Lunch With Ray Comfort

Cedric with Ray Comfort

My wife and I spent Memorial Day weekend in Los Angeles to visit clients and to attend the NCS Reubuens Awards Weekend. We started off the weekend meeting with one of my favorite clients, Ray Comfort (evangelist, author, and co-host of the TV series The Way of the Master with actor Kirk Cameron). We were given a tour of their offices and then Ray took us out to lunch along with some of his staff. They were a terrific bunch!

Ray is a ball of energy with a great sense of humor. He pulled out his wallet and showed us gag photo after gag photo, told us stories about the chickens he’s raising in his back yard (yes, Ray built a chicken coop in a California suburb), and showed us some nifty slight of hand magic. One thing I love about Ray is that he doesn’t let the dust settle. His mind is just brimming over with creative ideas.

For instance, I told him a humorous story about my first visit to LA and he very creatively used it as a springboard for a post on his blog about the Gospel. It’s a funny  story (well, funny now…although I didn’t think so at the time) so I thought I’d share the link.

I’ll also clue you in that Ray and I will (hopefully) be working together soon on a really neat project. I can’t say much more than that but if the pieces fall into place I’ll have some fun work to show in a few months.

Good Friday Cartoon

Today is Good Friday, the day Christians celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus. A crucifixion seems like an odd thing to celebrate, but it is in fact good news. How’s that, you ask? A couple of years ago I partnered with the ministry of Living Waters to illustrate a short cartoon gospel tract that explains what I mean. For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read it, I invite you to do so. It’s only 8 small pages and to read it online is completely free.

If you are so inclined you can also order printed copies to share with others. I don’t make any royalties, in fact any ministry that wants to download and publish the tract can do so for free. To date over 2.8 million copies of the tract have been printed in English and it has been translated into nine different languages with more on the way. It’s far above and beyond anything I could have imagined. My hope is that it helps many people to get a clear understanding of what Easter and Christianity are really all about.

Have a very happy Easter!

Scratch-N-Sniff

Some freelance projects have tight deadlines. Others move at a slower pace.

Way back in Spring of 2005 I was contacted by a publisher to illustrate a series of children’s books designed to help kids understand various Christian concepts. Since there was no real rush our understanding was that I could set it aside to work on other more urgent projects when necessary. It was nice to have a large project that I could work on at a somewhat relaxed pace, and the client was terrific to work with.

The first book, What Your Nose Shows, was about Creationism (or Intelligent Design, if you will). The author, Ray Comfort, wrote a some rhyming text about the nose and how it’s very existence points to a Creator.

A few months after finishing the first book I was hired to start a second one. Scratch and Sniff was about a cat named Scratch and a dog named Sniff. The lesson had to do with disobedience (sin) and our need for a Savior. We decided it would be fun to make this an actual “scratch and sniff” book, with a different scratchable scent on every page.

Eventually it was decided that since the first book was about the nose, it should also be scratch-and-sniff. So after completing the second book we went back and re-worked the first one to incorporate smells into the story.

Finally, after over a year-and-a-half both books were ready to go to the publisher.

Printing with scratch-and-sniff inks turned out to be a complicated process and resulted in several more delays. Eventually the books were printed overseas and now, nearly three years after the project was begun, the books are finally available for purchase. (Click to buy What Your Nose Shows and Scratch and Sniff).

Here are the covers and a couple of sample pages from each book. They are taken from different parts of each book so the text won’t make sense, but you can get an idea of what the art looks like:

nosecover1.jpg

nose1a.jpg

nose2.jpg

scratchsniffcover.jpg

scratchsniff1.jpg

scratchsniff2.jpg