Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing trailer. In word, awesome!

Shaun Tan’s fifteen minute animated adaptation of his book The Lost Thing—the story of a boy’s empathy with a lost, er, thing and his attempts to help it find its place—is completed and making the festival circuit. If anyone gets a chance to see it, please report back! I’m dying to see it.

In the meantime, anyone else as in love with Shaun’s work as I am can play around on thelostthing.com.There are character studies, color keys and production drawings to see. And if that is not enough, check out this 5 minute documentary on the movie.

Shaun Tan (and other talented people) at a PEN panel on childrens books.

FLICKR SET HERE

So, this was supposed to be highlights from a panel discussion on children's books with Neil Gaiman, Mariken Jongman, and Shaun Tan. I knew it would be a bit Tan-centric, since I am most familiar with his work, but once I started writing it up, it quickly became all Tan.

The other panelists were charming and insightful and funny. (Like when Neil Gaiman remembered his school teachers telling him, "Neil, dear, before you can be eccentric, you really should know where the circle is.") But since this is the Art Department I have the perfect excuse to focus on the only illustrator on the panel.

On childhood:
Shaun Tan mentioned that he grew up in a suburban town that was the perfect blend of idyllic and boring to help foster a vivid imagination. And, that he used drawing as a way to compensate for being the shortest kid in the class.

Influential books:
Shaun mentioned Where the Wild Things Are, especially the forest growing in the bedroom scene. He talked about the "tipping point, where everything starts to change."

He was also read Animal Farm as a young kid -- his mother assumed it was a kid's book.

Throughout the evening he talked a lot about being most interested in stories that are left somewhat unresolved.

Career Path:
He started as a science fiction illustrator and moved into children's books as a means to broaden his client base.

He also mentioned creating the picture book The Lost Thing as a means of pulling himself out of the pigeon hole of doing a lot of horror work. (Self initiated projects)

He feels he's hit a "Twilight Zone" between making books that for both for kids and adults.

Style and work:
Shaun talked about stripping stories and images down. Getting a everything down to it's bare bones and letting the child inhabit the story and fill in the details.

He seems to have very vivid memories of being a child and attribute his surrealism to remembering what it's like to live in a world were you can only understand 50% of what is going on.

He said that he used himself and his wife for the models on The Arrival.

He talked about spending lot of time struggling with a project, only to have a divergent project take off without trouble.

On hobbies:

When asked what he does when not painting, he replied..."Painting." But instead of fantastical images, he'll paint large scale portraits and town scenes for fun. He said they were very meditative allowed him to take stock in the world around him and observe details.

Artist Hugo Nominee Spotlights

Over on Tor.com, I posted quick spotlights on the five Professional Artist Hugo nominees. I asked them to send in 3 paintings from the past year and to give us a few words on their year or the work they chose to display. Come on over to see....

Bob Eggleton

Donato Giancola

Shuan Tan

Dan Dos Santos

John Picacio

Art Hugo Nominations

Congrats to all the Hugo nominees. Lots of friends on that list!

Since this is the Art Department, a special shout-out to the Professional Art nominees:

Dan Dos Santos
Bob Eggleton
Donato Giancola
John Picacio
Shaun Tan

And for Best Related Book: Spectrum 15. Congrats to Arnie and Cathy Fenner (and all the artists that make up Spectrum.)

Last year I kinda dropped the ball on doing nominee profiles. I'll make a better effort of it this year. Stay tuned...

Shaun Tan interview on Drawn

Yes, I am a completely devote Shaun Tan fangirl. I just picked up Tales from Outer Suburbia
the other night and am savoring it, one or two stories a night. It's fantastic.

Drawn just posted a lengthy interview with Shaun with a lot of great insight into the book and Shaun's creative process.

Free Kelly Link

Exposing myself for your benefit:

I am truly ashamed that I have not read more Kelly Link stories. The few I have read, I’ve loved. So, I'm outing myself to tell you, yes you – smarter and more ambitious than I — that she is offering her stories from Magic for Beginners online.

