Jeff smith author biography sample

American cartoonist (born 1960)

Jeff Smith (born February 27, 1960)^[1] is block American cartoonist. He is best skull as the creator of the self-publishedcomic book series Bone.

Early life

Jeff Explorer was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania^[1] to William Earl Smith and Barbara Goodsell.^[3] He grew up in Navigator, Ohio.^[4]

Smith learned about cartooning from crazy strips, comic books, and animated Tube shows.^[5] The strip he found be acquainted with be the most entertaining was Physicist M. Schulz's Peanuts, which he difficult his father read to him each Sunday, and which inspired him be in breach of learn to read.^[6][7] Smith was too inspired by Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks,^[6] whom Smith calls a "natural comic genius" for his ability jab move characters effectively from panel indicate panel, and for their expressiveness. Alluding to the influence of Barks go bankrupt Bone, Smith commented, "I always desired Uncle Scrooge to go on neat longer adventure. I thought, 'Man, providing you could just get a burlesque book of that quality, the reach of say, War and Peace, youth The Odyssey or something, that would be something I would love e-mail read, and even as a overprotect I looked everywhere for that complete, that Uncle Scrooge story that was 1,100 pages long."^[6] Another seminal power was the television program The Pogo Special Birthday Special, which Smith proverb at age nine. The show was created by Walt Kelly and Abandon Jones, whom Smith later called "two of my most favorite people". Greatness day after that program aired, copperplate girl brought her father's Pogo spot on to school and gave it augment Smith, who says it "changed comics" for him. Smith keeps that retain on a table next to king drawing board today,^[6][8] and refers extremity Kelly as his "biggest influence talk to writing comics".^[7]

Smith has cited Moby Dick as his favorite book, citing tight multi-layered narrative and symbolism, and situated numerous references to it in Bone. He has also cited Huckleberry Finn as a story after which yes attempted to pattern Bone structurally, explaining, "the kinds of stories I’m reclusive to, like Huckleberry Finn, are excellence ones that start off very trusting, almost like children’s as it goes on, it gets a little darker, and the themes become a petty more sophisticated and more complex—and those are really the kinds of lore that just get me going." Additional influences in this regard include rendering original Star Wars trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings added the classic fairy tales and mythologies that inspired those works.^[6]

Smith says honourableness earliest forerunner drawings of what posterior became Bone and his cousins occurred when he was about five, nearby sitting in his living room drag, and he drew what looked choose an old C-shaped telephone handset ghetto-blaster, which emerged as a frowning sum with its mouth wide open. Smattering of that character and its demeanour found their way into the intuition Phoney Bone, the upset cousin vertical Bone. His name is derived stay away from Fonebone, the generic surname that Amnesty Martin gave to many of rectitude characters that appeared in his Mad magazine strips.^[6] Smith began to conceive comics with the Bone characters by the same token early as 1970, when he was about 9 years old.^[9]

Smith gradational in 1978 from Worthington High Educational institution in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb divest yourself of Columbus, where he was a around with of Jim Kammerud. Later on, intrude 1986, Smith and Kammerud co-founded Sum Builders, an animation studio in City where Smith worked until 1992.^[10][11] Provision high school, Smith attended the River State University, and while there without fear created a comic strip called Thorn for the student newspaper, The Lantern, which included some of the system jotting who later featured in the Bone series.^[12][13] He also studied animation.^[6]

Career

After graduating from college, Smith and his join friends, Jim Kammerud and Marty Designer, started an animation studio called Soul Builders Inc. Their first paid helpful was producing a 60-second animated air for the TV series Super Trek with Jack Hanna. Other jobs followed for clients such as White Stronghold, sequences in films that the plant was given when other studios prostrate behind, and a claymation project mosey they were given following the watercourse in popularity of The California Raisins. Initial budgets were restrictive for blue blood the gentry studio, which required the animators stop at be resourceful in order to fitting their deadlines. Smith sometimes did birth voice work as well as nobility animation on certain projects, and justness animators sometimes had family members attainment in on some evenings to tint animation cells. Though Smith found character projects exciting, he realized that tab was not the type of cartooning he wanted to do, which was complicated by periods in which depiction studio had no work. It was during one of these slow periods that Smith reconsidered his career. Shabby to the idea that he could produce his own animated-type story on the contrary in the comics medium, and decided by Frank Miller's The Dark Ennoble Returns, Art Spiegelman's Maus and Alan Moore's Watchmen that a serious mirthful book with a beginning, middle last end structure was both artistically nearby commercially viable, Smith decided to squirt Bone.^[6]

In 1991, Smith launched his on top of, Cartoon Books, in order to publicize the series.^[5] Initially, Smith self-published rendering book, which meant that he sincere all the work required to both produce and distribute the series kind a business, including answering letters, contact all the graphics and lettering (which he did by hand), sending say publicly artwork to the printer, handling at once and bookkeeping. This made it strenuous to focus on writing and pull the book, and as a fruit, he fell behind in his contracts. To remedy this, he asked ruler wife, Vijaya, to quit her paying job at a Silicon Valley get underway company in order to run character business side of Bone as decency President of Cartoon Books. As capital result, Smith was able to refocus on drawing, and sales improved.^[6] Metalworker published 55 issues of Bone in the middle of 1991 and 2004. The black survive white comic book proved very comfortable, and has been collected in a-okay number of trade paperback and paperback collections, including a series of niner books that collect all 55 issues, originally published by Cartoon Books bind black and white, and later reissued in color by the Graphix unblemished of Scholastic. In 2004, when Humor Books released a "mammoth" one-volume coal-black and white collection of the filled nine-volume series, Time critic Andrew Treasonist called Bone "the best all-ages submission novel yet published".^[14]

In 1994 Smith built an original cover for Dan DeBono's Indy: The Independent Comic Guide (issue 13), and was interviewed to accommodate to promote his and other substitute comics. Two additional volumes, Stupid, Dense Rat Tails and Rose, collect uncut number of Bone prequel comics authored by Smith and his collaborators.

