iloveyoubecauseyouarelove

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some animal concept art i did for mercy tfp @emperor-kumquat

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Throwback to when I took painkillers and woke up with Photoshop open on my computer to this image I had made

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This is my unethical polycule. The nonmonogamy is consensual and negotiated we're just evil in other ways.

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i will give tiktok one concession and that is that it has spawned a comment that contains a phrase that i think of often at relevant moments: pack it up boys we've made a social blunder

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ladies and gentlemen i present to you the bffs. the buy 1 get 2 combo. toph and aang

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I think one of my favorite creative joys is seeing how many different things people can do with the same concept. give ten writers the same starting point, or basic plot, or set of tropes to use and you're still going to get wildly different end results

the details you focus on, the ones you omit, turns of phrase, tone, and framing, the cadence and tempo of the sentences themselves, all the little fingerprints you've left littered across the prose — how you tell the story matters, and your personal voice is what makes it unique

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Today's Seal Is: Tropical

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thinking abt this tweet again

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I love baseball

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Documenting the local dragons Twitter I Instagram

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The 7-11 dragon laid her eggs! 

You can watch the process of this painting under the story highlight “Process 20″ on my Instagram!

Twitter I Instagram

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The arcade dragon’s lair 🌟 How many characters can you spot?

Twitter I Instagram

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The great dragon migration

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The Avatar State

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Congratulations on your author debut, I'm so excited for your book!! 😇💕

Would you consider talking about the whole process of becoming a book illustrator /children's book author?

Thank you so much, I really appreciate it!! And I'd be happy to share the process!

It all started for me with my 3dTotal artbook. 3dTotal is a small publisher in the UK, and they mainly focus on collections of artists' work. They use Kickstarter to fund each book, and my agent (the amazing Seth Fishman at Gernert) discovered me through the Kickstarter for my artbook Windows to Worlds!

He asked if I had any interest in working on graphic novels or picture books, and I had already been thinking about picture books! He found me my first picture book project with Penguin Workshop, Mother of Sharks, written by the awesome Melissa Cristina Márquez, which came out last year!

While I was working on Mother of Sharks, I was also talking with him about developing The Bakery Dragon, based of course on this painting, which was (and is) one of my proudest artistic moments.

For a little background on the painting, I painted it right after a really challenging couple of months medically - I was dealing with medical complications from my chronic illness for about 6 months, and I wasn't able to finish a single painting the whole time, I was just too exhausted from hospital visits and being in pain. That painting was the first piece I was able to actually complete (both emotionally and literally) in about half a year. So it always held a really special place in my heart, and I really wanted to keep living in that little world. I think there's something in it that is very special to me, about being outside in the cold, seeing warmth and love through a glass barrier, and wanting desperately to reach it.

With Seth's guidance, over a couple months, I developed a pitch for it. The script developed slowly alongside the designs for characters, locations, etc.

(Early version of Ember above! He has changed a bit!)

I thought I had already read a lot of picture books, I've always loved them, but I read hundreds and hundreds during this process. There is something uniquely fun and challenging about telling a complete narrative in 48 pages (which is already a long picture book, many are 32!) My book also pulls some elements from comics, such as speech bubbles, which I found to be incredible assets for humor and character development.

My pitch included designs, some early example spreads, and a rough script with story beats and jokes! My agent took it out into the world, and the publisher we ended up going forward with was Knopf, an imprint of Penguin Random House! I absolutely love the Knopf team and the beautiful books they put out! My editor, Katherine Harrison, really understood what I wanted to accomplish and has been so incredibly helpful in her guidance!

And from there... through rewrites, dialog adjustments, and lots and lots of drawings, it became a book! I'm happy to answer questions about the process! I'll leave you guys with a little preview from the interior of the book! (And of course you can pre-order it here, gotta learn the author skill of always including that link haha!)

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Shoreline Procession