How to use this Page

A month ago I launched a Kickstarter campaign for my new comic puzzle book, “Talbot Toluca.”

After sleepless days and nights, I’m happy to report that it ended on a great note with the campaign exceeding its goal. Here’s a quick podcast recap with Al and Paul from the Beige Planet podcast talking about the experience and things that I’ve learned from it.

Hello, hello. As promised last week, I come bearing art. Its been getting busy around here since the last post, and it has made me almost forget about Halloween! I have to start my costume, and that means brevity in this month's post. Sorry!

Earlier this month, I was very lucky to be contacted by Tom at Riverfront Times. Not only was I glad to receive a job after a break, but it was a cover! Nice! Then Tom dropped the bomb that the article would be national among Village Voice Media publications, and that was awesome!

Tom had an idea of what he wanted so I sent him two quick layouts to choose from (I used a frame from another assignment's sketches as an indicator):

After layout approval, I worked up a tight sketch. While doing so, Tom ran the layout by the other art directors and wrote me with the feedback that it seemed very "farmer" with the pitchforks and such. I made it more urban by replacing them with pikes wrapped in barb wire. I thought it might be too much, but I guess not:

And I submitted two versions of final art. Initially, I was working the piece to emulate images on my website that Tom had mentioned. However, I really wanted to explore this as a two-color image, and Tom responded to that as the direction to move in:

After some discussion, we settled on this final version:
The difficult part of this assignment was creating a suitable composition that would work with all of the papers' mastheads. Tom allowed me some leeway and said that overlapping the logos is fine and actually encouraged in some cases. Good news for me!

The artwork is being featured as an interior image in Minneapolis City Pages as well as the cover of Riverfront Times, Village Voice, Houston Press, SF Weekly, Miami New Times, New Times Broward Palm Beach, and Dallas Observer. Needless to say, I am SUPER-PSYCHED to have this artwork coming out this week! It's one of those days where you can't stop smiling and whistling, and people look at your weird.

Many thanks to Tom, Ivylise, Miche, Alex and Alex, Monica, Justin, and Nick for such a great opportunity as well as the great exposure. I hope to work with each of them again in the future!

Enjoy the Day,
Chris