Amy took a picture of me while I was thumbnailing pages of Amulet 2.  One of the weird habits I picked up while working on Daisy Kutter was that I began to draw and write thumbnail pages while standing.  It seemed to keep me awake more, and really pushed me to get pages done (so I could eventually sit down and rest).  Now, I notice that this technique helps me on action scenes, so when I know I have to go through a long stretch of action, I stand up and do my work on a tall piece of furniture.  That's my random fact for the day.

Speaking at Cal State Sacramento was a lot of fun, and I have to thank Mario Estioko for setting that up.  The audience was awesome.  I also had a lot of fun signing books at the LA Times Festival of Books.  Thanks to the folks at Whale of a Tale for having me at their booth.  I was glad to see that they sold through all their copies of Amulet!  One kid came back to our booth about twenty minutes after having picked up Amulet earlier and his dad said he just read the book and loved it.  Two years of work in twenty minutes!  Sheesh.  Heheh.  I'll try and make Amulet 2 a little slower so you guys can enjoy it a little bit longer...

Earlier this week, we returned from the Big Apple, which was a fun place to be. Thanks to Becky and Vasilis for housing us, and thanks to all the people we met and hung out with during the course of the trip. Now, what wasn't so fun was the severe throat infection I got that put me out of commission for the past several days. It's been a long time since I felt so sick I couldn't walk, but I'm on feet again, and back to work. If anyone in New York found me looking a bit dazed and tired or if I was just rambling, my apologies. I'm usually not such a zombie! Just feeling quite a bit under the weather.

Tomorrow, I'll be at the L.A. Times Festival of Books signing copies of Amulet. You can find me at the Whale of a Tale/Scholastic booth from 3-4pm. If you're in the area, come by and say hello! I'll also be flying up to Sacramento State University to give a talk on April 29th. More info here. I've been doing far too many talks and presentations lately, so don't expect me to be on the road much this summer, as I'll likely be working steadily on Amulet 2.

Oh, and for those that haven't already, go check out the Scholastic Amulet site! It's pretty nifty!

Apologies for the lack of updates on the blog, folks. Just to update, Amy, Phil, and I have arrived in New York City. We'll be attending the New York Comic-Con this weekend (on two panels on Sunday), and I'll be speaking at the ICV2 conference on Thursday, as well as at the School of Visual Arts on Friday evening. Tomorrow, we'll be attending the RASL party. More info on that event here.

Flight Explorer is now available in stores!  It's also available online at Amazon.  This book was put together to accomodate a group of comics readers that have surprisingly been neglected for a very long time - the kids.  Let's see how this works out.

Amy and I just returned from Juneau, Alaska and it was wonderful.  We had a great time hanging out with Pat Race and and his crew.  In fact, it was like we had known them for a long time, and now, hopefully we will.  I'll post pics once I have them organized.  Thanks for everything Pat, Aaron, Cayleigh, Mike, Sarah, Lou and Allie!  Hope to see you guys again soon!

In the meantime, we're down to the final stretch on the production of Flight 5.  As I said before, I think this is the strongest book in the series to date, with a few stories spanning 40 pages in length.  I can't wait to see this book when it's printed.

I'm happy to say that Copper has found a publishing home at Scholastic, alongside Amulet and Bone (link). Along with the Scholastic book, Gallery Nucleus will be producing a limited run of 2000 oversized hardcover volumes.

Amulet 2 production continues at a brisk pace and I'm having a great time with it. The pages are fun to draw and read, and I'm looking forward to tackling the latter half of the book, which is always a good thing. The current structure I have set up with my editor is that I will be producing about 30 pages of linework plus several key color pages every month, with color production on the entire book slowly getting done during the entire process. So far, it's renewed my enthusiasm for the work by breaking the book down into manageable chunks. This is after trying once again to tackle the entire book's thumbnails at once and getting burned out by the process. It's looking like my brain wants to handle no more than 30 pages of story at a given time.

Hoping to see the Northern Lights... 

Today, Amy and I leave for Juneau, Alaska, where I will be conducting some comics workshops. The first one is tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm in the Juneau Public Library. The second workshop requires for you to pre-register (up to 30 students) and will take place on Saturday from 1 to 3 pm, for students grade 4-8. I'll be covering all the basics of creating comics, from story thumbnails to panel layouts. Should be fun!  More info at the library's website.

Seeing as how I haven't posted much on the website the past few weeks, I decided I better dust it off and start posting new material.  So here is the first entry in an ongoing series of tutorials on how I work on Amulet (I'll be posting them slightly out of order).  This will show you how to flat an Amulet page.  The process of "flatting" is very helpful for a colorist, since all of the major shapes are masked and ready to be digitally painted.  This step-by-step shows you how we did this on Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper.  For most of you, I imagine this will be dry reading, but for those who like the technical details, this post's for you!

In other news, a Copper book is now definitely underway.  I just signed a book deal with a major publisher for a paperback version of the book, and Gallery Nucleus will be creating a limited edition run of 2,000 oversized hardcovers. This also means I will be creating a new set of strips to add to the collection and they will be posted for viewing in the months ahead.  For readers of Copper, thanks for being so patient.  Speaking of Nucleus, be sure to check out their new Frank and Frank book.  It's skinny and awesome.

Flight 5 is also nearly wrapped up, and this collection looks to be the best one in the series.  We even have several stories that are about 40 pages in length.  Epic!  My hope is that this segues into the advancement of more professional graphic novelists in the field.  We need more talented folks to keep this going!  For those of you gearing up to try and do this thing, I have more tutorials on the way...

I just returned from the first leg of the Amulet book tour in Toronto and the greater Detroit area.  Amy was happy to know that I finally experienced a real Northeastern American winter, as a big snowstorm swept through Toronto.  It was great to see snow falling in the city, something I never really experienced.

Thanks to Denise, Nikole, Michele, Chris, Peter, Ab, Kean and everyone who helped make the trip a fun and eventful time.  I was glad to finally be able to talk to kids who read the book, and now I'm pumped to get more books out on the shelf for them.  Also, here's an interview I did for the National Post in Canada, and here's one over at Publisher's Weekly.

Hey all! I'm in Toronto right now on the first leg of the Amulet book tour. It's pretty neat to see snow on city streets. Being from Southern California, I don't get to see much of this type of stuff. Strangely enough, despite it being technically colder here, I felt it was colder back at home. It must be the dry weather in Los Angeles.

Today, my friend Kean Soo and I will be speaking at the Keep Toronto Reading event at the North Folk Central Library. You can read an article about us in the Toronto Star by clicking here. And here's the event info on Facebook. By the way, Kean Soo's Jellaby comes out today, so be sure to look for it on store shelves!

On Wednesday, Kean and I will also be signing books at The Beguiling from 5 to 7pm. Click here for more info at their site, and here for info on Chris Butcher's blog. I love that store.

For those of you in the states that hold their Presidental primaries today, please be sure to head to the polls and vote. I already put in my ballot (by mail), and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to vote for a future President that I will admire and be proud of.