It's A Cute Cat World!

Here's a quick peek at three stages of my new two page comic running in Devastator #3, which comes out next Wednesday, with a release party at Meltdown in Los Angeles this weekend. There were actually something like a dozen stages to this comic, because I kept starting to draw it and starting over because it wasn't just right. It's a true story that I'm glad I waited to draw.

Merry Catmas!

To promote my most recent cat book Cats Are Weird, I drew up these holiday cat cards. You can download a zip folder of all six to print out and mail until December 12 here. Feel free to share with friends!

Cats Are Weird

Here's the initial cover sketch for the new cat book. At the time, I was still planning on the book having more of a narrative, with the cat wandering around outside. Chronicle thought it'd be nice for the cover to sync with both the first book (by having the embossed line art) and postcard box (by having die-cut panels). The top of this image shows the cover, while the bottom is the full endsheets, which would be in color.


Here's some more sketching for the cover, trying to figure out how to have the endsheets tell a narrative, but also have the cover work on its own as well.


Here's pencils for the cover, working on a design where the cats only showed through in the color endsheet panels.


Eventually, Chronicle and I decided on the title Cats Are Weird. The book lost the narrative and ended up following the format of the first book. These are the pencils for the cover on the right, and for the right endsheet opposite.


And here's what the printed cover looks like. The book is half in gray like Cat Getting Out of A Bag, and half in color. It just showed up on page the Diamond Previews catalogue today, so you can now have your local comic shop pre-order it.

Cat Process

Just in stores now are the Cat Companion Journal, a blank journal illustrated with some of my cta drawings, and The Cutest Sneeze In The World, a box of 30 postcards mostly taken from Cat Getting out Of The Bag along with 8 all new color postcards. Recently, I've begun work on the sequel to the cat book, currently titled 'Cat Walks,' so I figured I should post on my process for the cat comics. I start out by pencilling the panels, then pencil the insides of the panels. Then using the lightest gray Faber Castell brush pen, I ink the lines, then erase the pencils. The new book is half black and white and half in color, but the next steps are pretty much the same for both. I either add the colors, or whatever gray shading I need, again using the Faber Castell brush pens. Finally, to finish it off I add the final black lines.