From Concept to Carnivore: Creating Maximus Rex

Greetings!

With only nine shopping days until Christmas, you surely are amidst hustle and bustle, attending this party, that event, cooking this dish, and sampling those desserts. It is a time of excitement and family togetherness, and, most importantly, to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus.

This is our first in a series of blogs titled “From Concept to Carnivore.” The intent is to discuss the process of how (and why) we created The Adventures of Maximus Rex, to share some lessons learned along the way, and point out so many things we could have done differently. It has truly been a journey – one which has covered a little over two years.

Our first book, Maximus Rex Joins the Family, launched in August of 2023, and we are slowly creeping up on 350 book sales. For those of you unfamiliar with the story behind Maximus Rex, it was created as a way to keep the memory of our son, Max, in our hearts and to share his wonderful story with all. You can check out the About page for more details, but Max was born with many medical complications, battled for 200 days, and finally came to be at peace in October of 2021.

These books have a twofold purpose: one, to share the joy and life that we had the privilege of having with Max (however short). And two, to use proceeds from the books as a donation mechanism for children’s care units as well as continuing to write more books. These are the adventures of Max, or how we would have foreseen those adventures unfolding for our handsome little man.

Where do we begin?

First and foremost, how did we end up with the name Maximus Rex!? How did we create the character’s features?! Are we super talented artists!? Good questions… let’s dive in.

First, the name. Max was very fortunate to have a small army of nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and other caregivers. Many of them watched over him like he was their own, a lot of them held him every change they could, and even others gave him nicknames. Amanda, one of his respiratory therapists, nicknamed him Maximus Rex.

Because he needed 24/7 care, we often didn’t meet his nighttime caregivers, but one very fortuitous day, we got to meet Amanda, and she told us how much she loved watching Max and spending time with him, and she, of course, told us the great nickname she had given him. It wasn’t until we started piecing together what a book series would look like that we settled on the name, but frankly, we didn’t do any creative or intense work. He just was Maximus Rex.

As far as character creation, we knew that we wanted to write a children’s book to encourage families reading together. It needed to be something that the kids could run up to their parents and say “let’s read Maximus Rex again!” We had done some initial pencil drawings, pulled some ideas from our niece’s dinosaur stickers, and researched “cute dinosaurs” online. There is a broad swatch of options, so we pieced them together and sent them off. Which leads to the final piece… artistic skill.

We are NOT artists. There is a very sharp distinction in the world of literature between “I’m good at art” and “I can professionally illustrate a book.” While we posses a good deal of artistic and creative talent, it’s an entirely different effort to create a character(s), build an entire world, and do it with relatability and consistency. To find our artist, we pulled together some requirements for the book, as well as a detailed description around why we were writing the book, what we wanted the characters to think, act, and look like, and sent those requirements out to 15 or 20 artists.

With the feedback we received, we selected five artists to do proof of concepts. Very general conceptual drawings/sketches but one which needed to reflect what we were looking for. There is a lot that goes into artistic style of book characters (but is a topic for another time). With the results back, there was one clear winner. We are very blessed to have found @eone28 who has been an absolute rock star for us! Each and every detail of Maximus Rex (and the many other characters) was carefully looked at and considered and adjusted as needed.

For those of you who may have gone to business school, you might remember reading The World is Flat. Our interactions with the artist pool truly reflect that. We’ve never met any in person. Frankly, we don’t even live in the same country as any of them. Or continent. All communication is handled by electronic portal! What a cool thing.

Below is the evolution of Maximus Rex. Please note, that this is the artist’s original concepts through the final form. This does not include our very painful pencil sketches… you’re welcome 🙂

Happy Friday!

The Adventures of Maximus Rex Team (King, Lynnette, Russell, and Lucy the dog)

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