With the end of 2019 comes the arrival of the 20s and the conclusion of a decade of creative growth. What follows are the projects and comic strips that defined the 2010s here in the studio. As a bonus, a song and film of the year are also designated. The selected projects, comics, films, and songs for each year either epitomized my creative headspace for that year or had lasting ramifications for neighboring years or the decade in general. Here we go.
2010 Project of the Year: Election Day Cruising World assignments
This was the first time I received two illustration assignments in the same day: both of which were from Cruising World magazine. It was an invigorating 10 days.
2010 Comic of the Year: Levi’s Denial, My Guardian Grandpa
Before the newspaper and book publications, the target audience for My Guardian Grandpa was very small: my little sister. Aside from myself, she was really the only person I was drawing the series for and if you’ve read the first book, you already know how the series drew inspiration from our relationship. In 2010, I took my first meeting with the Sentinel & Enterprise about launching the strip (which wouldn’t happen for another year) but I also decided to forge ahead and produce enough comics to publish the first book collection. The strip above was the first time I remember my sister actually laughing out loud at and marveling over the punchline.
2010 SONG OF THE YEAR: The Only Exception - Paramore | 2010 FILM OF THE YEAR: (500) Days of Summer - 2009
2011 Project of the Year: My Guardian Grandpa publications
March saw the publication of the first book collection and a summer book tour concluded with the strip’s debut in a daily newspaper called Sentinel & Enterprise in August.
2011 Comic of the Year: Bad Coffee, My Guardian Grandpa
I drew this strip twice. The manufacturers changed the formula of the ink or bristol board (or both) that I’d been using for the previous 10 years and the ink bled all over. I ended up changing ink brands and never looked back. This was one of the first strips drawn for the second book and I think it represents one of the first times the characters were actually drawn well. Only took about 300 strips to get there.
2011 SONG OF THE YEAR: Pictures - Benjamin Francis Leftwich | 2011 FILM OF THE YEAR: The Iron Giant - 1999
2012 Project of the Year: Miss Wallace Rhymes With William
I never knew I’d write or direct a play. For whatever reason, someone thought I could and encouraged me to do so. I’ve written six plays since Miss Wallace Rhymes With William and while they all mean something special to me, this is the most magical. Life imitated art during the production process: three days after the cast table reading, I met the girl who’d become my wife and she was there with me opening night. The play was published in 2014 - one month before our wedding.
2012 Comic of the Year: Election Results, My Guardian Grandpa
2012 SONG OF THE YEAR: Nonfiction Love Song - Jillian Edwards | 2012 FILM OF THE YEAR: The Artist - 2011
This is the last strip in a three week storyline, which was drawn in only three days, six strips a day. That’s an insane pace (for me anyway). 2012 was probably the most confident year of my life and I think it shows in the second year/volume of My Guardian Grandpa. I only worked at this feverish pace once more a few months later for a storyline called “Fashion Disaster,” once again drawing a week’s worth of strips a day for three consecutive days. Both occasions were commemorated with massive migraines which put me out of commission for at least a day. I never did that again.
2013 Project of the Year: My Guardian Grandpa
As mentioned, the 2012 confidence burst resulted in a much more ambitious second year or season 2 of My Guardian Grandpa. Aside from the strip's final year, I still think some of the best strips in the series are in that second book, which was published in August 2013.
2013 Comic of the Year: Auditions, My Guardian Grandpa
At least in the early years, this was me in a nutshell as a high school theatre director. What an idiot. But, man, I treasure the memories of those auditions and rehearsals. Performances are for the audience; the rehearsals were ours.
2013 SONG OF THE YEAR: Brother - Swear and Shake | 2013 FILM OF THE YEAR: You’ve Got Mail- 1999
2014 Project of the Year: Nasoya Baked Tofu Guy
This was my first job with a national client. Rationalizing every decision behind this character’s design was a blast.
2014 Comic of the Year: Lost to History, My Guardian Grandpa
I love the story arc of Judy living in the past. I had wanted to do it for years but I had to earn the opportunity to do it from readers. It was worth the wait for all parties involved.
2014 SONG OF THE YEAR: Someone Like You - Van Morrison | 2014 FILM OF THE YEAR: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - 1993
2015 Project of the Year: My Guardian Grandpa Volume IV: In Their Day
This is my best work in the series. It’s drawn the best, it’s the most emotional, and I final paid Judy’s character the attention she deserved. Production is a blur; Twice a week, I’d work on the strips from 7 or 9 at night until 3 in the morning to meet my deadline for the newspaper. I had to research the time period, I was drawing in a more detailed (and foreign) style, there was post-production grayscale involved. The storyline started in May and by October I was burnt out. Realizing this pace was unsustainable, I decided to end the strip once the storyline concluded…the following July. When I look back, I’m surprised by everything about this book. Including the fact that it was ever made in the first place.
2015 Comic of the Year: the Farewell Strip, My Guardian Grandpa
It was a tough goodbye. I love these characters and still think about revisiting them regularly. Readers were never shy about expressing their disappointment in my decision to retire the strip either. It’s shocking and humbling now in the last couple years that I’m being approached by people who read and loved the My Guardian Grandpa series as children. Astounding.
