Honors Program
Fine and Performing Arts Honors
Date of Award
5-2023
Thesis Professor(s)
Jonathan Hounshell
Thesis Professor Department
Digital Media
Thesis Reader(s)
Gregory Marlow
Abstract
The focus of this thesis project was to learn and understand the amount of work that goes into children’s book illustration, as well as bringing the story of another’s to life. “The Escapades of Cat & Dog” was written by my grandfather, George Petrella, to tell the story of my mother and her sibling’s pets going on kooky adventures. The script was given to me back in 2017-2018 not to long after my grandmother, Jane Petrella, passed away due to cancer. The result consists of a 36 page 9 by 9 inch fully illustrated book intended to be the first in an episodic storytelling series similar to “Clifford the Big Red Dog” by Norman Bridwell. The story follows Duke, a charismatic and carefree border collie who loves to explore with his best friend Ruddy, an uptight and serious orange tabby who would rather stay indoors than exit the comfort of his home. The first half of the year consisted of brainstorming and sketching down concepts for the designs of the two characters and deciding the visual direction of the project. The second half consisted of illustrating the pages and formatting everything properly for printing. There are still a few minor things to fix but with a little more time I hope to present this book to my grandfather and work to get it published.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Simmons, Cosette, "“The Escapades of Cat & Dog” The Process of Creating a Children’s Book from Start to Finish" (2023). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 765. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/765
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.