Gareth Hinds's Blog, page 13
December 12, 2010
Gifts From the Gods – cover development
A few weeks ago I delivered the last bits of art for Gifts from the Gods, a hybrid graphic novel / picture book by Lise Lunge-Larsen which I illustrated for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It's about characters from Greek & Roman mythology whose names have persisted as common words or phrases in modern English.
I want to preview some artwork for you, and I thought what I'd do first is to show the process of developing the cover.
Although I had done a few little sketches of cover ideas here and there, nothing could really move forward until we had finalized the title, which took a while. I had previously thought about putting Nemesis or the Furies on the cover, but with the title "Gifts from the Gods" it seemed like maybe we shouldn't put anything too dark or nasty on the cover ("the Gods gave us punishment" is not a good message)! So I started with a clean slate and did a bunch of sketches.
After discussion with my fab editor Ann Rider and designer/art director Scott Magoon, I did another page.
Next, I worked up some of our favorite ideas in color.
We decided on the Zeus sketch on the right, so I printed that sketch out very lightly on a piece of cheap printer paper and did a detailed pencil drawing over it. I scanned that back in, cleaned it up, printed it out on a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper (using my Epson Stylus Photo 2200, which has waterproof ink, unlike my old Canon s9000), and painted over it with watercolor for the final color version.
Here's the final art, with not-quite-final type.
(All images are copyright 2010 by Gareth Hinds, and appear courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)
November 17, 2010
More videos
This is kind of old news now — I thought I'd posted it already — but the Boston Graphic Artists Guild has a bunch of video clips on their YouTube channel from their graphic novel event, at which I did a presentation and participated in a panel.
Link to the first clip. The rest should pop up in the sidebar.
November 15, 2010
Games FAQ
When I do author visits, I talk a bit about my experiences working on video games. Kids often ask me the following questions:
1. What is your favorite game that you worked on? This (cutscene directed by Dan Thron)
2. What is your favorite game of all time? This (grandfather of Rock Band and all music games)
3. Why did you stop working on video games? The short answer is that I never really wanted to make video games, but kids these days do not believe this answer. So I have to explain about the endless unpaid "crunch" overtime, the lack of creative control, the amount of work that gets wasted and thrown away, and the fact that I get really sick of working at a computer all day. Then they ask me if I will ever go back.
November 9, 2010
Reviews
The reviews are in from from pretty much all the major all the major review publications, and The Odyssey has been praised across the board — three starred reviews (Kirkus, Booklist, and The Horn Book), as well as an unexpected mention in The Wall Street Journal. You can see them all on my reviews page, along with recent interviews by Publishers Weekly and Graphic Novel Reporter.
Teachers' Guides
Candlewick has written teachers' guides for Beowulf and The Odyssey, and these are now available on their site. Direct links are as follows:
October 12, 2010
Odyssey Day
The Odyssey is on sale TODAY!! Ask for it at your local (preferably independent) bookstore.
And thank you!
September 15, 2010
Odyssey Samples
Candlewick has posted samples of The Odyssey. They're using this little Flash widget, which you can embed anywhere. Please try it
Note that the actual story doesn't start until page 7.
August 18, 2010
My new project
Did I mention I'm in the middle of working on a new book? For a while I wasn't sure if I should be talking about it on the internet, but it turns out it's not a secret at all, and in fact maybe you can help come up with a good title for it! No royalties will be involved for the winning title, but you will be "in the acks" as they say in the book world (the acknowledgments, that is).
So what is this book? It's a bit of a departure for me, being neither an adaptation, nor truly a graphic novel. ...
August 10, 2010
New Home, New York
My wife and I have relocated to the big apple. We found a nice apartment way up in Washington Heights, and so far we are loving it. The move itself was a ridiculous marathon, so here's hoping we don't have to do that again anytime soon!
I'm back to work, trying to catch up on my schedule, but will try to post some NY drawings soon.
