Mechanical Pilgrim and Robot Travels

As promised, here is a list of my upcoming West Coast Rambles!

Will I see you at any of these events? Let me know! Oh and feel free to download and share the image below!

A Day for Robots (and Humans)

Today is the official publication day for my graphic novel Little Robot!

I have to say that, in the time between turning this book in (last October) and this time now when the book is finally drifting out into the hands of readers, I've come to be quite proud of it. Or, at any rate, I can confidently say that some of my happiest book-writing-and-drawing memories are associated with this one.

If you are interested in picking up a copy of Litle Robot I urge you to call your local bookstore (they may or may not carry it) and for internet shoppers here are links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the books Goodreads page (which has links to many other stores).

There will be a "blog tour" for Little Robot which will include some interviews and giveaways and things. Here's a link to the list of participating sites:

And later in the month I will be traveling up the West Coast visiting bookstores and libraries and schools in San Fransisco, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver! I will be posting my full schedule for that in just a day or two.

So hooray for robots! And for humans. I leave you with a couple recent bots from my sketchbook:

Contest Update, Goodreads, and Zita

1. Contest Update: I failed to mention in the last post the length of the raffle! I will close down the comments on Tuesday, August 4th and post the winners names on Wednesday, August 5th. Keep an eye on the blog!

2. Goodreads: More chances to get a free copy of Little Robot! Goodreads is giving away 5 copies over on their website. Click here find out more.

3. Zita!: Oh, Zita the Spacegirl... I hadn't drawn her in awhile so I recently drew up this little model sheet. Gesture is one of the most important tools in visual storytelling, and little character sheets like this are great for nailing down just how a character moves and emotes (and how they crash into things):

That's all for now!

Little Robot and Children's Book Week

It's Children's Book Week, and I am all over the internet!

First off, it's always an exciting day when I receive my first real, physical copy of one of my books and that happened last week when Little Robot arrived in the mail! I was so excited opening the envelope that my hands were shaking. This is the first book I've had produced at this trim size and I've very happy with it. Here are some pictures:

There are more pictures of the book over on the First Second website RIGHT HERE.

And speaking of Little Robot, I made a new Little Robot strip for the Washington Post to celebrate Free Comic Book Day (which was on Saturday). Here's the comic:

(click to embiggerize).

It ran in the Post with a nice little interview in which I talked about the art and influences for the book. You can read all that over by CLICKING HERE.

On Sunday Boing Boing ran a short article I wrote about kids comics. I don't know if I said anything groundbreaking about comics for kids, but I did post a list of comics that I think are great for summer reading. Check out the Boing Boing piece by CLICKING IT UP HERE.

And finally (for now), there is a short piece over at Sharp Read about my next picture book. This book is about a Goblin. You can see some concept art read a little bit about where that book came from HERE. I'm sure I'll be posting more about this one in the coming months.

And there's more to come. I have a couple more book announcements coming up this week as well as a look into my Little Robot sketchbooks. So much is happening! Stay tuned.

And as always, to everyone reading, thanks for following my work.

Little Robot for Preorder

Hey friends! Just popping in to say that my next graphic novel, Little Robot is available for preorder on Amazon and at cool independent bookstores like Mysterious Galaxy in California.

Little Robot will be released on September 1st of this year.

New Year, New Studio

New Year, New Studio.

It's 2015. And as the world clamors to weigh in on the year's first tragedy, one that hits a particular place with me, I find myself wanting to be quiet about it. I have nothing to add but tears. Instead I will be talking here about more mundane things. If that's a balm or an interest for you then read on:

. . .

I had hoped to do a year-end wrap-up post, with a comic (I wanted to draw my 2014 Valkyrie one last time), but this old farmhouse got the better of me. I ended up spending my holidays renovating one of our upstairs rooms and turning it into a new studio. Until this last week I’ve been working out of the corner of the bedroom, but I’d outgrown that space and my work items had been bleeding out into places they didn't belong.

There are still a few finishing touches to be done, and I'm still waiting on my new chalkboard to arrive, but the space is mostly finished and my big wall calendar is up so that I can get a nice visualization of how the year is already slipping from my grasp.

Here are some before-during-and-after pictures:

The room started out with dark paneling, that was warped and generally yucky. It also sucked up light:

Underneath the paneling was old peeling wallpaper:

Here's me scraping away. I am crying on the inside:

Wallpaper is a mess:

Once the paper came off things started looking better and it was time to patch the old plaster walls. The paneling, it seems, was put up to avoid this job. Why fix something when you can just cover it up? Here I am patching plaster and answering little questions at the same time:

While the wall patches were drying I went out to flea markets looking for an old adjustable arm desk lamp. I didn't find one, but I did come back with a cool mirror:

Sanding the walls was a dusty business. At one point I was convinced that I had spread a dust cloud to every other room in the house until Anna explained that it was just a film of dust on my glasses:

Finally it was mopping and cleaning and laying down drop clothes and painting walls and trim. toward the end I used my 2014 calendar for a drop cloth:

Then I moved in!

