INTERVIEW| Maxwell Eaton III, children’s author, talks shop

Maxwel Eaton III and his fiancée, Kristin Sadue, pose for the cameras during a recent visit to Canton, N.Y.

Maxwell Eaton III, our very good friend and children’s author whose work we’ve mentioned previously, took some time to answer some questions about how he writes, draws and produces his colorful and charming books.

Eaton, 27, is a 2004 graduate of St. Lawrence. His first book, “The Adventures of Max and Pinky: Best Buds,” debuted in 2007. Published by Knopf, the book and its two sequels, “Superheroes,” (2007) and “The Mystery,” (2008), star Max, a curious and adventurous young boy and his best friend, Pinky, a pig with a penchant for marshmallows. Eaton, who works from a Tucson, Ariz. studio, has a number of other projects on his docket, with two books set to debut next year and the year after.

Q: Max is often compared to Charlie Brown and Calvin. Obviously Watterson is a big influence. Is Schulz? What other comic strips do you admire and follow? Why?

A: The whole Charlie Brown similarity was something I hadn’t even thought of until the first book was out and parents started emailing me telling me how much they loved “Peanuts” when they were kids. For a while I thought “Peanuts” corporate was forwarding emails to me by mistake. I guess I hadn’t even thought of “Peanuts,” because I grew up in its dwindling years. At the age of nine or ten it was one of the few comics I skipped over along with “Rex Morgan MD” and “Cathy.” Maybe if I’d been born five or ten years later when they started running “Peanuts Classics” it would have clicked a bit more. Either way, it was “Calvin and Hobbes” and “The Far Side” for me. Both pretty standard favorites for most people. But the comic strip format taught me a lot about working within an extremely rigid format and using it to get the most out of a joke or story. Using frames to pace and reveal. Comics definitely have more limitations than your standard children’s book, but when you’re trying to cram a story into thirty-two pages you still learn a lot about working within boundaries. Good grief.

As far as comics I admire and follow? I think Darby Conley’s “Get Fuzzy” is about the best thing going and one of the few that make me laugh. Stephen Pastis’ “Pearls Before Swine” is another favorite. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of new talent have the impossible task of squeezing out the old dinosaurs, most of which are written by committee. But that’s true in any industry.

Q: We know that you’re a big fan of charcoal. Is that your favorite medium? If not, what is?

A: Charcoal has always been a favorite, but it doesn’t translate as nicely to the printed page as my usual style of illustration. My books are all done in pen and ink on a very small scale and then colored digitally. The illustrations in the books are probably twice as large as the original art. Of course, this isn’t a great combination with my condition the medical community refers to as “a case of the shaky hands.” But it’s always worth the sore hand when the day is done.

Q: We know about the product, but we don’t necessarily know too much about the production. How does a page of one of your books come to fruition? Spare no mundane technical details.

A: Mundane and mendacious. Here we go!

When first developing a story I stick to the word processor. I’ve found it’s a lot easier to shift a story around, add pages, remove pages, expand pages, etc., when it’s just a line of text on the computer. A large part your energy is spent getting the story to fit within the basic thirty-two page format. Of course, thirty-two pages includes every surface of the book. So right away you knock off the front cover, endpaper, title page, copyright/dedication page, rear endpaper and back cover. That leaves you with twenty-six pages of actual story space to work with. So getting a story to fit can be tricky. Working on the computer makes this a lot easier. When you add or remove a page you can immediately see how it bumps up or pushes back all of the following page and how that changes which pages can be spreads and where something can or can’t be revealed by a turn of the page. This is where children’s stories are more like dealing with sonnets than books. Here’s what a story looks like when I’m typing it:

3. Title Page
4. Copyright/Dedication
5. Max and Pinky are going to paint the barn.
6-7. (Spread) They work hard all day long…
Chuck: You missed a spot.
Turtle: Look I’m a “painted” turtle.
Bird covered in white paint looking at friend: That’d better be paint.
8. and finish just before it gets dark.
Chuck: Fantastic.
9. Morning comes. What will Max and Pinky do today?
(groundhogs sleeping on Max).

