I’ve put some new apparel in the Doctor Baer Etsy store, including this new Pickles T-Shirt:
And you can get it for 25% off until January 31, 2025! Just use the code PICKLESWOW at checkout.
Nobody expresses genuine wonder like Pickles!
New Pickles T-Shirt! Read More »
Travis Jonker—school librarian, children’s book author, and co-host of The Yarn podcast—was kind enough to interview me during the 2024 American Library Association Conference in San Diego last June. In our conversation, he graciously gave me the chance to discuss The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue. Here’s the interview:
At the beginning of the episode, you’ll hear The Yarn co-host Colby Sharp share some kind words about my school visits. Colby, an elementary teacher in Michigan, has been a wonderful collaborator through events like the fabulous (but now retired) Nerd Camp Jr. He even allowed me to kick off the Doctor Baer tour at his school—a generous gesture I deeply appreciate.
I’ve since led author visits for elementary students in Dublin and Columbus, Ohio. Here’s video from one of my favorites so far. Instead of leading a presentation I hosted a series of drawing game shows where the elementary teachers (and even the principal!) drew characters based on the students’ prompts. After each round I interviewed the teachers about their work, congratulated them for their courage, and highlighted the process they were practicing.
This is a modification of a game show I’ve led at comics festivals, Super Comics Challenge:
There’s an “exotic animal” quality in the author at a school visit. We come from the outside world, beyond the spaces where the kids spend so much of their time. That’s a privilege I want to handle with respect, so I spend a lot of time with my hosting schools discussing language I can use during my visit in order to support learning happening in their school. I want the kids to say, “Hey, he said the same thing Miss Scarpa has been telling us all year!”
This supports the teachers, but it also implicitly underlines that the adults around them care about their success. When I was 10 I felt like most adults just liked pushing me around, and I think I would have felt safer in my school had I been pointed at how some of their behaviors were expressions of caring.
The game shows also invite the teachers to empathize with their students, while letting the students devilishly challenge their teachers. Each round lasts two to three minutes, and even a seasoned pro can feel the pressure of creating a recognizable drawing under those constraints. The students delight in giving their teachers challenging drawings. The teachers, many of whom do not identify as artists, get a visceral sense of what it’s like to be out of your depth, the way many of their students often feel.
And this compassion can go both ways. One of my favorite memories of 2024 will be when the school’s principal said, after I introduced him to the 200 3rd and 4th graders in attendance, that he was very nervous about the games and hoped the kids would be kind to him. After the assembly I might have been a bit effusive as I told him how much it meant to me to see a person of authority express vulnerability to his students. And you can be sure I led them in a few chants of “WE BELIEVE IN YOU!” while the principal was drawing.
All this is to say that I cherish the opportunity to create events that celebrate everyone present. Yes, I want to sell books. Yes, I enjoy the curiosity and attention of the children. But even more I enjoy instigating joyful subversion of the traditional notion of an author visit. I want every person there to walk away with an artifact representing the idea that every one of us is a creative creature.
And here’s where I get mercenary: I’m offering free school in-person visits Central Ohio and virtual visits everywhere else. If you’re an educator or librarian who wants to create a meaningful experience for your students, click the button below!
School Visits and an Interview on The Yarn Podcast! Read More »
I like to do development/test pieces as I work on the outline of a story. It helps me learn whether or not the idea will be actually fun to draw (writer Jerzy might have a great idea that illustrator Jerzy will hate). Whether or not I’m excited to share the completed image is another emotional data point. And yes, I also watch the clock while I make these images to get a sense of how I’ll need to budget my time should I commit to finishing the story.
This piece represents a test of a short story idea that captured me back in October. I was listening to an episode of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast when I heard this exchange:
For those of you who don’t have time/space to listen, they’re talking about the Victorians’ strange fascination with Egyptian mummies as medicine, curiosities, and pigments. There’s a moment where the hosts, telling the story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, describe a scene in which crates of mummies are being delivered to a someone’s home.
Ghoulish, right?
But for those who have read my graphic novels Science Comics: Rockets (co-authored by my wife Anne Drozd) and The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue, you’ve probably noticed that one of my quirks is gently shining a light on difficult topics with a bouncy, almost absurdist humor.
This absurdity creates a friendly vessel to disarm the audience (wow, a chicken in a centrifuge is a funny image!) so the truth and sadness can sneak in (wait, Tsiolkovsky strapped unwilling creatures into a machine that frightened them if not harmed them?!).
In other words, reflecting on the image of wealthy Victorians inviting people over for a “Mummy Unboxing Video” is exactly my speed.
