Orlando, Florida - July 13, 2022.
Last year, after looking back at the success of my first book Sun Night, I had an aha moment. What if I could illustrate the stories my brother and I used to tell each other at night, those in the book, and more. That is exactly what I set to do since then. This summer, I am finally releasing the first in a series of picture books called When The Sun Came Out At Night.
Getting the book produced was more difficult and extensive than I thought it would be. As a self-published author, I do not have the means that well-known authors and publishers have, so this meant doing a lot of research and learning, on top of all of the work myself. One of the first steps was formalizing the story to fit in a single book format. Once the story was edited and concrete, I began the arduous process of simplifying it to be easily read by children. This was harder than I thought. What do I keep, or take out? There were so many moments that I wanted to highlight but I stayed focused on the story and the main idea of a fantasy world where children can create anything in their minds. This informed my next steps.
Since the stories in Sun Night are so visual, it was difficult to select which scenes to illustrate, but once I had defined the sections to keep in the story, I was able to separate those ideas into individual book spreads. My vision for the book was to fill the page spreads with beautiful scenes depicting the actions described in the story. I created a storyboard document where every page had an area assigned for the copy and the rest for the illustration.
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
I began to research illustrators from around the world while I was laying out the book to save time. I had just come out of designing the Disney enterprise look for the 2021 Hispanic Heritage Month celebration and this inspired me to focus my attention on Latin American artists. I was quickly captivated by Sergio Guillén, an amazing artist from Costa Rica. His illustration work was stellar and very unique. He dominates color and has a very personal aesthetic for building characters and illustrations. One of the reasons I ended up hiring him was his ability to create captivating illustrations that appear as if coming out of the page, as well as his level of detail.
Character Development Drawings and with colors by Sergio Guillén.
The illustration process took many months. Starting with the creation of character models, scene concepts, storyboards, reviews, changes, and final set-ups for each spread and cover art. It was refreshing to collaborate with a talented and experienced illustrator because he really understood the process and the need to relate that this was a work of fantasy. Even though the story has a fantasy element, I wanted the characters to appear real and in a natural environment that would align with where they came from. For that purpose, we focused heavily on documenting specifics about each of the characters. For example, Koa and Elio both have tattoos on their chests, arms, and legs. These tattoos were carefully designed to represent both the infinite love for the family on Koa’s chest and the volcano story on Elio’s chest.
Scene Development drawing by Sergio Guillén shows a lush and dimensional space that creates cinematic depth and interest.
The book setup was important as well. My approach was that it would start at night, with dark pages and as the story progressed, the pages would get filled with more and more bright colors as a way to emphasize the story.
Once the book was ready to get produced, I worked on creating several options, a hardcover 8 x 10 version, a softcover 8 x 8 version, and a set of read-aloud cards. These are to be available only in limited numbers for the original pre-order release of the book. Once the book is released in late July 2022, it will be available in book stores and online in an open edition 8 x 10 hardcover version only.
I would like to thank you for supporting self-published Latino authors and artists. I would also like to thank Sergio and Jim for believing in my dream to help make it a reality.
