HOW TO MAKE FRAME-BY-FRAME ANIMATION A VIABLE OPTION.

I’ve long loved animation and I have a weird, rich history of not ever getting to do it. Like, really do it. This from the guy who, in dot-com’s infancy, was the ONLY ART DIRECTOR IN SAN FRANCISCO WHO KNEW HOW TO MAKE AN ANIMATED GIF. True story.

When I was studying marketing at the Art Center College of Design in the super late 80’s a Hollywood production company (in an hilariously Cohen-brother-style meeting on Sunset Blvd.) invited me to be a part of a breakthrough, episodic animation project for adults that eventually became some dumb show about a guy named Homer and his weird family who lived someplace called Springfield. If you ever run into me, ask me about this experience because it’s super funny (sometimes I think I dreamt it).

The very first animation I did for Kelly’s marriage book, Hey, I Love You…. The hardest part was building the end title with the book closing. I knew it would be, so I made it so I could swap out the art and use the base animation as a template for every video after.

Once I figured out the basics, it was time to play with more layers, masking and more complicated animations.

Eventually I added unique title art to the front of each new video and kept pushing myself to do more complex scenes.

With all the booty shaking, this was the most detail I put into one of these animated shorts. And the most adventurous transition (to the dropped penny) I’d attempted.

Since the brand calls for stylish simplicity, you’d have to really be paying attention to see that the clip that begins at 00:22 is the most complex frame-by-frame animation so far. Can you guess why?

Soon after, Dick Clark Productions (another funny story) asked me to turn a comic series I’d won an award for in LA into commercial bumpers for a season of American Bandstand. I gave them an enthusiastic “YES” despite not knowing at ALL how I’d actually fucking deliver (it was the late 80’s and we didn’t even have clamshell phones yet for God’s sake!). Shit, I was still in school and only 19, for crying out loud, but I was all about it! When they said it’d be a great unpaid project on my resume, I bounced.

I’ve actually been creeping up on real animation for a bit. In 2017 I created a polished series of successful animated videos for a tech startup by supplying layered illustration files to a talented, local After Effects animator. Then I started a series of time-lapse illustrations that I made for Mr. Dave’s Best. Drawn in real-time, all one take.

But my real opportunity came when I got to promote the marriage book my wife had been contracted to write for Hachett – Hey, I Love You… To research her concept, Kelly had been interviewing all kinds of couples to learn more about all kinds of marriage experiences – the good, the bad, and, yeah, the sometimes terrible. Since I’d designed and illustrated her book to be as unisex and inclusive as possible, Kelly had a cool idea to set those candid insights to stylistic animation that would be right on brand.

Once animations were done, they were easily converted to animated gifs. Like this endless sharing of Hey, I Love You…

SImple, yes. Pain in the ass, not really. What I love about conceptual animation is that your can do a lot with little when you put a little thought into it beforehand.

Simple, yes. Pain the ass, also yes. But I do love this tedious-to-execute animated gif of the endless search for love. This was a part of the puck to fill Giphy with our cute little animations.

This concept for this animation was pretty simple so it had to get juiced up with some slightly difficult renderings of the word bubbles and the chair bounce on the refresh. Not hard, but nice thinking, I think. haha.

Frame-by-frame, onion skinning, multiple layers, Procreate, and my left hand – all in one photo. But this is what goes into every sequence on this page (and more on the Hey, I Love You… Vimeo channel.

The process wasn’t much different than the video work I did on those earlier tech-startup videos. I’d discovered the Procreate illustration app for those and it was a short leap to teach myself how to use its ridiculously simple animation assist to onion-skin myself to frame-by-frame-glory. Trying to do a whole video in one file was technically impossible anyway due to file size limitations which is fine because it would also have been an unworkable hellscape of layers to deal with. So I animated all the scenes as short clips. Once I had a scene down, I exported it as an mp4 file thatI then pulled into Adobe Premiere. There I could loop, extend, or slow, depending on how the VO timing worked out. And if I ran into trouble, I’d just zip back to the iPad to quickly animate a filler sequence or fix bugs in the scenes. Easy squeezy. 

Soon we had over 40 short animations for Hey, I Love You… And there’s more in production. It’s funny to watch my progress as I became more comfortable through experience. And the best part is that since I did all the animations as individual sequences, now we can mix and match previous work to make new narratives in just minutes. Or animated gifs of those scenes. Despite having so many options to economically repurpose the work into the future, I still prefer animating new ideas since I figured out how to do it so easily!

