MrBiggs dot com News

Book by its Cover

brian — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 03:05:09 +0000

I was so so so excited today to find that my book Un Mode de Transport was written about the other day on my favoritest blog, Julia Rothman’s ‘Book By Its Cover.’ I’ve spent a lot of money as a direct result of Julia’s reviews, and discovered a lot of artists and books that I otherwise would not have. When I saw that she had written about that Play Pen book that I am in a while back, I sent her a copy of Transport, since that was the book of mine that was written about in Play Pen (still with me?). I was taking a break from picture-drawing today and when I went to the site I fell of my chair and danced for a minute. I like it when people say nice things. I really do.

Mini Puzzle for Mudpuppy

brian — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:02:34 +0000

A while back I made a big puzzle for Mudpuppy with the theme “Air, Land, and Sea.” Recently they asked me to make another puzzle, a little smaller for the 3+ crowd, with more cars. Last night this thing got finished and will be out June 2009.
As you probably know, I really really like drawing cars and trucks and things that go.

Playground

brian — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:23:06 +0000

This last Saturday, Wilson, Elliot and I volunteered at the kids’ old school to help build their new playground. When we arrived I was quite surprised to find hundreds of volunteers from the Wharton School of Business and Kaboom.org there to build as well.
The entire thing was completed in seven hours. We started building around 9:00am and we finished around 4:00pm.
I brought a camera, tethered it to my laptop via Firewire, and used iStopMotion to record about one frame every ten seconds. I made a little soundtrack with Ableton Live and the result was posted here. Enjoy.

Beastly Rhymes

brian — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:58:00 +0000

Today is the official release date for Beastly Rhymes, a book I illustrated last year. It’s written by Judy Sierra and is all creepy monster poems about giant squids, haunted zoos, carnivorous leopards, and angry insects. The coolest thing, see, is that the book is furry. Really.
Read more about the book here.
Available at Amazon, of course, as well as fine local independent book stores all over.

Japan!

brian — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:54:47 +0000

The article for Wired’s website mentioned earlier has been translated and rejiggered for some websites in other locales. Namely Brazil and Japan. The iPhone pictures on my Flickr page got an enormous amount of traffic yesterday so I checked my stats to see why. Apparently, this is the reason.

writing for Wired

admin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:23:47 +0000

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.

Yellow Pages advertisement

brian — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:42:04 +0000

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.

Roscoe Riley at Children’s Book World

admin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:59:34 +0000

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!

Manhattan sign reference

brian — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:14:15 +0000

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.

Frederick & Eloise, with music and narration

brian — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:29:09 +0000

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.