Hands down one of the most challenging, yet enjoyable assignments I’ve received at Blue Sky was this map of Whoville to help promote Horton Hears A Who. After pretty much all the art duties were done on Horton and most of us were moving on to Ice Age 3 I got to stay behind and live in Dr. Seuss’ world for a little bit longer. This was a huge drawing. In order to get all the detail into it that I wanted I ended up drawing it at 40 inches by 30 inches (or something like that I don’t remember exactly.) The assignment was to create a map in the same vein as the Where’s Waldo illustrations. It would show the inherent humor of living in Whoville as well as a general guide to the different locations that we find in the movie. Below is somewhat of a step by step process of how the map got made.

I began by coming up with some gags that we might see in the map:

Next I worked up several thumbnail drawings:

Then settled on the best one:

I refined the drawing and got the underlining architecture a little more defined:

Next I blew that drawing up and used it as a guide to draw the buildings:

And then I laid vellum drafting paper over the top and sketched out each of the whos:

Here they are together:

With the drawing all figured out now I moved on to the inking. Because it was going to be such a pain to scan this in I decided to ink the whole thing in Flash. It almost crippled the program to do something this heavy, but it all turned out fine. And the crisp clean line work I got out of it was just what I was looking for.

Buildings first:

Then the Whos:

Finally it was time to color it. With the time constraints I was under the studio hired a freelance artist to lay in color for the back ground while I did the coloring of the Whos. Once I got the color back from him I put the two together and adjusted the colors to better match what we were doing with the movie and what I was doing with the Whos. Here’s a couple close ups. These are reduced 50% of the original size, just to let you know how big the original file is:

For the third straight year I’ve designed a t-shirt for my son’s elementary school class. This year I get to design two because my daughter is now in kindergarten. I like doing these because they offer a unique design challenge. The class comes up with a mascot that alliterates with their teacher’s last name. Then they pick a color for their t-shirt. To keep things cheap and simple the t-shirts just have one screen color on them. So my job is to figure out a way to bring the teacher’s name, the mascot’s name, and a design for the mascot (male and female versions) all together in one image that reads well and evokes a sense of pride in the teacher and the class. These shirts are primarily worn on field day, but this year they wanted them earlier so they could wear them on school outings and events. Below is this year’s designs. Following them is last year’s and the year before that.

This last Friday I went to the Sequential Exhibit at the Society of Illustrators. It was good times. There ’s a bewildering breadth of talent hanging on the walls this year, and I came away truly inspired. It was extra special because I got my work into the show! They selected four pages from my Antler Boy story in Out of Picture 2. My only explanation is they must’ve had some extra wall space and needed something to fill it. It was truly humbling to be counted with the rest of those artists. If you’re in town stop by the SoI and see the show from now until the 24th.

I don’t know what this car is, but an otter drives it and it’s got some kind of steam/gasoline hybrid powered engine under the hood.

I love Grand Prix racing cars from the 1930’s. All of them are beautiful monsters, but one of them stands out as my clear favorite: The Auto Union Type D racing car from 1938. It was design by Ferdinand Porsche (yes THAT Porsche), who’s design philosophy was that the engine should push the car rather than pull the car. The Type D with it’s mid engine V-12 was unique to racing cars of it’s time. It would be another 20 years before mid engine placement would become ubiquitous in Grand Prix racing. Drivers complained the cars were too difficult to handle. And with traditional race cars if you crashed into a tree, you had 4 feet of engine in front of you for protection. Not so with the Type-D. You can read about that and more here and here.

Also cool: 1936 Auto Union Type C

If you have the patience to sit through 7 minutes of someone drawing then watching this recording of me inking a missile mouse panel should be no problem for you. Around 1:16 I make a line that I don’t like and pause to decide whether I should fix it or not. I decide to go ahead and fix it. I use correction tape for my mistakes because it’s quick and clean. I’m drawing with #2 and #5 Pigma Micron pens.

I apologize for the compression on this. I probably should have shot it at a higher resolution.