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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HOW TO DESIGN A BOOK TO NEVER SIT ON A SHELF.

I’ve designed and illustrated a handful of books like the silly Safe Baby Handling Tips, Mysterio’s cute picture book, and more. But this was the first book I was asked to design that was, well, an actual BOOK. Like, a book you could spend more than 5 minutes reading. It had more than 1000 words in it, for crying out loud! What made it even more special was that it was penned by my talented writer wife and partner, Kelly Sopp. Which I’m thinking might be how I was lucky enough to get this very different assignment? Maybe.

Kelly’s book is titled Hey, I Love You…and it’s beautiful, simple, and remarkably (you’ll appreciate the pun in a minute) unique. It was written to give couples practical marriage wisdom, along with an effortless way to exchange heartfelt words that need to be said, or unsaid, or aren’t said often enough. It’s different from any book in the Relationship and Marriage section of your last remaining bookstore for a lot of reasons. But the most brilliant reason is the way you use it. Any book can tell you what to say, how to act, or what 25 rules to follow to reach happily ever after. But Kelly’s book has a simple, built in system that, when applied, will literally keep dust from collecting on the book AND your marriage.

The final cover of Hey, I Love You…: Bookmark your way to a Remarkable Marriage by Kelly Sopp. We did over 30 covers for this, can you believe it? And they were all this simple and they were all in white, black, and this charming yellow. That byline on the front on white? That’s a removable sticker. The book is meant to be personal and we didn’t want people looking at marketing stuff every time they wanted to use it.

SO MANY WORDS! It was actually fun managing the typography. I hadn’t dealt with having control over this much copy for a while and it was so fun. Of course there more to this than this one spread, silly. Oh, and tabs. I was able to include finger tabs for each of the 5 chapters so you could find what you wanted to “say” really fast.

It’s so REMARKABLY easy (paying off on that earlier pun now): the bulk of the book is composed of bookmarkable sentiments that you can use to offer words of romance or encouragement to your spouse. Just find the feeling you want to share, pop in the supplied bookmark, and hide the book in a fun place for your partner to find. Under their pillow. On top of the coffee maker. In the fridge. Get creative! Every page is a love note to be left to deliver a soft, unexpected reminder to your spouse that you’re there and thinking of them.

But the book is especially helpful to any and every marriage because it accounts for reality. Everything’s not all romance, all the time. There’s a section for when you have disagreements and tough times. There’s even an array of thoughtful ways for you (or your spouse) to sincerely apologize for any discretion. In these cases, it’s less about starting a makeout session. It’s more concerned with getting you two discussing what might be out of whack in a kind, constructive way so you can get back to the makeout sessions.

Most of the book is like this. And this is how it works: “Oh, something is bookmarked for me!” (top right). “Awwwww!” (left) “AWWWW! (bottom right) Do I really need to tell you what happens next?

This isn’t just a book to instigate cuddles. It’s got everything you’ll need during your decades together. Seriously. It can even help you tackle some pretty serious stuff. My article on doing the book illustration goes more into the challenges that posed to the tone of the book.

I’m not trying to sell you the book. If you’ve read any of my articles on strategy, design, marketing, and illustration, they all dive into this much background detail. Because no work can be evaluated by the work alone. That’s literally why they say, “You can’t judge a book by it’s cover.”! Because the cover may not reflect the spirit of the writing. I had a brilliant creative director tell me once that the fastest way to kill a bad product is with good marketing. It’s so true.

So when I got Kelly’s final manuscript, here were my take-aways:
Upbeat. WAY out of character in the genre (in a good way). Funny where appropriate and keenly adept at bringing a sensitive positivity and kind understanding to the serious bits. It reads like lavender scented, soft wool dryer balls. Romantic if you’re in that mood, comforting if you aren’t.

The book’s content was a complicated thing (the topic of marriage) broken down into its simplest form and delivered with a kind smile. So that was my direction. Get out of the way of the words and just deliver them, gently. The font is Abrade. It’s got, like, 1M variants and its Light version fits the tone of Kelly’s writing like a wedding ring.

All this is from the initial pitch to our publisher (Running Press). Pretty similar to what was published, no? Hahaha. It’s because we presented such a detailed, thought out vision of what this book could be. But there were some changes. (Clockwise) At first we thought it’d be really nice if the hardcover was cloth covered (instead of a book jacket). But that turned out to be too expensive (and in the end it was fine ‘cause it’d probably get really dirty with use. This is a photo of the book I ‘shopped up for the pitch. The books visual language was thought out at the beginning, too. We even included a series of patterns to use and that was just for the endpapers. The HEY logo as so important that I did a ton of versions before landing on what we chose, here on that bookmark. And finally a ‘shopped image of the book where one might find a spicy sentiment waiting for them!