And now I'm knee-deep in watercolor illustrations for my next book -the book that will come out after Little Robot. It has goblins. I am very excited.

There's so much to do.

--Ben

P.S. OH! I almost for got to add: I've posted this all over FB and Twitter, but if you want a look at the cover of Little Robot or if you are interested in reading my answers to some questions about the book, then head over to the LA TImes Hero Complex RIGHT HERE.

Fighter 8

This is a post about a project that never came to be. It's called:

Last year, after doing a freelance job for a small division of a pretty well-known animation company, I was invited to pitch a short animated web series to them. It was a fun, sort of open ended project. Ultimately, though, what I came up with didn't quite fit with the house style and the other things they were producing, and so we parted ways. And that was fine. Not every story, or project comes to full fruition. Life would be too crazy if that happened.

Still, the pitch has been sitting on my hard drive collecting dust ever since. I'm happy with a lot of the art, and the character designs in particular, so I thought, here on the first day of autumn, I would share them in one big post.

Briefly, Fighter 8 is an arena fighting story about a group of middle schoolers with weird super powers. Sort of Pokemon meets kid X-men. The story follows Douglas the Multiple boy as he helps his best friend Jason (the Spin Doctor) form a Battle Stars league for their school. Of course, in so doing they begin to uncover an unsettling mystery surrounding the school's principal.

There's a lot more to it of course, including a ten-episode story arc, but because I want the art to sort of take center stage in this post, I'm not going to include the full synopsis or character bios or anything -though I may paste some of those things into the comments for anyone interested.

And so, without further preamble, here's the art from Fighter 8:

Main cast:

Douglas the Multiple Boy

Jason the Spin Doctor, and the Elephantom

Tracker and Dino-Tail

Big cat and the Rainbowler

(you can click the one above for a larger version)

Some additional characters from opposing teams:

And here's a short comic:

And there you have it. It feels good to finally share some of this with the world. Thanks for reading!

Little Robot Flies Away

Little Robot, the book I started working on last year, is off to the publisher. There are still odds and ends to take care of, but the bulk of production is done and I'm getting that "book-has-flown-off-my-desk-and-into-the-wide-world" feeling. If this had been a construction project I would be clapping the dust off my hands and pouring myself a cold one. (as it is, I'm preparing to head into a construction project, but that's a different story).

It's a weird, gentle little book and I think I'm happy with it.

And so... my best guess is that Little Robot will be a Fall 2015 release. So now begins the great wait between the time a book is turned in and the moment it starts to land in the hands of the readers. (Why so long? Here's a little article about the publishing timeline).

Oh, and big shout of thanks goes out to Louis Decrevel, my friend on the far side of the world, for sailing in at the 11th hour and helping me with some coloring! Louis does some great work, and you can see it right here.

So to help us pass the time, here are a few interesting pictures:

I did not make it out for San Diego Comic Con this year, but I know there were at least two Zita the Spacegirl cosplayers in attendance.

This Zita means business!

And this awesome family had a Robot One floating around with them. This made me want to break out the ol' paper mache myself.

And finally, to bring things back to Little Robot, there's this picture that was sent to me recently:

Home Stretching It (or "How I Spent My Summer Vacation")

I am, right now, on the home stretch of my current graphic novel project. Today and tomorrow I will be drawing and inking the last few pages of Little Robot. After that comes scanning, some editing, and a whole lot of coloring. Not to mention the cover illustration and some watercolor decorations.

So there's still a hefty amount of work to do, but the end is in sight and that's a good feeling.

Unfortunately, all this intense work has caused me to fall behind in the ol' blogging and that's a shame because I'm building up a hefty backlog of posts. I've got book news! Journal comics! More D&D art! Green Turtle fan art! Reflections on the studio of my dreams!

So stay tuned. Little Robot will soon be Morping and Jonking his way to the publisher and I'll be posting more stuff around here.

Excelsior?

The Joy of References

I've been hard at work, these past few weeks, on my latest graphic novel (hence the blog silence). The book is called Little Robot and it stars our Robot Friend from these comics.

One of the things I've enjoyed most about writing and drawing this book is that the setting for the story is, essentially, the area where I'm living, and so I've taken a lot of inspiration from the mountains and trees and the river nearby. Not only that, but a lot of the action takes place in a junkyard, so I've become an almost compulsive photographer of rusted-out machinery.

When I speak to young creators, one of the things I focus on is tethering your stories to your life and the world around you, both artistically and thematically. I've been trying to go the extra mile to do that in this book by using reference photos and by drawing on location when possible.

Here are a few examples!

Drawing a railroad bridge on location. I posted this picture on my Twitter:

Here is an old Jeep that I also drew from life. I wish I could have brought this guy home:

A couple months ago I was driving with Anna when I saw this car near the side of the road. I pulled over and ran to it with the camera, leaving Anna somewhat perplexed. But impulsive photography paid of in this case because this little gem disappeared pretty soon after:

Having kids of different sizes/ages has always been a help in my work. My Julia, who is 6, posed a bit for the little girl in this book and it's been very helpful! Thanks Julia!: