Nick & Nack's Adventures
- Dino Jet Pilot
- Jan 6
- 2 min read
This gem of a time capsule was discovered hidden on a shelf in the art room. Quietly buried between a stack of old sketchbooks, this project was almost forgotten because it was done when the oldest boys were much, much younger. Around that time, we would read picture books to them each night. This sparked the idea to have a little project where we write and illustrate a simple short story, primarily driven by the kids' humorous and creative imagination.
Sketchbook Stories
The premise was simple: a short story in the form of a picture book, featuring a single image and short text for each page. The text wouldn't be more than 1-3 lines, and would need to be simple enough for the kids to be able to read read.
Around this time the kids were also incredibly interested in all things dragons, especially after the first How to Train Your Dragon came out. In the movie, The Dragon Manual was a creative way to build in lore to the story, and so it inspired some elements of this short story by having the kids come up with their own types of dragons with unique names.
The only part not created by the kids were the main characters: Sir Nicholas, or Nick, and his best friend (who was a dragon), Nack. I always liked the word "nick-nacks" because it sounded fun, had a bit of alliteration, and implied playful things. All of this conveyed the feeling of what the story was meant to be. So concept and sketchbook in hand (literally), we created the story of Nick and Nack one page at a time.
Digital Version:
Some of the latter pages in the story were even completely written and drawn by the kids.
The original story was hand drawn and written in the sketchbook together. The gallery below shows how the pages actually looked in the sketchbook when the story was made.