Alternate covers! So many covers. I mentioned we looked at over 30 subtle and not so subtle variations, but that didn’t even include versions of what shape the cover sticker was or what would be on the bookmark or what if the cover was cloth with an acetate jacket!? I don’t know if this is how much thinking goes into every published book, but it’s what goes into the ones I design.

This is where to keep this book. Everywhere. The best design aspect is the concept itself. That the couple who owns the book uses it as a fun communication device, passing it back and forth as desired or needed.

I mentioned at the beginning that this was more of a “book-like” book than I’d ever designed in the past. It’s true, but it’s “more-than-a-normal-book” because of the interactivity baked into the concept. So even the writing of it was part of it’s design and I collaborated with my author from the outset. We divided the content into bite-size, intentional bits. We made it easy to digest. And the final layout is a natural extension of that.

The bookmarkable spreads are visually sparse to give the sentiments the attention they deserve. The lead message is positioned large as a sort of headline at the top left with an accent illustration above for colorful, emotional seasoning. At the lower right are brief, carefully chosen words of support, positioned to not be blocked by the supplied bookmark. Easy squeezy, light and breezy.

One of my favorite quotes is one that I cannot for the life of me remember so I’m going to go with something similar that I found on the interwebs - ”The definition of being good is being able to make it look easy” That was from one of the great thinkers of our time, Hugh Jackman. I happily did over 30 cover designs for this thing to be sure I got it right. Yeah, the cover is important, but 30!? Published authors, did you get 30 versions to consider? I also did 250 more illustrations than was called for (or paid for in the advance). I explain in my article about the illustrations that it wasn’t because I had to because I was married to the author. It’s just the book needed it. Which didn’t make it the easiest project I’ve ever tackled but it was just as rewarding in the end. Because I LOVE going the extra mile(s) for something (and someone) I deeply believe in.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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HOW TO DRAW OVER 300 ILLUSTRATIONS FOR A 258 PAGE BOOK THAT'S NOT EVEN A PICTURE BOOK.

My wife wrote a book called, Hey, I Love You… and she asked me to design it. Then she asked me to illustrate it. It’s in the contract with our publisher. They paid me in the advance to do 50 illustrations for the book. Well, they paid Kelly to have me do the work. Hahaha. Anyhoo, you know how many illustrations I did for the book? Over 100. And that’s why I like being a strategic designer who can draw. I didn’t HAVE to overdeliver because it’s my wife’s project. I did it because it simply HAD to be done. I’ll explain.

Hey, I Love You… by Kelly Sopp. Illustrations (so many illustrations) by me, Dave Sopp. This is an early drawing I made for the Hey, I Love You… website because we didn’t have an actual copy of the book to show off. Hey, we still don’t!

Kelly’s book is beautiful. Hey, I Love You… gives couples practical marriage wisdom, and an effortless way to exchange heartfelt words that need to be said, or unsaid, or aren’t said often enough. It’s so unique. Not just because of the way you use it or how anyone who’s married can find incredible value in it. It’s unique in the space of Relationships and Marriage. Have you ever looked in that section? It’s D-E-P-R-E-S-S-I-N-G. It’s mostly for people trying to fix what’s very broke or, in the dustier lower shelves, trying to teach people how to NOT get into that situation in the first place. Kelly’s book tackles all that (and more) handily and expertly, but in such a refreshingly positive way. This is starting to sound like I’m the president of her fan club (I am, but I’m also the president of every businesses fan club on this site), but it’s important because when you illustrate a book, it’s not about your talents. It’s all about the content.

Didn’t I just say that I don’t have a sample of the book? I don’t. So I did that Illustration to use while I made my own dummy! I’m like that. Anyhoo, now you get to see what the book design looks like. Super airy and light. That yellow is so bright and happy and positive (just like the writing.). Below are some illustrations of how the book works – “it puts the bookmark in the book.” (Sorry, Silence of the Lambs joke).

I’ve collected my favorites (but not all my favorites) to share. The book is so light and bright and airy, so the illustrations really needed to just be seasoning for the words Kelly wrote. I chose a loose style using the colors we already established in designing the book together. The drawings are cute and happy, but still rough around the edges and almost sketchy, just like my marriage. Kidding! Just seeing if you’re paying attention.