It wasn’t long before a premise formed of Doctor Baer and his friends having to protect a shipment of mummies from dangerous rich people. Would the mummies be shipped in some kind of fantasy Global Shipping Services truck? A FedEx plane full of mummies? Then I remembered hearing a story of some unhappy souls actually using mummy materials for fuel on trains, and I felt a bolt of energy go up my spine: A Great Train Robbery story where villains are after mummies and my heroes have to protect them long enough to get to sacred ground. I could do this in 20-30 pages and ship it as its own story, but it could also be the cold open for the next Doctor Baer long story, The Case of the Frozen Sailor.
But Illustrator Jerzy stepped in to drain the energy. I don’t want to draw a steam engine over and over again, he said. Okay, maybe it’s some kind of future bullet train. No, that won’t fit with the image of putting rich Victorian weirdos on blast. And while Taft is swift, it wouldn’t make sense for him to be running along side some slick future train. It has to be an old, plodding steam engine. And then, remembering what I said just a couple of paragraphs back, I could use the absurd image of the villain chucking mummies into the boiler fire to really underline things.
My first move was to start consuming information about trains. I wanted to hear from people who really, really love trains on why they’re so terrific. I know their perspectives will help generate story ideas. I was lucky to find this great audiobook by Tom Zoellner on Hoopla (thank you, Worthington Public Library!).
I’d listen to that while building a train model in Blender. If I have to draw a steam engine over and over I’m at least going to work with a 3d model in Clip Studio to ease the pain. How hard could it be? I’ve made a handful of things in Blender. But a few reference images put just enough fear of effort into me that I went to Turbosquid to see if I could find a pre-made model to purchase instead.
And I found some great ones! But then I ran into another problem. As awesome as Clip studio Paint’s 3d model capabilities are, positioning large/complex models can be laggy. And I might want to pencil some of the pages on my low-end iPad. The train had to be low-polygon, and I wasn’t finding what I wanted in the 3d model marketplaces. No, I had to build it.
So over the next handful of lunch breaks, I did:
It took less time and effort than I anticipated. It’s low-poly, and not 100% accurate to any of the reference images I used. But it’s just enough for my cartoony fantasy comic.
Oh, and I even created interiors for the engine and cars, where much of the action will be happening:
After “rigging” the model with bones (one bone per train car), I exported it as an .FBX file for importing to Clip Studio Paint. It worked! I could now pose my model within CSP, as opposed to posing the model in Blender, exporting the .OBJ file, and importing it into CSP per instance.
Now I could start penciling a test image of the train and heroes cruising along the Pierogi Mountains:
Which I then printed out onto watercolor paper for inking:
And, after having them flatted by my student Phoenix (y’all should hire her, she’s great), I painted it in Clip Studio Paint:
The test taught me that I would have fun drawing this story, and I was pretty excited to share this image with you after finishing it. The drawing took about 5 hours total, but a lot of that was in the penciling. I think I can take an even looser approach to penciling the train in future drawings, since much of the detail was lost when printed out on watercolor paper.
Next steps after this test is to thumbnail the short story. That, and the rest of the process for making this comic, will be shared on Patreon in The Case of the Frozen Sailor collection, available for Teams Pickles and Doctor Baer.
And of course I’ll serialize this publicly as a webcomic once final art is underway.
The Month-Long Journey to a Train Full of Mummies! Read More »
12:00 am through 11:59 pm Friday, November 29, Iron Circus is holding a 50% off sale for their entire store!
Iron Circus is the publisher of The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue. So you can get a copy for two of your friends for the price of one! Or pick up some copies of the other terrific books published by Iron Circus.
50% off Doctor Baer! Read More »
Printful has recently started offering knitted sweaters, and I thought I’d try a swing at a design with the loveable porcine adventurer from The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue:
Pickles Knitted Sweater Read More »
I just found out that my publisher Iron Circus is holding a Halloween-themed sale in which you can find several of their spooky titles for 30% off cover price between October 22 and November 1, 2024. And The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue is one of those titles!
That brings the price down from $15 to $10.50. You won’t see the discount until you add the book to the shopping cart on Iron Circus’ website. And that’s an important detail—the sale is only on the Iron Circus website.
Thanks for believing in and supporting my cute, spooky book!
30% Off Doctor Baer Until Nov 1, 2024 Read More »
I’ve made literally hundreds and hundreds of Doctor Baer talismans.
There are so many that the new challenge is finding the time to get each one listed on my Etsy store ( I’m holding a sale there until Oct 19, by the way). Inspiration will drive new designs in the months to come, I’m sure. But right now I’m ready to try some new experiments and investigations.
I’d love to make some ceremonial vessels one might find in the world of Doctor Baer. Useful objects that also carry some imagery and symbols of the spooky fictional world of the book. I gave it a shot with a Lost City of Terror mug some months back:
I hand-built the vessel and pressed the design into the clay using a 3d-printed roller made of the designs seen in the background during the fight with the giant millipedes.
But I need more practice hand-building and pressing designs.
Lately I’ve been inspired by some of the underglaze painting Anne’s been pulling off with her pieces:
But I can’t jump into that without making more vessels to paint. And I need more practice hand building pieces.
