The very first book on the subject of costume illustration for the movies, Hollywood Sketchbook, contains over 500 previously unpublished drawings. More than just pretty pictures, each drawing provides a blueprint for the creation of a costume and a character. This gorgeous volume affords the viewer a rare peek inside the portfolios of a century of costume designers and illustrators including Theadora Van Runkle (Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather: Part II), Piero Tosi (The Leopard, Death in Venice), and Travis Banton (Scarlet Empress, Blonde Venus). Academy Award-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis follows-up her acclaimed Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design, to showcase the artistry of costume illustrators and designers from silent film to today's blockbusters.

What happens when a broken doll is touched by stardust? She becomes a ghost doll, of course! The newly awakened Ghost Doll and her companion Jasper, a mangy black cat, set off in search of a safe place to live. But the city is new and dangerous territory for Ghost Doll. But the city is new and dangerous territory for Ghost Doll (who fell asleep in quieter times). The noise and rush of traffic terrifies her, and as for the new style of toy—complete with computer chip and battery—she can’t think of anything worse. But there is something far more sinister and dangerous lurking in the city. Someone else witnessed the falling star and is anxious to get a hold of the fragment—and Ghost Doll—for his own evil purposes. How will Ghost Doll and Jasper escape their hunter and find a home where they both are safe and loved? Fiona McDonald has created a visually stunning and poignantly told story about an unlikely friendship and the importance of feeling secure and wanted. Ghost Doll and Jasper is an Edward Gorey-esque graphic novel for kids—sure to captivate and enchant as the ethereal Ghost Doll and her alley cat Jasper embark on an adventure full of magic, suspense, and, most importantly, friendship.

Over the last forty years the comic book has become an increasingly popular way of telling personal stories of considerable complexity and depth. In Autobiographical Comics, Elisabeth El Refaie offers a long overdue assessment of the key conventions, formal properties, and narrative patterns of this fascinating genre. A troubled childhood in Iran. Living with a disability. Grieving for a dead child. In Autobiographical Comics: Life Writing in Pictures, Elisabeth El Refaie offers a long overdue assessment of the key conventions, formal properties, and narrative patterns of this fascinating genre. The book considers eighty-five works of North American and European provenance, works that cover a broad range of subject matters and employ many different artistic styles. Drawing on concepts from several disciplinary fields--including semiotics, literary and narrative theory, art history, and psychology--El Refaie shows that the traditions and formal features of comics provide new possibilities for autobiographical storytelling. For example, the requirement to produce multiple drawn versions of one's self necessarily involves an intense engagement with physical aspects of identity, as well as with the cultural models that underpin body image. The comics medium also offers memoirists unique ways of representing their experience of time, their memories of past events, and their hopes and dreams for the future. Furthermore, autobiographical comics creators are able to draw on the close association in contemporary Western culture between seeing and believing in order to persuade readers of the authentic nature of their stories.