Extremely Cute Animals Operating Heavy Machinery - Hardcover

Gordon, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416924418 ISBN 13: 9781416924418

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2016

Synopsis

Just because you’re extremely cute, doesn’t mean you can’t operate a bulldozer! From author-illustrator David Gordon comes a fun, funny, and whimsical take on believing in yourself and telling bullies who’s boss!

Karen and the other extremely cute animals just want to build sand castles. But the terribly mean bullies Skyler, Mike, and Trent keep knocking them down! So Karen and her friends get another idea. They’ll build something the bullies can’t knock down, something even bigger and better than a sand castle...

It’s a good thing being excessively cute doesn’t prevent you from operating heavy machinery!

About this title

Review

Before and After with David Gordon

I sketched out the whole spread on the computer using my large Cintiq tablet. I wanted to show all the characters together in one spread, the bullies being mean, and the Extremely Cute Animals looking shocked.

But I realized that the spread was really about bullies being bullies, so I made them front and center, the Cute Animals in the distant background.

I had to show Extremely Cute Animals unloading steel beams from a truck, measuring, and acetylene-torch cutting, and then placing them with a crane, elegantly, all in one spread.

I then painted the small spot illustrations full size in a separate file, reduced, and placed them on the left page.

This was probably the most difficult spread. All the detail in the rollercoaster lattice in the far background muddled the detail of all the other rides, making the whole spread look too busy.

Every element—ferris wheel, ornate gold fence, sand castle, trees, tents, animals—I made in a separate layer and then tweaked until the whole thing held together.

From the Author

David Gordon has done visual development for numerous production companies from Lucasfilm to Pixar, including Toy Story; Monsters, Inc.; A Bug’s Life; Cars; BlueSky’s Robots; and Nickelodeon’s Spongebob Squarepants. He’s also written and illustrated several picture books, among them Hansel and Diesel, The Three Little Rigs, The Ugly Truckling, and Smitten. He’s one of the illustrators of Jon Scieszka’s fifty-two-book, New York Times bestselling series, Trucktown. Visit him at IllustratorRanch.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1416924418
• ISBN 13: 9781416924418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 48
• Illustrator: Gordon David