You can be a winner too! In honor of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver that kick off on the 12th, we’re offering readers 25% off* + free ground shipping on our Canada-centric titles. Great news, eh?

So You Want to be a Canadian

The US of Eh?

City Walks Vancouver

Cheers,
Hannah
Entertainment Marketing Manager

*Enter promo code VANCOUVER at check-out. Promo code good now until the end of February.

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We’ve just released Sanjay Patel’s book Ramayana and… it’s gorgeous. Sanjay has been an illustrator at Pixar for awhile now (almost 13 years!), so I thought you might be interested to hear about his creative process, how he got started, and some of his favorites. I asked him a few questions…

(And I wanted to share this photo that Sanjay has up on his site, because it’s just about the cutest kid photo EVER.)

What was your inspiration to tell this story?
Well I finally read the thing. I mean I suck at reading and everything. But I came across a great adaptation of the Ramayana by an author named Ashok Banker. I actually discovered the book via Nina Paley’s blog. She’s the one woman force behind Sita Sings the Blues, the feature length animated work about the same subject. After reading a few pgs on Amazon I ordered the first book by Mr. Banker which weighed in at over five hundred pgs. Keep in mind that was just book one of a seven part series. I just read and read and the thing slowly unlocked. And what I found was an ancient mythology with themes and symbols that were timeless and essential. Really meaningful stuff all wrapped up in a visually rich world of epic adventure. The story was just begging to be illustrated.

How did you get started working at Pixar?
The only thing I was ever good at was copying drawings from comic books. I just drew, and nothing could ever get me to stop. All throughout school I was considered “the artist,” which really just meant that I could make really bad drawings for people’s letterman jackets. A friend told me about Cal-Arts and animation. The school was the key. Most of Pixar’s directors have come straight out of Cal-Arts and its character animation program. I just walked in their footsteps and they ended up recruiting me after my second year. I’ve been at Pixar ever since, close to thirteen years now.

Describe your creative process. How do you create your illustrations?
Download LankaFireProcess.pdf.

How long did it take you to create the scenes in the book?
At one point the illustrations were getting churned out at about one every two and half days. I was at a good clip till I decided to redo the entire book three times. I kept fighting with trying to make the art lighthearted and cute, but the story was anything but that. The Ramayana is pretty dramatic and graphic, and I eventually found a style and voice that captured those things. It only took me four years.

Which characters in the Ramayana did you have the most fun illustrating?
I can doodle Ravana the ten-headed demon king in my sleep at this point. I also love sketching Hanuman and Rama. They both have really fun shapes to fiddle with. The cover of the book was actually a blast, it was probably the last illustration I did.

The cover of Ramayana

Sanjay’s Favorites

Favorite Illustrators
Marc Boutavant
J Otto Seibold
Saul Steinberg
William Steig
Ronald Searle
Richard Scarry
Martin & Alice Provenson
Mary Blair
Charley Harper
M. Sasek
T. Biskup
Lewis Trondheim

Favorite Movies
Back to the Future
Amelie
Wrong Trousers
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Mission
Raising Arizona
Princess Mononoke
Dumbo
Abyss
Bottle Rocket

Favorite Bands
That’s a toss up between M83 and Sigur Ros.

Favorite Restaurants
Usually places that serve french fries and hot sauce.

Favorite Books
Phoenix Karma by Osamu Tezuka
Calvin & Hobbes Tenth Anniversary by Bill Watterson
Angry Youth Comix by Johnny (really *expletive* funny) Ryan

Cheers,
Hannah deBree
Entertainment Marketing Manager

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‘Greetings from’ The Onion… postcards.

Now you can send the funny to your friends.

Have a great week!

Hannah deBree
Entertainment Marketing Manager

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Back in August I wrote a blog post called Color Me Indie about the fabulous Yellow Bird Project and the fantastic Indie Rock Coloring Book and their lovely tees. They recently launched the interactive game Color Me Indie…go play!

With a nod to YBP’s top 20 albums of 2009, here’s a list of the songs I fell in love with in 2009:

Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks

Camera Obscura: French Navy

Phoenix: Fences

Beirut: No Dice

Deerhunter: Agoraphobia

Want to win a Yellow Bird Project t-shirt? You know you do! Comment with your favorite songs of 2009 for a chance to win. We’ve got 15 tees ready to send to 15 lucky people,* so tell your friends.

Cheers,
Hannah
Entertainment Marketing Manager

*We won’t play favorites with you. Winners will be chosen at random.

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Jason Kottke of Kottke.org posted about Lauren Leto’s nerdy, bookish post Stereotyping People by Their Favorite Author in December and it’s too good to not share here.

Here are some favorite funny ones:

Stephenie Meyer
People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv <3 <3.

Jonathan Safran Foer
30somethings who were cool when they were 20something.

Chuck Klosterman
Boys who don’t read.

Chuck Palahniuk
Boys who can’t read.

Haruki Murakami
People who like good music.

Charles Dickens
Ninth graders who think they’re going to be authors someday but end up in marketing.

Harper Lee
People who have read only one book in their life and it was To Kill A Mockingbird (and it was their assigned reading in the ninth grade).

Nick Hornby
Guys who wear skinny jeans and the girls that love them.

Vladimir Nabokov
Men who use words like ‘dubious’ and ‘tenacity’.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Sommeliers.

Thomas Pynchon
People who used to be fans of J.D. Salinger.

Tama Janowitz
Cougars who went to an urban college in the 80s.

Alice Sebold
People who liked Gilmore Girls – even in the first season.

Nicole Krauss
Girls who intern at Nylon but end up moving back to the Midwest for their real job.

Stieg Larsson
Girls who are too frightened to go skydiving.

Seth Grahame-Smith
People who own a smart phone which requires a stylus to use it.

Michael Pollan
The girl who just turned vegan to cover up her eating disorder.

Virginia Woolf
Female high-school French teachers who have their master’s degree.

Albert Camus
People who went to art school after “trying it out” at a public university.

Kurt Vonnegut
People who played Creep by Radiohead while having sex or smoking pot.

Now, I can’t claim to have a favorite author. Favorite books, perhaps. But picking a favorite author is close to impossible, and I am a fickle reader; I find no qualms in unabashedly loving an author’s book and then dismissing his next. I don’t read by genre (well not really) so choosing between, say, Vikram Chandra and Theresa Hak Jyung Cha, A.S. Byatt and Edwidge Danticat, Paul Auster and Jane Austen, Sarah Waters and Steig Larsson, or John Berger and Jonathan Safran Foer is like choosing a favorite band. Really hard…

How about you? Do you have a favorite author (and what does that say about you?) and what was your favorite book of 2009?

Happy New Year!

Hannah
Entertainment Marketing Manager

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