The Think Bottle Blog was created to gather great art, ideas, and inspiration into one place. I hope you get inspired to take a chance and dive into something of your own. Plus it’s a great place to interact with me on a daily basis. Cheers!

Mastodon Draws Elephant

Watch an interview where I talk about 'Horton'.

One of the most frustrating things about illustrating books is that I never get to spend as much time with my creations as I’d like because my books are more or less limited to 32 pages; which seems like the blink of the eye. Sure, I revel in the worlds I have the privilege to visit- but I always feel like a tourist. It’d be nice to hang around sometimes and check out the natives.

So when I got the call from directors Steve Martino and Jimmy Hayward in 2004 to help bring my all time fav’ Seuss book to the big screen, I literally jumped at the chance- spilling a magnum of Pelikan drawing ink on a rug in my studio and scaring the dogs.

When I first read, “Horton Hears a Who” as a kid, I was moved by Dr.Seuss’ idea of scale and substance. The effect was so profound that without realizing, I started looking for the universe in paper clips and the infinite energy of dewdrops; it remains an insight that is integral to my work today.

After getting assurances from the directors that they didn’t expect me to be a computer whiz and that I could continue in my Jurassic existence, grazing on my accustomed high fiber, acid-free, carbon based diet- I was in.

“YEAH! Are you kidding me? YEAH!” I said, almost kicking over the ink again.

Aside from an occasional flaming asteroid and painty clothes, being a dinosaur is really keen!

In fact, even before the movie was green-lit or my first pencil lines were put to paper, the film only existed between the ears of Jimmy and Steve. So my first “viewing” of the concept was in the form of a hilariously composed pitch by Jimmy. Seamlessly crafted from the voices and Foley stage residing in his head, Jimmy took me from Horton lumbering after a speck of dust, all the way to Whoville actually gaining a couple of Congressional House seats. With these narrative voices still echoing in my skull and not yet knowing what this animal will look like, I started to draw.

My weekly conversations with Steve were inspiring and surprisingly freeing. Being the sensitive artist and director he is; Steve instinctively knew that directing artists is very much like herding cats or scooping minnows from a pool. So he just let me have at it, his only caveat being: that this is “Dr. Seuss”, not Conan the Barbarian.

The process was fun beyond belief and as a whole might have been likened to throwing spaghetti at the wall. When you’re finished, there is a goopy mess on the floor but there are quite a lot of tasty goodies still hanging off the wallpaper. For me, I was in my zone and I just drew like a dervish; eventually generating so much stuff that if I were to bundle it up and drop it, I’d break some toes.

When I signed on in January 2005 there were less than a dozen people developing this project; which everyone understood might never get made. By the time my role was completed a year later, the green light had been burning hot for 6 months, the crew had grown to more than 350 (roughly the size of the starship Enterprise) and it was traveling at warp speed.

When it reentered the atmosphere on March 14th, 2008 to much critical and box-office acclaim, I was already back on the savannah feasting on a chive and glossopteris salad with ranch on the side

“I helped make that”, I said to the other stegosaurs who were sipping Trenta double non-fat mocha lattes, but they didn’t have time to respond. As the celestial body ignited our world into a firestorm, all I could think was that I should’ve ordered a Frappaccino.