I love Dr. Seuss books. I like his limited colour palette and large areas of flat colour, so I copied him a bit. I’d like to know what you what you think. Does it work? Does it make you happy? Do you wish I had used some purple? (This book will contain no purple.)

The reason you’re getting a coloured page is that I have hired a successful children’s author to look at my story and tell me if it’s any good or not and recommend changes that will help it on it’s way to publication. I want her to have an idea of how the finished pages will look and there is no way I’m going to keep this little treat from you.

Here is a comparison of the original scan and the tidied and coloured page:

I haven’t died.

During the last nine months I did a little graphic design project that turned into a massive design project and earned three GCSEs (probably – results day is 20 August). I also rewrote the second half of this book. Twice. I think it is a much stronger story now.

Now I’m back and I’m so happy to be working working on the book again!

Updates may not be weekly quite yet. Over the next week I will be getting the book ready to show to a professional editor that I am planning to hire for a consultation. It may be two or three weeks until the next page but it will definitely be less than nine months.

Last week I read an interview with new children’s book author Rob Biddulph. In speaking about his drawing process, he said:

It takes quite a bit of sketching to perfect a character, and it’s not until I can draw them in any position and from any angle that I’m ready to get them onto the computer.

That’s a really smart way of working. It would bore me to tears. I work in a really dumb way. I get one good drawing and then assume the next one will work out okay. Last week when I drew the rocket bike from the side, I had no idea how to draw it from an angle. One of my early attempts looked like this:

It was only this morning that I finally figured out how to do it. I’m pretty pleased with the result.

It’s not perfect though. In addition to the usual clean up, this page will require some extra work in Photoshop. Somehow mum ended up with one weird fat leg. I’ll make it match the other one. Also, the plane is shoved too far up into the corner. I will lower in the sky to strengthen and unify the page composition.

I hope you figure out how to do the things you want to do this week.

This week I start filling some gaps in my education. I’m doing GCSE English, Science and Maths. I’ve also taken on a little graphic design job for a client that I’ve worked with for many years. I will be be busy, but I will do my best to continue giving you a page every week.

‘Be not afraid of poetry: some are born poets, some achieve poetry and some have poetry thrust upon them.’ —Bruce Willis

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed the the trampoline’s jelly is no longer in a tray. Thanks to some input from Caroline, my friend and one of my email subscribers from southern Arizona, I realised that showing the jelly is better than hiding it in a tray. (For readers in US America, jelly = jello.)

One of the aspects of the artwork that will need the most adjustment is the lettering. Pretty much every bit of the lettering will be adjusted to make the letter, word and line spacing right. I am barely good enough to do the lettering myself, and during the planning phase, I tried a bunch of different fonts. None of them felt right. Only the hand-lettering really seemed to fit. Fortunately, Photoshop allows me to turn my wonky words into lines of tidy type with reasonable speed.

Cora hasn’t made it to the moon, but if she fulfilled the promise of the title in the first quarter of the book, it wouldn’t be much of a book would it?

Boing!

We meet Cora. Sort of. From the back. I realised while working on this page that I have created a rod for my own back with the design of Cora’s trampoline. All those bouncy balls and springs take a long time to draw.