Crowdsourcing illustration ideas for a book

Tri friends,

My name is Brandon.  Haven't been on here in a long while!  I basically burned myself out training for Ironman in 2008.  Hey, I'm still recovering!  Huge respect to folks who keep tackling that challenge.

But I digress... I wrote a children's book called Daddy Tries several years ago. I sent it to dozens of publishers, but none saw the same potential I did.  So after being disheartened and disappointed, I have rekindled my enthusiasm and decided to publish it myself.  I engaged the services of a professional illustrator that is going to make the story come to life.  See her work on Hammer and Nails and you can see why she is doing this project with me!

Sure, I have plenty of ideas about what certain scenes might look like, but I'm just one person.  So I am turning to the collective BT to see what resonates with the very crowd the book is aimed to entertain.  Who knows, you might have the idea for an element or illustration that makes it to the final draft.

To give you an idea of what we're working with, here are a couple early concept sketches.  The plan for illustrations in Daddy Tries is to highlight a child watching and helping a role model (dad) hit his proverbial stride.  Gangly dad turns into fit guy.  Lots of fun moments between the two main characters.  And plenty of opportunities to poke fun at triathletes in a "you know you're a triathlete when" kind of way.  Think excessive amounts of quinoa and nutella in the pantry, a red bike, a car that looks like an official transition zone, and getting in a quick core workout while the kids are at soccer practice.

For example:
My daddy tries a bath with ice. His legs are feeling battered.                                                                                                                                                               I bring him cocoa in the tub.  His teeth just click and chatter.

- what might be going on in the background? what quintessential thing does the triathlete have in the bathroom that makes you chuckle?

I'm documenting progress of the project at Daddy Tries . I set up a FB page as well so I can leak storyboard sketches or thumbnails along the way. I hope there's an interactive feel to it at some point. I hope you might feel like participating in my little humorously insightful quest to make a beautiful book.

If you read this far... thank you very much!!

~B

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