Here are the inks from the spread in my new drawing/fill-in/doodle book where I check in on your progress and see if you need anything, like a glass of water. Why Is Sasquatch Crying? will be published in fall ’11 by Chronicle Books!

Hey, try to look past the poorly lit photos and dig what I’m working on right now for my new book. On the top you’ll see some pencils for the intro page on which I present myself as a slightly disturbing character under a sheet with no apparent clothing or arms. Next, a pile of the thumbnails from my sketchbook that I did up rapidly in ballpoint pen and photocopied onto sheets so that I could see them all at once. Last, a shot of the never ending Action Steps list. Yes, if that sounds familiar then you too may be a devotee of the latest, greatest, organizational productivity system, AMO. It’s been working so well for me for the last few weeks that I’ve even started a small cult about it that meets monthly to review checklists. Yes. You hit your 30s with some kids and a mortgage and you’ll start devoting social time to production efficiency too. You’ll see.

Anyway here is one more shot of some inked pages and parts of pages:

It looks like my new book coming out next year will be called Why Is Sasquatch Crying? after all. It was pretty much the first idea that Jay, my editor at Chronicle (and longtime Meathaus compadre) pulled from one of the interior pages and we’ve been running with it all the while while tossing around alternates. But it’s settled. I like it! Here are some more peeks at the inks rolling off my production line…

Here’s a peek at the cover of the newly translated and updated design of the French language rock and roll comic book anthology, Rock Strips. On the left, Rock Strips, on the right, Tunes, the English language version from Universe. Spot the differences! Much more on this soon when I post it all as a proper portfolio item. Below is a more radical redesign that I proposed as an alternate approach during the process:

I think hair is hilarious. The new book that I am writing and drawing will be published in fall 2011 and it contains hair. Another tip: it is a book that you draw in!

Here are a few shots of the Rizzoli book, The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox which I did production work on. The company Pentagram designed the book and I was brought on to process through hundreds of images that needed to be cleaned up, digitally cut out, optimized and standardized. Silhouetting objects so that they were cleanly resting on pristine white backgrounds with subtle shadows was one of the jobs. There was also a lot of photo retouching and removal of obtrusive graphics and jpg artifacts, as well as cleaning up the presentation of production drawings and scripts. I was very excited to work on the book because I love the work of Roald Dahl and Wes Anderson, and obviously I love animation, cartoons and drawings. And books. And design.

Here are a few progress shots of my new book. It’s still early enough in the production that we don’t have a title settled on yet, but late enough that I am inking pages furiously. There will be many more updates soon.

Lost Planet 2 shirt color ideas

Lost Planet 2 t-shirt artwork with three Akrid options

I Am 8-Bit Productions called again to get me to produce some t-shirt designs. This time it was for a Lost Planet 2 release party. The twist was that there was to be an interactive component to the shirts. A company in L.A. called Fresh Pressed specializes in custom, on-demand, do-it-yourself screen printing services and they were set up at the event to crank out individual shirts for each party-goer in color and design combinations of their choosing.

My designs had to be created with not only economy and ease in mind (two ink colors + shirt color = maximum choices with minimum screens used) but also be composed to work in every combo. The solution was a main screen with two guys from the game on a landscape, and then the option to pick one of three other screens, each with a different monster (called Akrids in the game) to be looming in the background. One thing that really stuck with me about the game was that these Akrids are HUGE. So even though you don’t know how big those rocky mountain forms are behind the guys, you still get the sense that the monster on the horizon is relatively gigantic.

I updated the portfolio with an illustration project that was in and out the door quickly last week and then at the Capcom Fight Club event just days later all over people’s t-shirts. See the project here.

Also I just put together a collaborative art zine with people from all over the world who contributed art via the meathaus.com site. I solicited art contributions from all the registered users of the Meathaus website and received a big digital art pile that I then sliced up into an eight page zine, and placed the result here. Click over and print yourself out a few!

Bigger projects in the works are the ongoing art direction and design of the new Bill Plympton book, which is going to be a must-have for animation enthusiasts. Also working on the English language edition of this intriguing book, Rock Strips, which combines comics and rock and roll, which of course is a sweet combo.

I have one more major project slated for production this spring and summer, a new book that I will be writing and illustrating for a publisher that I love! I’ll need to wait a bit to write anything specifically about it, but it is currently slated for Fall 2011 publication.

Lastly, I am still slowly filling out the portfolio projects on this website. They will continue to have process shots, sketches and descriptions added whenever I get the chance. As mentioned last time, all projects at least have a single image currently, and some have bits from the last website version still hanging around strangely formated. Oh well.