I am making daily drawings this year. Most of them I am planning on making a time-lapse process video of. When I do, I’ll add them to this play list embedded above.

Grabbed a moment to update the good ol’ McD Workshop portfolio with new books The Joker and Dudley and Omar’s Moving Garden.

The Joker was written by Daniel Wallace, edited by Robb Pearlman and Steve Korté, with an introduction by Mark Hamill, and designed by myself. Nick Gazin reviewed it over at Vice here (scroll down past the dong drawings), where he opens his review with “Chip Kidd should have made this book”, then Chip Kidd reviewed it over at The Wall Street Journal here.

Dudley and Omar’s Moving Garden was written by Douglas Hammer, designed by Justina Blakeney, overseen/published by Miguel Nelson/Woolly Pocket, and illustrated by myself. It comes stuck in a “Mini Wally” growing pocket and 20% of profits are put towards in-school gardening education programs for kids.

In other book news I have completed design on the new English language edition of Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salt Sea for Universe, which has already been scooped by a few blogs, and I am part way through designing a sci-fi art book along the lines of the Universal Studios Monsters book, also for Universe. Both will be released in 2012.

Me rolling in Sasquatch cash

And of course I still want you to buy my drawing book that is fun for kids, adults and surly teens alike! Sasquatch’s Big Hairy Drawing Book can be ordered for you from you favorite local bookstore, just call them up, or if there are none of those left in your area, there is always online shopping.

In animation news, I have been developing a cartoon project and posting time-lapse drawing videos to the meathaus account as they are produced in fits, and they are collected into a growing playlist that is embedded above. If all goes well with my operating system update later today, I’ll also soon be able to begin posting screen-cast videos of in-progress digital artwork.

Also I recently completed a short animated bit for the Adult Swim show, Eagleheart that required me to look up a lot of disgusting image reference. You’ll see what I mean after I post it. It is part of season two, airing sometime in the near future.

Last, the presentation pilot that I created animation for over the summer for HBO is still hanging in the balance… I think? When there is ultimately a decision either way I’ll be able to share some of the work eventually.

EDIT: I forgot that this should be titled THREE new books in the portfolio because I just added David Jablow’s Do It Yourself Doodler book that I designed for him over there too. Check it out!

Dudley and Omar's Moving Garden book bundled with 'Mini Wally' Woolly Pockets

Woolly Pocket makes different kinds of gardening containers made out of recycled plastics and promotes gardening education for children through their Woolly School Garden program. I was commissioned to illustrate this picture book written by Douglas Hammer, designed by Justina Blakeney and managed and published by Miguel Nelson and his Woolly Pocket company. The book is called Dudley and Omar’s Moving Garden and each comes packaged in a “Mini Wally” pocket that you can screw into any vertical surface and create your own vertical garden.

Some spreads of illustrations completed for the Woolly Pocket book

The first camel character design sketches

There were at least three more camel character design variations that we worked through before arriving at the final direction.

Nungma the monkey

There were also multi-stages of developing the monkey Nungma's design.

A digital coloring test of finished line art before the final digital/traditional hybrid technique was settled on.

Another stage in testing out digital coloring before settling back to traditional methods with some digital additions.

An essential step in this collaborative project was the drawing of a storyboard. This panel is of a four page spread revealing the oasis garden of Nugma.

The full four-page fold-out spread illustration which ultimately was broken in half and printed over two spreads instead.

A close up section of the four page page illustration.

Dudley and Omar fully loaded with Oasis ingredients about to head home to grow their own.

Above is the animation as it appeared on the end credits of the season one “Baseball” episode of Portlandia. The episode was directed by Jonathan Krisel, and the animation designed and animated by me. See the pencil test, line art inked, and then painted below:

Go For The Gold! 4 cover art

GO FOR THE GOLD! 4 is the fourth issue of Meathaus‘s anthology of sketchbook art. This issue includes the drawings of 39 international artists in an impressive 379 pages. I edited and designed the book and drew the wrap around cover art. Issue 4 as well as issue 3 and 2 are available to purchase in the Meathaus store.

GO FOR THE GOLD! 4 cover art inks

GFTG!4 pencils and sketch

Above is the video trailer I put together with some shots of the book. Below is my own 17 page sketchbook “comic” contribution.

In progress, a few spreads from an illustrated kid’s book that I’ve written and am painting in acrylics on illustration board. I think I posted an image of one of these perhaps six months ago or more on Flickr, but it took me until last month to finally schedule in solid working time on this and a few other projects that I have self-initiated. These paintings still are waiting for me to add some details here and there, such as the butterfly the bear cub is chasing down the hill.

Surprise, another new book. GO FOR THE GOLD! is the name of the sketchbook anthology that we’ve been putting out through Meathaus in which a selection of artists share their sketchbook work. Issue 1 was a hand-made piece with silkscreened covers and photocopied interiors, and I’ve edited and published issues 2-4 using a print-on-demand printer. More info is coming soon on this issue which includes 39 international artists and is an impressive 379 pages long.

Above is the wrap around cover art that I illustrated based on characters from my contribution to the book. Click the image above to get a larger image that you can download and use as a desktop image.

Contributor list: Angie Wang, Arik Roper, Chris Capuozzo, Seth Scriver, Dash Shaw, Fritz Bol, Hannah K. Lee, Jesse Moynihan, Keat Teoh, Kristina Collantes, Matt Houston, Mikkel Sommer, Richard Short, Thomas Herpich, Tomer Hanuka, Victor Kerlow, Devin Flynn, Brandon Graham, Mark Sunshine, Mu Pan, Nick Edwards, Sam Vanallemeersch, Nicholas Gazin, Takeshi Tadatsu, Phil Rynda, Jim Rugg, Grant Reynolds, Jeremy Tinder, Jonny Negron, Jesse Balmer, Jeff Kilpatrick, Max Fiedler, Gary Leib, Pendleton Ward, Jon Boam, Chris McDonnell, Vincent Giard, Farel Dalrymple, Jason Sacher.

Sasquatch’s Big Hairy Drawing Book made its debut at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con last week. I wasn’t there, but April from Chronicle sent me this photo of a sasquatch that came by the booth to check out the sasquatch related books. I don’t know if he left happy or not based on this photo.

I’ve spent all morning posting this bad boy all over the internet, so I’ll finally slap it up here. This is a video trailer I made for Sasquatch’s Big Hairy Drawing Book. It makes sense these days for visual books to have video trailers with so many purchasing decisions being made in front of the computer screen. I wonder how many people will browse through the book in a store and buy it. I wonder how many people will watch this video and buy, or decide conclusively not to buy it, heh. Any way I loved the excuse to make a video, so here it is.

Sasquatch’s Big Hairy Drawing Book will be available to buy for the first time at the San Diego Comic Con at the Chronicle Books booth, #1506. Chronicle also has a special Comic Con page set up here with 25% off and free shipping. That page mentions “daily raffles” at the convention. One of your daily raffles will be this very, very sad original art of Sasquatch from my drawing book. All you have to do is show up at the booth and write on a raffle ticket to get a chance to win this original, sad ink drawing. It’s already sitting somewhere in California waiting for you!