Gallery Show in Perugia, Italy // 6.21.10
I'll be having a solo show of my work at Galleria Miomao in Perugia, Italy next month from July 10th - 30th coinciding with the Umbria Jazz Festival! There will be a bunch of original Mr. Wiggles comics on display and for sale as well as some of my other comics and illustration work. I'll be at the opening on the 10th and hope to meet you there!
(Image for show poster below...)
Comical Radio Interview // 4.27.10
I'm being interviewed on Friday by Comical Radio in New York, WBMB 87.9 FM at 11:00am. Check it out!
Since Ugly Americans premieres tonight, I thought I'd post some stills of the character art that I did for the pilot episode. Be sure to check out the show on Comedy Central!
I'm going to be filling in for someone on maternity leave at Little, Brown in their Young Adult department where I'll be art directing and designing jackets for a few months starting at the end of March.
Lots of stuff to report here:
First, my comic creation, Mr. Wiggles, will be featured in a Dr. Sketchy's tribute next weekend. In case you don't know Dr. Sketchy's, it's Molly Crabapple's live figure drawing extravaganza featuring burlesque dancers and other entertainers posing for anyone who wants to attend (and pay the fee, of course). Model Darlinda Just Darlinda will be posing in a bear costume for the event and I'll be on-hand to sign and sell books and meet anyone who wants to meet me. Details are as follows:
Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School Tribute to Mr. Wiggles
March 13, 4 - 7pmThe Slipper Room, 167 Orchard St @ the corner of Stanton (F to Delancy)
Manhattan
$10 in advance. $15 at the door
Bring your own art supplies.
Hope to see some of you there!
Secondly, a couple of days before Dr. Sketchy's, I'll be participating at MICA's (The Maryland Institute College of Art) midterm reviews. I'll spend the day, March 11th, reviewing portfolios and talking to the students and then doing a short presentation of my work. I'm really looking forward to it!
Thirdly, sometime way way after this stuff (in July), I'll be having a solo show of my work in a gallery in Italy. I'll give further details once the contract's signed and we've made it all official.
In design news, I posted the cover to a novel I've been designing for Egmont USA. This one's only a bound galley design right now (something used for sales) and the final, full jacket is still being worked on. I've also been working on designing and art directing a picture book by William Joyce called The Man in the Moon which is the first book in his Guardians of Childhood series. A movie is currently in production right now based around his Guardians characters so this will, hopefully, be a pretty big book when it comes out. Starting this week, I'm also beginning preliminary work on Clive Barker's new Abarat book which I'll be designing. I'm really excited to get the manuscript and start reading it soon!
In writing news, I've signed with Brant Rose as my agent and Chad Snopek as my manager for Hollywood film and TV stuff. I've been doing rewrites of my Nicholl-finalist screenplay EDDIE FANTASTIC! and we're preparing the process of sending it out to industry folks. I've also been working on developing a new script and some other film and TV stuff, but nothing that I can talk about specifically here at the moment.
In additional news on EDDIE FANTASTIC!, I had interest from an editor who wanted to acquire it as a young adult novel so I worked up a pitch for her and she'll be shopping it around as early as this week. If it gets picked up, I think it will be a super fun book as it will contain a lot of illustrations and fund designy things.
And then there's some other projects on the horizon that are a little too premature to mention! Whew! A lot of stuff! Anyway, with all this stuff going on, I should probably get back to work!
Bye!
New Illustration for The New York Times // 2.8.10
Mr. Wiggles Colpisce Ancora out this week! // 12.9.09
Coming out this week will be my second Italian collection of Mr. Wiggles comics! Just in time for the holidays!
Also, check out Internazionale this month to get an exclusive Neil Swaab calendar!
Eddie Fantastic! now a finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship // 10.2.09
More exciting news about my movie script: EDDIE FANTASTIC! is now a finalist for the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship! Color me overjoyed!
Eddie Fantastic! Advances // 8.28.09
Some exciting news: my movie script, EDDIE FANTASTIC!, just advanced to the semifinals for the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting!
New Site // 8.19.09Welcome to the new NeilSwaab.com! I've redesigned this whole site from the guts to the exterior. The goal of the redesign was to have a cleaner portfolio of my work that functioned to showcase the many projects and areas of creativity that I pursue professionally. Rather than have a dedicated illustration or comics or writing site, I decided to house the work under one umbrella. I use a multidisciplinary approach in my work, drawing on all of the areas I'm involved in to inform it so this made sense to me and, I hope, to you as well.
So what's different? First and foremost, I wanted the work to be central and the website design to be more of a background element. I worked to find a navigation that allowed the user to see the projects in a simpler, more intuitive way. For instance, in the illustration section, rather than put each piece of art on its own page, artwork is now grouped by client with vertical scrolling to see several projects at once. Previous and Next buttons also help the user to navigate through the portfolios quicker. And thumbnails are a thing of the past. Additionally, the portfolios have all been updated, weeded out, and refined.
The coding of this site is done with CSS and an iFrame for the navigation. I'm new to CSS, but picked it up fairly easily and found it to be a lot more flexible than the old method of using tables. Of course, since I'm new to it, there may be mistakes, so please let me know if you see anything funny.
My logo font is Cubic and the main navigation is set in LipoD-VectorizedSquare. The rest of the fonts are different weights of Helvetica set using CSS.
So that's pretty much it. I hope you enjoy the new site! Let me know what you think!
—Neil