| 00:00 | (music playing)
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| 00:05 | Ed Emberley: Not everybody has to be an artist.
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| 00:08 | The big thing is feeling good about yourself.
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| 00:11 | That's more important than the art part.
|
| 00:18 | I have made lions and
chickens out of thumbprints.
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| 00:21 | I have cut circles in pieces and put
them back together to make pictures of
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| 00:26 | birds and flowers and things like that.
|
| 00:29 | I have made a little red bird.
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| 00:30 | You make a half circle for the body,
put a triangle at one end, a circle at the
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| 00:34 | other end, another triangle for the beak
sticking out front, a little dot for an
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| 00:38 | eye, and two little spindly legs.
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| 00:40 | I can make a bird that way and
probably so can lots of people,
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| 00:43 | including children.
|
| 00:48 | Everyone who likes my
books is like me in some way.
|
| 00:52 | If you like my books, you've never met me?
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| 00:55 | There is something about you that's just
like me, and that's the person I can speak to.
|
| 01:02 | If I try to speak to
everybody, I speak to nobody.
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| 01:05 | I only can speak to the Ed
Emberleys there are in the world.
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| 01:08 | Whether they are girls or boys, whether
they are grown up or small, my duty is
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| 01:14 | to present me out to the other me's
in the world, and that's what I do.
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| 01:20 | (music playing)
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| 01:34 | My name is Ed Emberley.
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| 01:36 | Both my work and my fun are combined in one.
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| 01:39 | I write and illustrate books for children.
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| 01:42 | And I have illustrated, over the past
number of years, about a hundred books.
|
| 01:51 | The reason I do children's books,
when I started working, I decided that I
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| 01:56 | would do something to please me, and at the same
time would not try to analyze why it pleased me.
|
| 02:03 | Does it please me because it
brings me memories of child? Perhaps.
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| 02:08 | Mostly it's a visceral, inside reaction.
|
| 02:12 | When I look through the children's books,
I just listen to this voice, and the
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| 02:15 | voice said, "I would like to do that,"
and that was the end of the conversation.
|
| 02:23 | I don't like to work the same way all the time.
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| 02:26 | I would prefer to
experiment with different materials.
|
| 02:29 | I find that when I'm challenged the
challenge brings me energy and fun.
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| 02:35 | I am determined to have fun doing my
work, primarily because it's fun, but
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| 02:41 | the second reason is if I'm enjoying myself
then that feeling is passed on to the reader.
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| 02:48 | If I have fun, I can pass the fun on.
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| 02:51 | That's what I'm always searching for.
|
| 02:53 | (music playing)
|
| 03:15 | Welcome to Ipswich,
forty-five minutes north of Boston, on the
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| 03:19 | coast of Massachusetts.
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| 03:21 | This is the Emberley home.
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| 03:22 | We've lived here since our
children were in preschool.
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| 03:26 | The house was built around 1690.
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| 03:28 | The Ipswich River, it's a tidal river.
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| 03:31 | That means that twice a day we have ten
feet of water in front of the house and
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| 03:35 | then twice a day we have no
water in front of the house.
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| 03:37 | So be very careful where you park your car.
|
| 03:41 | They call this the keeping
room, the main living room.
|
| 03:45 | This cupboard that's between the two
windows, it is a good metaphor for our
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| 03:51 | life, which is a jumble of this and that.
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| 03:54 | There are little things, big things,
colorful things, not-so-colorful things.
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| 03:58 | Most of them are old.
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| 04:00 | Most of the houses in
this area were disassembled.
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| 04:03 | They are all pegged and put together.
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| 04:05 | There are large beams like this, and
you can take them all apart like a Lego,
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| 04:08 | like a little toy, like Lincoln Logs or a Lego.
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| 04:11 | In the early 1700s, this house was an
antique when George Washington--if George
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| 04:16 | Washington were to come to this
house at the Battle of Bunker Hill, this
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| 04:20 | would've already been an antique.
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| 04:22 | So this is an old house.
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| 04:24 | (music playing)
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| 04:45 | This is the art studio.
This is where I do all the artwork by hand.
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| 04:49 | You see all the markers standing around.
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| 04:51 | On the shelves all around
here are all different tools.
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| 04:53 | On the right-hand side are all the
books--the books that I do, not the books
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| 04:57 | that every artist does.
|
| 04:58 | You notice there is a Big Orange
Drawing Book, so inside there are all the
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| 05:01 | orange drawing book thing.
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| 05:03 | So what I have to do is if I am going
to make a book with the color orange and
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| 05:07 | the color black, two drawings have to be made.
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| 05:11 | So see all the pumpkins, see
those basically right there?
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| 05:13 | Well, they are the pumpkins.
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| 05:15 | The orange thing that you see
on the top would go like this.
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| 05:17 | We often make pumpkins like that.
|
| 05:19 | They call these overlays.
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| 05:20 | It's the solid print plus the overlay.
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| 05:23 | And each one of these books requires a
different number of pieces, but there is no picture;
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| 05:29 | there is no picture that exists of the book.
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| 05:31 | Only the book is our method.
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| 05:33 | The book is our medium.
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| 05:34 | Only the book is our final printed book.
|
| 05:38 | This is Michael's original room--it
has been converted into a computer
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| 05:43 | workroom--and some of the work that we
have been working on with Rebecca, which
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| 05:47 | is where a lot of the work from Rebecca is done.
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| 05:50 | This wall is used to lay out a whole book.
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| 05:52 | The size of these, there's a piece of
wire, and there are pieces of paper that
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| 05:57 | get hung up like this.
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| 05:58 | This is a double-page spread, and it's
necessary for us to print something to
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| 06:03 | make absolutely sure that this
line is exactly where we want it.
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| 06:08 | And also, the printer uses this as
a guide to actually print the color.
|
| 06:14 | The wall that you see here is a
small part of the collection of books we
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| 06:18 | just happen to own.
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| 06:20 | We don't--we have been
keeping books over the years.
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| 06:21 | There are drawing books in here.
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| 06:23 | There are books done the woodcuts.
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| 06:25 | There are picture books in here.
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| 06:26 | There are flipbooks in here.
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| 06:27 | There is The Wing on a Flea,
which is the first book.
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| 06:30 | There are books that have been
recently done on the computer.
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| 06:32 | This one was absolutely done by hand
because it was done with my thumbprint,
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| 06:37 | which is pretty simple.
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| 06:39 | And it's a book that shows people how
to draw things using their thumbprints
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| 06:44 | and the word ivy lou.
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| 06:45 | So there is step-by-step illustrations
that tell you how to make people's faces,
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| 06:50 | how to make different kinds of hats,
how to make action, how to make animals.
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| 06:54 | That was very successful,
used a lot in classrooms.
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| 06:57 | There are also books that were done
specifically with what the computer is
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| 07:03 | able to do, which is the computer
is able to make ovals and circles and
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| 07:08 | rectangles and triangles.
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| 07:10 | So I thought maybe I could use them
and if I put them together in a clever
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| 07:15 | enough way then the pictures wouldn't
look too static, but you would be able to
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| 07:20 | get some action out of it.
|
| 07:21 | The total number of picture books I
have done are about a hundred, one hundred
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| 07:24 | titles, and more, I hope, in the future.
|
| 07:35 | (music playing)
Well, I had an interesting experience in high school.
