Media Darling

Hey everybody! Sorry it’s been so crazy long since I’ve updated. Lots of changes in the past few months. The biggest is that I’m doing Illustration full-time these days, a big step that was long overdue. And I’ve been starving ever since!

Also long overdue is to let everybody know about some cool mentions I received in the last few months, in all sorts of cool media.

On the Radio

Back in October, I was fortunate enough to have a return appearance on the great Craig Silliphant’s radio show, to talk about the latest news in comics. I always have a good time when I’m on there, and whether it’s comics, or film, or television, Craig really knows his stuff. Here’s an .mp3 of my appearance on Entertainment Weekend--bend an ear!

Be sure to “like” Don Sparrow on Facebook.

And if you have time, check out some of the links mentioned in this post:

Media Darling

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The interesting thing is that we stayed frozen in these poses for the entire interview.

In Print

Shortly after my interview with Craig, it was announced that for the second year in a row, the readers of Planet S Magazine voted me Best New Media Artist, as well as naming me Best Artist (Traditional Media) for the first time. So a huge thanks to all who voted, it was a pretty neat surprise. Craig Silliphant also did very well in the voting, as did my old alma mater, Amazing Stories, taking a well deserved win for Best Comic Store.

Online

You might remember a while back, I did a post on my obsession with NBC’s Dateline. Well, a funny thing came from that post--Dateline got in contact with me! It was all part of a “how do you Dateline” campaign, where they would share the different ways fans would watch the show. Having seen my blog post about it, the show asked if they could use my drawing of Keith Morrison on their site:

I agreed, and so they did! Here’s how the drawing appeared on Dateline’s Facebook site.

And then if you clicked on it, you’d see the image in higher resolution.

On TV

So I thought that was pretty cool, until that Friday, when I tuned in for a new episode of Dateline and saw that they had used my drawing in a commercial for the show! It was pretty tiny, but still, that’s a national broadcast! Kinda cool.

It looks a little like Keith was surprised by his own question.

Surprisingly, that wasn’t the only time part of my work was featured on TV that month! I’d done a collaboration on a t-shirt with the great Steve Thomson at HardPressed (I’ll talk more about HardPressed in a future post) which was shown in a feature on CTV Morning Live, where Steve showed the reporter how to screenprint.

The drawing, as you Saskatooners might already know, was of CTV anchor and local improv legend Jeff Rogstad. Here’s a closer look at the drawing, which Steve then incorporated into his design on the shirt.

The shirts are available for sale at Collective Coffee in the 220 Building in Saskatoon, or directly at HardPressed, with a portion of the sale of each shirt going to charity.

Then, when Two Twenty head honcho (and all-around swell fella) Curtis Olsen appeared on News at Noon with his wife, chanteuse (and fellow Planet S winner) Carrie Catherine, to promote the launch party of the Two Twenty building, they too proudly wore their Rogstad shirts on the air.

Lastly, at that very launch party, the man himself, Jeff Rogstad stopped by Steve’s studio, where he was presented with the original drawing I did.

Jeff’s been a real sport about having his face plastered all over the city, and as I mentioned, a portion of the money is going to charity.

So there you have it, a whirlwind of media activity. Thanks for reading, and for being patient about there being so few posts on here lately. I really will try to change that. I love you.