Here’s some exciting news to share that doesn’t have to do with babies (does such a thing exist?):

We have been invited to speak at ICON7.

!!!

Okay, so I imagine most of you don’t recognize how crazy exciting this is. For those (many) of you who are not illustrators, ICON is the big biennial conference that is the creative mecca melting pot for all things illustration. It is the kind of conference that little old me/I would be super excited just to be able to attend – lots of inspiration, lots of shop talk, and huge, huge, blinding loads of talent. I haven’t gone in the past in part because I haven’t had the time/money, but also because I mostly don’t really consider myself a totally legit illustrator (most of the time I’m just working for myself, you see, which is not the greatest measure of success). Matthew and I have been asked to talk about collaboration, and also about the unique way I get so many illustration jobs (by giving them to myself, see above).

We find ourselves in the middle of a line-up of illustration titans:

Bob Staake:

Marshall Arisman:

Lynda Barry:

Jillian Tamaki:

Jen Corace:

Jordan Isip:

Julia Rothman:

Yuko Shimizu:

(among others). The great irony here is that even though Matthew cannot draw to save his life, it is because of him (the writing half of our duo) that I (the illustrating half of our duo) am part of this thing. My illustration chops alone wouldn’t get me up on that stage for decades (if ever), but because of how unusual our partnership is, I will find myself addressing these folks right before they break for lunch.

Crazycakes.

We’ve been planning our talk and hope that come June it will be worth a nickel. In the meantime, I go to the ICON7 website every ten minutes just to see my little face on the front page.

If you’re wondering what we’ll be talking about, all I can say is somehow I end up getting sacrificed to the gods of creativity:

Wish us luck.