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| 07:38 | I was not a very good student.
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| 07:40 | I was taken away from mathematics,
transferred to a special class where they
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| 07:45 | taught art all afternoon.
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| 07:46 | They had a professional watercolorist.
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| 07:48 | He taught boxing and watercolor painting.
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| 07:51 | I worked at least for two years
with this teacher, maybe three years.
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| 07:54 | He talked to my parents, said, you know,
"He really should go to arts school."
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| 07:58 | My parents said, "Yes, it's a right idea.
We can't afford it."
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| 08:00 | He said, "You can afford this art school.
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| 08:02 | It's a very good art school.
It's the Massachusetts College of Art.
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| 08:05 | They will charge you a hundred dollars
a year, and you can pay fifty dollars in
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| 08:08 | the fall and another fifty
dollars at Christmas time."
|
| 08:10 | In arts school, at the end of the
four-year period, I met Barbara and went in
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| 08:15 | the army rather than put it off, and
because I had a Bachelor's Degree in Fine
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| 08:19 | Arts, they thought what I would be good
at is digging ditches for the engineers.
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| 08:24 | So I was a ditch digger.
I used to dig targets.
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| 08:26 | So they thought a BFA
would be terrific for that.
|
| 08:30 | Luckily, sometime around half way
through, they discovered I could paint signs.
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| 08:33 | I could actually twirl a brush and
paint a sign, so I became a sign painter.
|
| 08:38 | When I got out of the army, I went
to Rhode Island School of Design.
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| 08:41 | So you had to take something new,
so what I took was a post in
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| 08:43 | advertising design.
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| 08:45 | So I had a chance to work with type for a year.
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| 08:47 | For the first time, I was handling
blocks of color, thinking about type, type
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| 08:51 | size and type faces.
|
| 08:52 | Get out and walked around Boston,
went down by Fenway Park, and there was a
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| 08:56 | little building right at Kenmore Square,
and there was a place in there that was
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| 09:00 | looking for paste-up artist.
That was an artist who pastes type down.
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| 09:04 | So I brought my portfolio from arts
school, which happened to have a lot of
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| 09:08 | silly cartoons in it.
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| 09:09 | They said, "We want someone to order
type and glue it down," and they said, "You
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| 09:13 | do these drawings too?" I said yeah.
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| 09:15 | "Well, okay, then we are going to
hire you to do the drawings," and so they
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| 09:19 | started immediately, that day, and
started doing small drawings, of which not
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| 09:24 | much was expected of me, but I did
even better because I enjoyed doing it.
|
| 09:35 | A year and a half later, I had
published for them, for this company, two of
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| 09:39 | these books that are called clip books,
and they were books that were made
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| 09:42 | for small companies and businesses, and
they can go through and cut the pictures out.
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| 09:47 | They had permission to cut these
pictures out and use them, just as they today
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| 09:50 | on the computer, but this
was an actual paper thing.
|
| 09:53 | Now the tools that I were using were the
oil painting brush or watercolor brush,
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| 09:58 | which was a red sable, or a little,
fine mapping pen called a Crow Quill pen.
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| 10:04 | And I use the techniques that were a
hundred years old, some of them two
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| 10:07 | hundred, three hundred years old.
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| 10:08 | I had no new materials whatsoever, certainly
no computers, but not even a felt-tip marker.
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| 10:15 | In fact, I still remember somebody
coming into the school with a felt-tip
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| 10:18 | marker, it was only a hundred dollars,
and the felt went in one end then they
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| 10:23 | mixed color and put it in the other end.
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| 10:24 | And they said, "This is the latest thing.
This is the fine artist's great pen."
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| 10:27 | So this one was done with--which is interesting.
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| 10:31 | Here's a good example, here you can
see the thick and thin of the brush,
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| 10:36 | learning to take the brush and go down
and make it thicker and thinner at just
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| 10:39 | the right time, and then a few lines
with a pen, but mostly with a brush, where
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| 10:43 | the brush was done like that.
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| 10:44 | You get used of doing this.
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| 10:45 | But of course, the Crow
Quill pen had the same problem.
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| 10:48 | A Crow Quill pen is very, very fine;
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| 10:50 | it's finer than any pen point you have
seen on a fountain pen or anything, about
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| 10:54 | half the size of that.
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| 10:56 | And the pressure is exact.
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| 10:58 | If you press too hard, you splutter.
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| 11:01 | The pen digs into the paper and it splashes.
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| 11:03 | And if you don't do it heavy enough,
it doesn't make a mark on the paper.
|
| 11:08 | I was not headed deliberately to
be a children's book illustrator.
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| 11:12 | I wanted to be a person who drew pictures.
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| 11:15 | And I would say after about a month of
reveling in the fifty-dollar checks at
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| 11:20 | the end of the week, I started looking
for freelance work by mail and started
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| 11:26 | getting magazine illustrations for children's
magazines, greeting cards, stuff like that.
|
| 11:32 | In fact, that's what precipitated my
leaving of the direct mail advertising
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| 11:37 | firm, because I was working
nights and working weekends.
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| 11:40 | So I went to Boston, those people
who know about Boston, on to Prudential
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| 11:45 | Center, and got an office with three
other artists, shared the rent, went
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| 11:50 | inside, and for a year I said, "I will do
anything anybody asks me to do for one year.
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| 11:54 | At the end of the year, we will stop and
we will think about the facts about the
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| 11:59 | future and the past and figure out
what's going on, make some decisions about
|
| 12:02 | what to do in the future."
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| 12:03 | And the first day--this is rather
interesting--I just felt like doing a
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| 12:07 | children's book, and the first four
days that I was freelancing on my own and
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| 12:12 | not salaried, I did the
sketches for The Wing on a Flea.
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| 12:16 | What I did was, I said, "Well, I
will do something really nice and arty."
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| 12:19 | This is a nice arty page.
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| 12:21 | There is nothing on it except some
little scratchy lines that indicate the
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| 12:25 | marshes like that, a little tiny
triangle, a little tiny--so that was easy.
|
| 12:29 | Again, Crow Quill pen, (mimicking
sound of pen scratches) hundreds of Crow
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| 12:33 | Quill lines, (mimicking sound of pen
scratches) like that and some shapes like
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| 12:36 | that, and it looked good.
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| 12:37 | And it was chosen that
particular year by the New York Times.
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| 12:42 | It was a very important, prestigious award.
|
| 12:45 | It was one of the ten best
illustrated books of the year, it was chosen.
|
| 12:49 | So that was the start of it.
|
| 12:52 | The thing that was presented to me then
is if I work for Little Brown and did a
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| 12:56 | book a year and I made fifty dollars
every time a book came out and I started
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| 12:59 | getting royalties at so many pennies a
book, I was never going to be able to
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| 13:04 | make a living because not every
one of those books was going to sell.
|
| 13:06 | Well, I said, "Well, there is one
solution, and that is I will start
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| 13:09 | illustrating other books."
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| 13:11 | I said, "Well, what I will do
is I will do a woodcut book.
