MrBiggs dot com News

Well this is different. In a certain career move that has nothing at all to do with childrens books or illustration I was asked to write a small piece for Wired.com’s how-to wiki. Michael Calore, the section’s editor, asked me to explain how I got my iPhone to take these twisty distorted photos that I have on my Flickr page.
And just so everyone knows, I’m also available to write articles on getting the most out of pocket calculators and electric pencil sharpeners.
Here’s the link.

Last month I made this illustration for an ad for AT&T/Yellow Pages. It’s based on kind of a Where’s Waldo idea where the reader is asked to “find a golf instructor” or a piano tuner or an acting coach.
I devised this urban city park setting and populated it with I don’t know how many people and things. The final illustration was, by a large margin, the largest most complex illustration I’ve ever made. It was 30 inches wide by more than 40 inches tall, and it was created in two sections. It took 16 scans to get the whole thing into Photoshop, where it was colored. The final ad will run in newspapers, sporting-even programs (like minor league ballgames) and other locations. The ad agency can’t give specifics, so if you happen to run across this anywhere, please grab a copy and send it my way.
Bonus: free prize to anyone who accurately counts the number of people in the illustration. You can see the art much larger and with details on my Flickr page.

Finally found one of the Roscoe display cases that I had heard about. Barnes & Noble and Borders didn’t have them, and in fact all these big stores I’ve visited had only one copy of each book in their shelves. For having such an influence over the design and marketing, you’d hope they’d put their money where their mouth is. But bless Hannah and Heather and Sarah at CBW in Haverford. They had dozens of Roscoe books and this nice display, and Hannah says she’s sold lots of books. Woo!

While waiting for my accordion to be fixed at Main Squeeze on Essex Street yesterday, I walked around the Lower East Side/Chinatown taking pictures of building signage with the iPhone. Here are some of the better ones.

Another oldie but goodie. I posted a movie I made in 2002 that’s basically my 1993 graphic novel Frederick & Eloise set to music with me narrating. It was done for a special comix event at the Prince Music Theatre. I really enjoyed creating this thing and I think that the book actually lacks for not having music. I met Tin Hat Trio at a concert in 2003 and gave them a DVD with the movie on it, and asked them if it was ok that I used their music. Rob Burger answered in the affirmative. It’s here in the animation department.