The Pedal Turns the Crank: Scribble breakthrough!

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

The Pedal Turns the Crank, Week 2 Buzz: Rando!

Khai showing off his notes from Friday’s weekly production meeting at the Danbury Hackerspace (where I base my print/ebook design company, Typeflow).

One of the throughlines in our Kickstarter kids’ picture book, The Pedal Turns the Crank, will be diversity of all kinds, with the common thread that everyone loves bicycles (and loves their families).

That means different kinds of families, different kinds of backgrounds, different kinds of locations, and everybody having adventures on bikes, with adults watching out for the children (who are the stars).

It also means different bike cultures. We’re not letting ourselves nail down exactly which bike cultures will be most featured yet (and there’s a big final spread where some of the things we couldn’t fit elsewhere can be allowed to flower), but what you’re looking at above is Khai’s notes from Friday’s weekly production meeting, showing our ideas for a rando spread!

“Rando” is (in the tiny little niche sport of randonneuring) short for “randonneuring.” It’s my sport, and I love it beyond reason. It’s endurance cycling over very long distances, self-supported (no follow vehicles, and rules about what kind of help you can and can’t get), and against the clock – but not racing. There’s a route you have to cover within a certain number of hours, checking in along the way at “controls” (checkpoints) along the way, which you have to reach within certain time windows.

One of the common types of control is a convenience store, where either you get a receipt (its timestamp will prove what time you were there) or have someone (the clerk, a club volunteer) sign and timestamp your “brevet card,” which you have to carry through the whole event.

The illustration we landed on is all about one of those convenience stores – likely a WaWa, though we probably can’t be explicit about that for trademark reasons – at 2am, where a rowdy little tribe of kid randonneurs is regrouping under the supervision of their adult(s), throwing away food wrappers, buying snacks, getting their brevet cards signed, lining up at the bathroom, taking naps on the concrete, and all the other things randos (and other children) do at convenience stores.

I originally had a different location in mind – a dirt road along a cornfield – but collaborating with Khai brought out a way better idea. We both love the visual element of headlight and taillight beams shining along the rough surfaces of walls and fences, where the bikes have been leaned. This is one of the little things I love when night riding, and he’s all about little insider details that will make the painting special.

KICKSTARTER UPDATE

The official Kickstarter page is under construction, still needs a video, a tight budget, rewards really nailed down, etc. Which is all lurching along, and will go live when I’ve got it all together. Until then, I’ll keep doing weekly “pre-launch buzz” blog posts after each production meeting, and I really hope you’ll keep checking in.