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| 13:13 | I will do something that's entirely
different, absolutely entirely different, so
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| 13:17 | it looks like another artist
did it," which makes me happy.
|
| 13:20 | So I started to say, "Well, the thing
that's the furthest from a pen line, the
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| 13:25 | furthest from this line, is a woodcut."
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| 13:28 | It has a lot of solid blacks and mostly
solid blacks with very few thin lines.
|
| 13:33 | So at a certain point, I decided what I
am going to do is I will make a woodcut.
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| 13:37 | This is the wooden drawing that I made
just to make the inquiry to the publishers.
|
| 13:42 | So you can see the chisel
marks in there, like that.
|
| 13:45 | So you chisel out, you rub ink on
the surface, and pull the print off.
|
| 13:49 | And when you get through, you
get a picture that looks like this.
|
| 13:52 | You can see all of the solids.
|
| 13:56 | Compared to this, that's quite different.
|
| 13:57 | It looked like two different
artists did it, but it's the same artist.
|
| 14:00 | Now, I had fun doing this.
|
| 14:02 | This has a lot of accidentals in it, things,
little pieces that stick out like that.
|
| 14:07 | This is extremely neat, with no accidentals.
|
| 14:09 | I just loved it to pieces.
|
| 14:12 | We have another Paul Bunyan that's a
little bit closer to the real Paul Bunyan,
|
| 14:17 | that's bigger than I am anyway, and taller.
|
| 14:20 | And it was done for--to
promote the Paul Bunyan book.
|
| 14:24 | Now for some reason or other, I thought it
would be a good idea to make a giant woodcut.
|
| 14:29 | This would actually be printed.
|
| 14:31 | So the drawing was roughed out,
as I do with all the woodcut books.
|
| 14:35 | Most of the work is done with
the knife and with the gouging.
|
| 14:38 | You can see here how the knife cuts are
here and large pieces of wood are chipped out.
|
| 14:43 | So these are pine.
|
| 14:44 | These are 12-inch pine
boards that are put together.
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| 14:47 | And poured ink over the surface like
this, black ink, then a piece of rice
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| 14:53 | paper, which is a nice transparent paper,
like that, and you rub it and you rub
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| 14:59 | the surface, and when you do, you get the
print that looks like that.
|
| 15:03 | (music playing)
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| 16:26 | One thing you should know is that I draw
many different ways, and the most usual
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| 16:31 | way of starting a career as an
illustrator is to develop a single technique in
|
| 16:35 | which you draw the same face the same
way with the same brushes and the same ink
|
| 16:39 | and the same paint over and
over again, which is fine.
|
| 16:41 | That's a good way to do things.
|
| 16:42 | However, even at that time, I worked
in many different ways, and I had been
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| 16:46 | working on a series of books and
had bogged down with one book that had
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| 16:51 | taken two years to do.
|
| 16:52 | So my publisher walked up to me and said,
"You know, you haven't published for two years.
|
| 16:56 | You really should get something out."
|
| 16:57 | So I said, "But I have this little
thing, which is not a masterwork of an
|
| 17:03 | illustrator with wonderful illustration,
but is a way of drawing that I ran into
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| 17:06 | when I was a child."
|
| 17:08 | I still remembered how to draw the
little figure that I was taught how to draw
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| 17:12 | from the Sunday paper.
|
| 17:13 | It was still stuck in my memory.
|
| 17:14 | So then I said, "There must be something there."
|
| 17:17 | And as I had thought back, I thought
well, this picture was really made of
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| 17:20 | shapes that I could remember, like rectangles,
triangles, circles, and that sort of thing.
|
| 17:25 | You're all familiar, I'm assuming most
of the people who are watching me now are
|
| 17:28 | familiar with the
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ alphabet.
|
| 17:34 | Well, this is the drawing alphabet.
|
| 17:36 | We can also draw, I can show you
how to draw using a picture alphabet.
|
| 17:41 | And these are the letters you have to know.
|
| 17:44 | You do have to know how to make a
shape that looks like this, that's round.
|
| 17:48 | It doesn't have to be perfect, but it
must be round, just the same way you make
|
| 17:51 | the letter O, which is why
even young children can do this.
|
| 17:55 | In fact, preschoolers, actually, it's
very successful with preschoolers who
|
| 17:58 | haven't been introduced to the alphabet.
|
| 18:01 | In fact, some schools use this as an
introduction to the more complicated
|
| 18:04 | alphabet of ABCDEFG.
|
| 18:06 | The second letter in my drawing
alphabet I figured was going to be a rectangle.
|
| 18:10 | One, two, three, four.
|
| 18:11 | It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't
have to be straight, but it must have four sides.
|
| 18:16 | So it's a shape that has four sides, like that.
|
| 18:18 | The third letter in the drawing alphabet
is the third shape, which is like this.
|
| 18:22 | One, two, three, it goes across like that.
|
| 18:24 | Then we can make the other, the one, two,
three, the fourth shape is a half circle.
|
| 18:28 | Flat on one side, round on the other side.
|
| 18:31 | See, it's only half as big as the circle,
so it should be half as hard to make.
|
| 18:35 | So we have one, two, three, four.
|
| 18:37 | The letter U that you see, so it's a
line that goes down and back up again.
|
| 18:42 | And the last letter, the last letter in
the drawing alphabet is a reverse curve,
|
| 18:45 | which sounds hard when you first hear it,
so be careful of the thing that sounds
|
| 18:48 | hard and isn't always hard.
|
| 18:50 | Sometimes a thing that sounds hard
isn't hard once you see it, because the
|
| 18:53 | reverse curve is easy to draw, because
you probably already know how to make it
|
| 18:57 | because it's the letter S, just like
the letter S. It's a line that curves like
|
| 19:00 | this and back up and double like that.
|
| 19:02 | You have to know how to make a dot like that.
|
| 19:04 | You have to know how to
make a larger dot like this.
|
| 19:07 | You have to know how to make a few straight
lines like that, and you have to know how to scribble.
|
| 19:14 | Scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble,
up and down, back and forth, every
|
| 19:17 | which way, scribble.
|
| 19:18 | And the book, the first
book, looked a lot like this.
|
| 19:22 | What it was is a book of assorted
animals that can be drawn, limiting it to, if
|
| 19:27 | you have three markers, if you have
an orange marker, a green marker, and a
|
| 19:31 | brown marker, and a black
marker, that's four markers.
|
| 19:33 | So you don't have to have
every color in the rainbow.
|
| 19:36 | And as you see the step-by-step illustration.
|
| 19:38 | Start with a pollywog, for instance.
|
| 19:41 | You draw that, you succeed,
a little zing of success.
|
| 19:44 | You take the letter S and make a
tail out it, the zing of success.
|
| 19:47 | You take a dot and put it
up here, it becomes an eye.
|
| 19:49 | You take a line and put it
up there, it becomes a mouth.
|
| 19:52 | And then it goes on.
|
| 19:53 | If you keep doing and following the
same system, you can use the same limited
|
| 19:57 | number of shapes and make a dragon
that looks like that, and a whole bunch of
|
| 20:01 | other animals that go in between.
|
| 20:04 | I don't want the children to fail.
|
| 20:05 | The most important thing
is that they are amused.
|
| 20:06 | The second most important
thing is they do not fail.
|
| 20:09 | I didn't want to put a book up that
made Ed Emberley a fancy guy. Oh boy!
