THE ONLY POWER IN THE WORLD

They won't be available until May, but I drew this postcard to support 826CHI, the non-profit writing and tutoring center. Each postcard features text written by one of the students who's participated in programs at 826CHI, which are then illustrated by various artists. When I was in elementary school I had the opportunity to attend a few writing workshops (including one where the guest speaker was author/artist Tomie dePaola. It had a big impact on me, and is part of why I write and draw books now. You'll be able to buy the postcards to support 826CHI soon, but if you're really ambitious (and in Chicago) you can pick up tickets to the upcoming People Eating & Giving fundraiser, or PEG.

Space-Time!

This week, the newest Threadless Comics-on tees went on sale, featuring a story I wrote about a fictional science-fiction property called Space-Time!. I drew the first shirt and managed to recruit Paul Hornschemeier, Jeff Lemire and Anders Nilsen to each draw one of the other shirts. It's the first time I've scripted comics for someone else to draw, and they all made amazing work. Here's my initial character designs.
Also, Darth Vader and son has started to find its way into stores, and if you don't see it at your local shop you can always order it...

Darth Vader and son: The Trailer

Less than a month away, something to watch while you wait for the book. Thanks to Matt Saunders for making my drawings move...

Save The Date, Now Playing Somewhere Near You*

After debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Save The Date - the movie I co-wrote and created artwork for - has started playing at various film festivals, including tomorrow in Kansas City. Here's some of the first sketches I made for the film.

*Relatively speaking - on the grand scale of the entire universe, the movie will essentially be playing inside of your head tomorrow

Lately: March 2012

In my comics class a few weeks ago I gave an assignment where each student had to draw a comic with a few restrictions I gave specifically to each. At the end of the class I let them assign me restrictions to work under, and they gave me a few: no panels, aerial viewpoint, non-autobio, a sidekick/more than one character and the characters should have tiny heads and large hands. I started out not knowing what to do, but after French cartoonist Moebius passed away I decided I'd make my comic a tribute to him. Moebius was and is a big inspiration for me, and I came up with a short story of two explorers encountering a strange lifeform that transforms them. Here's sketches and abandoned inks for the first page. The whole comic is four pages long so I could print it up on a single 8.5"x11" sheet of paper. I eventually re-penciled it and drew the final comic in full color.


Also lately, although the book is basically finished, I've been working on the covers for A Matter Of Life. Here's the pencils to the front cover. You can see a little sneak peek to a couple of the pages in the online, PDF downloadable Rooms Magazine.

A Matter Of Life

Last night (or, technically, really early this morning) I finished the last interior page of my next autobiographical book. There will still be corrections and technical work to be done before printing, and I also need to draw the covers. This chart (written inside the front cover of the sketchbook I drew this book in) displays the dates I finished each part of each page over the past year - pencils, line inks, colors. The chart also displays my OCD.

Steven The Extraordinary Dinosaur

I'm getting more and more used to teaching college students at The School of the Art Institute, but last Friday I got to try something new for me - working with second graders. 826CHI is the local chapter of 826 National, an organization that works with students age 6 to 18 to improve and inspire their writing. One activity is the Field Trip, where a class comes to 826CHI and writes a story together, guided by volunteers. While one volunteer leads as the storyteller, another acts as the illustrator, creating two drawings the students can see on an overhead projector. After writing a few pages together, students each write the next page of the story, which is then bound in a little book along with a blank page to add their own drawing. This is one of the drawings I made of Steven the Extraordinary Dinosaur, who likes to wear underwear on his head and sells chocolate and underwear door to door with his talking rocket Rocky.