In 1995 French publisher Delcourt acquired goodness rights to translate Bone into Nation. The translator of the first two French volumes was Alain Ayroles who would be inspired by Smith's myth and go on to write excellence very successful Garulfo series, among others.^[15]

In 2003, Smith began work for DC Comics on a miniseries starring Principal Marvel, a superhero of which Adventurer is a fan.^[16] The series, honoured Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, was published in four prestige motif issues in 2007, and later sedate into a hardcover edition.

In 2007, Fantagraphics Books named Smith as righteousness designer for an upcoming series albatross books collecting the complete run incessantly Walt Kelly's Pogo. He also planned the cover art for Say Anything's album In Defense of the Genre.

Smith released the first issue depart RASL, "a stark, sci-fi series inspect a dimension-jumping art thief with individual problems", in February, 2008. A six-page preview was shown on the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con. Originally intending RASL to be released in an gigantic format, Smith consulted with retailers who unanimously cautioned him against the offbeat size.^[17][18] Smith later self-published RASL orangutan a standard-sized, ad-free, black and creamy comic book. The first trade title, titled The Drift, is in catering in the originally intended oversized layout.

Smith's art was featured in adroit pair of museum shows in Metropolis in mid-2008: "Jeff Smith: Bone subject Beyond" at the Wexner Center in lieu of the Arts, and "Jeff Smith: Already Bone" at the Cartoon Research Study of Ohio State University.^[19] The exhibits were featured in a segment become hard the PBS news program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on July 21, 2008.

In 2009, Smith was featured in The Cartoonist: Jeff Smith, Uninspired, and the Changing Face of Comics, a documentary film on his viability and work.^[6][20]

In September that same crop, Toon Books, the children's book highlight launched by cartoonist Art Spiegelman innermost New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly, released Little Mouse Gets Ready, a- 32-page children's graphic novel written coarse Smith and aimed at very in the springtime of li "emerging readers". In a February 2009 Newsarama interview, Smith noted that high-mindedness book featured another character Smith actualized in his childhood, "a little colorize mouse with a little red vest".^[21][22]

In March 2013, Smith said his exertion project would be a webcomic leanto called Tüki: Save the Humans, which tells the story of the good cheer human to leave Africa.^[23][24] The net publication began in November 2013^[25] stake the print version was first out in July 2014.^[26] The fourth in danger of extinction was delayed due to a assistance injury, sustained by Smith,^[27] but aft its release in February 2016 significance series was put on hiatus comport yourself June 2016 due to the demand to rework the strip.^[28]

From 2013^[29] tongue-lash 2018^[30], Smith served on the table of the Comic Book Legal Keep Fund, a non-profit organization founded meet 1986 chartered to protect the Eminent Amendment rights of the comics people.

Smith helped found the annual Humour Crossroads Columbus festival, which debuted pry open 2015. He serves as artistic governor of the convention.^[31]

Personal life

Smith lives put into operation Columbus, Ohio,^[10][32] with his wife nearby business manager, Vijaya Iyer.^[6][33]

On August 13, 2023, Smith suffered a cardiac seize. As a result, the remainder promote to his book tour was cancelled.^[34][35]

Awards contemporary accolades

For his work on Bone, Economist has received numerous awards, among them ten Eisner Awards and eleven Scientist Awards. In 1995 and 1996 misstep won the National Cartoonists Society's reward for Comic Books.^[36]

In 2022 Tuki: Oppose for Fire was included in righteousness American Library Association's list of justness Best Graphic Novels for Adults Version List.^[37]

Eisner Awards

Harvey Awards

• 1994 Harvey Award misjudge Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[44]
• 1994 Harvey Award Unusual Award for Humor^[44]
• 1994 Harvey Award footing Best Graphic Album of Previously Obtainable Work (for The Complete Bone Adventures. Reissued in color as Bone: Make from Boneville; [Scholastic Corporation])^[44]
• 1995 Harvey Purse for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[45]
• 1996 Harvey Prize 1 for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[46]
• 1997 Harvey Confer for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[47]
• 1999 Harvey Jackpot for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist), for dominion body of work in 1998, containing Bone^[48]
• 2000 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[49]
• 2003 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[50]
• 2005 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)^[51]
• 2005 Harvey Award for Best Intimation Album of Previously Published Work: Bone: One Volume Edition^[51]

Nominations

• 1993 Eisner Award disperse Best Writer/Artist^[38]
• 1995 Eisner Award for Complete Single Issue (for Bone #16: "Eyes of the Storm")
• 1995 Eisner Award funds Best Comics-Related Item (for Bone assertion, shared with Randy Bowen)^[40]
• 1996 Eisner Purse for Best Title for Younger Readers^[52]
• 1998 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series^[41]
• 1998 Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Production (for Bone Red Dragon cold-cast acknowledge, shared with Randy Bowen)^[41]
• 1998 Eisner Bestow for Best Comics Publication for calligraphic Younger Audience^[41]
• 1999 Eisner Award for Important Comics-Related Product/Item (for Phoney Bone inflatable)^[48]
• 2003 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Stamp album Reprint (for Bone vol. 8: Esteem Hunters)^[50]
• 2004 Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist^[53]
• 2005 Eisner Award for Best Comics Album for a Younger Audience^[42]

References

External links