Why did the chicken cross the road?

My son Oscar gave me the punch-line, which you can hear on The Dinner Party, where I also talk about some sci-fi moments that have stuck with me over the years. Also, in preparation for my first visit to Star Wars Celebration, I drew a little comic for a starwars.com guest blog post. If you're going to be at Celebration on Saturday,August 25, come see my panel (along with pop-up book artist Matthew Reinhart) at 11am, or stop by the Dark Horse booth for my signing at 4pm. I'll also be signing at the Barnes & Noble booth Sunday morning at 11am. Now back to drawing the last 113 pages of the second rough draft of my current project...

Save The Date for Save The Date

I just found out at San Diego Comic Con that Save The Date has a release date - November 16 will see a limited theatrical release for the film in New York and LA. It will also screen in Chicago and Austin after that, and IFC will have Video On Demand at some point too. Stay tuned to the Facebook page for updates. In the meantime, if you've got a record player you can listen to some of the music from the film on a 7" from The One AM Radio, which comes packaged with a booklet full of drawings from the movie as well.

San Diego Comic-Con

San Diego Comic-Con is this week and as usual I'll be spending most of my time signing at the Top Shelf booth (#1721). I'll have a small amount of artwork and hand-drawn trading cards for sale, and you'll be able to find more original art at the Scott Eder Gallery (booth #4515). On Friday I'll be doing a Star Wars panel along with pop-up book author Matthew Reinhart, and Saturday morning I'll be doing a panel for Save The Date. Alison Brie, Lizzy Caplan and Martin Starr will be at the panel, and you'll be able to pick up a copy of my "Save The Movie" minicomic as well (you can also check the Top Shelf booth for the mini while supplies last).

Heroescon

This weekend I'll be back at the always fun Heroescon in Charlotte. Here's a drawing I did a few years back for Heroescon's Indie Island.

Darth Vader and son and son

Oscar has started reading on his own, and I finally remembered to give him a copy of my new book. You can also see some of Oscar's drawings, and some of my own childhood Star Wars drawings, over on the Chronicle Books Blog. And if you're in Chicago this weekend, make sure to come check out CAKE, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo. I'll be there both days, with a minicomic making talk on Sunday at noon.

Avengers

Daniel Kibblesmith won the commission I donated to 826CHI, and asked if I'd write a story about seeing the new Avengers movie. I met Daniel after appearing on The Late Live Show, where I made a joke about 3D movies and why I don't want to see them. I decided I should go see the Avengers in 3D, of course.

Dinosaurs

It's going to be a busy summer for me, as I'm starting to work on three books, all very different and hopefully I'll be able to talk more about them soon. I'll also be doing a ton of travel to promote Darth Vader and son, including some San Francisco events next week. Check out the left side for updates on where I'll be when. As a result of all this busy-ness I'm going to take the summer off from commission drawings, except for a few I already committed too. Above is an unused version of a dinosaur tattoo I made, and another commission I'll be doing was auctioned off to support 826CHI. There's one more commission I'll do, and that one is part of the Reading With Pictures kickstarter campaign. If you miss out on the commission from me, though, you can also fund the RWP kickstarter and get a customized action figure made by my brother.

May The Fourth Be With You

May 4th is Star Wars day, and so of course there's some promotion for Darth Vader and son happening. On starwars.com, you can download a wallpaper designed from the above drawing of Luke making Vader play with him, and over at threadless.com, you can watch a short interview about making the book.

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.

Darth Vader and son in Diamond now

I'm home from the Sundance FIlm Festival, where Save The Date premiered to a largely positive response. Hopefully everyone else will be able to see the movie soon, but until then you can get ready for Darth Vader and son, which will be out in May and is currently available to pre-order in the Diamond Comics Catalogue (you can also ask your local comic shop to make sure and order you a copy). Here's some pencil sketches from the process of designing the book's cover - trying out slight variations of where Luke and Vader are looking, as well as their positioning. I think I drew about eight pencil versions in all, and fully inked and colored three or four of those. In the end, of course, we ended up using the first drawing I did. Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and Star Wars are all TM/R/C/etc. Lucasfilm 2012.

Lately: December 2011

In addition to doing some last minute artwork for Save The Date and teaching at SAIC, I've mostly been working on A Matter Of Life, the next autobiographical book which has stories mostly about fatherhood and religion. Here's part of a cover design sketch on the top left. On the top right is part of my drawing for the retailer incentive cover for the first issue of Adventure Time comic book (in this month's Diamond catalogue, so order at your comic shop now). The bottom left is a drawing of Racky, based on one of John Porcellino's King Cat covers, drawn as a thanks to John for speaking to my class at SAIC. The bottom right is part of the cover to a minicomic I created in conjunction with the New Trier Literary Festival. I gave a talk to students, then had them write a comic with me - I sat and drew thumbnail pencils while they gave suggestions for what the comic should be about and what should happen next. I inked the comic at home later on and failing to think of a good title, settled on naming it after an Anders Nilsen book.

Sundance 2012!

About five and a half years ago I got an email asking if I'd ever thought about writing screenplays, and so I started working on a story. The final idea turned into a screenplay that I co-wrote with Egan Reich and Michael Mohan. The movie, Save The Date, ended up being filmed this summer, and now they've scheduled the premiere. It all feels fairly strange, but exciting.

Where I Draw

Jordan Shiveley, who runs Grimalkin Press, started a new blog displaying artist's working environments. You can see my non-coffee shop drawing space there now.

Funny Misshapen Obstruction

Once again I put my comics students through the obstruction exercise - inspired by Lars Von Trier's film The Five Obstructions, I had students re-draw a comic of theirs with some restriction specific to them. These included not using panel borders, using different materials than they normally do and limiting dialogue or text. I felt it would be only fair that they be able to give me obstructions as well. They chose to have me draw with a panel layout that wasn't a grid, use animals not people, use pastels and draw it big. They also tried to get me to draw more cars but I nixed that one. I chose to redraw this two page sequence from Funny Misshapen Body, and started out by thumbnailing a non-grid layout of how I could re-draw the pages.


I wasn't going to go buy pastels just for this, so I used colored pencils, and drew on some standard issue Dark Horse comic art board. I didn't have a lot of time to work on it, but I think it turned out okay, and more importantly it was interesting to get outside my normal comfort zone. I don't think working like this would work for me in general, and the effect of having an entire book of pages like this wouldn't feel right for my autobiographical comics, but it's something that'll probably sit in the back of my head and be of use somewhere down the road.