The Great Illustrator Project

A while back ago, I was emailed by a guy named Tom Anderson about his new project. I'm really excited to talk about this project and I knew that a lot of my viewers would be interested in it.

I especially think this project will be of interest to my Children's picture book authors and to my viewers who can't wait to fulfill their dreams of writing illustrated novels. 

Tom's project (which you kind find here if you want to cut to the chase,) is all about making author's live's easier. The project will take archives of artwork from dozens of authors (45 artists last I checked!) and let you use them in a functional app, to sew together story and art. 

 Beautiful!

I can see many facets to this project, and many ways it can be used to your advantage. Here are a few sweet and to-the-point bullets:

• A freeing, yet economically efficiant way of illustrating your novel with original designs
• Letting the little writers in your life get free reign of their imaginations (go creativity!)
• familiarizing yourself with art, and gaining a better perspective of the vast spectrum of art (not just pencil's anymore folks!) 
• Creative presentations
• Rough draft story boarding (Ok, this is kind of a 'creative presentation, but it's definitely different because I put it on a different bullet point. *winks*)

The best thing about a creative app like this, is that art is endless and it's expression infinite. If you can come up with a good way to use it, that isn't listed....guess what? You can use it that way.

Seriously. 

If you've been around me long enough, you know that I'm usually completely incapable of  'average.' Even if the road less traveled does kick my butt from time to time, creativity (and being different in general) is a big part of my life, and it will always remain so. I like the idea for this app because it takes a typically hard industry (that being, the art of words) and applies it to it's opposite (technical mathematics, in the form of an app.) 

If you'd like to support this endeavor, and receive goodies in return, check out the official kickstarter and donate!

Click here

UPDATE: We've raised $8,000 so far! The higher we go, the more the app will have (for specifics, see the kickstarter!)

If you would like to hear an almost-author's view of how this app could have been applied if she'd had it a year earlier, click here.

The Time I Dealt With A Rude Famous Illustrator

First, I'd like to say that I won't be naming names. That's not what this post is about.

On to the story!

Once upon a time, my sister wanted to be an author. She was eight (and a quarter, thankyouverymuch) years old. At the time, we were both enrolled in a 4H (um...tribe?Club? It's been so long!) as clovers.

We joined a club called 'Book Making' were we listened to a short lecture by out teacher, and then received assigments.

My sister was a whiz kid. She had the highest calculated vocabulary (out of all the kids, of all ages in that group...) and she wrote a book called The Horse Heroes.

It was a funny/energetic story about the horses at the ranch we volunteered at. In the book they were all superheroes behind the human's backs and each had their own superpower.
Rough Rowdy,
Karate Cookie,
Luscious Lacy
Super Sissy
Agile Annie
Sheriff Cody
and the side-kick Gloria the Goat. (she had a superhero moniker too, but I can't remember it at the moment.)

And then, she picked me to illustrate it! It was wonderful and fun for an 11 year old to do!

Last year, I ran across the book (the pages had been laminated and bound.) And my mom thought we could actually publish it (it's an adorable story, and it has an impressive range of events in it.) But I wanted to have a proffesional illustrator to do it nice.

I contacted an illustrator (his illustrations appear in one fairly high profile middle grade novel), and we volleyed emails back and forth about the subject of the story and etc.
Then he told me he was going on vacation and he wouldn't be emailing me for a couple weeks.

So I waited a month, and re-emailed.
I waited another month and re-emailed.
and eventually he emailed back and said he wanted nothing to do with my venture.

How rude.

I know in my heart he must have had his reasons.... but it was mean to lead me on for months...conversing about the novel and etc.

I one day hope to pick it back up again and seek out it's publication.
and perhaps I have an option to look at.

There's an app being developed by Tom Anderson. It's called The Great Illustrator. You can pick the background and insert different characters to illustrate a book or project of any kind! I'll seriously consider it!

Had this app existed a year ago, it might have saved me the heart ache of being treated like poo by someone I respected.

If you'd like to read more about on it's kickstarter page! Click Here