Erica and Fuzzy

The cover for the coloring book features two illustrations by my niece, Amelia Gollub. Amelia also did an illustration for my sister Jeanne's save-the-date cards.

Scotto Starkey was in the first improv group I ever performed with and had a comic strip in the Purdue Exponent for a couple of years. These days he does some nifty game design and illustrations for other people's games.

Kate O'Leary is my best friend-who-is-a-girl-and-not-my-wife (and in fact, was my Best Person in the wedding). Kate's work is all over this wedding -- she also illustrated the invitations and the thank-you cards.

Noah Ginex did three coloring book pictures and they were so good we had to include them all. This page is slightly inaccurate: Erica does like to dance, but she really likes to sleep. The illustration was inspired, Noah says, by his song Dance Myself to Sleep, which can be heard in episode 4 of his podcast.

This one is by Dan Henrick, Kate's boyfriend, and features us as Don't Spit the Water comedians: me as Morty Applebaum, Ukeleleist, and Erica as Cutie Bumblesnatch.

Erica's childhood friend Melissa Dixon, a designer with Blufish Design, turned in what was chronologically the first of three cake illustrations.

Another Noah Ginex picture. Erica's head does look remarkably like a tomato.

Tommy Cannon is an improvisor, cartoonist, puppeteer, and animator from Phoenix.

Erica's brother, Christopher Reid, drew this action-packed activity page. Christopher works exclusively in Quark Xpress' built-in illustration tools, which is pretty impressive if you know how terrible those tools are. You can check out more of Christopher's work in his full-length comic-book.

Another, and awesome, Noah Ginex. We're both Indiana Jones, Parker is Willie Scott, Mustapha is Short Round, and Latte is Sean Connery (that is, Professor Henry Jones). And Erica, like Indiana Jones, really does hate snakes.

This one is by Erica, and comes from a time when she had drawn a Delicious Mexican Pastry in her notebook to try and illustrate to someone the kind of DMPs we had gotten from a Panaderia up near our friend the McSchnits. I added the smile to make it a picture of a FLS.

My brother Disco did this very stylish one. A number of people have asked what kind of fashion design training he has. The answer is "a math degree".

El Rey is an internet friend of mine and I've been a collector of his work for some time (I was in his El Año del Rey picture-a-month club, which helped kick start my collection) and he was gracious enough to take out from packing up for a cross-country move to do this Kirby-energy-field inspired number.

This is exactly what goes on in my heart when I look at Erica. Exactly.

I also had the idea of doing a page of paper dolls, but Dan Henrick's design turned out about 5000% better than mine would have been. Maybe 6000% better. Look at the little expressions on the cats' faces!

The back cover of the coloring book was provided by my nephew, Jake Gollub. Jake already realizes that the number one job of an artist is self-promotion. My dad says this piece reminds him of a Peter Max.