Red Nose Studio recently illustrated for The New York Times’ piece Eat My Dust where writer, Steven Kurutz, tested a half-dozen portable air purifiers in an attempt to alleviate allergies. The article ran in last week’s Home & Garden section.

Yelena Bryksenkova, Eleanor Grosch, Bella Pilar, Red Nose Studio and Nate Williams each contributed artwork to the 19th Annual Children’s Book Art Silent Auction, part of BookExpo America at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. All proceeds from the auction support efforts opposing the censorship of children’s books and authors, including The Kids’ Right to Read Project, Banned Books Week and the ongoing legal efforts working on behalf of children’s books and authors nationwide.

The auction takes place on Wednesday, May 29th from 5:30 to 7:30pm in the River Pavilion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. The art can be previewed online with some of the pieces available for bidding prior to BookExpo America as part of a special online auction, opening Saturday, May 18th at 9am and closing Friday, May 24th at 9pm.

Red Nose Studio’s Chris Sickels is one of thirteen artists contributing artwork to the annual MicroVisions auction at the Society of Illustrators in New York. Each piece measures 5×7 inches with all proceeds benefiting the Society of Illustrators student scholarship fund. The eBay auction goes live Tuesday, April 23rd and will end Thursday, May 2nd at 7:00pm. Chris’ piece ‘Waiting for Shackleton’ was inspired by Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914. Visit Chris’ blog to see preliminary sketches and read more about the piece.

Start bidding here!

There will be a Happy Hour and Opening Reception celebrating MicroVisions at the Society of Illustrators on Wednesday, April 24th from 6:00 to 10:00pm. The artwork will be on display until Saturday, May 18th.

Society of Illustrators, 128 E. 63rd St., New York, NY

We’re pleased to announce that several Magnet artists were recognized by American Illustration and will appear in either the AI32 annual or on THE ARCHIVE as part of American Illustration’s website collection. Ana Bagayan, Gordon Wiebe and Nate Williams each had work chosen to appear on THE ARCHIVE, while Emiliano Ponzi, Graham Roumieu, Jungyeon Roh, Pieter Van Eenoge and Red Nose Studio had their work selected to appear as full-pages in the annual.

The AI32 book and THE ARCHIVE will launch November 6th-7th at American Illustration’s two annual events – The Party and BIG TALK – in New York City.

Congratulations go out to all!

CHOSEN – Ana Bagayan

CHOSEN – Gordon Wiebe

CHOSEN – Nate Williams

SELECTED – Emiliano Ponzi

SELECTED – Graham Roumieu

SELECTED – Jungyeon Roh

SELECTED – Pieter Van Eenoge

SELECTED – Red Nose Studio

Red Nose Studio’s Chris Sickels will host a stop-motion animations workshop at the Society of Illustrators in New York this Saturday, April 20th, 2013 from 1:00 to 5:00pm. Click here for more information or to purchase tickets.

From the Society of Illustrators website:
Join the Society and sculptural/ 3D illustrator Chris Sickels, the artist behind Red Nose Studio, for a bare bones, lo-fi stop-motion animation workshop that is an opportunity to submerge into a miniature world of Red Nose characters that you and your fellow participants bring to life via 24 minuscule movements/frames per second. 

The workshop will focus on the basics of hands on stop-motion animation: The first 30 minutes will include a demonstration on incremental movements and capturing of individual frames. We will use a set with ready made environmental elements, characters, props, etc. that are then composed and animated by the group as a whole. The goal is to utilize off-the-cuff story telling and ‘spontaneous’ animation and discover what can come from a group of creatives being run through a crash course on one of the most tedious ways of creating movement in film.

Click here to view an example video from a past workshop.

TICKETS
$100 non-members, $90 members
Space is limited to 20 participants so please RSVP soon!

The New Yorker’s special Journeys issue hit the stands today and we couldn’t be happier! We’ve been waiting a long time to share the artwork Red Nose Studio created for the iconic weekly magazine and the time has finally come. Inspired by stories about traveling off the beaten path, Chris combined 3D and hand-drawn elements to create a series of whimsical illustrations featuring an oddball character on a series of far out adventures, from jetting through outer space to riding a polar bear across the arctic on an ice floe.

Red Nose Studio was commissioned to create an illustration celebrating a major scientific breakthrough in pig genetics. Scientists at the University of Illinois recently published a high-quality draft genome sequence for a female domestic Duroc pig, increasing the potential of the pig as a biomedical model for studying human disease. The team’s lead scientist is a huge Pink Floyd fan and asked Chris to use the cover of their Animals album as inspiration for the piece. A large framed print of the artwork hangs in his office and each member of the team received a t-shirt with the art to commemorate the discovery.

Red Nose Studio was invited to speak at Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville, TN on Thursday, March 7th, 2013 as part of their Visiting Artists Series. The lecture begins at 5:30 and will be immediately followed by a reception from 6:00 to 8:30 for Illustration the Hard Way: Process, Sets & Puppets, featuring Chris’ preparatory sketches, fabric samples, photographs and puppets. It will be on display in the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Gallery on campus through Thursday, April 4th. The event is free and open to the public.

Dan Brawner, Chair of the Department of Graphic Design at Watkins, says: “Chris Sickels aka Red Nose Studio is one of the most inventive illustrators on the planet. An avid scribbler, builder and maker, Chris is a modern day Geppetto, cobbling together new worlds out of springs and cogs and other found bits and pieces. Via books, advertising and animation he entertains a wide audience with his odd, puppet-filled worlds – garbage barges, look books and holistic visualization are but a few curious topics that have inspired investigation and storytelling. The visual treats from Red Nose Studio are a feast for the face.”

Click here to read press about the event.

Watkins College of Art, Design & Film
2298 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville, TN

Red Nose Studio’s recent editorial work includes assignments from Orange Coast Magazine and Planadviser. His recent piece for Orange Coast Magazine‘s Secrets of Disneyland dispels some of the enduring myths about America’s most-loved theme park, while his cover for Planadviser offers tips to wake up 401k participants.

Last summer Red Nose Studio was invited to collaborate on the development of an original ballet for Dance East Ballet Academy in Chris’ hometown of Greenfield, IN.

The ballet, called Little Things, revolves around the struggle between a young girl named Sophia and her mother. While visiting her eccentric grandmother’s house on Christmas Eve, Sophia searches for a lost gift and stumbles across a magic door in her grandmother’s old bookcase. The portal leads to a secret world inhabited by gremlins, spiderwebs, evil witchy things and their queen, and the mastermind, Stephen Von Breckenbocker. Sophia must summon strength from the Christmas Angels – Faith, Wisdom and Perseverance – who help Sophia see the qualities her mother has struggled to instill in her.

In addition to creating the poster for the production, Chris helped develop the look of the ballet’s main characters and designed and built the set. He says “For me, the challenge was how to create characters that help tell the visual story without any dialogue. Designing costumes that enhance movement of the dancers and not hamper it proved to be the biggest challenge. Seeing a costume on paper and on a body was one thing, but if that character couldn’t move like they needed to, things had to be modified.”

The ballet ran during the 2012 holiday season and will be an annual production that grows and refines with time and the ages of the dancers. Visit Chris’ blog for more sketches and photos from the production and to see a documentary about the making of Little Things filmed and produced by Rebecca Elayne Dixon.