Welcome to my
monthly interview feature! I’m so excited to be interviewing all the fabulous
artists, illustrators and designers I’ve meet over the years (both personally
and virtually!) and sharing their artwork and experiences here on Bird Meets
Worm. Look for a new interview on the first Tuesday of every month.
This month I’m excited
to be chatting it up with the super fun Illustrator/Designer, Merrill Rainey! Merrill
is a fellow Tugeau2 artist, who has been illustrating and designing for more
than 10 years. He is a 5 ft. 7 in. kid at heart, who uses his youthful memories
of growing up as inspiration to draw his imaginative ideas. A techie geek by
nature, Merrill generates all of his illustrations using a combination of a
Green Pencil, his Modbook, and Adobe Illustrator. His clients include American
Greetings, Hasbro, Highlights Magazine, U.S. Kids Magazines, Picture Window
Books, Pockets Magazine and Scholastic. You can view more of Merrill’s artwork here.
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| Who doesn't love hidden pictures?! Super fun! |
Q: Describe your MOST favorite project you have created: one
in the past and one in the present.
A: Present:
My MOST favorite project to date would
have to be “The Candy Caper” Halloween board game spread I created for the
Sept/Oct 2014 issue of Jack & Jill magazine. Why? Well,
for one, who doesn’t like to create Halloween art?! And two, it brought
back childhood memories of the Halloween books I used to read. I enjoyed
trying to create something that will give others a piece to look back on as a
fun holiday memory as I do with so many entertaining Halloween books such as The Bernstein Bear’s
The Spooky Old Tree or In a Dark, Dark Room. This spread gave me the
opportunity to create that same imaginative excitement I had when I joined the Bears on their spooky adventure through each secret passage
and corridor in that old tree, but this time for the Jack and Jill readers.
Past:
Red Beard the Pirate, was my first
e-book project for Scholastic as well as a game changer in how I create
my illustration work today. This project literally came a few
days after I had thought to myself while walking my dogs, “Man it sure would
be cool to add Scholastic to my client list.” In most cases, this project
would have been a nightmare (having had all of my original sketches tossed
out the door, and being asked to rework everything in a completely different
style)! But it forced me to break out of my creative mold and start
to build my current final art style. Plus,
it didn’t hurt that the e-book was about pirates!
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| Arrgh! Pirates are too cool, Matey! |
Q: You do a lot of artwork for children's magazines that are
chock full of super fun details! Give us the scoop on what is awesome and what
is challenging about creating illustrations for kids magazines.
A: I consider the challenges of
creating work for kids’ magazine to also be what is awesome!!! I love the
challenge of trying to out-do myself with each new piece, especially when
it comes to Puzzle Pages! :-). When that fresh new assignment zooms into my
inbox… I always ask myself, "If I were a kid what would I want to
look at?" Or, "What would the activities be that would keep my
interest?” I then start jotting down those thoughts and the rest is history!
I think the greatest thing about what I
do, is being able to create those memorable reactions and emotions within kids
that will stay with them forever.
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| Octopus! Treasure! Adventure! Fantastic! |
Q: I love the friendly-action-oriented-saturday-morning-cartoon-comic-book
feel to your artwork! Tell us all about who, what, where inspires it.
A: I am heavily influenced by the 80s
Saturday morning cartoons. For a good chunk of my childhood, I would wake
up early (like 5:30am) when only Looney Tunes would be on, and just watch
till noon, flipping between ABC, NBC, and CBS to find the next show. (And
parents don’t worry, I did get my exercise as I had to walk across the
room to either adjust the TV antenna box or change the channel :-) ). But
seriously, Saturday mornings were set aside for pure cartoon love; and
cartoons then were all about having fun. Some might have had educational
values, but what made them so great was how they made your childhood
imagination work.
I am also influenced by the story
telling and character designs of the Rankin & Bass era to other greats like
Charles Schulz, Jim Henson, & Hank Ketcham.
Q: What would be your dream illustration gig?
A: This is hard to say as my mind flips
from one idea to the next, but if I have to choose something, it would be
either getting involved with a graphic novel, or chapter book
series. My boyhood dreams of being able to create my own comic, or book
never die. :-)
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| Puzzlemania!!! |
Q: Chat with us about your experience creating the
"GraveYard Hop" app. What about the project was similar to working
with traditional publishers? What was different?
A: Back in the mid 2000s when it
was cool to customize your folder icons on the MAC. I had created a series
of Halloween character icons for the Apple share/developers market called
the Halloween Friends. They were a huge success and even
were chosen as one of apples top downloads of the week/month. So for years
I wondered what to do with them, and then finally, right before I left my
full-time job to work for myself, I partnered with a past co-worker
of mine to build the first Halloween Friends app. We both had high
hopes that the game would sell well, but like most apps at the time, the market
was just so flooded that things didn’t go as we had planned. Nonetheless,
it was a great learning experience and it allowed the Halloween Friends another
chance at success.
The execution of this work was very
similar to what you would normally experience with traditional
publishers. From character development, to story-boarding out each
game screen/page, to executing the final art. The biggest difference here
was we set our own timeline of when we needed to get things completed and
launched.
Most of what I do runs the
same gamut whether it be a game, a book, or a comic. It just all has
different outcomes!
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| I confess Halloween is my most FAVORITE holiday! |
Q: Describe your most perfect Sunday.
A: I’d wake up early and hunker
down with a fire, a good book(s)/comic(s), and the snow falling
outside. I’d then toss in some family time with the Mrs. and the
kids, then finish off the day with biting into a nice juicy
cheeseburger (with all the toppings) and a plate piled high of fresh-cut fries
with ketchup to dip them in. It's the simple things in life that make
it so great!