I tried to keep everything as simple as possible at every level. I use three brushes: Rough Crayon, Tight Crayon (for any type), and Messy Dotted. There are only three colors: White, Yellow, and Black. Even conceptually I tried to be super simple without being lazy. I mention that the Life Preserver was an easy out, but I tried to at least make it look really interesting. And it turned out to be one of my favs.

In this case, the content is composed of two parts. The first is an introduction to the book to explain it (it’s that unique) and give you an entertaining breakdown of tried and true marriage best practices. The second part is the bulk of the book - bookmarkable spreads that convey your romantic thoughts, encouraging words, mild concerns, deepest worries, and your most sincere apologies. That’s a lot of emotional content, right? Sound kind of heavy? Well, it IT IS! And that was what made it so tricky.

The Hey, I Love You… bookmarkables are divided into five categories. The first two, Romance and Encouragement, were super easy and fun. Then it started getting challenging. I feel like such a baby even writing that because you honestly, have NO idea how much thought and research went into the writing of this book. For example, consider this spread: I’m Worried About You. / It seems like you might be having a tough time right now. Want to talk about it? While the sentiment is clear, it’s also intentionally vague. Because this bookmark may be appropriate for someone who’s going through a really hard project at work as well as someone who might be suffering from deep depression. The overall tone of the book is upbeat, but it’s not tone deaf. As a person who identifies as “married for more than 25 years”, I’ve (we’ve) experienced a lot of the experiences in this book. So what would you illustrate to represent that bookmarkable message?

For every message in the book, I had to put myself in the shoes of the bookmarker AND the recipient in both the most mild of circumstance AND the most dire. All the while I had to keep with the book’s upbeat voice and palette. For example,“I’m Worried About You.”. For this I illustrated a door outlined in white in a very dark room. Under the door there’s a bright yellow light showing from the other side. From other side comes a bright, hopeful love note that travels a playful path into the room. Fine for anyone who’s just sort of shut off emotionally from their loved one and open to interpretation by the recipient to speak to just how dark that room is that they’re holed up in. See what I mean?

Of course, not everything in the book called for something this heavy. Even in the serious parts. If you know me, you know I can’t stand an easy way out. But for a small part of this assignment, the easy way out led to more time and effort to tackle the harder stuff. “Maybe We Can Learn a Lesson in This.” = Graduation cap. “I Will Never Give Up on You.” = Life Preserver. Not lazy. Just accurate, appropriate, and efficient to tackle the harder spreads. Besides, remember what I said about the book not being about the illustrations? It’s true. They were always meant to be seasoning for the content.

At this writing, I’m still making more and more drawings. Once we sent the final files to our publisher, there was the website and all the marketing materials to produce. Right now I’m at over 300 unique illustrations for this project. This isn’t even counting the animated book trailers and animated gifs viewed by over 3 million on GIPHY. I hope there’s even more to add to this story when the book is available October 5. If you want to be in the loop, subscribe to the Hey, I Love You…Newsletter. If you preorder the book before October 5, you’ll get a cool little Sneak Preview Gift. from Kelly and I :-)

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Give the People What They Want.

Illustration > Mysterio Predicts

I’m not Mysterio. Well, sometimes I had to be at trade shows. But I originally drew Mysterio with no thought of him being me. Some people also go to Zoltar, the mechanical mystic from the movie, Big. Nope. It’s funny that our collective image of exotic mentalists are all kinda the same guy. I’ve got that big, beautiful Taschen book of Magic and when you look through the history of magician-types, those guys are all doing the same look! For the branding work I did for Continuum (a communications company), I talk about avoiding cliches. But, honestly, sometimes you have to give the people what they expect if you want them to understand something. Oh, sorry, if you don’t know, Mysterio is a mystic who predicts your baby’s future on a little t-shirt. See? Totally appropriate and no way around it. I toyed with using a top hat instead of a turban, but he looked too Fred Astaire. Like he’d take your baby tap dancing.

FINAL: Mysterio…such a jerk. But being serious makes him believable. I didn’t really have a lot of reason to draw him outside his logo, but once in a while I needed him to have a body. You may say “lazy” but I thought it was funny to keep his logo head exactly the same in any scenario. He’s so INTENSE! hahahah.

