SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS 54
SEQUENTIAL/MOVING IMAGE JURY
CREATIVE DIRECTOR, ABRAMS BOOKS
Chad Beckerman oversees picture books, novels, and graphic novels under the Abrams Books for Young Readers, Amulet Books, Abrams Appleseed, and Abrams ComicArts imprints. He is the designer behind such successful children series as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Origami Yoda, NERDS, and The Last Apprentice. He has worked with a variety of illustrators from John Hendrix, Sophie Blackall, Jillian Tamaki, Yuko Shimizu, Ross McDonald, Jen Corace, and Marcellus Hall. Chad studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. You can visit his blog, “Mishaps and Adventures,” which is dedicated to the process and exploration of children’s and young adult’s book design, at: www. cwdesigner.blogspot.com.
ILLUSTRATOR
Steve Brodner is a satiric illustrator, caricaturist, art journalist, and filmmaker working in New York. His work covers topical and cultural issues and has appeared in most major magazines in the U.S., winning a bunch of nice awards along the way. He has produced animations for The New Yorker, Slate, PBS, and The Washington Spectator. He teaches narrative art at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Steve sees illustration as a major and vital communication tool, regardless of platform and venue, moving in many directions at once.
ILLUSTRATOR
Asaf Hanuka has been doing editorial illustration since 1995. He has collaborated with his twin brother Tomer on the comics series Bipolar. Asaf’s graphic novels have appeared in the U.S., France, Israel, and Spain. Among them, Pizzeria Kamikaze with writer Etgar Keret, was nominated for the Eisner awards in 2007. He contributed art for the award-winning docu-animation feature film Waltz with Bashir. Since 2010 Asaf has been documenting his life in a weekly comic, The Realist, for which he won a Gold Medal from The Society of Illustrators and an Award of Excellence from Communication Arts. For the last four years he has been teaching illustration and comics at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design. He is married to illustrator Hilit Shefer. They live in Tel-Aviv where they raise their son Yoel.
ILLUSTRATOR
Paul Hoppe is a freelance illustrator for newspapers, magazines, and advertising agencies, as well as a graphic designer, and a writer and illustrator of children’s books and graphic novels. His clients include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Adidas, and IBM. His work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Communication Arts, and 3x3, among others. Paul co-founded the comic-anthology Rabid Rabbit and served as its art director for years. His picture book HAT has been translated into seven languages. He illustrated the graphic novel Peanut, written by Ayun Halliday. Paul teaches in the Illustration Residency at the School of Visual Arts. Born in Poland and raised in Germany, he now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
ILLUSTRATOR
Nora Krug’s illustrations appear in many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and Le Monde Diplomatique, and in anthologies by Simon & Schuster, Chronicle Books, and Houghton Mifflin. She illustrated the children’s book, My Cold Went On Vacation (Putnam/Penguin), and published the graphic novel, Red Riding Hood Redux (Bries), and the illustrated monograph, Shadow Atlas (Strane Dizioni). Her work was recognized by the New York Art Director’s Club, American Illustration, and Print, and her graphic biographies won two Gold Medals from the Society of Illustrators. Nora’s animations were shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Ars Electronica, and ZKM, and her work was exhibited at The New York Times and Illustrative, among other venues. Krug is an associate professor in the Illustration Program at Parsons The New School for Design.
ART DIRECTOR, TIME INC.
Nai had been the longtime international art director for Fortune magazine. After leaving Fortune, she worked in Beijing as a design director consultant for Caxin Media, redesigning Century Weekly and China Reform. Both are Chinese language magazines. Nai has also worked with Dr. Mario Garcia on a Hong Kong project, redesigning Post Magazine for South China Morning Post, one of the oldest English newspapers in Hong Kong. They also created Shang, a new, luxury lifestyle magazine for Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. Nai is presently working as an art director at TIME.
