I’m so excited about this! (I know, everybody says that about their Kickstarter project, but I’ve got the excitement chemicals speeding around my system EVEN AT THIS VERY MOMENT.)
Photo from today’s weekly production meeting for The Pedal Turns the Crank. I love Khai’s rough sketches, but the major conceptual breakthrough? That I’ve been banging my head against for months (for years, if you’re counting since I first had the idea that this could be a picture book)?
The scribbles at lower right. Those are the final breakthrough that had to happen.
This whole book is families having bike adventures together, and each spread (spread = left and right page together as one big rectangle) is one family. There’s the mountain bike family, the road bike family, the beach cruiser family, etc. On the last page, they all come together for a big ride.
But just because a kid has learned the chant (“The pedal turns the…CRANK! The crank turns the…CHAINWHEEL! etc.), that doesn’t mean they know what a chainwheel is, or how to recognize one.
I’ve been going with variations of one basic idea, which is simple technical illustrations as spot art on each spread. Pedal. Crank. Then on the next spread: Crank. Chainwheel.
But I got to thinking about how I taught my own kids. I didn’t do that, I got down low with them and put my finger on each thing. Pedal. Crank. Chainwheel. Chain. Sprocket. So could we do something like that at the very end? Just show everything in that way?
And Khai said, Or the center spread.
And there was the thunderbolt:
The center spread (the one that comes halfway through the book) is in comic book form, a series of panels, each showing one of the different bike families taking a break on their journey and the adult showing the kid one drivetrain part.
So each family’s journey is in three pieces: Their own spread, at the start of their journey; one panel of the center comic spread, taking a break during the journey and learning something; and their little part of the big final image, all the cyclists coming together.
And then, on each main family spread, which says, eg, “The chainwheel turns the…CHAIN!” the chainwheel and the chain are red, or have a little glow, or something like that. It’s a Where’s Waldo, with the center comic spread as its key.
This was the LAST THING that had to fall into place.
I love weekly production meetings, I love collaborators that get you excited every time you meet, and I love this book.
Kickstarter pre-launch page. Please follow us! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noteon/the-pedal-turns-the-crank
Keith Snyder 