|
| 20:13 | Can he draw a pictures!
|
| 20:14 | No, I wanted something they can succeed at.
|
| 20:17 | (music playing)
|
| 20:28 | (music playing)
(crosstalk)
|
| 20:34 | People look at the drawings and they
|
| 20:36 | take them apart in their mind and they
say, "Well, I never noticed that before,
|
| 20:39 | that this fox is made of a triangle,
a rectangle, or another half circle."
|
| 20:44 | That kind of analysis helps them make
their own animals, so it helps your brain
|
| 20:49 | work and problem-solve and puzzle-solve.
|
| 20:54 | How many think you could make a triangle
flat on the top, pointed on the bottom?
|
| 21:01 | How many think you could make a
triangle flat on the top? Excellent! Very good!
|
| 21:06 | How many think they could make a
little beetle here like this? There we go!
|
| 21:15 | But I wouldn't ask you to make a lion, no siree.
|
| 21:20 | I was having fun doing it this way,
and the pages are made to be fun.
|
| 21:24 | And I think if I have fun, the
fun is transferred to my listener.
|
| 21:27 | If I'm bored, that boredom is
going to transfer to somebody.
|
| 21:32 | So, am I an educator?
|
| 21:33 | I do not pretend to be an
early learning specialist.
|
| 21:37 | I do not pretend to be an educator.
I'm an entertainer.
|
| 21:41 | You could make a picture of a
baby mouse and a mama mouse.
|
| 21:46 | All you have to do is make one
mouse small, make the other mouse big.
|
| 21:50 | You could easily draw a picture of a
short mouse and a tall mouse, just like that.
|
| 21:55 | You could make a picture of a
great big Arnold Schwarzenegger mouse.
|
| 22:01 | (singing)
(children laughing)
|
| 22:06 | You could do one about the purple mice from outer
|
| 22:09 | space coming to attack planet Earth.
|
| 22:11 | (singing)
(children laughing)
|
| 22:15 | I am being taught about my own drawing system, and
|
| 22:19 | what I've found is from local people in
Ipswich and across the country--but this
|
| 22:23 | is all anecdotal, nobody writes to
me about that--is that the kids with
|
| 22:27 | dyslexia, when there is a school that
specializes in educating--and they're
|
| 22:31 | mostly boys--with dyslexia, found
these books extremely useful, because after
|
| 22:35 | all, children in the first grade
are memorizing their twenty-six-letter
|
| 22:38 | alphabet, and I can give
them a six-letter alphabet.
|
| 22:41 | And you can get children with dyslexia
and get them to draw a mouse or a skunk
|
| 22:47 | ten times, rather than
write the word banana ten times.
|
| 22:50 | There's a lot of reward for them if
they learn how to draw a monster or a skunk
|
| 22:54 | or a fox or a turtle or a
spider or something like that.
|
| 22:57 | (music playing)
|
| 23:18 | Rebecca Emberley: I was huge into boutique when
I was in high school, silversmithing, sold a lot
|
| 23:21 | of that stuff, did craft fairs.
|
| 23:24 | For a while, I was selling T-shirts to stores.
|
| 23:27 | I definitely have early memories of
putting things together, assembling things.
|
| 23:32 | I dug out my old collage stuff from
high school and said, "Well, you know what?
|
| 23:37 | If I'm going to do books, this is how I
would like to do it."
|
| 23:38 | Michael Emberley: They were encouraging, in the
household, to do something if you said you
|
| 23:43 | wanted to do something.
|
| 23:44 | Halloween, we made some really nice costumes.
|
| 23:47 | My mother helped me make this
elaborate Planet of the Apes costume.
|
| 23:51 | It had like an articulated jaw.
|
| 23:53 | We made it out of paper mache and molded
it on my head, and we made a lining for
|
| 23:57 | it and molded it so it had the jaw that
moved just--because I remember seeing
|
| 24:00 | the one in the movie, they were the
first ones that had the jaws that moved.
|
| 24:04 | And I can remember saying, "No, I
want it to be like that," and so it was a
|
| 24:12 | collaborative--I remember my
mother mostly working on that one.
|
| 24:15 | They both went to art school and
even though my mother didn't work
|
| 24:19 | professionally, she had gone all
the way through art school and was a
|
| 24:22 | gifted craftsperson.
|
| 24:24 | She studied design, fashion design, and
she had done an extensive amount of sewing.
|
| 24:31 | Barbara Emberley: My mother always painted and
sewed and did all kinds of things, and I grew
|
| 24:36 | up with that, and I did the same thing, and the
kids just joined in and did everything we did.
|
| 24:40 | Neither one of them was particularly
interested in the typical job, pumping gas
|
| 24:46 | at the gas station or
working in the grocery store.
|
| 24:49 | And they weren't brought
up on a nine-to-five basis.
|
| 24:53 | I think when push comes to shove, they
had to be creative about almost everything.
|
| 24:58 | Ed: Because my time wasn't set,
you could make it flexible.
|
| 25:01 | If I decided that I want to take four
days off and try to make sandals, leather
|
| 25:05 | sandals, at that time was a big craft thing.
|
| 25:08 | We'd take a month off to make Christmas.
|
| 25:10 | Rebecca: There was a long time before I ever
bought a Christmas present. I just didn't.
|
| 25:15 | We made them all.
|
| 25:16 | I carried over all of the stuff that I
had learned into my parenting experience,
|
| 25:21 | which was, prepare her to be a lifelong learner.
|
| 25:24 | And my parents, I think,
inadvertently prepared us to be lifelong learners.
|
| 25:27 | If there is something that you want to
know, go find it out.
|
| 25:30 | Adrian Emberley: It was fun growing up in this family.
|
| 25:33 | I didn't really know any other way.
|
| 25:36 | As an only child, I kind of figured this
is what everybody's family must be like.
|
| 25:40 | Like everybody makes puppets and
clothing and goes to their grandfather's house
|
| 25:45 | and does a new craft every day or something.
|
| 25:48 | It was definitely fun and
colorful and lively. That's for sure.
|
| 25:56 | Michael: When I was working with my father
upstairs, like a lot of us did, we were doing
|
| 26:00 | sections of the book.
|
| 26:02 | He was doing drawing books, and he did
a series of books with a color theme.
|
| 26:06 | When people do ask me how you get
into books, I mean, because it was so
|
| 26:10 | practical and such an extension of what
we were already doing, there wasn't that
|
| 26:14 | much pressure on me.
|
| 26:15 | It was just something to do.
|
| 26:18 | If you hit a stumbling block, you might think,
I just don't have it, whereas I never had that.
|
| 26:23 | I always thought this doesn't look
good because you didn't do it well enough.
|
| 26:28 | And if you don't know how to do it
well enough, you better figure out because
|
| 26:32 | you are going to have to pay rent.
|
| 26:34 | Rebecca: There isn't any medium that
I didn't cover at some point.
|
| 26:38 | I left home feeling like there
was very little that I couldn't do.
|
| 26:43 | And I think the greatest gift that came
from being in that family, from growing
|
| 26:47 | up in that family, was complete lack of
understanding that I could totally fail,
|
| 26:54 | knowing that I would always be able to
make a living, knowing that if I couldn't
|
| 26:58 | do that, I would be doing something else.