SKETCHES: In 2006 I started trying to figure out what Mysterio was going to look like. I distinctly remembering being bored in a trade show booth in San Francisco, so that’s why the three stacked sketches are so shitty. But that last one really seemed to be the one, no? I remember I didn’t do that many before heading in that direction. The strip of heads up top was me working my way toward finish (far right). I’d never done shading like Mysterio seemed to demand (the etching style). It’s hard! Anyhoo, once I got to a finish I did there little extras for the packaging. In the beginning I softened Mysterio by saying he also sewed all the shirts himself.

EXTRAS: Once I got comfortable drawing in the Mysterio style, I started doing little extras here and there for customers. Here’s an early version of Mysterio’s origin story that I did as a free comic download. To the right are the Spirit Animals from Mysterio’s free downloadable Cootie Catcher.

SKETCHES: Some early rough pencil sketches for Mysterio’s children’s book, A Future Just for You!

FINAL: Illustrated spreads from Mysterio’s picture book, A Future Just for You.

As the Joker once said, “Why so serious?” After all, it’s for a BABY. Exactly. I wanted Mysterio to look intense to add some gravitas to the thing. Look, imagine if he was some happy winking cartoon dude, it’d ruin the whole thing. The way he’s STARING, part of you has to wonder...will this prediction really come true? Also, this was made to be a baby shower gift. So it’s all theater when it’s opened in front of a party. Looks serious, ends up being ridiculous. Get it?

Still I had ideas on how to soften him up a bit. I had a whole backstory planned for him, like how he sewed the shirts himself and somehow imprinted the shirts with a blast from his eyes, but I never played it up. I once made a comic book about his origin story. It was an extra credit free download for a while at wrybaby.com. And, of course, I illustrated a children’s picture book about Mysterio’s powers. That really softened him up. I even brought him to life on Instagram for a while! Hahaha. In the end, I think I prefer him looking like his tagline description: Uncanny! Almost Scary!

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Expand a Magical World.

Design > Product

I’ve said before that your packaging is as much the product as the product is. This is another example of how true that is. If you don’t know, Mysterio makes a baby t-shirt that can predict your child’s future. Kelly and I had just published a children’s picture book about Mysterio and we were looking to expand his product line. Mysterio was always more of a gift for parents than a gift for baby. Sure, the baby got a shirt. But the parents, the baby shower guests and the gift-giver, all got a fun, memorable experience. So why not develop more experiences for them

FINAL: BEHOLD! Mysterio’s Deluxe Keepsake Chest! An expansion of the Mysterio infant t-shirts that predict your baby’s future. It was so fun to play in this sandbox from a design and illustration standpoint. Almost too fun. In the end I made way too much stuff for it. Made it a little hard to explain all the contents!

That’s where Mysterio’s Keepsake Chest came from. It was a deluxe collection of Mysterio’s baby shirt, his book, two fun games, a wooden top, and a paper craft. Over the years, customer feedback told us that people really did keep Mysterio’s shirts once their baby’s grew out of them. How fun to see if the future would eventually come true! So one of the games we developed predicted more specific events – Milestones. At the bottom of the box lies the game board and a heavy card filled with milestones. Spin the top and name a milestone. When it stops, it will point to the age at which the child will reach that milestone. Write it down on the card. Easy! The fun part is discovering that your child’s first haircut will happen at 58 years of age. Yes, all silly, good fun at a baby shower. Flip the game board over, and you’ll find that Mysterio will answer any YES or NO questions you have. Again, ask the question, spin the top, get Mysterio’s answer.

FINAL: SEE?! TOO MUCH STUFF! The tag on the outside had a list of contents (as brief as I could make it), but it still read like a novella. The game board that’s flipping up? That’s two games on one board. Of course it comes with a one of Mysterio’s signature baby t-shirts and his new picture book.

FINAL: A close up look at the Ask-O-Meter! Think of it as a flat, paper, much sassier Magic 8-Ball. I’ve got one of these in our living room and we use it all the time to make YES or NO decisions for us. I like how a lot of the answers end up being sort of confusingly ambiguous/

FINAL: The flip side to the Ask-O-Meter is a fun way to record when your baby will meet their major development milestones. What’s so funny is how horribly wrong Mysterio’s predictions get. First Tooth could be at 51 years, for example. Hilarious.

FINAL: There’s even a little papercraft Mysterio that you can pop on a shelf to keep a mystical eye out for baby. I like the extra credit (which I always say is for chumps) of printing a back to the paper Mysterio complete with all the instructions reversed as well. And here’s a shot of me tying up a box to ship out. I’d do 100 of these at a go and it KILLED my fingers. The things you do for art.

