When I was doing my cartoon show “Sheep in the Big City,” one of the critiques that a kid wrote to me was, “It looks like you’re trying too hard.” That really rocked my world, because I couldn’t think of another industry where that would be a problem. You would never say that about your plumber, for instance. “I like him, but he really spends all day plumbing. You know? He doesn’t take a break. He doesn’t have a cigarette. I don’t know if I quite trust that.” But in entertainment, you want it to look as if it’s effortless.
So, I spend a lot of time simplifying my line and simplifying my books, so that they can be as effortless-seeming as possible. For example, in Knuffle Bunny, all the backgrounds are photographs; but they’re not actually photographs, you see, because there’s an emotional truth. Everyone’s eyes do us this great favor. They hide all of the ugly stuff. They work as a beauty filter.
When I took these photographs, my neighborhood didn’t look as good as it looked to me when I’m walking down the street, because there are air conditioners coming out of these Victorian buildings. There are garbage cans everywhere. There is trash. All this stuff is very distracting to the reality of the street, and it’s not how those streets felt. So, I spent an inordinate amount of time getting rid of that stuff.
I had to make sure that I got rid of it in a way that you would never notice. So, the digital files on those photographs are huge, but they look like snapshots. That’s the sort of effort that goes into a book. Again, if the reader notices it, you’ve failed.
