Here Alison Bechdel walks us through the creative process she used to create her graphic novel, Fun Home . It’s particularly interesting to see the various stages of layering Alison’s drawings are created with.

(link via Mike Lynch )

Scott C. (aka Scott Campbell) recently posted a slew of images from his recent gallery show, Home Slice . The show is made up of some of Scott’s trademark watercolour paintings of tiny characters and their bizarre, surreal environments. In this case, those enivronments are cross-section dwellings shaped like everything from a dinosaur to Honest Abe.

You can see (and purchase) all the pieces over at Gallery Nucleus .

Be sure also not to miss the interview with Scott over at Hunt & Gather.

Previously:
Lots of Fun Stuff from Scott Campbell
Scott Campbell Blogs!

UPDATE:
Wow, check out these friggin’ sweet puppets designed by Russ Walko based on Scott’s designs (photos by Love Ablan):

I don’t know what it is about list-making that I find so satisfying, but pair it with drawing and it’s a strangely sublime combination. So I certainly love drawings of collections of things, and here Hwa Young Jung has drawn a series of decidedly English brands and products .

Related posts:
Blackstock’s Collections: The Drawings of an Artistic Savant
Every Person in New York

Fernando Cintra created this short animated film as his final project at Vanarts. I found it a bit too saccharine for my tastes, but visually it’s quite gorgeous.

Reader Michael Johnson took issue with Bob Staake’s recent Picture Book Dummy . He writes:

I think that if the dummy remains as it is, it will mislead aspiring picture book creators into thinking they have, as Staake writes, “15 spreads… (and) a single page finale,” when they are more likely to have 14 spreads, a single page beginning and a single page finale. I’d hate to see a bunch of Drawn readers (or Bob Staake fans) show up at a publisher or agent only to be told that they’ll have to lay the whole thing out again.

I’ve attached a “corrected’ (if I’m right) version. It more closely resembles the children’s books I own - books from different decades, Caldecott winners, etc.

The revised dummy shows the flip-sides of the end papers as what they must of course be, i.e., end papers, too. The title page is the first of the 32 (non-end paper) pages, the publication information is on the flip-side, and the story begins on the facing page.

I assume there are books out there that resemble Bob Staake’s diagram, which shows printing on the backside of end papers, etc., but this revised version is closer to the books I’m familiar with.

Here’s Michael’s version (click to see the full size):

And here’s Bob’s version again:

So who’s right? By my calculations, neither of them. Of course, they’re not wrong, but certainly neither guide should be treated as gospel.

For example, neither Where the Wild Things Are nor The Cat in the Hat , arguably two of the world’s most famous picture books, follow either of Bob or Michael’s guidelines.

A quick survey of the picture books on my shelves reveal books with 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 27, and even 30 spreads. And of those, there are books with publication info at the front, publication info at the back, books with multiple title pages, books with no title page, books with blank pages, books that begin or end on a single page, books that begin or end on a double-page spread, and all manner of variations.

As it is with all things, there is clearly no one true method. These guides certainly help one understand the basic construction of a physical book, and how it affects page layout, but I’d think twice before letting any one set of rules dictate too strongly how to write your story.

To me it would seem that the best picture book dummies are picture books themselves.

I am smitten with these highly geometric urban landscapes illustrated by Borja Bonaque . And I’m no skateboarder, but I’d hang these on my wall for certain:

Visit Saxtoon Moore’s blog to check out the swell animated spots he created to help celebrate Black History Month for Nick Jr./Noggin by honouring noteworthy black inventors. Shown here: Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker!

I love this absurd little, one-minute animated film by Phillip Eddols .

In this animated short, two creatures wonder, “What is a hole?” They have different points of view. Their debate leads to an idea, an idea that changes the world.

Read on for a short Q&A with the Eddolls himself…

Read the rest of this entry »

Twelve animals made from a map of the world (Flash warning). Design by Kentaro Nagai .

Thanks, Elaine .

I should be working, but I can’t stop reading the wonderful, wonderful comics of Lucy Knisley . Her marriage of ligne claire drawing style, the minutiae of daily life, and a just-wry-enough sense of humour has me hooked.

In addition to her website , you’ll find plenty more comics at her journal .

With shows like Pocoyo , Yo Gabba Gabba and the like, these are good times to be a kid. Here’s another creative show that I would go ape for if I was a kid: George and Paul .

It certainly is reminiscent of Pocoyo , but in my book, that’s certainly not a bad thing at all, and I hope to see more of it.

To serve as a reminder and guideline for how to think about writing a picture book, Bob Staake created this diagram, The Idiot-Proof Picture Book Dummy . Bob writes:

Of course there are execptions to the rule, but when we talk about a “picture book” we’re speaking of a “32-pager” (or depending on how liquored up your editor is) a “40-pager”. Think of it this way: you as the artist only have to worry about 15 spreads, a title page image, a single page finale and, of course, the cover.

Over at the Shoebox blog, Chris Grine has been posting drawings of Bots with Stuff … He’s going to be drawing 3 robots a week for a year. I love these!

I also love Chris’s comics work .

Chickenhare is a small, beautifully-drawn graphic novel, and I’ve just discovered it has a sequel I was unaware of. Chris has a 20-page preview of Chickenhare 2 (PDF) available on his site.

This wacky 8-minute animated short, SuperGo! by Lindsay Small and Alex Butera defies explanation, so just watch.

Alex Butera, you may remember, also brought us the hilarious Baman Piderman.

(thanks, Jeff)

InFrame.tv has posed this beautifully-produced video profile of Australian artist Ghostpatrol busy at work in his “Mitten Fortress” studio.

The video is brought to us by Matt Hopper who also produced the recent video of Australia’s Shaun Tan posted here.

Previously: Ghostpatrol: Pencils as Canvas