Mackenzie Blue Book 3: Three times the drama, three times the fun... three times the work!

Mackenzie (Zee) & the gang.

The last two and a half months were pretty intense, but I FINALLY completed my illustration duties for Mackenzie Blue's 3rd installment, Mackenzie Blue: Friends Forever? It was fun to draw but it feels AWESOME to be done. Out of all 3, this book had the most illustrations so far. 71 in total, not counting the sticker elements I design for the front cover (which added up to 17 individual pieces). Since all the drawings were already designed (and approved by HarperCollins), I'm pretty much just tracing over everything for the final art phase. At this stage, after round the 50th illustration or so, it becomes more of an endurance test than anything else! And now that I've got Disney as my 9-5 on the weekdays, pumping out 70+ illustrations became even more challenging.

Still, the illustrations for this book may be my favorite bunch so far. In this story, Mackenzie Blue and her friends all go camping so there was more opportunity to draw the kids in action, and environmental stuff, to give the art more of an outdoors feel. Due to time constraints, I don't usually get to read the entire story until it officially becomes a book, but from what I did read, it was pretty entertaining.

So yeah, I'm done! And it feels GREAT. Now that I only have 1 job to contend with, what am I gonna do with the rest of my time?? I'm thinking of starting up a new hobby, like sleeping or maybe even getting a social life...

~