The Making of The Book

Part 1: THE ORIGIN OF STICKY BURR

Sticky Burr began life in my own backyard. As a child, we had sticky burrs that always grew at the end of the yard, near the apple tree. They were fascinating, and always stuck with me. Years later as an adult, I thought it would be fun to turn them into characters, so I started drawing Sticky Burr in my notebooks, and the drawings turned into stories. I began writing a comic strip of his adventures, and just for fun I put it online, adding a new chapter every month.

This is one of the original Sticky Burr cartoon pages. FableVision, the media company that I worked for, had a section of their website devoted to stories and games for kids, and they allowed me to run my comic strip there each month. It was a great way to test out audience reaction, and the feedback was enthusiastic from kids and adults alike. Working on the monthly comic helped me develop my visual storytelling skills, and allowed me to develop the characters slowly over time.

The success of the comic strip inspired me to create other Sticky Burr online features, such as a character page, a map, and an interactive game, which I designed and programmed myself. (All these things are still available on this website, in updated form.)

When I didn't have enough time to draw the comic strip each month, I began Sticky Burr's online journal, just jotting down random thoughts about his life in the forest. It was a great way to explore his character, and when it came time to create the book, I used the journal pages to expand upon the story.

Being an animtor as well as an illustrator, I wanted to see how the world of Burrwood Forest would look as an animation. And since Sticky Burr himself is a musician (and I've always been a fan of musicals) I decided to create an animated theme song for him. I collaborated with my brother Tony Lechner, a composer and muscian, to write the song. He then recorded the song (singing all the voices himself), and I created the animation, which you can see here. It took about six months to finish, but it was great fun.

I was developing all of these projects in my free time, outside of my full-time job, and getting very positive feedback from all sides. So after the release of my first picture book A Froggy Fable, I approached Candlewick Press with the idea of turning this strange, prickly world into a book.

Part 2, THE EVOLUTION OF A BOOK

So, how do you transform all this into a book? I had lots of raw ingredients – a cast of characters, an adventure story, a colorful setting, and several notebooks full of ideas. And there were many questions to answer: what format should the book take? What age is it for? Should it use comic panels to tell the story, or follow a more traditional layout?

I wrote many, many drafts of the story. I first tried telling the story in a traditional picture book format, with full-page illustrations – but everyone agreed that much of the action and spirit of the original comic strip was lost. So I reinstated the comic book panels, an approach that was more risky but also more true to my artistic vision.

Throughout every draft, the heart of the story was always the main character of Sticky Burr – persecuted and maligned by the other burrs, he is cast out of the village, and winds up proving his own worth in a series of adventures. The idea of the misfit hero who is persecuted by his own people, and only finds reward by venturing afield, is a well-worn theme in literature, and I tried to give it a whimsical spin, keeping the tone light and breezy. This was never meant to be a weighty or profound book, but an entertaining yarn, a fun book to read.

The journal pages were interspersed throughout the story as a way to further develop the main character and his thoughts, since the action of the story left little room for exposition. Anyone who has drawn a comic book knows it's not as easy as it looks, and there is a delicate balance between words and pictures that is difficult to maintain. I used the journal pages strategically to break up the story, alter the pacing, and play with time. And also to develop a "world" around these characters, one which extended beyond the main storyline.

When the story and sketches finally came together (and the text revised yet some more), then began the final layout and typesetting, and finally the colored illustrations. I sketched and inked the drawings on paper, then painted them with watercolors. I drew the word balloons on separate pages, so they could be scanned and positioned independently.

Everything was put together by the amazing designers and production artists at Candlewick. Special care was taken with every detail, from the scanned-in paper textures to the different typefaces. We wanted to make a book that was not only fun to read, but visually stimulating. The song on the final page was an extra piece to close out the book, which I wrote myself.

And there you have it – the making of the book! It was a challenge from start to finish, and I hope audiences enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.