I think my favorite part of the whole thing was the clever packaging. We stuffed the box with wood excelsior so it looked all wild and exotic. We even slid the lid closed to leave some of the curly fill sticking out because it looked so cool. And just like we did on his baby shirt packaging, we let the lid be pretty simple and straightforward. We used a paper tag to really detail all the info. But even the tag was cool because, as the gift-giver, you could clip off the contents part and be left with a nice gift tag to fill out. Then, the giftee could discover the contents on their own. Also, it looked WAY not-commercial that way, too. Oh, and to keep people from getting into the box in stores (I already learned they would try), I wrapped each one with heavy rope and fastened it tight with heavy black wire. It killed my hands (yes, I wrapped them all myself), but it was totally worth it.

When baby was too big for Mysterio things, the whole kit and kaboodle could be stored away in Mysterio’s handsome wooden chest. Someday, far in the future, the child would find it, and have a good chuckle.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Turn Iffy QC into an Asset.

Strategy > Mysterio Predicts

Making things sucks. There. I said it. Kelly and I had been manufacturing goods for Wrybaby for years and whether it was done domestically or overseas, it always sucked. It’s just a lot of moving parts that can go wrong. And we weren’t even making complicated stuff! We had our share of screen printing problems in the US and we once had our inventory held for ransom in India WHILE WE WERE THERE VISITING THE FACTORY. Understandably, when it came time to think up a new product in 2005 we were feeling pretty sour. So we gave ourselves this challenge: Can we design a product that, if it arrived all messed up, would still be ok to sell, if not improved, by its defect?

FINAL: This is how consumers meet Mysterio for the first time. Curb appeal for days and all the result of outsmarting a quality control problem. I specified using rough-sawn wood for the crate box knowing it wouldn’t print very well on the front. That way I’d never be disappointed with how badly AND it sets the stage so well for the product.

That’s when Mysterio was born. Honestly. As exotic and fun and popular as Mysterio’s baby tees are, it’s totally one of those really disappointing “How I met my spouse” stories, like, “Oh, we were drunk in Vancouver and hooked up and got pregnant, so...”. Mysterio was a child of past failure. See, maybe you know this, but manufacturing overseas sucks for small orders. The sewing, for example, can be kinda janky even if it’s something the factory specializes in. Like onesies. You’ve got QC, but still some crap sewing sneaks through. Sometimes a lot. The printing is even more iffy: It’s off center, faded or too dark; or smudged because it’s done across town with someone your factory contracted with. Get it? Good luck getting anyone to take responsibility for anything when you see it come back all messed up. And again, that’s on stuff they all specialize in.

So given our challenge, we went rustic. We went old world. Exotic. Mystic. We started with the aesthetic. What could you make that, if it arrived messed up, looked like that was intentional to reflect being handmade, or primitive, or of exotic origins? And how would that product relate to a new baby (which Wrybaby specialized in)? 

At this point in our own parenting adventure, we were past the “how will we keep it alive” phase and entering the “what will it be someday” phase. So, I don’t know, it became sort of a no-brainer to make the connection. What if we created a garment that told the baby’s future? It could come in a printed bag that was sealed, so you didn’t know the future until your opened it? What if we built it up to make people think the futures would be amazing and then they weren’t? What if they were kind of hilariously odd? Like, how you can wonder sometimes how anyone grows up to find their passion as a Shrimp Boat Captain? Or a Romance Novelist?

FINAL: The current product packaging, front and back. We’d added the grommet to give our stores more display opportunities. You can see how the printing on the front is a bit off-center (a bit too far to the left). If it was on an envelope or a box, I’d be pissed. But because we used a sewn bag, you totally forgive it.

FINAL: Clip the bag open and VOILA! Your baby’s future. Boom.

It all unfolded from there. We didn’t even test it. We just went all in. We developed a wood crate display for stores with tons of curb appeal. It’s made by a US company who is AMAZING, but still, their shipper dropped our palette and half of the crates splintered, cracked or flat out broke. DIDN’T MATTER! In fact it made them better. They looked like they were just thrown off a boat from Cambodia.

The product itself is a little complicated to explain, being so unique. It makes a bit of heavy lifting for the little muslin packaging, but here it is: Mysterio predicts your child’s future on a t-shirt. There are 12 possible futures (which, btw, we change up every year) and each future is sealed in a muslin bag. Clip open the bag to reveal your baby’s future. 

