Drawn

Dan Stafford explains:

About five years ago I had the idea of doing hand-written interviews with cartoonists I loved. I took a shot and wrote the top guy I could think of – Robert Crumb! And he wrote back!

I couldn’t f*ing believe it. So I wrote others and for the most part, people were great.

Here are the interviews.

Thanks to Kean for the heads up.

Charlie Rose’s new website, with a little help from the people at Google Video offers up access to over 4,000 hours of interviews including this one with Charles Schulz. Can we please stop writing the word BETA on website logos now, though?

Some quick searching also found interviews with Garry Trudeau, Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, Scott Adams, Dorothy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, and a panel discussion about the controversial Mohammed cartoons. The site is a goldmine.

In this fantastic video, Steve Martin interviews one of my favourite cartoonists, Roz Chast. The two pore over her somewhat new collection, the mammoth hardcover Theories of Everything, which remains my favourite book I purchased in the last year. I was engrossed in the video, so I can’t give you a real running time, but it must’ve been at least 30 minutes. Really fun stuff. Watch it just to see the cartoon “homework assignment” Steve gives to Roz.

(Thanks to Graham Roumieu for the link!)

To help celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Eric Carle’s first illustrated book, NPR paid a visit to his home to pick his brain about his life, his work, his inspiration, and his favorite color. In addition to a short article and fifteen minute audio interview, NPR has also put together an audio slide show- pairing illustrations from Carle’s many books with excerpts from his interview.

In this interview from one of my personal favorites in the animation industry, Bill Melendez talks about everything from getting his start from Walt Disney himself, his favorite characters to animate, as well as the World War II training films he worked on back in the 40s.

(link via Sandbox World)

Am I the only one who buys comics based almost solely on the name of the artist involved? Daniel Acuña could draw an entire series of comics about a leaf blowing in the wind and I’d buy every issue.

I’m thrilled he’s doing more interior work for DC. He’s a master of color, line, shape, simplicity, expression, and storytelling. Hopefully someday he’ll do a few tutorials about how he makes his magic.

Here’s a recent Newsarama interview with him, and a cross-section of his work here (but it’s much nicer to see his work on a printed page to get a closer look at his coloring technique).

Inquiring minds will want to bookmark this page at illoz.com for this new feature:

“illoz interviews” is a new feature at the illoz project which asks the question: What happens when one illustrator interviews another illustrator? As with everything else around here, this is an experiment that may work and then again, may be dashed to bits on the rocks below. We shall see. At any rate, you can’t fault us for trying!

Up first is this interview with Marc Burckhardt (previously blogged), as interviewed by Cathleen Toelke.

Upcoming interviews include David Goldin as quizzed by Bob Staake, and John Hersey in a tête-à-tête with Rob Dunlavey. Oh yeah, I’m puling out my fancy French accents for this post kids.

For those of you who (like myself) weren’t able to attend Mo Willem’s recent panel discussion, animator Dave Schlafman has been kind enough to share his notes from the event with us (click on the image below). I’ve read through them several times and it sounds like the panel had a great discussion, offering tips and sound advice. Once you are done checking out Dave’s notes, check out his website and blog. It’s chock full of great animation and illustrations (plus a very cool artist statement).

Thanks again Dave!

Designer Jeff Andrews has complied a nice amount of interviews with artists, designers and illustrators on his Design Inspiration blog. If you rummage a bit through the archives you can find some Drawn! mentions such as Penelope Dullaghan (Illustration Friday), Dan Goodsell, Brandon Reese, Meg Hunt, and uh…some industry hacks like Jared and me.

It’s always interesting to read about how artists got into their particular line of work, as well as finding out what influences them. Some good stuff there. Check it out.

I’m really digging Brian McLachlan’s The Princess Planet strip. Don’t let the cute and saccharine aspect of cartoon princesses turn you off; the humour here is smart and tongue-in-cheek. It rides that line where both adults and kids will find it funny.

While the site’s home page is here, you may want to start reading the strips here (even though it appears that the strips may be a tad out of order). Here’s Brian’s description of The Princess Planet:

The Princess Planet is a world where every girl is a princess and fairy tales mix with space operas. Join Princess Christi (and her many friends) as she ditches her lavish lifestyle for awesome adventures! Updated every weekend with a new strip!

There’s already quite the collection of strips to read on the TPP site. You can also see more of Brian’s work on his site, and delve into his mind by reading this interview in Exclaim! magazine.