Illustration from Miss Elephant’s Gerald, a tablet app based on a song by the Pop Ups.

A couple of months ago, the awesome Brooklyn-based children’s band The Pop Ups contacted me, asking me if I wanted to illustrate their jazzy Halloween song Miss Elephant’s Gerald. There would be animals. Playing instruments. Wearing costumes. Oh yes, I was very interested.

Illustrate a song, you ask? How does that work? Well, the band was collaborating with an app developer called Mibblio, whose product is a musical interactive storybook. Individual songs become illustrated apps that you can play along with. I was excited to work on something for the iPad and especially excited to work with a children’s band. You can buy the result in the App Store! Anyway, it was a totally cool project and the folks at Mibblio were great to work with. The app has gotten a couple of nice reviews already, from the kids’ music blogs Kids Can Groove and Zooglobble.

This project posed a bit of a stylistic challenge for me, as I felt that my normal ink-and-watercolor style would be a little too delicate for a tablet screen. So I amped things up a bit, drawing with a fatter line and using the colors straight out of the pan. Check out some more of the artwork:

Rahsaan Roland Cat.

My friend Jason suggested that the nun needed to be animated. He was totally right.