07 Wednesday Feb 2018
Posted in Great News!
SCBWI loves celebrating our members’ successes and noteworthy news, and there are many! Read on to find out who’s got something to shout about. Digital high-fives welcome in the comments!
Hatching Chicks in Room 6 by Caroline Arnold was named a 2017 Eureka! Honor book by the California Reading Association. The Eureka! awards are for excellence in nonfiction.
08 Friday Dec 2017
Posted in Illustrator's Perspective
Tags
chapter book, Dogs, Emma Chichester Clark, HarperCollins, illustrator, illustrator tips, illustrators, interview, Michael Morpurgo, middle grade, Plum, The Wizard of Oz, Toto
Emma Chichester Clark is the illustrator of the beautiful middle-grade chapter book, Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz. Its 250+ full-color images showcase Chichester Clark’s signature style.
CHRISTINE VAN ZANDT: Welcome to Kite Tales! In Toto, you collaborate once again with author, Michael Morpurgo. How does illustrating well-known stories differ from working on new fiction? Does having a dog as the narrator change your focus when you work on the art?
EMMA CHICHESTER CLARK: In fact, it’s my sixth collaboration with Michael. We have also done versions of Pinocchio, Aesop’s Fables, Hansel and Gretel, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and a Christmas story called The Best of Times. Almost all of them were about well-known characters and I had to find my own ideas about that. This is a challenge because the images we all already know so well are imprinted in our heads. With each character, I have to draw and redraw them, over and over again, until I find someone that belongs to me but who is, at the same time, true to the character I’m representing. [In Toto], having a dog as the narrator was the most fun of all because I adore dogs. I have one, Plum, who is not unlike Toto in appearance and I spend a lot of my time trying to interpret what is going on in her doggy brain.
CVZ: You are also an author. Please give us some insight into your process, both as an illustrator and an author-illustrator.
24 Friday Nov 2017
Posted in Toot Your Horn!
It’s Black Friday! Don’t forget that you can purchase books today, and small business Saturday, and cyber Monday! Here are some members whose books have recently become available!
Lint Boy, by Aileen Leijten, Clarion, ages 8-12, Graphic Novel, ISBN: 978-00544-52860-4, released 06/27/2017.
22 Wednesday Nov 2017
Posted in Great News!
Tags
SCBWI loves celebrating our members’ successes and noteworthy news, and there are many to be thankful for as Thanksgiving approaches! Read on to find out who’s got something to shout about. If you have something to be thankful for, kid-lit-related or otherwise, share in the comments! We here at SCBWI Los Angeles and Kite Tales are thankful for each and every one of you!
Rabbi the Rabbit, by Shireen Hakim, was published in the “Out of Many, One: Celebrating Diversity” anthology. It also won an award by the anthology publisher, Houston Writers Guild Press, on April 5, 2017.
04 Wednesday Oct 2017
Posted in Contests & Grants, Mentorship Contest
By Marcelle Greene, SCBWI-L.A. Contest Coordinator Emeritus
Carmel O’Mara-Horwitz & Cassandra Federman
Whether you’ve thought of mentoring, or dreamed of having a mentor – this year’s mentorship team demonstrates how a seasoned professional working with a promising newcomer benefits everyone involved.
Mentor Carmel-O’Mara Horwitz started working with selected mentee, illustrator Cassandra Federman, on May 1st, and they set an ambitious goal: improve Cassandra’s portfolio, including the creation of a new piece, and update her website before the SCBWI Summer Conference. They had two months and six days. Continue reading
20 Wednesday Sep 2017
Posted in Illustrator's Gallery
Ellen Jin Over is an art director, visual development artist, and illustrator. She’s also our featured artist in this quarter’s Illustrator Gallery! Her work has appeared on televisions all over the world for the last 20 years. Spirit Riding Free, now on Netflix, is her latest project. Before that, she was art director on Disney’s Tinkerbell movies for nine years.