So I’m going to try to get to painting faster by trying my hand at slip casting. My hypothesis is I can make a mold of a simple, clean form to practice underglaze painting on. As I get more skilled at painting I can design more complex forms to work with. Eventually working my way back up to that Lost City of Terror mug.
So I needed:
It stood to reason that if I am going to eventually make 3d printed complex forms to mold, I might as well start with a simple 3d print to test out making molds of that material. I could start with a glass tumbler I already own, but removing glass from the plaster mold might be different than the plastic extruded by a 3d printer.
I created a simple tumbler in Blender and ran a print on my Flashforge Adventurer.
It’s a hollow form designed with a lip to catch any overflowing clay. When the slip hardens in the mold I’ll trim the lip off so I have a clean edge on the tumbler.
I then painted the form with filler and sandable primer. Once it dried I smoothed out the sides of the form with some high-grit sandpaper.
Then I attached the form into the bottom of a bucket with some caulk. I made sure to use a bucket that left plenty of room above the form.
Why create the mold upside down like this? In case the plaster had any air bubbles rising up, they’d rise to the “bottom” of the mold, decreasing any chance that they’d show up on the parts that will form the clay object.
I coated the bucket and the 3d-printed form with a thin layer of liquid dish soap. This would help release the plaster once it set.
And 30 minutes later I had the mold!
I’ll pour the slip, or liquid clay, into that well to fill it up completely. Some minutes later, the outer edges of they clay will dry as the plaster drains moisture from the clay. I pour out the rest, leaving a layer of clay stuck to the walls of the mold.
Once the clay is hardened sufficiently, I’ll cut the ring off the top of the well and remove the clay tumbler inside. With a few of these molds I can create a bunch of vessels to paint more quickly than if I was hand-building.
(I still want to practice hand-building, by the way. But right now I suspect I’ll make faster gains with underglaze painting–or at least, I think I’ll have more fun exploring underglaze painting.)
The plaster has to cure for a while, but once it does I’m eager to try my first slip cast vessel. And if it works, I’ll dig into designing some more interesting shapes to mold.
Credit to Pottery by Kent on YouTube. I had been taking a Domestika course on making 2-piece molds, but his tutorial on how to make a one-piece mold was super helpful in getting me started.
Next Investigation: Slip Casting Read More »
The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue is finally available for purchase! To celebrate I’m joined by my friend, beta reader, and advisor Marisa Szpytman. It was through conversations with friends like Marisa that I discovered my book was becoming a meditation on topics surrounding object and cultural repatriation. In the earliest days of the book’s creation, she was generous in helping me understand the ethical quandaries around collecting cultural objects, and now that the book is in the world she joined me again to have that conversation anew.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
TPD Special: The Emotions of Objects, with Marisa Szpytman Read More »
While making The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue I recorded a bunch of reflections on why and how I was making the book. These microcasts were shared exclusively with people who supported me on Patreon (I’m sharing the entire process of making the next Doctor Baer story there right now!).
To count down to the book’s release, I’m putting some of those reflections into the Thunder Punch Daily feed. Please note: the book was titled Baron von Bear and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue at the time of this recording. But baronvonbear.com does take you to the book’s landing page. Here’s the original post:
Another thoughtful question from the Doctor Baer ask me anything form led me to think about my weaknesses as a Teaching Artist/Cartoonist. And finally ask for what I need from you to support The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue:
This is a two-parter: 1) making comics for public/wider consumption today involves a lot of things that maybe aren’t necessarily the things that one excitedly looks forward to (or is even thinking about) as they are headlong and heart-deep in the thick of making their comic — things like marketing, and promoting, and keeping somewhat of a social media presence. How do you balance the joyful, flow-state, lost-and-in-love-with-the-making-of-the-comic side of things with the more business orientated part of the process? Is it something that you don’t even think about until after the book is made? When does that side of things start popping up on your radar? And how do you feel about it? and 2) What is the best way to support you when BvB releases? Pre-order at my local comic shop? Order on Amazon? Put an order request in at the local library? What actionable steps will help the most?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Archives: TPD 314 – The Best Way to Help Me Read More »
While making The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue I recorded a bunch of reflections on why and how I was making the book. These microcasts were shared exclusively with people who supported me on Patreon (I’m sharing the entire process of making the next Doctor Baer story there right now!).
To count down to the book’s release, I’m putting some of those reflections into the Thunder Punch Daily feed. Please note: the book was titled Baron von Bear and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue at the time of this recording. But baronvonbear.com does take you to the book’s landing page. Here’s the original post:
Once again I go back 20 years to explore some themes that show up in Baron von Bear and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue. Recognizing our interdependence seems like an obvious thing to me, but it’s easy to lose sight of it in adventure fiction.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Archives: TPD 310 – We Need Each Other Read More »