ILLUSTRATOR
Matt Rota is a New York-based illustrator, and an instructor at institutions that include the School of Visual Arts and The Maryland Institute College of Art. His drawings have been created for print, film, and gallery. His clients include The New York Times, McSweeney’s, The Utne Reader, LA Weekly, Russian Esquire, Philadelphia Weekly, The Columbia Journalism Review, Ninja Tune Records, and many others. His drawings and prints have been shown in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and other cities nationally and internationally. He has received recognition and awards from the Society of Illustrators, American Illustration, Communication Arts, 3x3, Creative Quarterly, Lurzer’s Int’l Archive, and Spectrum. His comics have been anthologized on Top Shelf 2.0, and in Gutter, Rabid Rabbit, and Supertalk.
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, FIRST SECOND BOOKS
The editorial director of First Second Books, Mark is also the illustrator of several picture books. He is the winner of the 2006 Texas Bluebonnet Award for Seadogs, and the 2007 ALA/Robert F. Sibert Honor Book for to dance. First Second brings together authors and artists from the U.S. and abroad to open new avenues and make a home for the best in graphic novels.
ILLUSTRATOR
Ward Sutton is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work appears in many publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York, GQ, The Onion, and The Village Voice. His first book, Sutton Impact: The Political Cartoons of Ward Sutton, was published in 2005. He has created posters for Beck, Pearl Jam, and Phish, as well as for John Leguizamo’s Freak on Broadway, and the Sundance Film Festival. For HBO, VH-1, and Comedy Central he has created animation, and his monthly feature, Drawn to Read, is an online book review in cartoon form for The Barnes & Noble Review. Steven Colbert says, “Ward Sutton’s satire doesn’t just bite, it maims. He’s the perfect cartoonist for our discordant times.”
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
ELIZABETH BADDELEY
Swimmer Girls
The “Swimmer Girls” series explores the emotions and personal growth I experienced as I pushed myself physically during my years as a competitive swimmer. Together with my teammates, I learned that hard work paired with passion can often yield great results. This series is dedicated to the memory of my coach and friend who pushed, yelled, and guided me to be the person I am today.
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
ALESSANDRO GOTTARDO
Herman Wouk Is Still Alive
I did the illustrations for the Stephen King short story, “Herman Wouk Is Still Alive,” for the Internazionale magazine. The story was based on a true dramatic event in Fairfield, Maine. Mark Rothko’s work was the inspiration for my color and compositional choices. I tried to think about his painting as stage scenery and my characters as actors in this drama.
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
GB TRAN
Photo by Joe Tomcho
Pages From Vietnamerica
“If you could tell only one more story, what would it be?” I was asked this question at a crossroads in my life and Vietnamerica is the answer. It’s a 288-page journey to uncover and preserve my family’s legacy of trauma, tragedy, and triumph. It’s a child realizing that to better understand himself, he needs to better understand his parents, and to ask questions before it’s too late.
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
LEO ESPINOSA
EcoPetrol TV Spot
The most exciting thing about this project was being able to create an animated TV spot in a short period of time while working remotely with animators, designers, and art directors. The director of the spot and I first created a very simple concept board with a few of the characters, graphic elements, characters, etc. Upon receiving approval from the client, I created a storyboard for the animators and started to illustrate all the keyframes digitally. In the meantime, music and sound design were doing their part. All the keyframes were produced in a record time of two weeks, and that same time frame was used to animate and edit the first 30-second version of the commercial the client requested. A second 60-second version and print ads, for which I also provided illustrations, were also part of “Ecopetrol 60 Years” institutional campaign.
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
IAN HIGGINBOTHAM
Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Animation
Working on this project was a huge honor, it being the 50th anniversary of Catch 22, and it was an opportunity to work with illustration and animation in a unique way. A ton of credit goes to Alan Trotter, the producer and art director, for providing a wealth of information in terms of the source material, as well as excellent feedback for the final piece. Working with a lot of reference, I tried to show the dual nature of Joseph Heller’s work, combining the comedic elements with the more serious, explicit scenes of the book.
