construction time again
Where foundations are laid, parts are put in place, projects are completed, and then it starts all over again. Also, France.
What just happened:
I drew this little picture of a dog-shaped construction crew driving a dump-truck yesterday, which was the final piece of illustration for the book I’ve been working on. Completing a book is exhilarating and weird. Exhilarating because it allows me to climb out of my hole and take a look around, and it means it’s time to start something new. Weird because a book takes a long time to make, and as an illustrator I’ve been living with these characters and these words for more than a year, now. They’ve inhabited my imagination-brain, and now I’m done with them. Let’s talk about that.
I don’t know if this is true for everyone who illustrates picture books, but in my experience, a picture book lives with me for about eighteen months. One day, seemingly out of nowhere, an email arrives, typically with a subject line that says something like “Brian Biggs Project” and has a manuscript attached in the form of a Word document. The email begins with a perfunctory note from my agent1 which is followed by what’s usually a gushy email to him from an editor, describing the book in excitable terms2 and hoping that I like the script, can fit it into my schedule, and will want to illustrate it.
And I probably will. It’s been a long time since I turned down a project. For better or worse, at this point in my career, editors more or less have a handle on what I like to do, and what I do well.3 Of the last six projects I’ve taken on, one came my way because the script is mechanically weird and the editor knows I like breaking down how picture books actually work; one came my way because the editor wanted a goofy and gross halloween book (which I was asked to write as well as illustrate - more about this when it comes out in August); one was the sequel to a previous book; one is about buildings that play tricks on townspeople, and with Tinyville Town and Everything Goes behind me, the editor knew I love drawing buildings and I love snark; and the other two are both books about construction, and, well, I could draw dump-trucks and diggers all day long.
The book I just finished illustrating is one of the two construction books. It’s called Hard Hat Hank, and it’s about a construction crew that discovers a pair of birds nesting atop the skyscraper they’re building. Hank is the crew chief, and he has to figure out a way to deal with the situation. The email with the script showed up in my in-box in February 2023, and fifteen months later, yesterday in fact, I turned in the last piece of art on it, the dump-truck, that will be on the title page.
Tyler, the art director on the book, will now put the mechanicals together which will inevitably lead to some minor revisions as I may have to adjust things, etc. Copy-editing will then get their hands on it and find places where I colored something blue on one page and red on another page, or I missed a comma in some hand-lettering. There will be a request for some additional birds, or some lettering for the flaps and back cover, I’ll have to figure out who I’m dedicating this book to4, approve the little bio that appears on the flaps as well as the design for the back cover, and then, probably late this summer, I’ll get a big thick envelope with color proofs. If the color proofs look good, and they almost always do, the book will at that point disappear from my brain until publication day, which in the case of Hard Hat Hank will be February 4, 2025, two years to the month that it first landed in my in-box.
Even though I’ve illustrated a lot of books, it’s still pretty special when a new project shows up, when one gets completed, and when it’s published, and I don’t take any of it for granted. Last night, after finishing that last drawing and sending a PDF of the layout to my editor and art director, I went out for my regular Wednesday night bike ride, came home, and mixed a big fat Manhattan.
I look forward to an edition of Random Orbit, likely in several months, around the time it’s published, about Hard Hat Hank. It’s been a fun book to draw. Sometimes the original “vision” or ideas that one has when reading a script for the first time make their way directly into the book. Sometimes they don’t, and this book was one of those sometimes. As an example, here are a few character-sketches of the main character. Hank started out as a person, then became maybe a monster, then a bear, and finally landed on a dog. I don’t know what I was thinking with those dark sunglasses and that moustache. I probably just wanted to see what I could get away with.
Hard Hat Hank was written by Charlotte Gunnufson and will be published by Disney Hyperion and is part of their Planet Possible initiative, which I think they officially announce next week. Stay tuned for more on that.
What’s about to happen:
Even though I just finished Hank yesterday, I’m supposed to get some rough sketches out for the next book “in May.” Today is May 30, so guess what I’m doing today? This is the book I mentioned above that came to me because of the weird mechanics. The story is about a whale and an otter who are arguing over who is the coolest, and the script can be read front to back, like a regular book, as well as back to front. It’s one thing to do this and have it make sense with words. It’s another thing to add pictures and make it work. As I’ve been finishing Hank I haven’t had the bandwidth to really work this out, so today the cobwebs must get cleared and I have to think like an engineer more than an illustrator. This has to be done before I really start drawing otters and whales. Right now it’s work. Fun work (remember, I like figuring out how books work!), but hard thinking kind of work.
More importantly, I want to get that mechanical stuff done for this new book because a week from today, Sacha and I are getting on an airplane and (OMG! OMG!) flying to Nîce, in the south-east of France, where we’ll be living in a house near the village of Aups for five weeks (OMG! OMG!).
We’re both taking iPads and laptops and plenty of work with us, and we’re scheduling in several hours a day of actually getting shit done. She has clients and things to write and zoom meetings to take part in, and she’s very diligently scheduled her time while we’re there. For me, completing Hank was my main priority the last several weeks so that I can focus as much as I can in France on creating a working dummy for the insect stories I wrote in March and April. My agent loved the stories about a Stinkbug and Grasshopper, and we both think that doing as much as I can with them to show a potential publisher the vision5 I have for them in terms of how they will look and feel as books, is important. I can shout and dance LOBEL!6 SENDAK!7 WIND IN THE WILLOWS!8 all day long, but those books are fifty, sixty, a hundred years old. It will be important to show how these stories will fit into a modern marketplace and delight new generations of smart and sentimental young readers, just like I was, a million years ago.
Anyway, this newsletter might turn into a travelog for the next month-and-a-half. I have a new-to-me incredible camera9, I’m taking a bike and art supplies, and the weather forecast looks perfect.
On se voit là-bas!
I took a jewelry class! I made this ring last week!
I plan to use these new skills adding shiny metal parts to the woodworking projects I have in mind. I hope to get some access to the jewelry studio at Tyler School of Art, where I teach a class, and get back to making these objects this fall.
And, lastly, an obligatory cat pic I took just now as I was writing this. These two are ridiculous.
Thanks for reading.
Something like “Here’s a new project that seems right for you. Let me know what you think!”
lots of explanation points!!!
Which is not always a great thing. It’s easy to get pigeonholed. For example, this book is the second book about a construction crew I illustrated in a row. It’s why I’m sort of pushing with my elbows to find room to do new things, too.
75 books in, I’ve run out of my own children and and nephews and nieces and parents, and dedicating books gets hard to do at times. But I already know how this one is going to go.
Modern, but old fashioned as well! It’s prose, but with illustrations, and maybe even comics! Not really a picture book, but not really a chapter book, and, well, here, let me just SHOW you…
Frog & Toad, Grasshopper on the Road.
Always Sendak, but mostly the Randall Jarrell books in this case, especially The Bat Poet.
It’s 100 years old, but it holds up. Writing and drawing a modern take on this format would be a dream.
A Fuji X100f to go with my little Canon G5x I mostly use on bike rides.
Is the title of this by any chance a Depeche Mode reference?
Frog & Toad, Grasshopper on the Road, Bat Poet, and WITW is a fantastic place to reside! I would love to explore that universe in my studio for the rest of my life.