She didn’t always know what she wanted to do with her life until her senior year in high school pushed her to figure it out. “I got lucky that my long-forgotten childhood obsession of drawing and making paper dolls suddenly came back to my mind one day and I decided to major in art. After studying illustration at Otis, I stumbled upon a job interview for a position in an animation company.” The rest is history! Her program of choice is Adobe PhotoShop, something we tend to think of for editing photos, not creating illustrations, but Ellen does beautiful things with it! She tells us more in the interview below.
Sarah Parker-Lee: How did you choose to use Photoshop over other programs?
Ellen Jin Over: Photoshop has been around for 30 years. When I was going to school in the early 90’s, that was the only computer software that was available for students at Otis School of Art and Design. It was mostly for graphic designers. It just happened that illustrators like me found it useful to create images too…Photoshop started to be used more in some animation studios for digital paintings [in the] late 90’s.
There are many painting software today such as Painter, Coral Painter, Illustrator, etc–some for professionals and some for “regular Joe” doodling. I just have not found any other software that is comparable to Photoshop. It’s fast and easy.
SPL: Do you only work digitally or do you do any hand drawing? What do you think are the benefits of each? Continue reading
01 Friday Sep 2017
Posted in Great News!
Tags
SCBWI loves celebrating our members’ successes and noteworthy news, and there are many! Read on to find out who’s got something to shout about. Digital high-fives welcome in the comments!
Snowed by Maria Alexander has been nominated for the 2017 Anthony Award for Best Children’s YA Novel. The World Mystery Convention, aka Bouchercon, has bestowed Anthony Awards on iconic mystery writers since 1980. Snowed also recently won the 2016 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. The book was published November 2, 2016 by Raw Dog Screaming Press. (Snowed.jpg, used previously)
30 Wednesday Aug 2017
Posted in Toot Your Horn!
SCBWI members’ publishing news is something to celebrate here at Kite Tales. Check out whose book is coming to a platform near you! Leave a digital high-five in the comments!
Sleepy Toes, by Kelli McNeil, illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld, Scholastic, ages 0-5, Board Book, ISBN: 978-133-803-07-23, released 3/1/17.
A Squirrel in Trouble, by Farida Mirza, Oxford University Press, ages 4-6, Picture Book, ISBN: 978-0-19-940485-8, released 5/1/2017. Continue reading
04 Friday Aug 2017
Posted in Author's Perspective, Illustrator's Perspective
Ashlyn Anstee is a story artist at Nickelodeon on Harvey Beaks as well as the author/illustrator of Are We There, Yeti? and No, No, Gnome! (Simon & Schuster, 2015 & 2016), a comic artist, film maker, and devourer of cookies. She talks with us about finding her agent through SCBWI, how professional relationships are just like any other relationship, and how she keeps her skills sharp.
Sarah Parker-Lee: You’re an illustrator, author, and storyboard artist for animation. Which came first and how do you find time for both?!
Ashlyn Anstee: It helps that all of them are a little different, so it’s actually been fun to jump between them, thank goodness. I started out first as a reader–I was a voracious reader as a kid (and my mom’s a teacher-librarian). I didn’t really start to draw until my teens. I fell in love with animation, and it wasn’t until I graduated from college that I started to rediscover illustration and kids’ books. I find writing the hardest, so I’ve been focusing on that, lately!
SPL: For those unfamiliar, can you tell us a little about being a story artist? How does it compare to illustrating a book? Continue reading
14 Wednesday Jun 2017
Posted in Tips and Tools
By Cheryl Bommarito Klein and Kara B. Wilson
Kara & Cheryl, 3rd from the left
Editor’s Note: Cheryl and Kara, who are in the same critique group, both won manuscript awards at this year’s Los Angeles Writers & Illustrators Day. I asked them to share their critique-group-secrets with us because they are definitely doing it right!
We all want the kind of support that keeps us motivated to create and improve our craft. For us, a well-organized critique group was exactly what we needed! Here are four tips we have learned over the last year that will help you to enhance or build the kind of group that fits you as illustrators/authors. Continue reading