|
| 27:01 | Ed: They are both freelance.
|
| 27:03 | Rebecca lives in Maine, Michael lives
in Ireland, and they've both been doing
|
| 27:08 | freelance all their lives.
|
| 27:09 | Neither one of them--Michael had a
job for about three weeks.
|
| 27:12 | Barbara: We weren't regulated the same way.
|
| 27:13 | The only thing that really
regulated us was the schools.
|
| 27:16 | We had to be there at a certain time and
you had to take a vacation at a certain time.
|
| 27:20 | With the summers we could do
pretty much what we wanted.
|
| 27:24 | Ed: So we would work hard, but then we
were able to take off the kid's school
|
| 27:27 | vacations and we'd just go
some place, go do something.
|
| 27:31 | Instead of having them come home and
letting them play with their friends,
|
| 27:34 | which probably would have been a good idea, we
would say, "No, I don't want to hang around here.
|
| 27:38 | Let's go up to Trapp Family Lodge and go skiing.
|
| 27:41 | You've got a week off. Let's go skiing for a week."
|
| 27:44 | So we did a lot of, we called it adventuring.
|
| 27:47 | I remember skiing in Franconia at
thirty-five below, thirty-five below, was it
|
| 27:52 | thirty-five below there?
|
| 27:53 | Barbara: It was forty below, and the car was frozen.
Ed: Yeah, the car was frozen.
|
| 27:57 | Barbara: Solid, so we skied around while we
were waiting for the tow track.
|
| 28:00 | Ed: We were skied around the lake.
|
| 28:01 | It hurt to breathe, so I said,
"Maybe we could go back now."
|
| 28:04 | It hurt to breathe.
|
| 28:06 | I said, "If it hurts to
breathe, maybe that's cold enough."
|
| 28:09 | (music playing)
|
| 28:33 | Ah, my first sail, but
you have to know something about sailboats.
|
| 28:37 | But it was twelve feet long, and I
still remember the first day I got it.
|
| 28:41 | I bought it in Marblehead, a very
famous, well-known yarding area.
|
| 28:45 | A friend of mine who was already an
experienced sailor and my wife were at my
|
| 28:49 | house, and he was waiting
to go with me in the morning.
|
| 28:52 | But what I did instead was I went way
out where they could just barely see me on
|
| 28:57 | the morning, and I got a big
bawling out, for I had left no note.
|
| 29:02 | I had just taken off and sailed out.
|
| 29:04 | So I think a lot of--it helps to be dumb.
|
| 29:11 | It helps to be dumb because a
smart person wouldn't have done that.
|
| 29:17 | Number one, they would have at least
left a note and said, "If I don't come
|
| 29:21 | back, I went over there.
|
| 29:23 | Go look for me over there."
|
| 29:25 | But it was like me meeting my wife.
|
| 29:28 | My wife and I met, and then one day we went
just okay, let's make a life together, just like that.
|
| 29:34 | And the same thing happened with sailing.
Okay, we are going to sail the sailboat.
|
| 29:38 | We are going to get bigger ones and
bigger ones and eventually we are going to
|
| 29:41 | teach ourselves how to sail to
Nantucket, which is a four-day trip.
|
| 29:45 | We are going to sail to Maine, which
is a four-day trip, and we are going to
|
| 29:48 | take two little kids with us.
|
| 29:49 | Well, the interesting thing about the
boat is I had no electronic equipment.
|
| 29:59 | In fact, there wasn't much
that existed to help you navigate.
|
| 30:04 | When you go up the coast of
New England there are no roads.
|
| 30:08 | There are a series of small buoys going up
the coast, and there are entrances to harbors.
|
| 30:14 | And you have to learn two things:
|
| 30:15 | you have to learn seamanship, how to
take care of a boat when the waves get big
|
| 30:18 | or when the waves get small, and the
second thing you have to learn is how to
|
| 30:22 | navigate and work your way up the
coast, which is all math. It's all math.
|
| 30:27 | And you have to measure the
distance between the two buoys.
|
| 30:30 | You have to know when you are going to hit it.
|
| 30:31 | You have to mathematically allow
for the effects of the tide on you.
|
| 30:37 | And to my surprise, I found that I
not only enjoyed it, I don't have much
|
| 30:44 | interest in sailing when it's too
easy and I don't have to do that, when
|
| 30:49 | there isn't a danger.
|
| 30:51 | The two entrances here when the wind
is blowing in the wrong direction are
|
| 30:54 | extremely dangerous.
|
| 30:55 | When the tide is coming out, when the
water, that ten feet of water, is scooting
|
| 31:00 | out of Essex and it meets a wind
coming from the opposite direction, then the
|
| 31:04 | waves pile up and they go like this,
quite high, and they can turn your boat
|
| 31:09 | over and you can die.
|
| 31:11 | So it's nice to know those things.
|
| 31:13 | And I've found to my--perhaps not to my
surprise, but I've found that I like that.
|
| 31:19 | And I notice gradually that I was
restless and needed the same challenge when I
|
| 31:28 | was drawing or doing anything else.
|
| 31:30 | I think it's electrochemical.
|
| 31:31 | I think that's why people
are different than animals.
|
| 31:34 | We have given a little shot of
pleasure when we solve a problem.
|
| 31:38 | For instance, we'll use riding a bicycle;
|
| 31:41 | a lot of us share that experience.
|
| 31:43 | If you can remember back to that
experience, one of the things you probably
|
| 31:46 | noticed was, as you came closer and
closer to actually being able to ride a
|
| 31:50 | bicycle, the stress became worse and worse.
|
| 31:54 | It was like a tympan, it was like a
rubber disc, and you are pushing your
|
| 31:57 | head, trying to push your head through the
rubber disc and it gets harder and harder and harder.
|
| 32:03 | Now some people back away.
|
| 32:04 | It gets harder and harder, then they
back away, and some people just keep
|
| 32:09 | pushing and they go, and
they go through the other side.
|
| 32:11 | One minute you can't ride
bikes, the next minute you can.
|
| 32:14 | The ability is there.
|
| 32:16 | Your body already knows how
to ride a bicycle and ski.
|
| 32:19 | What you have to have is someone who
says yes, you can, yes, you can, yes, you
|
| 32:25 | can, keep trying, don't be bothered with it.
|
| 32:28 | And if a child goes through that once
or twice then they can take it and apply
|
| 32:33 | it to learning new skills, like
nowadays looking for a new job, oh, it's too
|
| 32:37 | hard to learn a new job.
|
| 32:38 | Well, repetition, repetition will do it.
|
| 32:41 | Something you didn't think you
could do, you can do later on.
|
| 32:44 | (music playing)
|
| 33:02 | Up here is Make a World,
which is the book that came on after
|
| 33:05 | the animal drawing book.
|
| 33:07 | But all the artwork that was used to make
Make a World is inside here. I keep it.
|
| 33:11 | When I find a stray piece, I pop
it in this box, so it's a little bit
|
| 33:16 | disheveled, but there are pieces in
here that might interest or amuse you.
|
| 33:21 | And so this is what I
would present to the publisher.
|
| 33:25 | The publisher would be
presented with these sketches.