But wait, it gets better...The giveaway is to promote her new book, Pretty Monsters. When I saw it I thought, "nice cover", and then I read that it has Shaun Tan drawings within. Shaun Tan is awesome. Shaun Tan rocks. All things good, are Shaun Tan. So, download Magic for free and then go buy Pretty Monsters. That’s my big plan for the evening.

Wesley Allsbrook and Shaun Tan: Great art and a free comic!

Ok, so I had hoped to only do this once a week but these two are just too good to let sit.

Tor.com just launched it's first free comic, The Leviathan. It's written and drawn by Wesley Allsbrook. Long term readers may remember that she gave one of the most articulate interviews on The Art Department. She is awesome. Go enjoy the story.
And, an interview with Mr. Shaun Tan, who is one of my personal favorites, and is also awesome, and so you should also go and enjoy.

Three Rabbits

Three nice bunnies I've run across.

Shaun Tan:
From Shaun's picture book, The Rabbits.This was the first image I saw Shaun's and I just fell in love with it. The book was shown to me many years ago by Jenna Felice, an editor at Tor who passed away tragically young. It was given to her, if memory serves, by writer Justine Larbalestier.

Cathie Bleck:
I believe this was a personal work in Cathie's wonderfully organic and sensuous book, Open Spaces. More on that here.

Bill Carman:
I first ran across his Bill's work on Concept Art.org. His site is full of great work. It would be tough to narrow down but I think the top hatted crows in the drawing section are my favorites.

Another Installment of Eating With the Art Department

There was a great convergence of artists in NY last night. John Jude Palencar was in town for the Society of Illustrators' annual exhibit judging, Greg Spelanka and Roxanne Villa were in town on their way to a lecture being given by Greg in Philly, Shaun Tan was in town doing a series of book signings between World Fantasy and a book fair in Mexico City, and Donato, well, he's always in town. And if you want a really really good meal in downtown NY, go to l'Ecole.

Shaun Tan will be signing books at:
Books of Wonder
Thursday, November 8, 5:00-7:00pm
18 West 18th Street, New York, NY

Greg Spalenka will be giving a lecture and having an opening reception:
University of the Arts in Philadelphia
Thursday, November 8
Lecture: 1:00-2:30
Reception 2:30-3:30

World Fantasy Day 1

World Fantasy is off to a nice start. I had half a day to run around before things got started -- Saratoga Springs is a perfect October town.

I had never met Shaun Tan before but I am not entirely surprised to see that he is a great guy. I bought his latest book, The Arrival, about a month and half ago and I keep meaning to get to writing about it. If ya’ll are smart, you'll stop reading this and go pick up a copy.

The only panel I went to yesterday was a drawing demo with Bob Eggleton, Donato Giancola, and Shaun Tan. It was a big room with a large crowd. The smarter among us sat up front on the floor and had great view of all three of them drawing and answering questions as they went.

At one point Shaun said something very interesting which made me think I should hunt done a pen. Of course, by the time I found one I had completely forgotten what he said. Some thoughts from the second half of the hour:

Donato mentioned that he likes to read the book and then let it sit in the back f his mind for a while. Letting it percolate. When he gets to sketching he’s left with the memory of the book, allowing him to capture mood and themes rather than specific scenes.

Bob mentioned that he liked to work more quickly, reacting emotionally to the book. He also mentioned that Lovecraft was one of the most inspiring writers for him - both or the reading experience and for visual inspiration.

When asked about their dream project, all three said that they simply wanted more time to do what they are already doing better.

Bob and Donato said that their early appreciation for draftsmanship came from comics.

Shaun and Donato talked a bit about working beyond the given assignment -- getting to a place in their career where they were confident enough to add their own voice to the project.

So that was yesterday, with the addition of lots of food and late night talking, of course. The art show looks amazing but I have only skimmed it so far. I'm off now to spend some real time there.