Isopod Saturday, featuring "THE SKINNY 'LIL ISOPOD"

FACT: When a Giant Isopod finds a large source of food, it will gorge itself to the point of immobility.

FACT: This is my first ever web-comic. How'd I do?

Isopod Week! Well, Isopod Friday anyway...

I don't actually have a week's worth of Isopod paintings. In fact, as of this moment, I only have one, half-finished isopod painting. Here it is, in progress, it still has a ways to go, but it's Isopod Friday, I gotta show something!



I'm doing a job about giant isopods, pill-bug-like crustaceans that live on the ocean floor. So I have a bunch of giant isopod images on my desktop. Like this one:



Or this one:



Pretty creepy huh?



According to Wikipedia: In Northern Taiwan and other areas, they are not uncommon at seaside restaurants, served boiled and bisected with a clean lateral slice. The white meat is similar to crab or lobster in texture.

Yummy!

Isopod Week!

Hey gang, remember Jester Week, and how much fun we had?



Well, Jester Week is over and never coming back.



We're now starting ISOPOD WEEK!

Provo Children's Book Festival FIRE!!!

Here's a random scene from Saturday's Provo Children's Book Festival. That's me, Dean and Shannon signing Rapunzels. If you look really closely at the bottom of the photo, you might get a glimpse of the new CALAMITY JACK cover.

There was a giant turn out (this picture looks pretty bare, but there were hundreds of people there, as well as at least twenty authors. In the background you can see a big screen, this was a cool overhead camera that showed what the illustrator was drawing--I did that for a few hours, drawing dinosaurs and dragons for kids.

Thanks to all the blog readers who came up and said hi. There may even be one in this photo...

Oh, also, about two hours into the festival, a little kid pulled the fire alarm and the building was evacuated. A sci-fi/fantasy author panel was going on at the time, and those guys just kept on talking through the alarm. Didn't even go outside.

Thanks to Lauren for taking the photo.

Provo Children's Book Festival Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Saturday, May 16, is the Provo Children's Book Festival at the Provo Library (the very building where all the CALAMITY JACK pages were drawn.)

It goes from 10 am to 4 pm and is free. Guest authors include; Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, Brandon Sanderson, James Dashner, Jessica Day George and Caldecott author/illustrator, Laura Seeger. As well as many others--including myself! There will be signings, readings, and panels, as well as free stuff (books, posters etc.)

Last year I drew portraits of attendees--I think I drew about 80 kids' portraits. It was fun! This year promises to be even better, I don't know if I'll be doing portraits again, you'll just have to come and see.

Bring your Rapunzel's Revenge, the ENTIRE Team Rapunzel will be there. Me, Dean and Shannon. You could own an ultra-rare triple signed copy!

See you there!

And one MORE day of Jester Week...

Woops, I totally forgot the main image for the ground-breaking jester. The other two from yesterday were just supplemental. This is the image that was on the print, as well as on the '09 jesters' trunk.

And that's the real end of Jester Week.

One more Jester Day!

I hope you've all enjoyed Jester Week. I have a few extra items, so I thought I'd extend the week one more day.

First off, here's a look at an early sketch for the new jester, with the set crew:



The jester herself is in the same pose, but we also have Bobby, the set designer, and Cody, the lighting director doing their thing, with the jester standing up on a half constructed set. The main issue with this one was that the figures all ended up being tiny. The close up of the Jester works better. Less is more, right?

Last of all, here are a few promotional images I did for the theater last year. These were to celebrate the groundbreaking of a new theater building at a place called Midtown Village. The central tower there is the landmark the jester is climbing on. If you look closely at the trunk of the '09 jesters, you can see a tiny version of this.



The jester is holding a shovel for the groundbreaking ceremony. Everyone who came to the groundbreaking got a big print of this. The theater actually had a guy dressed in this very jester outfit running around with a shovel.  These images are different from all the other jester images in one major way. Illustrators, can you guess it? Digital coloring. That's right, all the other jesters were acrylic paintings, but the groundbreaking jester illustrations were hand drawn in pencil, then colored with Photoshop. Similar to the way the Jack and Rapunzel books were done.

The sad part of this story is that the ground was broken for the new building, then, of course, the entire world economy collapsed. So the theater is still rocking the old white building (the one in the '07 Jester's hands.) Hopefully, when the economic climate heats up a little, they'll get that new building. We've got big plans for a HUGE jester mural in the lobby, so keep those fingers crossed.

This ends Jester Week. Regular programming will now resume.

Jester Week FINAL DAY!

And now, for the first time anywhere, the new 2010 Jester:

Waaagh! Kids, this is what happens when you put a CMYK, print-ready file on the internet. Yikes! She looks like a blueberry! And why am I getting underscoring on the type?

Boy, Jester Week is really ending on a high note here.

Let's try this again...

And now for the first time anywhere, the new 2010 Jester:

Ahh. That's better. This is the new jester, I'm very happy with how she turned out. The girls from '09 worked out so well, that I used a model again. This is triathalon winner Erin Collins, a friend of the set designer at the theater. The original plan was to have a bunch of set construction guys building a set, with the jester out in front doing nothing. I shot photo reference of three guys doing work, but in the end just focused on the jester. Keep it simple.

I hope you've enjoyed jester week--I may squeeze in one more day of it tomorrow with some extra jester stuff.