GOLD MEDAL WINNER
EMILIANO PONZI
Voices for Freedom
The Amnesty International anniversary TV spot was done with the partnership of Leo Burnett Iberia. I was called by the Portuguese animation studio “We are Captive” to create the look for a video about Dhondup Wangchen, a Tibetan filmmaker imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2009. He was condemned because of his documentary about violence in occupied Tibet. The story was depicted using Tibetan animal metaphors—the Yak, the Tiger, and the Antelope are all Buddhist prayer animals, while the crane is a national symbol of China.
SILVER MEDAL WINNER
BRIAN REA
Modern Love
The images created for the “Modern Love” series in the New York Times Sunday Styles section are inspired by drawings I did for my partner during the time she and I lived apart. The essays written each week for the column are accounts of different writers’ experiences with relationships and love. They are at times heartbreaking, humorous, witty, painful, sometimes nostalgic, and more often than not, familiar. I don’t try to illustrate the essays. Instead, I try to create a drawing that runs parallel to the story, one that pulls from my own experiences and emotions and provides a familiar tone to that of the writer’s experience.
SILVER MEDAL WINNER
MICHAEL SLOAN
My Extraordinary Dream
This comic is an account of an unusual dream I had one night. When I awoke I realized that I had to record my dream right away before I forgot any of it. I immediately went to my drawing table where the entire story poured out of me before I came downstairs for breakfast. Later, I developed my sketches into this comic. My dream took the form of a series of scenes almost exactly as they appear here.
SILVER MEDAL WINNER
ANDRÉ DA LOBA
Thinktopia
This project was originally supposed to be a poster. But after designer Patrick Hanlon came to my studio and saw the three-dimensional quality of my work, he suggested that we could do an animation instead. He thought that some pieces would be great to say “Thinktopia” in an inspiring way. From there it was an easy process of adapting an old toy I had invented a few years ago to incorporate the message he wanted to convey. This was one of the most interesting projects I have ever worked on because I’m really happy about how it turned out.
SILVER MEDAL WINNER
BILL PLYMPTON
Summer Bummer
I was commissioned by Showtime to create an animated short for their online shorts series. I’d had the idea bouncing around in my head for a couple of years. It’s my traditional color pencil (Prismacolor) on animation bond style, scanned, and digitally composited in the computer. The music is by Corey Jackson, one of my favorite composers.
A. RICHARD ALLEN
Lucky Jim
I read through Kingsley Amis’s book, making notes to remind me of key events in the narrative, introduction of characters, scenes that revealed plot details, and more humorous, visual events that would lend themselves to interior illustrations. I produced around 24 thumbnails. The art director and editor whittled down this long list to seven interior plates. Additional consideration was made to ensure that the selected images, including a frontispiece, were evenly distributed throughout the book and didn’t spoil the story by describing scenes before they appeared in the text. A similar procedure was followed with the cover blocking, although technical considerations, and the need to produce an iconic, representative image, weighed upon the choice and rendering. Once approval was given, the process of sketching, refining the drawing, and applying color digitally began.
WESLEY ALLSBROOK
Taken by Pirates, for The New York Times Magazine
LAUREN SIMKIN BERKE
The Love Issue
Nashville Scene’s Valentine’s Day issue, with a bitter, realist’s slant on Nashville romance.
CHRIS BUZELLI
Entega Calendar, 12 Tales from the World of Energy
A total of 12 paintings were commissioned for a calendar by Entega, a German ecological energy company. Each month illustrated a myth or a lie about green energy and was accompanied by a beautifully written fable. The deadline was short and I dedicated about a month and a half to this project. The art directors from DDB gave me the creative freedom that I needed in order to illustrate this important subject.
DANIEL CHANG
Full-Body Peril
Proto, a magazine produced for Massachusetts General Hospital, explores ideas in biomedical research. For an article about tuberous sclerosis complex, this piece is an elegant metaphor for the loss of lung function inflicted by the disorder.
