The Assembly Line

It’s been about a year since I was able to draw some art for Jonathan Coulton.  As some of you may know, I did art for every song that he did in his Thing A Week project. Man, that feels like so long ago.  Anyway, Coulton would release a song and I’d draw some sort of image to go along with it.  Fans of Coulton would use my art for their album art in iTunes, because up until that time, he was just releasing the songs on his blog.  Flash forward, Coulton’s new album “Artificial Heart” is on the brink of being released and the first “single”, a little song called “Nemeses”, was released today as a reward for signing up on Coulton’s mailing list.

It feels good to draw something for Jonathan again. I know I’ve said it before in other places, but in many ways, this crazy path I’ve gone down as an illustrator is, in large part due, to my collaboration with Jonathan.  This design was inspired in large part with me meeting one of my art heroes at San Diego Comic Con a few weeks ago; Mr. Bill Plympton.  I’ve always been a fan of Bill’s scribbling style and I tried to channel some of that into this piece of art.  (Which, if you didn’t know, is Coulton facing off with his in-song nemesis, John Roderick of The Long Winters, who I was also fortunate to meet and chat with at w00tstock a few weeks back.)  

In my short conversation with Bill, I was able to tell him how influential he has been on my work, and that he taught me that you didn’t have to be perfect to be good.  His unfinished, broken scribbles gave me great confidence as an artist and I remember going back to my drawing table after seeing one of his interstitials on MTV, and going very loose with my style, trying to ape him.  This piece is a definite nod to Mr. Plympton and also the first of many (I hope) more images for Coulton’s new album. 

As far as I know, the song does not have any album art associated with it. So feel free to use it as the art for the song. Huzzah!