Sacramento Press Local illustrator's first children's book .

I've been a professional illustrator for the preceding 15 days and have been capable to go on a broad diversity of interesting projects for the likes of The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal, The Onion and NY Press among others. For the past 2 days my wife and I have lived here in Sactown after 10 years of life in Manhattan. New York is a fun site to go though by the end of my time there I was kicking cabs out of the focus and defeat of our hectic surroundings.

Luckily my wife's work brought us to the Sacramento which was a hint of new air for us. Throughout that time I've ever wanted to do one case of illustration work but had never gotten my foundation in the door: children's books. That changed this past winter when I was contacted by an old college friend Amiee White Beazley who'd had a book proposal excepted by People's Press of Woody Creek Colorado. Her level was divine by the holocene and incredible ice-age fossil finds in Snowmass Colorado. After a work crew which was expanding a source there discovered a large tusk sticking out of the mud, scientists discovered perhaps the greatest chance of ice-age fossils in the country. Fossils of mastodons, mammoths, sloths, ice-age beavers, ice-age bison and even evidence of salamanders were unearthed. Amiee, along with her 6 year old son Tanner were inspired to come up with a floor of a young mastodon who embarks on a snow-day adventure with her acquaintance the sloth.

Image by: Paul Antonson

That's when I got into the picture. Amiee contacted me in February and the publisher asked us to take the picture complete by early June. It was a fraction of the time normally alloted to assemble a kids story so we quickly got to work. Three months of furious sketching, drawing, painting and photoshopping ensued (as good as lots of drafts of the story) and by early June our book had come together - we called it: Snowmastodon! Snow Day Adventure

Sloth and Snowmastodon: prehistoric shredders (Image by: Paul Antonson)

The idea of the book revolves around friendship and acheiving goals with the assistance of pals, but my favorite aspect is the exploration and risk in the outdoors. I'm a big fan of snowboarding and spending time in the mountains and we were able to interweave these idea's into our tale. Something else I'm very tender of inside the word is the endpapers which are traditionally white or a strong color. But I love creating patterns and our publisher was back to let me try one based our our characters. I remember it worked out easily and often get comments that we should create pajama's or wrap paper based off of it.

Endpapers for 'Snowmastodon!' (Image by: Paul Antonson)

I've begun approaching local bookstores to see if they'd like to bear the book. I've also created a preview for the book, with an accompanying song by my brother James which can be viewed here:http://www.vimeo.com/26630413.