|
| 33:27 | These are all written in pencil.
|
| 33:29 | All the text is down here like that.
|
| 33:31 | And then the finished art is made.
|
| 33:33 | If you look very carefully at
everything you're looking at, you can look--have
|
| 33:37 | a game if you like--which is look for
all the triangles, the rectangles, the
|
| 33:41 | circles, and those six shapes and look
for them over and over again, and you
|
| 33:45 | will see that oh, that's a truck, but
what it really is is two rectangles and a
|
| 33:49 | slanting line that goes like that and
two circles and that becomes a truck.
|
| 33:53 | They're all based on that little rectangle.
|
| 33:55 | So you can see that to master this
doesn't take years and years, especially
|
| 33:59 | since you're free to do what you please.
|
| 34:01 | You can make a car upside down.
|
| 34:03 | You can make a car crashing into the woods.
|
| 34:05 | Whereas if you take a model car, a
model your father buys you, or a train, and
|
| 34:10 | you find out that the most exciting
thing you can do with that train is have a
|
| 34:13 | crash with another train, you don't
get many more solid gifts anymore.
|
| 34:18 | But if somebody gives you a couple of
markers, gives you four markers, and say
|
| 34:21 | you can have trains crash, you can have
trains flying in the sky, you can have a
|
| 34:25 | train going underwater, you can have a
train in outer space, it's your train,
|
| 34:29 | you can do what you want and
exercise your imagination that way.
|
| 34:32 | My prime experience was being in the
second grade, or third grade, I guess.
|
| 34:35 | I go in the third grade, and I am
sitting in the third grade, and the
|
| 34:39 | teacher comes up and at Thanksgiving time
says, " Okay, I want you to draw a fruit bowl."
|
| 34:45 | So this came as a shock because I had drawn
a lot, but I just--draw a fruit bowl, today?
|
| 34:50 | Now? Right now, you want me to draw a fruit bowl?
|
| 34:53 | So I was a little lost and kind of
embarrassed, and all of a sudden Antonio, the
|
| 34:58 | guy called Tony next to me,
sitting next to me, Antonio, sits down.
|
| 35:02 | He started drawing this bowl of fruit,
and I should have caught it as of the
|
| 35:08 | orange, which is almost an oval,
he made, which is pretty easy.
|
| 35:12 | And I was just saying to myself,
"I could do it, I could do this."
|
| 35:17 | But nobody showed me how.
|
| 35:19 | Nobody showed me how.
|
| 35:20 | And Tony made a banana like
that, made a shape like that.
|
| 35:24 | And maybe I remember that.
|
| 35:26 | Maybe I'm still trying to work out that
embarrassment when I said, "I'll show you how.
|
| 35:30 | You want to make a bowl of fruit?
|
| 35:31 | I can show you how to make a bowl of fruit ,"
or a world or a greenhouse or a church.
|
| 35:35 | And the interesting thing is once you
give them some of these, they can make
|
| 35:39 | their own, but they needed that first boost.
|
| 35:43 | We just finished a show in Los Angeles,
and the show was for adults who had had
|
| 35:47 | the books when they were children some
twenty years ago, in some cases thirty
|
| 35:50 | years ago, who ended up being
artists. We were surprised.
|
| 35:55 | The show looked terrific, the stuff
was on the wall, but we had anticipated
|
| 35:59 | meeting a bunch of children and
parents with children would come in and have
|
| 36:03 | their books signed and go away,
which we're used to that kind of book
|
| 36:05 | signing. And we were surprised, there were
only two families and all the rest were adults.
|
| 36:10 | They were adults who'd use the books
themselves and come in with the book and
|
| 36:14 | came in with their tattoos, and the
biggest thing that surprised me was when we
|
| 36:17 | asked, "What's your favorite animal?"
or, "What's your favorite car," the most
|
| 36:22 | universal answer, the answer that most
people gave, was that they took it in
|
| 36:26 | their room at night, the book was their
companion, and it made them feel good.
|
| 36:30 | So, whatever that is, that when they're
doing art, they felt good, for whatever
|
| 36:34 | reason it was, which is why they
contribute to the fact that they decided to go
|
| 36:38 | into art, because when they started
doing art on their own in their own style
|
| 36:42 | that made them feel good after, and
they were after that feel-good feeling.
|
| 36:45 | (music playing)
|
| 37:10 | There were a bunch of
things about the computer that worked for me.
|
| 37:13 | I was having so much fun being able to
make the picture larger so I could see it.
|
| 37:18 | For instance, I was working
on the little--a dog's nose.
|
| 37:22 | I could blow the nose up big on the
computer, instantly, without going down and
|
| 37:27 | adjusting my magnet glass.
And of course, the colors.
|
| 37:30 | I mean the colors are fantastic,
and the use of the mouse was no more
|
| 37:35 | complicated than learning--in fact,
less complicated than learning how to use a
|
| 37:39 | Crow Quill pen or a brush or a
magic marker or things like that.
|
| 37:43 | So it allowed me to be more productive,
and it allowed me to move more quickly,
|
| 37:50 | to be able to make many figures and
many characters, move them around, put them
|
| 37:54 | behind each other, make
then bigger, make them smaller.
|
| 37:56 | It was play for me.
|
| 37:58 | Then along came a day when I was
sitting in my studio, feeling I'd done it.
|
| 38:03 | I'd done five books this way, I'd
solved the problems, I'm a problem solver.
|
| 38:08 | I'd solved all the problems
and I solved them well enough.
|
| 38:11 | I was sitting in my studio, feeling
tired about starting a book because of
|
| 38:16 | the ennui that comes on sometimes when
you're not excited by the project ahead of time.
|
| 38:22 | I suddenly looked up on the wall and
there was a painting by my daughter,
|
| 38:25 | Rebecca, a monster that she had.
|
| 38:27 | I looked up at the monster and I
said, "That's what I want to do."
|
| 38:32 | That's what should be done.
|
| 38:34 | The looseness and the excitement that I
saw in looking at her drawing, I said,
|
| 38:40 | "There is something there that I want."
|
| 38:42 | Rebecca: Working with my father came as a
surprise, and we had never worked
|
| 38:45 | together before and didn't think that we
would work together, didn't think it was possible.
|
| 38:49 | We're both impatient and stubborn
and very, very opinionated.
|
| 38:55 | Ed: I mentioned it to Rebecca, and I
said, "You know what would be great?
|
| 38:59 | If I sat down with you and I forgot all
about Ed Emberley, the famous Ed Emberley.
|
| 39:04 | I will make pictures in complete abandon.
|
| 39:09 | I will just make what pleases me at the moment.
|
| 39:11 | I won't think about my editors, I
won't think about the reviewers.
|
| 39:14 | I will just play and do things."
|
| 39:16 | Rebecca: I had my doubts, that my father
and I would be able to get through a
|
| 39:20 | project together, but I think the
difference was that we weren't thinking
|
| 39:23 | of it as a project.
|
| 39:25 | I mean, we were just, both of us,
looking to shake things up.
|
| 39:31 | Ed: No, didn't you? I don't want to do that monster.
Rebecca: I don't know.
|
| 39:34 | Rebecca: But I said, "So give me
some paper." I know said that.
|
| 39:36 | Ed: Yeah, "Stop talking and
give me some paper."
|
| 39:38 | Ed: So she decided to get some paper.
