D.S. (Dan) Edwards has been looking for his elusive “big break” for over a decade. At 21 he co-founded Art Barn, a Portland, Maine based design studio. The group was on the forefront of the web-cartoon movement, producing an award-winning series of Flash cartoons for RKO Pictures called Alien Abductee Theater. The year was 2000, those prehistoric days before YouTube, and while everyone knew that web content was the wave of future, no one had any idea how to monetize their creations, and Alien Abductee Theater, like many similar projects, went the way of the dodo. After producing a half dozen animated commercials, a pile of illustrations, and numerous websites, Art Barn folded as well.

After a number of sidesteps into screenwriting, filmmaking, music video directing, and opening and closing coffee shops, Dan stumbled into a digital marketing job. He worked as the senior Flash designer for Atrinsic, Inc, a Manhattan-based direct marketing company for over four years. Some of the results of this era are posted in the animated web ads section above.

About three years in, Atrinsic's need for Flash work started to dwindle, and Dan began looking for the creative project that would set him free. But what project should he begin? Film production involved too many people he couldn’t pay. Screenwriting felt too intangible and neglected the illustration side of his work, arguably his stronger skill. Animation was Dan’s true love, but after biting off more than he could chew numerous times in the past, it felt too daunting.

If Dan took one of his animation ideas and adapted it to a picture book, though, he felt the workload might become manageable. By New Year’s Eve, 2009, Dan decided that it was going to happen. He was making a book.

A year later, Dan finished Mr. McFrawley's Traveling Show.

MR. MCFRAWLEY’S TRAVELING SUMMARY:

Bix Spiderbeck is a young freak in Mr. McFrawley's Traveling Show. Trouble strikes when a bigger circus, run by Ms. McCrum and Ms. Callow, comes to town and threatens to bankrupt the only place Bix has ever called home. A visit to the old fortune teller, Madame Barfogsky, sets him on an exciting adventure. His goal? To find more freaks and save his circus! With Annie, the bearded girl (who is too young to grow a beard), and Morosy, the puppy with two tails, Bix heads out to find new friends.

Unfortunately, he's never more than a few steps ahead of McCrum and Callow's army of disgruntled clowns. Keenly imagined, elaborately visualized, and vividly colored by writer/illustrator D. S. Edwards, Mr. McFrawley's Traveling Show is a fun adventure story for all ages about the importance of family, the need for a place to call home, and the fact that everyone is, deep down, just a little freakish.