CAKE, Volume One

(advanced copies)

2007-2008; anthologies & graphic novels...

I haven't posted here in since September 2007, sweet! I'll try to keep this so called "blog" updated whenever possible. There's actually a good reason for me not updating. Let's turn back time - through my work last year, our entire department got a free ride and hotel stay to attend San Diego for Comic-Con 2007, sweet huh? During lunch one of those days, my friend Robert Islas and I we're discussing how easy it would be to create a book with everyone in our department in it - we'd all create some illustrated stories & put it all together - get a booth at Comic-con next year - it'd be fun, right? Well... we did and it's done! It's in China being printed right now. It's called CAKE Volume 1 and it's an anthology of 176 pages, 10 artists and 11 stories presented by Art Jumble. I went in on this not knowing where to even start; I've never made a book before. Everything was approached logically from creating a project schedule to creating templates for the book format, meetings, yadda, yadda... All in all, it was made in a little over 5 months. It'll be here in mid-May and we also have a booth at Comic-Con 2008! Please check out everything here: http://the-cake-anthology.com. I'm currently planning CAKE, Volume 2 with Greg Ham. It's probably going to be twice as big as the first volume because we've invited several artists from Art Jumble that live all around the world to join in on the fun. It should be neat, please stay tuned for that!
Anthologies of 2007-2008 Because of CAKE, Volume 1 - I've done a lot of research about everything you need to know when making a book. Obviously, we are not the first people to create an anthology - so here's a list of anthologies that ROCK and/or are going to ROCK around Comic-Con 2008 week:
Flight, Volume 5 coming out July 22nd (Comic-Con week)
Flight Explorer, Volume 1
Out of Picture, Volume 1
Blue Sky Studios artists
Out of Picture, Volume 2 coming out June 3rd
Popgun, Volume 1
Popgun, Volume 2
Graphic Novels of 2007-2008 These are just a few well known graphic novels, there are a lot of them out there. These two come to mind because of their moods they set, action and just good old storytelling:
Bone, Volumes 1-7 (9 part series; volumes 8 & 9 are come out later this year)
I'm very excited that BONE is being turned into a movie (Warner Brothers). Jeff creates some great work and his paced story telling and inking skills are awesome!
Amulet, Volume 1 (5 part series; volume 2 comes out later this year)
I think Kazu is a robot - I'm not sure if he sleeps. Amulet got picked up by Warner Brothers too - these are very exciting times for Kazu. He has a deal with Scholastic for the first two books of Amulet, if they sell (which they will), Kazu will get to make the other three.