Exclusive: INVADER ZIM Artist Aaron Alexovich Takes Us From Concept to Final Product in IT’S NOT SCARY
Jonathan Barkan
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When it comes to finding safe ways to introduce children to the world of horror, there is certainly a load of possible choices at your fingertips. You can go safe with stories like Bunnicula or any of the Goosebumps books. Alternatively, there’s always cartoons and movies that target that demographic, like Aaahh!!! Real Monsters or Paranorman. Even certain video games go for that crowd. But if nothing has itched that particular scratch and you want to make sure that the horrors your child is exposed to are safe (relatively speaking), then you might be interested to learn a bit about It’s Not Scary!
Written and illustrated by artist Alex Alexovich, who has worked for years on Invader Zim (the cartoon and comic series created by Jhonen Vazquez), It’s Not Scary! is a 35-page, fully painted, hardcover children’s book that is also coupled with an app that takes the story from the page to the screen. The app will feature voice acting, an original score, interactive elements, and more, all of which will make this story pop in engaging and exciting ways!
The book is fully funded on Kickstarter but there are stretch goals that will make the final product all the better. And to hype up the project, we got Alexovich to share a series of images that take a concept and show how it gets fleshed out to the final product. You can see these below.
Here’s what Alexovich tells Dread Central:
“I basically had to teach myself to paint while doing this book, and paint in a really weird way. It’s more like laying out a scene for animation, in a way. We’re designing the book to work in 3D for iPads and Android devices, so I had to work it out so you’re able to see behind and around all the different elements. Peek around the corners and see all the cool junk!
“This is my first children’s book and first painted ANYTHING, so the learning curve was pretty steep. Especially doing it in this laborious million-layer way. But I think it’ll be worth it once people see this book in all its 3D glory. I HAVE to think that, or else I might go insane! In a bad way!”
I start with rough thumbnails in Photoshop to work out the composition. Can you make sense out of that mess? DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE IT’S JUST FOR ME, BUDDY. 
Then I do a more refined sketch of all the different bits and pieces, all on separate layers. 
Then I block out every object, creature, whatever, and start rendering each one. 
Then I polish it up, add text, make a few sacrifices to Nyarlathotep, and hopefully end up with something real pretty! And horrifying! Pretty AND horrifying.
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