"Black Day - The Monster Rock Band". To learn more about this mother-son creative team see this post on my blog.
"Black Day - The Monster Rock Band" was illustrated by local artist Noah Witchell. Because of the large crowd in attendance to hear the Sikoras unveil their new book, I did not get a chance to meet Noah, although I did chat briefly with his lovely wife while we were outside at the Monster Cookie Table. (Check out the blog post mentioned above to see pictures of The Cookie Table!)
I had a very enlightening chat with Noah recently via email:
Q: Is this the first children's book you have illustrated?
Yes it is! Hopefully not the last.
Q: Did you know Marcus before he started writing the book or did you meet through the process of making the book?
No, I didn't know Marcus before starting on the book. I had
met his dad, Quinn, briefly months beforehand via a friend of mine and between
the two of them it had come to light that Marcus and Mardra had put together
this manuscript for a children's book and were looking for an illustrator, at
which point my friend put me in touch with Mardra. We met up for coffee
to discuss the book and the rest is history.
Q: How long did it take to complete the illustrations?
Not necessarily the number of hours but what was the process and how long
(weeks? months?) did it take?
It was a very involved process, taking about a year to complete.
We had talked from the very beginning about possibly making Black Day
into an animated short, which had a huge influence on how I approached the
whole project. I spent approximately four months building the characters
and preparing them for animation through a process called rigging, as
well as building all of the set pieces. After that, I spent about three
months creating the book illustrations. Once the book was nailed down, I
moved over to the animation, which has taken about four and a half months so
far, with another 2-3 weeks left to go!
Q: I sometimes hear authors say they didn't meet their book's
illustrator - in person, at least - until after the book was published, and
that they had only so much say in the choice of artist and illustrations.
I suspect your collaboration with the Sikoras
was much more personal?
Very much so. We started with meeting every other week to
talk about what the book and characters would look like. I would work on
developing the characters and set pieces, then create a few style frames to
show them the progress and get their feedback. I think because of how
long the process took it provided ample opportunity for this to be particularly
collaborative. As we moved into finalizing the illustrations and starting
the animation, we stepped things up to meeting once a week to look at proofs of
the book and rough cuts of the animation.
Q: Was Marcus fairly particular about details (the colors used for
each monster, Brad's hairstyle, the purple shingles on the monsters' house, etc.) or did he leave a lot of that to your imagination?
I think this is exactly where this project has been a match made
in heaven. Marcus was absolutely particular about the personality of the
characters and had an extensive collection of drawings he had made to depict
what they should look like, but there was still plenty of room for
interpretation on my part, translating it from his drawing into a dimensional
character. In that sense it never felt like it was 100% only his vision
or only mine. We were both aiming for the same target, just standing in
slightly different places. With the sets, we talked broadly about the
feeling of the locations but they largely left it up to me to make the house
and the cemetery what I thought they should be to fit the story.
Q: What kind of training do you have? What software did you
use when creating the pictures for "Black Day"? What other
kinds of artwork/graphic design/illustrations have you done?
I initially went to school for photography, but through a long and
gradual process photography evolved into video work, which turned into motion
graphics work, which in turn lead to me working as a 3D artist. As a
photographer I was always fascinated by the concept of "constructed
realities", where instead of going out and looking for something to
photograph, you would simply build what you wanted to photograph on a massive,
elaborate scale. Working as a 3D artist is exactly that process, so it
fit like a glove! I built everything for Black Day in a 3D program called
Cinema 4D, and I used a combination of a few other softwares such as Adobe
Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, and InDesign in order to put the
finishing touches on both the illustrations and the animation. As far as
other work goes, I spend most of my year working on creating 3D content for
concerts and television specials. The beauty of what I do is that it can
be done from just about anywhere with a decent internet connection, so I
contract work remotely for companies based in Los Angeles. You can find
more information about me at www.noahwitchell.com
Q: Finally: Anything else you'd like to share?
This has been such an incredible experience! When I first
met Mardra I remember coming home and telling my wife about it, and it wasn't
even a question. We were both like "Yes, you need to
do this!" The thing that has been so remarkable to me with Black Day
is that there are so many angles to look at it from. You can look at it
solely on the merits of the book as this fun Halloween story, or you can take a
step back from that and look at it as this story about inclusiveness.
Another step back and it's about Marcus ponying up proof to the world
that he isn't defined by an extra chromosome and that he can and will continue
to be the inventive, clever guy he is. Personally, my favorite angle to
look at it from is the one where a small group of passionate people focused on
a shared goal can accomplish some pretty amazing things. A handful of
people really shouldn't have been able to pull this off! It's the
craziest, most elaborate project I've ever taken on in my life. But it's
happening - the book is published and the production schedule for the animation
is drawing to a close! A little perseverance has brought us a long way,
and I'm so thrilled to have been a part of it.
Want to see and learn more about Noah?? Visit his website!
Noah also has an email account (noah@noahwitchell.com) a Tumblr account, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a Vimeo account...well, you get the idea.
Want to see and learn more about Noah?? Visit his website!
Noah also has an email account (noah@noahwitchell.com) a Tumblr account, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a Vimeo account...well, you get the idea.
Now...are you ready for the premier trailer for the upcoming video short of "Black Day"?!
Drum roll, please!
Here...
It...
Is!
Black Day - The Monster Rock Band TRAILER!
Enjoy!!!