Rebecca: You gave me this.
|
| 39:40 | I don't know what the
first character was.
|
| 39:42 | Rebecca: So, he gave me this and I didn't really
know what to do with it, because I was
|
| 39:47 | used to using colored paper,
like this, and textured paper.
|
| 39:51 | He said he wanted birds.
|
| 39:53 | This is before we decided to
do Chicken Little.
|
| 39:54 | Rebecca: So I said, "I can do birds."
Ed: Any bird, any bird.
|
| 39:56 | Rebecca: And he said, "Don't you want to draw it out?"
|
| 39:59 | And I said, "I don't draw
anything out first."
|
| 40:02 | Ed: So I said, "Oh, you don't make a
hundred sketches, oh?"
|
| 40:07 | Rebecca: No, no. So now I am making an ostrich, so an
ostrich has--sometimes I can't remember
|
| 40:13 | what something looks like.
|
| 40:14 | He is much better at saying well, this
doesn't look like an ostrich because the
|
| 40:17 | tail feathers go that way and not this way.
|
| 40:20 | Ed: We had no expectations when we went into this.
There was no fail or succeed.
|
| 40:26 | We just said, "Let's play around for
a few hours in the afternoon and if it works, it works.
|
| 40:32 | If it doesn't, we walk away from it.
|
| 40:33 | It's better that our relationship remain
reasonable than we turn out a beautiful
|
| 40:38 | piece of artwork and then we're
both miserable at each other."
|
| 40:41 | So there was no expectation
that this would work.
|
| 40:46 | Rebecca: And I really didn't have the financial
freedom to fool around with something new
|
| 40:50 | that wasn't going to pay, but we did it anyway.
|
| 40:52 | It was like we did this without the
consequence of worrying whether someone else
|
| 40:57 | Rebecca: would like it or not.
Ed: I used to get exhausted
|
| 41:01 | Ed: at the end of the first day, when I
am working on my own books, because the
|
| 41:03 | pressure was too dull.
|
| 41:05 | I had to get through the dull
period to get to the exciting period.
|
| 41:09 | With Rebecca, it was exciting from the first
minute because things were going like this.
|
| 41:12 | (Ed tapping) Rebecca:
I like to get things--
|
| 41:15 | Ed: With me working and starting, I thought
everybody was having this experience.
|
| 41:19 | Ed: Oh, I can write a book.
Rebecca: Me too.
|
| 41:20 | Ed: Okay, let's go in the room and we'll
be quiet while Daddy writes a book.
|
| 41:24 | And then you sit in front of the page,
page 1, and page 1 is the hard page.
|
| 41:29 | Page 1, 2, 3, and 4 are the hard pages,
and most people don't get over that.
|
| 41:33 | They might make really good writers,
but getting over the barrier, that slow
|
| 41:38 | ennui, that tremendous pressure that
makes you tired and it makes exhausted,
|
| 41:43 | and it used make me.
|
| 41:44 | It had gotten to the point when getting
started on a job took two or three days.
|
| 41:47 | It took me two or three days to get warmed up.
|
| 41:49 | There was no warm-up period with this.
|
| 41:52 | And a lot of the decisions that I would
normally have to make and fuss over and
|
| 42:01 | grind over, Rebecca took away.
|
| 42:03 | So all I had to do was really
move the stuff around that she had.
|
| 42:06 | Most of the vision is Rebecca's.
|
| 42:09 | Rebecca: This is the head, this is
the body. The feet are easy.
|
| 42:13 | The beak. Oh, I didn't know that's
the side-beak, that's here. That's the side-beak.
|
| 42:19 | This was too much for him in the beginning.
|
| 42:21 | And you've seen some of his earlier
|
| 42:22 | Rebecca: work, the woodcuts, nothing is--
Ed: I was thinking of a little black dot.
|
| 42:26 | Rebecca: Nothing is to size.
|
| 42:27 | When I first cut these out and we put
them up on the screen, you said, "Why are
|
| 42:31 | the eyes two different sizes?"
|
| 42:33 | And I said, "What?"
|
| 42:34 | He said, "Well, why are
the eyes two different sizes?
|
| 42:36 | That doesn't make sense."
I said, "Just because they are."
|
| 42:38 | And then I came back the next morning
and you'd taken everything and doubled it
|
| 42:42 | so the everything was symmetrical.
|
| 42:43 | So the two eyes, he just
duplicated this one,
|
| 42:45 | Rebecca: so the two eyes were the same, the two
Ed: Mistake, mistake.
|
| 42:48 | Rebecca: wings were the same, the two feet were
the same and I said, "No, put it back.
|
| 42:51 | Put it back the way it was."
|
| 42:54 | This book was very well received.
|
| 42:56 | I was speaking with a friend of mine
on the phone who is a children's lit
|
| 42:59 | professor and I said, "I love
the quality of Roaring Brook books.
|
| 43:03 | The production quality is really great.
I'd love to work for them someday."
|
| 43:06 | And she said, "Well, if you want to
work with them, the guy you need to talk
|
| 43:09 | to is Neal Porter."
|
| 43:10 | And it turned out, in the
serendipitous way that things do, that in all of
|
| 43:15 | Manhattan, he was giving a speech in a
hotel across the street from the hotel
|
| 43:18 | that I was staying in.
|
| 43:19 | So we met at the Polish Tea Room in
Times Square, and he opened them up and
|
| 43:24 | looked at them and started
laughing and I knew we were good to go.
|
| 43:27 | He started laughing, he looked at them,
and he sat them down, and this has never
|
| 43:31 | happened to me before and he said "Well,
I want them, I want to buy them both."
|
| 43:34 | And I said nothing.
|
| 43:37 | I was like, really?
|
| 43:38 | I'm thinking in my head, does it work
that way, what am I supposed to do now?
|
| 43:41 | And then I looked at my watch and I
said, "Oh God, I have to be--I have an
|
| 43:44 | appointment with so-and-so, at so-and-so."
|
| 43:47 | And he said, "Well, I don't want you to do that.
|
| 43:50 | So what do I need to do?"
|
| 43:51 | So in the space of five minutes,
I had to say what I really wanted.
|
| 43:54 | I said, "I want a multi-book contract.
|
| 43:55 | I want this amount of money for an
advance for each of them," and we have
|
| 43:59 | since sold eight books to that publisher and
a couple to another and a couple to another.
|
| 44:03 | Ed: But I enjoy the hell out of them.
|
| 44:06 | I look forward more to doing another book
with Rebecca than I would doing one on my own.
|
| 44:09 | Rebecca: And my sense was that we had fun doing it;
|
| 44:14 | therefore, other people would
respond that way, and they did.
|
| 44:18 | (music playing)
|
| 44:38 | Ed: A short history of
publishing, from the time I started.
|
| 44:41 | When I first started publishing,
eighty percent of the books that were sold
|
| 44:45 | were sold to libraries.
|
| 44:46 | The government used to give money to
libraries, so the libraries would buy the books.
|
| 44:50 | And then all of a sudden, the government
decided not to give the libraries any books anymore.
|
| 44:56 | So instead of eighty percent in this--so
the eighty percent that were buying the
|
| 45:00 | books, they were buying the
books, this the public buying books.
