YOU'RE TURNING INTO A PENGUIN. STOP IT.

In my pathetic excuse for a heart, I hold a tremendous fondness for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Like, I'd get into it, but it's truly embarrassing how much I love this stuff. Y'know... Turning point in my childhood. If you haven't read the series before, I urge you to pick up the first book (it's the best).

Even as a kid, I felt that the Hitchhiker's Guide books deserved more than the goofy-cheesy cover treatments they often received (heh, I threw away the dust jacket on my all-in-one volume because the naked book was better). So, for our latest Typography class assignment to redesign book covers, I chose the first three in the series. I wanted something fun and subtly retro but also sophisticated. Some progress was tracked on Twitter, if you care.

THIS IS MOSTLY WORDS.

First! I recently received an amazing set of handmade sketchbooks from Mark Grambau and Mel Chao. Mel makes these leather, softcover books and, holy wow, they're so damn nice, I think they'll motivate me to get back into this whole sketching thing. Plus, the paper's really great so I think I'm going to try out more ink sketching. This drawing is my first in the book, just something quick because I don't like dealing with an empty sketchbook. It's intimidating.

And a few bits of news... My poster for "A Dead Sheriff In Little Wichita" will be included in Spectrum 17. It's an honor to be in such fine, fine company, so I'll be pretty excited to see the book when it comes out in November.

Also, my design for Strand didn't win their contest but I'm one of the twenty finalists. Not too shabby. The winning and finalist pieces will be part of a show at SVA some time in June, I believe. They're also online here. I'm just excited that people like R. Sikoryak and Adrian Tomine looked at my work for even a second during the judging process.

Also, also, some friends told me that my Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick illustration was on [adult swim] a while ago. It was kind of a nice surprise the morning of my birthday (yeah, I'm 22 now). It's been running all week and, as always, BumpWorthy was on the ball and uploaded the clip a few days later. Watch the bump here, and marvel at the, like, ten seconds that my work lingered on [as]. Hey, this kind of stuff makes me giddy. Don't mock me.

And... I think that's it. For now. I graduate in less than month, so I need take care of all the nonsense associated with that.

SEE, I CAN STILL DRAW EYES.

So. I was asked to create a banner for an e-mail to Art Directors, inviting them to come to our illustration department's end-of-the-year showcase (Seniors show off portfolios, chat with ADs via Skype... It's quite cool). This was one of the toughest assignments I've had in a while, having less than a week to come up with something visually interesting and friendly/inviting (not my area of expertise). I also had to somehow express the relationship between art students and ADs at Showcase. Of course, my brain immediately spit out numerous concepts about panic and the desperation of recently graduated students but, okay, no one wants to hear about that, let alone see it on an invitation.

My professor and department chair both reacted positively to the Venture Bros. piece I did a few weeks ago and we pushed it in that direction. I was really hung up on making everything happy and inviting at first, which resulted in a mediocre piece that didn't look like my own. Then I scrapped everything and started over, tossing the happy-go-lucky tone and just doing what I wanted to do (I mean, while keeping most of my weird tendencies in check... No one has an eyepatch or anything). In the end, I came up with a piece I actually quite like, and I hope the ADs dig it too.

In other news, I attended MoCCA this last Saturday and had a blast. I was around for only about five hours but I caught up with old friends and met so many great people. So worth the exhaustion. Holy crap.