested in."
I reply that I'm up for a meeting, still waiting as of June 12th.
June 6, Emily forwards this feedback from the publisher we sent the above work to:
"I’ve shared the samples with K and also our art director and we love the humour and energy that Kev brings to these projects! We particularly liked Kev’s two-colour approach and thought the panels worked really well with that pantone colour. That said, we don’t think that the samples are yet where we would want them to be as the characterisation of the people doesn’t quite sit in the commercial space for a child audience – the squat shapes of the characters, while classically Beano, are not fully aligned with the current market where the characters have more realistic proportions. We also thought that the teen characters in particular look a bit middle-aged, and I would love to see them looking like aspirational teenagers of around 13/14 years old. This is further stems from feedback we received from our Rights team after Bologna on similar projects where the international markets stressed that the characterisation had to feel more human-like for them to buy into the project.
If Kev is happy to, would he be able to have a look at the characterisation and ageing of his characters and send through another sample? It really doesn’t have to be much at all – even if it’s just a spread of a scene. It would be great to see this in a two-colour approach and a scene from A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM featuring the main characters, maybe where they’re wandering through the woods or featuring Puck. While I loved the humour in ROMEO AND JULIET, we think that A MIDSUMMERNIGHT’S DREAM will have the broadest age range appeal.
I hope it’s OK to be coming to you with these thoughts and request. We really do think that Kev has lots of potential and lots of talent, but we know with visual projects that we need to be presenting material that our wider commercial teams can see on shelves during our acquisitions process and it is harder to bring them along without this material to show them."
June 12, I am writing and drawing new pages of Midsummer Nights Dream to hopefully rise to this challenge.
My Books and where to get them:
Shakespeare Omnibus Collection (all 3 books) -
Amazon
Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories -
Lulu
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