Working on characters and illustrations

I have received feedback from friends and family that "Millicent Marbleroller..." needs illustrations. I did not illustrate the first edition (other than the cover) just because of the volume of work entailed. I found just doing the cover artwork to be pretty difficult.

The hardest part is visualizing the characters. Millicent was very difficult because I wanted to capture a very "every-girl" look without making her boring. This meant I had to be really subtle with the caricature, and yet not fall into the trap of typical illustration cliche's that make the character unrecognizable.

The easiest character to illustrate was the villain, Admiral Algernon Crackerhead. He is meant to be unusually tall and thin, with an arrogant, vain expression. I picture all the main male characters in the book having a very 19th century look about them - stylized hair, sideburns, pointed goatees, etc. Imagine a bunch of explorers sitting around an 1800's adventuring social club, or posing for pictures about on safari and you get the idea. The clothing, as well, is very late 19th century. I guess you could copy the look of the villain in Series of Unfortunate Events and you would have the Admiral pretty close.

I always had a pretty good picture in my mind of the General, but have found him difficult to draw. I picture sort of a cross between Teddy Roosevelt (think of the enormous grin) and Colonel Sanders, but throw in enormous mutton chop sideburns. There is a lot of 18th century advertizing art characters that fit the bill.

Mumbleskull is a pretty easy character to visualize. I picture him as a short, round faced man, balding on top, with wild white hair sticking out to the sides. His sleeves are almost too long for his arms. Pleasant, funny little old man face.

Nobbins is the one that gives me the most difficult. I don't even have a visual of him in my head. I can picture the body form (almost like Bluto in Popeye, or maybe a Paul Bunyon, John Henry style physique), but just cannot picture the face. My daughter Aimee says she imagines him looking like Jamie from the TV show Mythbusters (tall guy, bald, wears a beret). That might work, if Jamie had a large barrel chest and were a bit more gruff and scary.

I will scan my sketches in and upload a few as soon as I get a chance.