GREG CLARKE
Dispatches From Oblivion
For this edition of Blabworld!, Monte Beauchamp, the art director and editor, asked artists to create work around the theme of the afterlife. I wanted to play with the basic human need to ascribe meaning to objects and their surroundings, particularly where dearly departed loved ones are concerned.
TAVIS COBURN
Field & Stream “Retro Issue, June 2011”
ERIC COLLINS
Rabbits
As a fan of Epic Illustrated, The Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, I was excited to illustrate for Carrier Pigeon Magazine, which often depicts mature themes in surreal circumstances. I was excited to explore the odd details that hold the story together: molds like constellations, a phonebook in a fridge, and super signage. I worked traditionally with ink, paint, and gesso using the computer lastly for enhancements and color.
JOHN CUNEO
Adventures in Illustration
BRIAN DANAHER
Cemetery Friends
These digital illustrations use found photography and textures, hand-drawn doodles, ink blots and splatters, and were created to accompany Rabbit Children’s EP, Cemetery Friends.
MICKEY DUZYJ
The New York Mess
MICKEY DUZYJ
The Fist Pump in Tennis: A Style Guide
BYRON EGGENSCHWILER
This House is Haunted
BYRON EGGENSCHWILER
Zodiac Series
ALESSANDRO GOTTARDO
Dark Zone
JOHN HENDRIX
Rolling Stone Rock Decades
Rolling Stone came to me with a great project for their 2011 Rock Trivia Issue: six images that represented six decades of rock and roll. Each image needed to faithfully represent the prominent personalities and themes of the decade in music.
MATT HUYNH
Lion Dancers
A contemporary arts gallery in Sydney commissioned me to create a series of short comics of stories from Chinatown. This led me to sit in with the Jin Wu Koon Martial Arts Academy over several weeks as they trained for Moon Festival celebrations. I created a ten-meter-long scrolling comic strip to relay their story using a process and physical impression that testified to the admirable dedication and discipline of the young practitioners. I removed all frames and used a circular narrative to demonstrate their boundless commitment to their performance and training night after night, one blending into the next.
RYAN INZANA
Ichiro
These are the beginning pages from my graphic novel, Ichiro, a story of a boy’s struggle to find identity in the shadow of war. It takes him on a journey through both history and mythological worlds. This scene is my own take on a Japanese folk tale about a tanuki, or raccoon dog. The style in which the fable is illustrated is obviously in the manner of ukiyo-e prints, many of which depicted such lore.
PETER KUPER
Visitation
This is an excerpt from a four-page piece created for Blabworld!, Monte Beauchamp’s annual book with this edition’s theme: afterlife. It was based on a dream about my deceased father that was so visceral, I had the feeling I’d spent some quality (albeit surreal and emotionally distressing) time with him. It was created using pen and ink on scratchboard, then digitally colored in Photoshop.
PETER KUPER
One Dollar
I initially drew One Dollar in 1988, inspired by the 1987 stock market crash. Though New York is a little cleaner now than it was back then, the strip could easily have been drawn about the crash of 2008. I revived and colored the strip for a comics festival held at the Sydney Opera House in Australia. The comic was projected one panel at a time, while accompanied by a live orchestra. It also was published in a collection of my work titled Drawn To New York.
CHRIS KOEHLER
Devotion
ZOHAR LAZAR
Rules of the Game
HYESU LEE
Never Mind the Gap Between Us
My work conjures up memories of the worldly things we easily dismiss, like animals, plants, and the web-like connection between everything in nature. I would like to invite viewers and listeners to tune in to the world I am in. The world where all emotionally engaged communications take place.
ROSS MACDONALD
The Greek Myths
MATT MAHURIN
Morality of Choice
MARI MITSUMI
The New World for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
These pieces were created and exhibited for the exhibition entitled The New World of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, at Galerie Malle.
