What happens when a child becomes the guardian of ancient ruins and silent monuments for a day?
This is the question they asked themselves when they entrusted me with the boards of "The Guardian of the Forum".
With Federica Lamonaca ( author ) and Andrea Schiappelli ( Project Manager for the Park ), a story gradually took shape, which she skillfully transformed into a screenplay, with all the difficulties of writing something without words, because "The Guardian of the Forum" is a book that speaks only through images, A silent Book.
Once the screenplay was finished, my moment truly arrived:
The first step was on paper; I would have liked to do the whole book that way, but moving around a lot and knowing that it would be a book subject to possible modifications during the process, with Federica and Andrea trying to fill my historical and archaeological gaps. So I sketched all the drafts of the book, in pencil, roughly, with a raw mark that probably only I could interpret:
While the drafts were being finalized, the character design was defined, followed by the first complete boards on my iPad to establish line and color, and finally all the clean pencils, this time digitally, the inks, the color, and then a bit of color correction. A process that took almost one year, inbetween various start and stop.
Once the book was finished, I created the covers for the two print versions and handed the ball over to the publishing house Bummy Edizioni, which took care of the entire production and final printing phase.
It was a long but satisfying journey.
The book will be released on May 4th. You can purchase it from the Bummy Edizioni website, on Amazon, and of course, in bookstores.
You can find more details on the ParCo website!
I'll also leave the links below and a small image gallery.
