I was flipping through my sketchbook and ran across this scribble I did of Chris Grine’s character Chickenhare, from the comic of the same name. Go check out a wonderful comic with great characters, story, and artwork!
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Archive for April, 2011
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This week we opened our email here at Mission Control and found this amazing rendition of Jeff by Denver Brubaker, creator of the fantastic comic-noir Tales of a Checkered Man!
And how cool is it that Denver’s drawing depicts Jeff’s sense of smell the same week we’re focusing on one of his other senses? Denver says, “It’s been a long time comin’ but I finally finished my Ellie fan-art! I have had the pencils done on this pic of Jeff for quite some time now, but wanted to wait until I got more comfortable inking with a brush before I took the next step.” Using a brush is no easy feat, but it looks like he’s settled right in. It’s wonderful work and I’m tickled and touched that Denver’d spend so much time putting this together.
So, speaking of taste, go exercise yours by visiting Denver’s tribute to adventure pulps and caped crusaders: Tales of a Checkered Man! And if anyone else has a drawing of Jeff or Ellie, or even Muffin, send them in to jim@jimcandraw.com, or click on the contact button in the menu bar at the top! We’ll post them right here!
Jeff’s got some weird anatomy and it can be a challenge to draw. Sometimes he’s a quadruped, sometimes a biped . . . sometimes standing on his back leg-like tentacle appendages, sometimes on his front ones. Sometimes balancing on just one. Usually his legs are pretty short which makes it interesting when he has to reach his head. Luckily the Warbling Orange-Crested Quadrapus doesn’t have an internal skeleton (except for a pretty thick skull) so he can stretch those arms far enough to feed himself. Here’s a bunch of sketches of Jeff and his alien anatomy.
An anonymous reader asked in the comments if the Strang Institute is affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis. I answered in the comments section, but I thought I’d add the answer here too in case anyone missed it. I didn’t know why Anonymous asked that until I Googled Washington U. So everyone knows what I’m talking about, the Strang Institute logo from 1966 (like what appears on the Symposium announcement from the last post) looks just like Brookings Hall, the main gate, at Wash U in St. Louis. I was told that the gatehouse at the Institute was designed after Trinity College at Cambridge University in England. Well, sort of. Here’s what I found out:
More fun things I didn’t know. It’s always assumed that Carver Agricultural College and Carver Hall are named for botanist George Washington Carver. Though that makes a good story, Carver was only just out of college when the agricultural college was built. It’s actually named for Aloysius Carver, a local and very successful farmer who bred new and “interesting” produce. He created the college from his success. When he died he bequeathed a portion of the campus to his good friend Cornelius Strang for his own research projects. The rest is history. Carver Agricultural College still maintains a small presence on the campus of the Strang Institute and their gardens provide all of the produce for the institute. Some of it very “interesting”.
So there you go!
There was a symposium held here at the Strang Institute forty five years ago to discuss plans to send a probe to explore Planet X, mere months after its discovery. All the while NASA was already making plans to send men to the Moon. It would be another six years before Ellie would be sent on her trip in 1972, three whole years after the Moon landing. Of course it would take her thirty years to reach her destination in 2002, and another eight years for her signals to finally reach us. That’s lots of years. Makes you wonder what’s going on there right now, eight years after the story we see unfolding before us has taken place.
I digress.
Here’s the announcement for the symposium as it appeared in some science journal or the National Geographic or some such magazine. The scientists who spoke at the event are the same people who were recorded for Ellie’s greeting. They’re the first human beings that Jeff and Muffin had ever seen!
I had a great time last night over at Comic Chatcast. David Ski put on a nice show and it was a lot of fun doing a live typed-in interview. You can go there now and read the entire interview and questions from readers of Ellie on Planet X.
Thanks David! And thanks to everyone who tuned in!
Here’s another reminder that I’ll be interviewed at Comic Chatcast tomorrow, Thursday April 7 at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific! Join in and ask me anything about all things Ellie!
I’ve returned to my seat here at Strang Institute Mission Control from out west where I spent time with good friends and saw some amazing sights. I picked up some goodies too at Wondercon. Here’s a few:
Monster Commute is a webcomic by the good folks at Steam Crow. This is the first compilation – the second is already available and I’ll be getting that one soon too. Below, Daniel Davis, the man-half of the husband and wife team, draws me a sketch in the back of my copy.
I’ve followed Brianne Drouhard’s blog for some time and was happy to find her behind her publisher’s desk hawking her amazing children’s book Billie the Unicorn.
I’m also a fan of character designer Stephen Silver. I even took a design class with him online a year back, which helped me tremendously with my drawing skills. I picked up his latest treat of a sketchbook.
Another blog I’ve been following is that of Mann Arenas, who draws the incredible Yaxin the Fawn. I’ve watched the progress on this book over the last few years and it was a treat to finally get my hands on a copy. It’s in french though, so I’d better brush up on my foreign language reading skills.
My best Wondercon experience, hands down, was getting to meet the creator of Bloom County and Opus the penguin himself, Berke Breathed! I didn’t have anything with me to have him sign, so I snatched a copy of volume two of his Bloom County compendium. This is right after a talk he gave about his comics, books, and movies based on his comics and books. He also showed a short clip from a failed Opus movie project. David Hyde Pierce was the voice of Opus (which I thought was rather distracting). I asked Mr. Breathed what voice he heard in his head when writing Opus and he said that of Winnie the Pooh.
Here’s a few other mentions of people I met at Wondercon: Becky Dreistadt, one half of the duo that creates the fantastic hand painted webcomic Tiny Kitten Teeth; also artist and animator Pascal Campion, who does some amazing Flash based illustrations. Check them out!
Finally, here’s me in front of Pixar Studios, where one day the Ellie on Planet X movie will be made. So I tell myself.