PEP MONTSERRAT
Stella Gibbons
VICTO NGAI
I Was Born In 1920 3500’N 10500’E
This piece was inspired by stories of my grandparents’ generation. Living in China during the chaotic era, every day they were faced with drastic changes over which they had very little control.
DAVID PLUNKERT
Body Breakdown Series
Series for the article “Body Breakdowns,” illustrating various runners’ injuries: Achilles tendinitis, shin splints, and iliotibial band syndrome.
EMILIANO PONZI
Imaginary Friends
Every image is the title of a song written by singer Valerio Millefoglie. All the portraits depict one of his imaginary friends. I tried to capture the look of his characters by listening to the CD over and over until I could clearly see faces and environments.
JUNGYEON ROH
H.O.T. (Holistic Organic Temptation)
The health and environmental benefits resulting from a vegan diet. Forty pages of silkscreened, handmade book. Five editions.
MARC ROSENTHAL
Yoga Time
I got a call on a Friday afternoon from The New Yorker. Françoise Mouly asked if I would submit a full-page cartoon by Monday. I started doodling immediately and (sorry to say) I have no idea where this idea came from. The hard part was matching yoga poses to undressing.
CECILIA RUIZ
Welcome Misfortune
This is a series of images in which the recurring theme is the presence of ill luck.
JESS RULIFFSON
Status Quo Ante Bellum
This piece was made as an introduction to a long-form comic based on interviews conducted with veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The challenge was to create a concise and sensitive introduction out of many pages of notes and hours of interviews. The short format allowed me to filter out unnecessary elements and resulted in an intriguing biographical portrait.
KOREN SHADMI
Heavy Hearted
HILIT SHEFER
Smiling Dish
It all started as a huge mistake. As an illustrator, I used the only tools I had to convince my son Yoel to eat. Every evening I prepared a new smiling dish for dinner. I’m not better than any other mom, I only wanted him to remember as he grows up that I tried my best. So I took pictures of the plates before serving. The funny thing was I failed to upload a little movie to Facebook, and instead uploaded the pictures of the smiling dishes. The response was overwhelming. Since then I was invited to share my plates on a weekly basis on one of Israel’s biggest web platforms, Xnet, and I have been doing it for the last year.
MICHAEL SLOAN
Professor Nimbus and the Arctic Horror
A rogue scientist, the hazards of genetic engineering, and a recent trip to Scandinavia inspired this latest Professor Nimbus adventure. The setting of a scientific facility on a remote Arctic island seemed a perfect location for a sinister plot involving the breeding of carnivorous plants poised to overwhelm the planet.
MARK ALAN STAMATY
A Cartoon Legacy
DANIEL STOLLE
New Forms of Reading
NATE WILLIAMS
Naïve City
QING ZHUANG
Mom Bought Crabs on a Rainy Day
This personal comic depicts my mother and me coming home from our weekly grocery trip to New York City’s Chinatown. I carefully edited the story and design so that each panel holds its own, while contributing to an overall composition. I have always wanted to make tangible a sense of gratitude towards the life I have been given. I hope that the sentiment comes through in this piece.
SERGE BLOCH
School of Art
STEVE BRODNER
Biosphere Congress
STEVE BRODNER
Diablo Canyon for Dummies
ANDRÉ DA LOBA
Gigantis
CORY GODBEY
The Last Flight of Petr Ginz
JASON HOLLEY
True Tales from a Not Too Distant Analog Past
KAKO
Mayday Parade Music Video
BILL PLYMPTON
Sailor
Back in the go-go ’90s, I was commissioned to do 30 very short animations in Flash. Well, as you know, the .com bubble burst and Waiting for her Sailor was never finished. In the summer of 2011 I discovered the original drawings and commissioned Sandrine Flament, my French intern, to digitally add color, sound, and music to this long unfinished short.
RED NOSE STUDIO
Ticket Taker
STEPHEN SAVAGE
Where’s Walrus Book Trailer