In 2005 people weren’t very trusting that the futures wouldn’t be something stupid, dirty or terrible. So, we listed all 12 futures on the lid of the display crate so customers knew what they were in for. Eventually, we put the futures on the back of the bag (for reasons I mention in another article.) We succeeded in creating an amazing baby shower gift that was memorable because of great suspense and theater it created at parties. And talk about having a keepsake for that child to discover decades later when they really achieve their career goals! Creative moms-to-be have even used Mysterio Tees to let their husbands know they’re pregnant. Boutiques around the world found that Mysterio customers became steady customers, as Mysterio became the proven go-to baby gift. One boutique told us that Puff Daddy sent his personal chef (why the chef we’ll never know) to open all the Mysterio’s in the shop until he found Criminal Mastermind. He paid for everything he opened and left with his prize.

FINAL: Mysterio’s money-back guarantee along with some product extensions. His deluxe Keepsake Chest, his picture book, and even little freebie goodies like a papercraft Mysterio you can consult in times of indecision.

Over the years we’ve tinkered with Mysterio here and there. In the beginning all you had to do was pull the string to open it, but too many people just opened them in stores until they found one they liked. So now you have to cut it open. We added a silly guarantee the your future will be accurate by the time they’re 70 (and even still there’s a ton of impossible legal stipulations). We even released a limited keepsake box full of games, an inspirational book about Mysterio, his t-shirt and even a paper craft doll Mysterio doll to guard your child’s aura. Mysterio continues to delight, and I’ll be sure to update this post soon. He’s got some new, amazing products in the works as I write.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Make Fun of the Helpless.

Illustration > Safe Baby Handling Tips

Fun fact about my book, Safe Baby Handling Tips: That’s me and Kelly in all those drawings! We were living in SF and I was doing a rockabilly thing with vintage red tab Levis and no handlebar mustache. You can see Kelly go through a couple of hair styles between Safe Baby Handling Tips and its prequel follow-up, Safe Pregnancy Handling Tips. I’ve written about how we came up with the idea, but the intention of the drawings was to mimic instructions for power tools. Not airline emergency instructions. Not IKEA assembly instructions. There’s actually an important distinction here.

FINAL: The first edition of the book in question – Safe Baby Handling Tips circa 2005. Look at that handsome rockabilly devil, will ya?

FINAL: Like painters in all the cartoons who paint live models, illustrators use photos for reference.. We call it “scrap”. Before computers, I knew illustrators who had rooms full of file cabinets packed with torn out magazine pages, photos, all kinds of scrap (see!?) paper with stuff they could reference in their work. I like this photo because of the baby laying on the ground behind me. Looks like I totally missed!

FINAL: A couple of my favorite panels. It takes people a while to see what’s so wrong about Shopping with Baby, which is fun to watch. Drying Baby is so moronic and mean it never fails to crack me up. Same with the Lifting Baby detail (what a grip!). Oh, and a little something from Nursing Baby to keep you up at night. Yep, that’s me. I’ll spare you the scrap I shot for it.

FINAL: Another true life adventure in scrap shooting (courtesy of Bonding with Baby). And two of my favorite Kelly panels. She cut her hair short in the middle of the project and I kept it accurate. So when you read through the book you can tell what was done first and what was done later. Don’t ask me why all our furniture was labeled.

My dad and my granddad always taught me that you have to respect your tools. You understand their power and never forget that you need to be mindful when using them. Let your mind wander, and bad things can happen. That’s what I thought about when we had our baby. As long as you stay mindful and not be a moron, no one will get hurt. It’s a weird twist, but you follow me, right?

If you read about the strategy behind Safe Baby Handling Tips, you know I didn’t have a lot of time to mess around drawing these. They’re simple, but they had to be realistic enough to need scrap for me to work from. Because what I’d do if I had time is take photos of people recreating the actions and then draw from that. I did that, but then traced the images in a stylistic way so I could scan them, clean them up in Photoshop, turn into vectors in Illustrator, and then pop them into frames fast. The stuff I couldn’t shoot, I just drew freehand which turned out to be pretty efficient.