|
| 45:03 | This is the libraries buying
books, so the public is buying books.
|
| 45:05 | That's all who is buying books.
|
| 45:06 | All of a sudden, they're gone.
|
| 45:07 | All of a sudden, your market is gone.
|
| 45:09 | You're sitting down and all of a sudden the
market is down to ten percent of what it was.
|
| 45:14 | I don't know these numbers.
|
| 45:15 | You have to talk to somebody
who knows more about business.
|
| 45:17 | I'm speaking metaphorically as a general idea.
|
| 45:21 | And that's happened twice within
my lifetime, in which the market has
|
| 45:25 | changed completely.
|
| 45:26 | Now there are two ways of reacting to it.
|
| 45:28 | You're working as an illustrator.
|
| 45:29 | All of a sudden this happens and you
either go in your bedroom and cry and say,
|
| 45:35 | "I'm used to working with librarians;
|
| 45:38 | therefore I'll never do another children book.
|
| 45:39 | I don't know how to change," or you
find out how, where the market is going.
|
| 45:45 | Along comes ebooks.
|
| 45:47 | Now this has been here before.
|
| 45:48 | Along comes ebooks. What do you do?
|
| 45:50 | "Oh, God, ebooks, there are
less books going to be sold.
|
| 45:53 | Children buy ebooks.
|
| 45:54 | Why are they ever going to buy a picture book?
|
| 45:56 | Why are they ever going to read a book?"
|
| 45:58 | Me, myself, I haven't done it yet, but I
do have an iPad and iPod and an iPhone,
|
| 46:04 | and I look forward to
having a novel on an airplane.
|
| 46:07 | I can go in and get it on the airplane and
read a novel, and I bet it's going to be great.
|
| 46:12 | But even if you scan your artwork, you
did some artwork and just scanned it and
|
| 46:15 | scanned the thirty-two pages and send
it out and send it out to the audience,
|
| 46:18 | you're not--I don't think
you're going to kill the audience.
|
| 46:20 | You're not going to kill
the audience with a book.
|
| 46:23 | I think you're going to find the audience.
|
| 46:25 | (music playing)
|
| 46:54 | Ed: Ta-da!
|
| 46:56 | (Music playing)
Female speaker: Here we go!
|
| 47:10 | Nat Sims: Hi, nice to see you!
|
| 47:14 | Jen: Hi Ed, I'm Jen.
I'm the graphic designer. Yeah!
|
| 47:19 | (crosstalk)
|
| 47:28 | It's a great time for us
to think about and to see that there's
|
| 47:33 | something about the interaction of
children with the pages of a book that is
|
| 47:37 | good and valid and will last and
there's something, of course, that's yet to be
|
| 47:42 | discovered, I believe, that's yet to
be discovered about children interacting
|
| 47:47 | with an app or a small tablet.
|
| 47:51 | It would be a lot of fun.
|
| 47:52 | I can see a lot of fun in trying to
solve the problem of what do you do with
|
| 47:56 | this, what exciting thing
can you do with this?
|
| 47:59 | Nat: I was a big fan of Ed Emberley's when I
was a kid, and when we were looking for
|
| 48:06 | content that we could bring into our
apps, we were looking for things that
|
| 48:09 | worked--that was already two-
dimensional, that was modular, that we could have
|
| 48:14 | fun with, because we knew that we are
going to be breaking things apart and
|
| 48:16 | putting them back together.
|
| 48:17 | It was such a natural leap from the
page to the app so that the kind of things
|
| 48:24 | that were built into the book design
translated very well into iPad design.
|
| 48:28 | So he made our lives easier and there
was the same situation with Eric Carle,
|
| 48:33 | where both of them are making books
that were already very interactive and kind
|
| 48:37 | of pushing the technology
of what a book could do.
|
| 48:39 | (music playing)
|
| 48:45 | Erin Rackelman: Instead of creating new content, we
were interested in taking stuff that
|
| 48:47 | already existed, that we loved, that we
respected, and bringing that into the digital age.
|
| 48:54 | So we were looking for authors and
illustrators that we'd loved as children.
|
| 48:59 | In this case, Nat had
loved Ed's work as a child.
|
| 49:02 | We have been so excited to work with
authors, but they're very scared of moving
|
| 49:07 | into this new medium, and he has no fear.
|
| 49:09 | He is just ready to jump in.
|
| 49:10 | He has already jumped in.
|
| 49:12 | It's been really refreshing to work
with someone who isn't resentful of the
|
| 49:16 | medium coming out there.
|
| 49:18 | He has adapted every time to
the way the industry has curved in
|
| 49:21 | different directions.
|
| 49:22 | So he, by far, is the most
open artist we are working with.
|
| 49:29 | (music playing)
|
| 49:30 | Ed: We want to find out if there are people
within the field who have credentials,
|
| 49:33 | who are going to be able to say
something, this is an entertainment, yes.
|
| 49:37 | And of course, it has to
be entertaining, of course.
|
| 49:40 | If you're lucky, you get both.
|
| 49:41 | I mean it just helps you
to think in a certain way.
|
| 49:43 | One of the things, very careful, very
important when the first drawing book came
|
| 49:47 | out was that people succeed doing it.
|
| 49:49 | (music playing)
|
| 49:55 | Nat: We are excited to take Ed Emberley's
books to a whole new generation, partly
|
| 49:58 | because I love the way that they
demystify what is almost like a priesthood.
|
| 50:06 | The ability to draw is something that
every kid has when they're little and
|
| 50:10 | then one day, around second or third
grade, you know, "Billy is good at drawing
|
| 50:15 | and Johnny is not."
|
| 50:17 | And the only difference between them is
that Billy kept drawing and Johnny stopped.
|
| 50:21 | To you crack that open, that mystery,
and say it's just practice and it's just
|
| 50:26 | paying attention and it's just thinking through.
|
| 50:28 | So we are really excited
to share that with kids.
|
| 50:31 | Anytime you open up a problem that
seems so mysterious and so difficult and you
|
| 50:34 | let people see inside it and
say, it's actually no big deal.
|
| 50:37 | It might be some hard work.
|
| 50:38 | And it's not saying that anybody can
write their own book right off the bat, but
|
| 50:42 | there is a way to get there.
|
| 50:44 | That's really exciting.
|
| 50:45 | (music playing) Ed:
|
| 50:45 | Just as I thought of ideas, the ways to
use printed pages on books that people
|
| 50:50 | will want to come to, I think I could
devise ways of communicating through an
|
| 50:56 | app that aren't used on apps right now,
and that are better--and some of the
|
| 51:00 | things that I've wanted to do like
certain books, had ideas for books, and said,
|
| 51:05 | gee, that's a great book,
but it really needs motion.
|
| 51:09 | If I describe this as one thing, I can
do 1, 2, 3, but if I design an app, I can
|
| 51:14 | actually have this happen.
|
| 51:16 | I can design books in
which movement is the book.
|
| 51:20 | To do a movie is so expensive.
|
| 51:22 | Say, well, I am not going to do a movie.
|
| 51:24 | It costs millions of dollars to do a
really great movie, but an app? Hmm, not bad.
|
| 51:32 | (music playing)
|
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