My First Story for FarFaria

FarFaria is a recently launched storybook app for the iPad.  In early January I was contacted by one of their Art Directors who had seen my online portfolio on the SCBWI site.  To make a long story short, after a nice phone call from their CEO, I was hired to do illustrations for one of their projects. I began work on the story at the end of January and finished it about 5 weeks later.  The app was launched on February 14th and my first story, "The Magic Fish," was published last week.

After they sent me the manuscript, I was asked to do a series of thumbnail storyboard sketches plus a color sketch of the main characters.  Once these were approved, I proceeded with the final art.  For the final art, FarFaria provided me with a template and detailed instructions on how the art needed to be set-up for their app's layout.

Here is one of the thumbnail sketches and then a cleaned up version that I prepared for the final art.

Here is the sketch that I submitted to show the characters and my color scheme.  The first draft of the manuscript that I received had the fish changing color as the story progressed.  After some revisions, it was decided to have the fish remain the same color throughout. 

Below is the final version of the art that is shown in the sketches at the top.  I created the final art using Corel Painter 11. This scene takes place after the fisherman has returned for the second time to ask the Magic Fish for a favor for his greedy wife. Each time he returns to the fish, the sea and the winds have gotten rougher.

The top image shows the illustration with the template turned on.  The shaded area around the edges is a padding area which is like the 'bleed' area for a printed page.  the white space in the lower half of the image is where the text will be dropped in.  The main part of the image needed to be visible in the upper half of the image above the white area and not be hidden by any of the shaded areas.  The bottom image shows the illustration with the template layers turned off.