After school this afternoon, I biked to a local photo supply store to pick up a new bulb for exposing screens for screen printing. I locked my bike to the standard blue staple bike rack and what do I see but a “Have You Hugged A Robot Today?” sticker! This is of course…

A) awesome because it’s on a bike rack, and…
B) even more awesome because I didn’t put it there.

If my day wasn’t already made, this would’ve done it.

I figure it has been way too long since I’ve posted a robot, so here’s a little something from the old sketchbook. I’m quite suprised I didn’t think of this concept back in the “Robot-A-Day” era.

Also, Michael Rouse-Deane is putting together a project entitled The Kid’s Book Project, and I am happy to be part of it. Basically, 60 artists create one page each of a children’s book. Easy enough, right? But the tricky thing is, each artist may only see the preceding page before starting his/her own. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. I cannot even begin to list the awesome artists who are also participating, so lucky for you, they’re already listed right here. Please follow that link, and if you can, pre-order a copy for yourself or your child, or even someone else’s child. It’s available for under $17 (US). The more pre-orders there are the better. Thanks!

Hello friends. I should be pretty much back to normal posting from now on, but here’s an update on why I haven’t been around for a while:

www.robopocalypse.com

I started a comics collective here in Portland. As of right now, it is mostly people from my school, PNCA, many of whom are working on what will become their first printed comic work. I’d been finding that there was a lot of interest in creating comics amongst people I know, but no sort of unity in terms of sharing the knowledge or skills that each person had, so I put a stop to it and started the Robopocalypse Comics Collective. It started as a simple idea, but due to a small quarter-life crisis about a month ago, grew into this 11 person group as we now know it. Basically, I’ve been working on putting together a website for the RCC amongst other managerial/administrative functions. I just launched the site today. There are still some things to add (like the majority of our members), but feel free to check things out. Our first show as a group will be the Olympia Comics Festival in mid-May. Big things are ahead.

One of our plans as a collective is to periodically publish a themed, group anthology book, along with our solo comics. The first one will be available in May, and is entitled “Creation.” I will be posting my story for it within the next week. We are also looking to trade links with other comic artists, comic collectives, or comic shops. If you are any of those three and you would like to trade links with the RCC, let me know.

I plan on having Volume #1 of “The Life and Times of Baby Otto Zeplin” completed before the Olympia show as well, and will be posting most of those pages as I complete them. I know there are some people who have let me know they are quite excited to see more of Otto’s life, so I’m glad I can finally get started on it again.

One last bit: Being that the RCC site is living where my old portfolio once roamed, I had to move it to the much more professional sounding (as well as easier to spell and pronounce) www.bigtimeillustration.com and I wouldn’t mind swapping a few links with other illustrators on that site as well.