This book is a little different than other projects that I have worked on in the past. Since there really isn't any dialog, I started with a basic action breakdown of what was going to happen. As you can see, I didn't really care about spelling or legibility, I just wanted to get all of my ideas down so I can begin figuring out how I am going to layout the book. I also did lots of little thumb nails like the one on the top of the page just so I can figure out how I could layout the school best for the visual gags. After all of this, I typed out an official action breakdown in script form so Silverline's fabulous editor, Kristen Simon ,and publisher extraordinaire, Jim Valentino, could approve it.

After breaking the back of the story, I started thinking more about the art. Again, this book is a little different because the background basically stays the same from page to page. So before I began sketching characters, I worked on the layout of the school. So I started with this really basic sketch just so I could get the layout strait.

Once I got the layout done, I sketched out each room separately.

Once I got all of this done, I scanned each sketch and imported them all into adobe Illustrator. Illustrator made the whole process of this book incredibly efficient because I could edit the background and insert the characters much faster. So here is a clean "hero" pic of the background I completed first before I began concentrating on the character work.

Again, this book is a little different than my last one "The Floor is Lava". In that book I sketched out and fully illustrated one page at a time. This book was different because the background stayed somewhat consistent throughout the book depending on what the character actions were. So because of this, I really worked on multiple pages at the same time, concentrating on each little story one at a time. So, I sketched out and fully illustrated all of the character separately and inserted them into each page. The whole process was very similar to my flash animation work. I had a stage, and I inserted the characters and "animated" them. Here are some of those sketches.

And here is a final completed page. SOOO, there you have it. The only thing it's missing is a little friend for my happy tree. I will have to remember that next time.

Jeremy R. Scott
www.jeremyrscott.com

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