Pages that appear side-by-side are lumped together and dialogue and written cues help me when I start illustrating.

The next step is sketching. This is done with a good ol’ Dixon Ticonderoga pencil and a stack of obsolete letterhead or used computer paper. I don’t like using anything better at this point because it’s important that I still don’t feel too attached to any artwork and keep it in the story just because I like how it turned out or because it’s on a nice piece of paper. Here’s an uncharacteristically neat sketch:

Once the sketching is done and I finally have something resembling a functioning story, I scan it into Photoshop and e-mail it to my editor in the form of about 14 .jpeg files. I’m close to caving in and buying Acrobat so that the book can be sent in one neat file. But for now I’ll blame the recession.

My editor usually prints out the story, goes over it with my designer, runs it by colleagues, discusses it at editorial meetings and finally sits down, gets out the ol’ Random House Children’s Books stationery and writes me an editorial letter with her thoughts about where the story can be improved and all that good stuff. These can run anywhere from two pages to 12 depending on what shape the story is in. I think it’s the opposite of job offers and college acceptances. You want the Fedex guy to hand you a thin envelope.

After receiving the editorial letter I spend time thinking and reworking the story, often typing it all up again on the computer in order to give myself some distance and keep from getting attached to certain jokes or nicely drawn chickens. But then it’s back to the pile of computer paper, drawing and redrawing, scanning and emailing, calling and being put through to voicemail, and then drawing some more until a draft is approved and we can “move to final art.” That’s my favorite order. It would be nice if they’d send me a telegram with those words on it. Then I could open the door, receive it, turn around, and dramatically tell the dog, “We’re moving to final art.” Here are a couple of steps that the previous sketch went through before approval. A lot of it is changes to dialogue.

So “Move to final art” means that I get out some nine- by 12-inch sheets of smooth Strathmore Bristol (it’s got a nice bright white finish good for scanning and the ink doesn’t bleed much) and redraw all of the pages in the correct proportions. These then get inked over, and I leave the narrative text in pencil. It’ll be replaced by my designer with typed up text. Any last minute characters or dialogue I’d like to add after it’s already been inked are drawn in the margins for placement once it’s on the computer. Here’s what a final drawing looks like before switching the process over to the computer:

This always receives a disappointed “Oh” at school visits.

At this point I scan it into Photoshop in grayscale at 300 dpi and scaled at about 160 percent depending on the size of the hardcopy illustration and the final trim size of the book. In Photoshop I spend a lot of time cleaning up the lines, removing elements, mistakes and pen bobbles, and adding characters or dialogue from the margins. I then darken everything to a gray as it’s much more forgiving when filling in colors later on and doesn’t end up looking as “digital” in the final product. I call these files “grays,” but that’s just me. I learned everything I know about Photoshop cutting vinyl lettering and stencils at my dad’s old awning shop. Here’s what a gray looks like:

Once the artwork is all cleaned up I switch over to CMYK mode. The printer that produces books uses a process involving Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black inks, so I use a standardized CMYK color chart to figure out what colors to use. It’s important (but difficult) to put all of your trust in the color chart and not your computer screen. Computers use an RGB color scheme, and what you see on the screen might not be what you get off the printer around the block in China. So every character, tree and mud puddle gets assigned its own sort of color formula. For instance, Pinky is 40 percent magenta. Max’s skin is 30 percent magenta, 70 percent yellow. The grass is 80 percent cyan, 100 percent yellow. Here’s what a page looks like all colored:

Each page is then saved as a .tiff file, and after looking over all thirty-two pages thoroughly (I always miss filling in the loop in Pinky’s tail), I send it off to my editor and designer. The .tiff files are huge and a set of illustrations usually tops out at a gigabyte so we use a mass transit site like yousendit.com to send the files. It always feels good to get these boogers out the door and off the desktop, and it’s especially nice because it’s usually a payday as the second half of advances are paid out on delivery of final art. A red-letter day for a struggling children’s book author.

