On Friday I drew a guest comic for my friend Dave Kellett’s comic strip “Sheldon”! If you’re not familiar with Sheldon, all you really need to know is that the titular Sheldon is a child gazillionaire and that he likes geeky stuff. Hope you enjoy!
(I did one a few years ago too!)
Inspired by Anthony Clark, whose Tumblr is always full of fun little sketches and animations, I tried making some li’l animations of my own!
This one I call “PARTY ALL NIGHT”
That was just to get me into the swing of things. With a little more confidence I then attempted another one, which I call “FIGHT TO THE FINISH”
Feeling positively BRAVE I then spent most of a morning on this one, which I call “STOP TOUCHING THE BUTTON”
And finally, this image wouldn’t leave my head until I made it a reality — “DO A BAAA-RREL ROLL”
For the last several days I have been checking back in on them (on my Tumblr) and have been pleased to find that they’re still truckin’ away! GIF ANIMATIONS: The true perpetual motion machine??
I’m at Comic-Con right now, and I’ve been doing a fun new thing I call “Roll-a-Sketch.” Simply put: I wrote down a list of adjectives and nouns (such as “underwater”, “ninja”, “backhoe”, “jam jar”, etc.) in columns. Then, a person chooses a column and rolls a die to randomly select one of the words — then does it again, to select a second word.
Then the fun part: I draw the combination, like this vampire helicopter:
For a few extra bucks the person can even roll FOUR times to generate a SUPER-COMBO like this Victorian submarine helicopter bulldozer:
But my favorite so far has to be the boxing rhino space tank:
And the best part is, the result is a fun sketch that the person gets to take home and keep!
So if you’re at Comic-Con, come by booth 1229 to roll for your own sketch! I’ll likely also be bringing this to other conventions later in the year as well — heck, I’d do this at the dentist’s office, if they let me. AND WHO’S TO SAY THEY WON’T??
Greetings from Vaasa! I’m intermittently drawing and posting journal comics about my (ongoing) trip to Finland. Here are the ones I’ve posted so far! (New ones are announced on my Twitter as well.)
A while ago I reviewed Richard Thompson’s wonderful comic “Cul de Sac.” It’s a charming, hilarious strip I think everyone should be reading. (Read it online here, or follow Richard’s blog here.)
The image up there is the cover to a book called Team Cul de Sac: Cartoonists Draw the Line at Parkinson’s. In what has to be one of the supremest ironies ever visited upon the arts, Richard Thompson was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
So his friend Chris Sparks organized a project called Team Cul de Sac, in which artists created original “Cul de Sac” fan art to be auctioned off to benefit The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
The series of auctions is going on now — only through Sunday evening, in fact! — and features original art from literally hundreds of amazing cartoonists. As well as from me! I snuck in there somehow too, with this piece:
(Click through to the auction site for a closer look.)
Many of the pieces (including mine) are also collected in the Team Cul de Sac book above, the proceeds of which also benefit the cause. Signed editions are available here, or you can buy it on Amazon or Indiebound right now.
Finally, if you’re in the Arlington, VA area, this Sunday night there will be a group signing featuring many of the contributors!
And DOUBLE-FINALLY, if you are creepily interested in Richard Thompson himself and the background behind the strip, here is an extensive feature about him in the Washington Post:
A 2007 offering is the prototypical “Cul de Sac.” Alice — “who’s not afraid of anything” — is momentarily cowed by winged cicadas. Petey, typically squeamish out of doors, advises: “Do what I do. Construct a distancing fantasy as a coping mechanism.” Next thing we know, Alice is costuming the cicadas in napkin dresses and naming them. By the last panel, with precise elliptical wit, the Otterloop parents are reading headlines about intelligent “superbugs” wearing paper clothes. “Don’t tell the kids,” Mom says. “It’ll just scare them.”
GO TEAM
Heritage Auctions: “Petey and Alice in Wonderland” Original Art by David Malki !