2015 SONG OF THE YEAR: Depreston - Courtney Barnett | 2015 FILM OF THE YEAR: Pride and Prejudice - 2005
2016 Project of the Year: Character References
Really, 2016 is only the year Character References was in the public’s eye but that material has cast a long shadow behind the scenes. This is the only time an idea has ever come to me in a dream (in February 2014) and I spent two years writing the script before its stage production in February 2016. It was another year before I’d finish an animated trailer, which was also in production since 2014. Of everything I’ve written, I think this world was the most fun to be in. I’ve been investigating ways to do more in it ever since.
2016 Comic of the Year: Childhood Betrayal, Mates and Dates
After My Guardian Grandpa, my wife an I started a new series together called Mates and Dates under a pseudonym. Each strip was an adventure of sorts to learn how to draw in a new way as it is in a drastically different visual style. I like the set up and pay off here.
2016 SONG OF THE YEAR: Always - Ella Fitzgerald | 2016 FILM OF THE YEAR: Captain America: Civil War - 2016
2017 Project of the Year: Single Panel Cartoons
Mates and Dates was a practice collaboration between my wife and I. She came up with the concept and characters, wrote a few strips, and served as editor, but by and large, I handled the day to day operations. Submitting single panel cartoons to magazines like The New Yorker was entirely her brain child and we tried to adhere more closely to designated writer and illustrator roles. This isn’t the best of our cartoons but it is the very first.
2017 Comic of the Year: Friendly Competition, Mates and Dates
These guys are such idiots. I love this strip because it shows how quickly they get carried away out of desperation.
2017 SONG OF THE YEAR: Emoji of a Wave - John Mayer | 2017 FILM OF THE YEAR: Captain America: The Winter Soldier - 2014
2018 Project of the Year: Understand THIS! A Buddy and Romeo Short
What an experience. My wife and I lived in Georgia for a month while she took a class at Emory University. She’d go off to class each day and I’d glue myself to my light table animating. At night when I’d be trying to fall asleep, I’d have mental rehearsals for how I wanted the characters to emote in the scene I’d be animating the next day. Animating and recording the sound effects and voices was so much fun and I’d love to do more with Buddy and Romeo in animation. Not long after this short was completed, I did story reels for three more shorts and have been animating one of them here and there in my spare time. Understand THIS! was a finalist in the GoComics Short Shorts animation contest and I am still in awe by the amount of support that I received from this experience.
2018 Comic of the Year: Father & Son, Mates and Dates
I was tossing and turning one night worrying about the future when this strip came along. I’m so proud of myself.
2018 SONG OF THE YEAR: Only Yesterday - Taken By Trees | 2018 FILM OF THE YEAR: Ingrid Goes West - 2017
2019 Project of the Year: Coffee Lovers’ Christmas
Speaking of pride, in all seriousness, Coffee Lovers’ Christmas is one of the projects of which I’m most proud. Mates and Dates and the single panel cartoons were trial runs for collaborating with Julie. We came up with this idea back in 2012 and I used several later projects - Buddy and Romeo, the single panel cartoons, and the Character References trailer - to teach myself a different drawing and painting style that would align with her vision. She wrote and designed all of these; I tried not to screw it up.
2019 Comic of the Year: Prom Committee
These are recurring characters in our single panel cartoons. I wrote and directed a play about them a couple years ago.
2019 SONG OF THE YEAR: Caterpillar Caterpillar - Kira Willey | 2019 FILM OF THE YEAR: Little Women - 2019
Project of the Decade: My Guardian Grandpa
Coffee Lovers’ Christmas, Miss Wallace Rhymes With William, and Character References were creative breakthroughs in their own ways, which impacted several years for me. But in considering the project that made the most profound, lasting impact on myself and others, there’s no contest. It’s My Guardian Grandpa.
Comic of the Decade: Friendly Competition, Mates and Dates
It’s not the best comic strip that I wrote or drew this decade but out of context and based on the playoff bracket that this blog post established, this is the winner. Not a very strong argument, is it? But as previously mentioned, out of context, you learn something about the characters and the visual style is such a radical departure from the way I was working at the start of the decade. It builds off of everything that came before it.
Year of the Decade: 2012
This was the year. My Guardian Grandpa, Miss Wallace Rhymes With William, Coffee Lovers’ Christmas. This year was more influential and had greater creative ramifications than any other in the last decade. 2011 had the roots of many things that paid off in 2012 and 2012 laid the ground work for projects that would capture my attention for the next eight years. Possibly beyond.
Purely by coincidence, I arrived at the following conclusion without realizing they two were 2012 selections.
SONG OF THE DECADE: Nonfiction Love Song - Jillian Edwards | FILM OF THE DECADE: The Artist - 2011
And that’s the decade. In the next 10 years, though the color will likely leave my hair, it will find its way into more characters and paintings. Not a bad trade off.
Onward to 2020!
See you in the funny papers.
Nathan