Archive for the ‘new work’ Category



Thursday, December 20th, 2012

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I've always always loved board books. Big thick cardboard books, ostensibly for little kids who like to chew on things. Since Everything Goes was first conceived back in 2008, I wanted there to be board books with my cars and trucks and stuff. And now, I'm vey happy to tell you, there are. In fact, there will be six before I'm done. Sadly, they're not "officially" released until the day after Christmas, but I hear that some stores and retailers have them on the shelves already, in time for the holiday.

The first is called 123 Beep Beep Beep: A Counting Book and it is what it says.

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The second book is called STOP! GO!: A Book of Opposites. This one is similarly simply-plotted.

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The next two board books, Blue Bus Red Balloon and Goodnight Trucks get more complicated, story-wise, and will be out next year sometime.

Amazon has Stop! Go! and 123 Beep Beep Beep available for preorder.

Or get it on Indiebound, which is better for the world. 123 Beep Beep Beep and Stop! Go!

Happy Holidays y'all.

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

Eight Brownie and Pearls

Back in 1954 2008 I began working on a series of books written by Cynthia Rylant about a little girl and her cat called Brownie & Pearl. After drawing the pictures for Shredderman and Roscoe Riley, doing a project like this seemed like a longshot, a fluke, and a relief, frankly. I was kind of tired of the snarky grade-school boy thing and it was fun to get going on a project that could bring out the cute in me. I have a lot of cute in me by the way.
The eighth and final book in the series, Brownie & Pearl Make Good, was published on August 14 and the series has wrapped itself up. Cynthia sent me a really sweet box of cookies and a nice note, and little girls all over America can go cry in their tea cups. My editor, Andrea Welch, and I had a little commiseration when the illustrations were done. We'd been thinking of patterns and colors and cuteness for four years and with any long project, it was weird to say goodbye.
You can find Brownie & Pearl Make Good and the entire Brownie & Pearl series here:

Amazon

Indiebound

Brownie & Pearl Make Good on Indiebound

Eight Brownie and Pearls

Wednesday, August 15th, 2012

I'm not one who is often accused of, nor credited with, planning ahead. But in this case I'll take it. About a year ago, while I was working on the cover of Everything Goes: In the Air, the 2nd Everything Goes book, I decided to document the process with a time-lapse recording. I set my camera up so that it hovered over the drawing table and had it record a frame every couple of seconds. What resulted was a two-minute rendition of the drawing of an illustration that actually took a few hours.
I've had this video sitting around for a year now, and while on vacation up in Maine over the last few weeks I was able to string it together to make a little promo video for the book.

The movie is made up of 1,882 images, each shot six seconds apart. The color images are illustrations from the book, and the music is by my alter-ego, Dance Robot Dance.

Time-lapse videos can be funny to watch. I have a few that I sometimes show at schools events and they always get a good laugh from the students. Inevitably there are some kids who "get it" and know that the video was sped up, and there are other kids who later on will ask me how I did that so fast.

Of course, the bigger news here is that the book will be out in a matter of a few weeks. September 11 September 18 is the release date and you can pre-order it now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indie-bound.

It probably goes without saying that for the next few weeks I'll be posting a lot about Everything Goes: In the Air including a process post about designing and illustrating the cover that won't be so speedy.

Bonus update 16 August:
Finished a second trailer. It's this here:

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Tampa Bay Times

An illustration of mine ran in the Tampa Bay Times this last weekend, on Sunday July 8. I don't do a lot of editorial work these days, so it's cool to have a big one like this that works well in a newspaper format. The idea is that the future is full of unknowns right now — education, health care, economy, home prices, and so on. The idea dovetailed nicely with the busy chaos in Everything Goes. Below the finished piece are a few of sketches showing the work in progress. The one on the left is the initial rough just to get the structure of the illustration down. The color one in the center is the first sketch I sent to the client. They asked for a few changes and the next iteration on the right is shat I use to make the final art. Click on the sketch image to enlarge it.

sketches for the Tampa Bay Times piece

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

2wheelers is a magazine/journal from Sweden, and they asked me to design the cover of their second issue. You might notice a familiar theme in this design. In the video, pay special attention at about :42.

Also, you need the poster. Big screenprinted thing. They really did an amazing job. Click on the image to go to their online shop.

2wheelers poster

Monday, May 7th, 2012

Mudpuppy Dinosaur Block puzzle

A new dinosaur puzzle. I must like dinosaurs because I draw a lot of them.

Mudpuppy Dinosaur Block puzzle

This is a cool little thing from Galison/Mudpuppy, for whom I've made a lot of toys and puzzles. Six dinosaurs and one puzzle. The puzzle comes as a series of nine cubes, with each side being a piece of one of the puzzles.

Mudpuppy Dinosaur Block puzzle

Mudpuppy Dinosaur Block puzzle

Mudpuppy Dinosaur Block puzzle

Mudpuppy Dinosaur Block puzzle

You can get this here at the Mudpuppy site.

I have an extra one of these and I'd like to give it away to someone, so I thought I'd have a little contest. There are six dinosaurs here, right? Send me an email with all six dinosaurs correctly listed (and list the colors so I can tell which one you're naming). Of all of the right answers I'll pick one winner from random, okay?

So you have this week. I'll pick the winner on Friday afternoon, around 3pm Eastern Time. Send your email to brian at mrbiggs dot com. You could leave it as a comment if you want, but then you'd be giving your answers away to everyone who reads this post. So instead of doing that, use email, and then just write a funny joke about dinosaurs in the comments. Cool?

Oh yeah, the winner has to send a picture of themselves building the puzzle when they get it. Okay? Good luck.

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