With the illustrations now sitting comfortably on the ninth floor of 1745 Broadway, it becomes the job of my designer to take what I’ve created and give it the final touches that really class up a story. She lays everything out, adds text, designs the jacket and flaps and a million other things that make a book a book. Often, the publisher will request a few proofs from the printer to make sure certain colors are going to turn our correctly. This is one of only a few more slight chances you get to make any changes. When the designer’s job is done, the book takes form at the printer.

Every 32-page picture book consists of two of these sheets (printed front and back) and a sheet with the jacket. But before it’s bound you receive what’s called a Folded and Gathered copy or F&G. This is simply the trimmed and assembled book before it’s glued to the boards and bound. It’s used as a final proof (although you really don’t want to be making changes at this point) and is distributed to reviewers, publications, librarians and booksellers for marketing purposes.

Finally, about a month before the official publication date you get a box of the final product in the mail. This really is the best part about making a book. There’s nothing like pulling a crisp copy out of the box, smelling it, feeling its weight in your hands seeing what it looks like spine-out on a shelf. Of course, at this point you’d better be half-way through your next book and have contracts for more or you’re probably falling behind. Just thinking about this is getting me stressed out. Next question!

Q: Who do you write and draw for? Who do you see as your audience? What kinds of reactions have you gotten from readers? Are their MaxHeads out there?

A: Max and Pinky’s official age group is 4 to 8, I think. But I’m constantly amazed to receive emails and letters from high school kids, college kids and adults who enjoy them as well. However, when I write a Max and Pinky, or any of the books I’m working on, I don’t think about an audience. I just try to write a story that I find funny. If the story entertains me and I enjoy writing it then chances are it will click with other people. Hopefully kids. I had initially thought that Max and Pinky would skew more towards boys (and I definitely have a file full of fan drawings of Max and Pinky holding guns and swords), but I seem to get just as much feedback from girls, which is great. My sober half, Kristin, likes to remind me that I don’t have a single female character in any of my books, but I am working on future stories about female characters. Of course, I’ve also heard from a few parents that my books should include more religion. More religion? I didn’t know there was any in them at all. The important thing is to simply write what I enjoy and what comes naturally to me. Otherwise I’m just pandering to children or their parents and it’s the most obvious thing in the world and hardly sustainable. I don’t think you could make a career of it. At least I hope not. Maybe a series about a Pandering Panda? Eh. For now I’ve hitched my wagon to the Sarcastic Seal.

Q: What lies ahead for Max and Pinky? We know a new project is in the works. What can you tell us about it?

A: Nothing immediately in the works for the pig and the bald kid. My next book is “Two Dumb Ducks” and will be out a year from now. It’s about two ducks, Steve and Carl, who are being tormented by a group of unruly seagulls. Here are just a few of the elements: aluminum can castles, soggy sock puppets, and slimy pond muck. It’s going to be good. Probably my favorite. The hard part has been not falling into the trap of your conventional duck/seagull story.

Then, in the summer of 2011, it’s the release of the first two “Flying Beaver Brother” novels for a slightly older crowd. They’re about a couple of beavers that surf, ski, skydive and stop the diabolical plans of say … penguins? For some reason my bad guys are always birds. Maybe they don’t elicit a lot of sympathy. Anyway, those should just be the first of what I hope are many Beaver Brother graphic novels.

Q: Do you see yourself trying a project that might attract the same sorts of readers as Hergé’s Tintin series does? Or something even more adult, perhaps along the lines of Eric Chase Anderson’s “Chuck Dugan is AWOL?”

A: In between picture books and my current projects, I’ve been working on a graphic novel that would be aimed more at the young adult market, although I think they’d entertain any age group. That’s all I’ll say for now as this sucker isn’t official yet, but hopefully you’ll be hearing more about it soon.

For more on Eaton’s work, visit the official Max and Pinky Web site and explore the author’s blog.