dantat.com

Let the Building Begin

Outside, they've torn down a bunch of stucco and begun on the framework of my home. Meanwhile, inside the house I work on my various projects which include this bizarre stickerset for a toy company

Special thanks to Ken MIn for snapping a few nifty photos of my work at the Society of Illustrators show at Gallery Nucleus on Saturday night.

My whole family is currently fighting off sickness. I've had little to no sleep for the past three days.

Ugh. Clagone Take me Away!

Sylvester... In Succotash.

April 2nd I'll be in a show at Gallery 1988 here in LA called "Idiot Box" which is themed on old television shows. I chose ALF.



I was struggling to get this piece together for the past few weeks because I've been juggling other projects but I managed to come up with a really strong idea.

I originally wanted to paint the A Team washing their van at a car wash, but then I was too busy to get a solid likeness of all the characters

Then I thought, maybe I'll do 'Small Wonder' until I saw Adam Rex bust this out for the same show and I thought, "Eh, I want to do something different"



So I started an under-painting for the show "The Greatest American Hero"


and then I realized, I couldn't decide which view I thought was better....



Then a friend of mine asked me what show it was from.... WHAT SHOW?! Do you not know "The Greatest American Hero"?!


which was also spoofed on Seinfeld!....

Naturally, out of frustration of painting an obscure show, I scrapped the piece entirely.

Then randomly I thought about the Looney Tunes character Sylvester the cat who always had a quote "Sufferin' Succotash!"

I Googled 'succotash'. Turns out it's lima beans and corn!



Then I remembered that old show ALF, the alien from Melmac who crash lands in the home of a family and lives with them in all his puppetry glory.

and who didn't like ALF? I also recalled that he liked to eat cats. and thus spawned the idea for this piece... "Sylvester in Succotash" I know... Cheesy. I'll see you all at the show April 2nd. Thanks for letting me rant about my thought process.

Tightening up

I'm steadily working on m graphic novel and this is the first real good glimpse of what it's going to look like. I still have a few issues with dramatic framing and some pacing  issues as well but they will all, hopefully, be sorted out in this round of tight sketches, then the last phase will be color with a few corrections.

I won't say much about the story or content for now, but, I am happy with the way things are going.

Who knew a graphic novel would be this much work?

"Oh No!" Oh yes...

After talking with my editor and art director at Hyperion about the sketches for "Oh No" I couldn't wait to get started and after completing my first piece I couldn't wait to share it with all of you....

It's going to be hard for me to keep this book under wraps.  

A book party, my agent, Japanese subtitles, and a missing page

The ravaging of Casa De Santat continues...

I attended Lisa Yee's book opening for Absolutely, Maybe on Sunday...

So I just wanted to warn you all, that if you see images of me floating around on the internet looking like this. Let the truth be told that that man in the picture is an impostor.

I did get to see my agent at the book signing though. Here's me and Jodi Reamer. Everyone calls her "THE REAMER" because she's so tough.

OK, I lied, no one else calls her "The Reamer"... In fact, I've never even said it to her face because I'm so intimidated by her....

...Please don't tell her I blogged about this...

...seriously....She's also lawyer AND has a black belt in Hapkido...

In other news, I finished the dummy book for "Oh No" and recently turned it in to the editor at Hyperion who seemed to really dig it. As some of you may know from previous blogs posted about this book I was heavily influenced by my childhood love for Japanese monster flicks.

 What some of you may NOT know is that I had a friend of mine (from France of all places) translate all the text for me into Japanese so that the book has Japanese subtitles and it seems to be OK with the editor!

Chalk one up for me and author Mac Barnett! (Hi-Fiving myself)

I recently got my ARC's of Bobby VS. Girls (Accidentally). It feels so quick considering I turned in the final art about 3 weeks ago, but I learned that author, Lisa Yee, (see above) did NOT receive her copies in the mail.

So I taunted her via email....

....She was not amused.... I had one of my copies sent over to her house and minutes later Lisa had informed me that the last page of text was MISSING!

We informed the editor and they are now reprinting all of the ARCs all over again. YAY for print!

Lastly, I made this video of my darling friend Amy Goldman Koss to help promote her books....

and SPEAKING of promotion. Since I have a little down time in between projects (not really but I'm a little sick right now so I'm procrastinating) I'm currently working on a trailer for "Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo" but even better is that I discovered that STERLING PUBLISHING is recording an original song for CHICKEN DANCE and offering up a contest on Youtube for people to enter and win prizes! Now THAT is the way a publisher should treat a book. Let me just also add from a book creator to a publisher, If you give a little love to your product, then the people who generate the content will return that love back two fold.

Or at least I will.

I'm fine. What's new with you?

Last Friday night I participated in a book reading at Sherman Oaks Elementary School. I read "The Secret Life of Walter Kitty" and even gave them a special first reading of "Always Lots of Heinies At the Zoo" which was an absolute hit. Then I drew several animals and their heinies on a drawing pad with a sharpie pen (which I can't do very well) One parent even wanted to by my only copy from me. Needless to say, it made me feel very good inside and I can't wait for "Heinies" to come out in May.

One of the folks who also read at the school was the amazing Pseudonomous Bosch  the best selling author of books such as "The Name of This Book is....: and "If You're Reading This It's Too Late" They are wonderfully written and the premise is seriously just oustanding. Just a very well thought out book idea from the very beginning. Here's a picture of me with the infamous PB...

In other news, construction is still going on at my house.

A few complications came up here and there. Mainly issues with updating my house to meet city standards (my house was built in 1929)

Meanwhile, I'll be wrapping up one of the tightest dummy books I've ever completed in the next few days. I seriously never put this much love into the preliminary stages of a project but I have to say that after all the drawing I did for "Bobby VS. Girls (Accidentally)" My drawing chops have come back in full force.

 Here are a few more samples....

My, editor notified that I should be getting my final notes for my graphic novel early next week or so. Then I'll be starting that and you won't hear me stop talking about that.

I for one am so excited it hurts.