Here is another sample background, as well as the original sketch.   

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from my agent about some book related business. At the end of the email she asked if I had anything else that I was working on. To which I replied, Nope! I had nothing. Things had been stressful and it's hard to be creative when there's too much stress in one's life. But I sat down and put my mind to the task of coming up with a new idea.

I did this in a not so traditional way, I started reading the archived posts of one of the blogs that I follow and simultaneously writing down anything that came to mind. The first thing I wrote was two kids circumnavigate the globe in a boat, followed by a penguin circumnavigates the globe, followed by a penguin circumnavigates the globe on a piece of ice. He made it as far as South America and then the ice melted and he was eaten by sharks. Needless to say that wasn't the great idea. But somehow this made me think of bird migration and that was the first piece of the puzzle. I then took that piece and combined it with this other character I had which was a Squirrel and from there the premise pretty much fell in my lap. It was a gift from the creative heavens.

I took that idea and spent the next two weeks writing. This resulted in an 8 page outline of the complete story. I then sent that to my agent and I'm currently waiting to see what she thinks.

While I'm waiting, I've been designing all the primary characters and trying to figure out what their world will look like. I really enjoy this phase of development. I get to just draw and have fun. The image above is one of the first samples of how things might look. I'll post other stuff as things move further along.