COMPS: of course there were a lot of ideas that didn’t make the book for one reason of another. When we did the 10th Anniversary update/expansion we had to nix some panels because technology made them obsolete. They just don’t make TVs like that anymore and we didn’t feel like a flat panel would be as funny. And somethings our editor at Running Press nixed to save us from ourselves. Co-Sleeping is too scary and real a problem, for example. And even though we have a booze related panel (Calming Baby) it was not recommended where this one we flipped it to be the YES. Bad. And I added some that were just shitty for fun. That’s a string of firecrackers I’m lighting over there for the unpublished, Teaching Baby to Crawl.

FINAL: New directions for Safe Baby Handling Tips. Clockwise from top left: 1. If dogs are the new children, a Safe Dog Handling Tip series seemed appropriate. 2. We played with the idea of offering our Handling Tips on adult apparel, canvas totes, and even pillowcases, so we made some useful usage tips for those fine products. 3. I picked something at random to see if the formula would hold up. HI-YA! It did. 4. This was the big NO on how to use a SBHT coffee mug.

I later tried my hand at expanding the Handling Tips concept to other things to see if the idea had legs. Karate, Dog Ownership, that kind of stuff. I think the baby is the best foil just because of the original power tool reference. For some gross reason it’s funniest when the person who could get so seriously hurt is the small helpless person who least deserves it.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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How to Not Destroy a Baby.

Strategy > Safe Baby Handling Tips

Are you a parent? Let me tell you, it’s terrifying. Scary at the least. If you are one, you know what I’m talking about. You’re so nervous and excited and, well, clueless. Because if it’s your first, you have no real idea what you’ve gotten yourselves into. And that’s a fact that becomes more and more clear as you careen toward your due date. When Kelly and I were expecting, I was just scared. She was terrified.

FINAL: The cover of the expanded version of Safe Baby Handling Tips. On the cover is a miniature, simplified version of another product I designed for Wrybaby – The Wheel of Responsibility.

When I was 14, my parents decided they missed being parents (of really small, helpless people). So, they had my brother Josh. Then my sister, Lindsey, three years later. So being in middle school through high school with a couple of babies in the house would prove really helpful to me as a soon-to-be-dad. I knew how to feed and burp a baby, change diapers, and all that jazz. Meh, just like ridin’ a bike. I was in no way emotionally prepared (and who is the first time) for the shock of full time responsibility, but at least I had some exposure in the field. Kelly had none.

We did all the things you do as expecting parents. We read scary articles online, we bought books that were thick and boring, or thick and scary. We were the first of our hipster advertising friends to have a baby, so they were, hilariously, no help at all. We went to baby care classes, and to the requisite Lamaz classes. And finally, our hands about all wrung out, Kelly went into labor and everything changed. 

 Sorry, changed for the better, I mean. Kelly and I soon discovered a few important truths.

1. Across the span of human history, all new new parents feel the same

2. Caring for a baby is difficult, but it’s manageable and only gets easier with time

3. You’ve got to be a fucking moron to really mess this up

REVIEWS: Our Amazon reviews are hilariously amazeballs.

TRUE: The only foreign translation of Safe Baby Handling Tips – German. Take a look at that title on the cover! Hahahaha. Do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with the layout? So bad!

That last point, especially. That’s where Safe Baby Handling Tips came from. Look, as long as your intentions are good, and you’re a somewhat stable person, you really aren’t going to mess this up. At least not in the beginning. Oh, you’ve got all the time in the world to unintentionally destroy your child emotionally. But in the first year? Nah. You good.

We’d conceived (see what I did there) the concept of these “handling tips” about a week after bringing our new son home. Each illustrated tip was printed on a newborn item: a onesie (Playing with Baby); a hooded towel (Drying Baby); a diaper cover (Checking Baby’s Diaper); you get the idea. It’s very simple. Each scenario shows you a common parenting activity and what kind an absolute idiot you’d have to be to mess it up. Sort of gives you some perspective, no?

Anyhoo, we were in Wrybaby’s booth at the New York International Trade Fair when a couple of reps from Running Press strolled in. They asked me if I had any more of these tips to fill a book. “Of course!”, I said. I didn’t. But I sure did a week later when we sent them the packet of illustrations that would eventually become Safe Baby Handling Tips.

To date, Safe Baby Handling Tips has sold over 120,000 copies. It is also well reviewed on Amazon. The book has been translated into German because if anyone knows anything about comedy, it’s the Germans. And the illustrations have become an stubbornly enduring meme on the internets much to our pleasure and dismay.

DAVE SOPP – Creative

Yep, that’s me. I’ve got over 20 years of marketing strategy, graphic design, advertising art direction, and illustration experience. Want to use some of it? Email me at dave@davesopp.com

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