LESEAN THOMAS ON NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS

[MattBrady]

by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean

Nervous Breakdowns: The Art of LeSean Thomas Vol. 1 is an ambitious “sketch bible” that features various works of the artist from 1995 to the present. The perfect bound book retails for $40 and is about 400 black and white pages with a full color wraparound cover and includes doodles, breakdown sketches, illustrations, thumbnails, pencil tests and tutorials from the artist. Nervous Breakdowns also carries a foreword by Warner Bros Animation Studios Producer/Art Director Jeff Matsuda (The Batman).

Thomas, who also serves as Supervising Character Designer/Co-Director of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim animated TV series, The Boondocks, took time off his hectic schedule to talk about his first ever sketchbook and provided an update on Cannon Busters and spilled the beans on other new projects.

Newsarama: Now, you've been busy with Adult Swim's The Boondocks. Comics-wise, you'd worked on Arkanium, TMNT: Animated, Street Fighter and your creator-owned comic, Cannon Busters. We'll get to CB in a while so let's discuss about Nervous Breakdowns: The Art of LeSean Thomas Vol. 1, your ambitious sketchbook project. Why publish a sketchbook of such scale now?

LeSean Thomas: Well, part of it is because the convention season’s here and I wanted to drop something comprehensive and heavy for the summer. Since Cannon Busters and many other things take up my time, and because I couldn’t really release much of what I’m currently working on, I wanted to have something to tie fans of my stuff over till I drop CB. The other, and also happens to be the main reason, is because I think it’s long overdue.

Click here for the full interview and preview art.

[Utizzle]

Lesean is an awesome talent. Whenever new work drops from him it's most certainly a good thing.

[Andre MOP]

Absurdly good art! That hulk one is probably the best Hulk ever!

See, Ramos and others, you can distort and still make it look good!

[Ectocooler]

I met him at a con and he's a very nice dude. His TMNT stuff is fantastic, can't believe the book got canned, then again it was dreamwave. Hope he got paid for his work there.

[jza1218]

Whoooooaaaa...so pretty....

[innocentboy]

long time fan still
dope read, thanks for this article Newsarama, LeS

[KevenGardner]

LeSean is so good it makes my head hurt.

[Derek Ruiz]

Originally Posted by Andre MOP

Absurdly good art! That hulk one is probably the best Hulk ever!

See, Ramos and others, you can distort and still make it look good!

Ramos always makes it look good.

[Pikachu007]

The man does good work! Hope to see him in San Diego and get a sketch!

[Titan Slade]

Awesome stuff . Sadly though, we will problably see some posts pop up shortly about how this is bad art and it sucks because it is a to cartoony and distorted .

[Charlie Hustle]

as one of his disappointed followers I'm glad to see he'll be finishing up Cannon Busters.

[Hobowatcher]

Originally Posted by Titan Slade

Awesome stuff . Sadly though, we will problably see some posts pop up shortly about how this is bad art and it sucks because it is a to cartoony and distorted .

Sadly though, you don't know when to concede defeat.

This stuff is good, not my cup of tea, but I do know when I see good. And this is god. He's got flash and distortion down to a proper proportion. Kudos, LeSean, kudos.

[psycha]

That's great artwork but it's also the kind of work that makes you assume that he won't manage to release his books on time or complete the series.

As long as he can maintain a professional momentum, I think he'll do really well.