Maddie Baker
Bryant, AR
Maddie Baker is an illustrator and comic maker living in St. Louis, with an MFA from the Sam Fox School’s Illustration and Visual Culture and BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University. She loves cannellini beans, Jane Austen, and collecting unwanted scraps to use for art projects, and you can find her five inches deep in cut paper scraps and paint stains. The goal of her work can be summed up by designer Jessica Hische who once said: “There need to be people who show us that the world is a beautiful place worth saving.” Maddie’s work is about the loveliness and humor of everyday life, especially stories about women. Her favorite projects are those with deeply relatable flawed characters, and a healthy dose of playfulness.
What was your favorite book as a child?
When I was very young I loved Click Clack Moo, Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. I found the farm animals demanding a higher quality of life from their disgruntled farmer to be very entertaining and clever!
What is your favorite food?
Any kind of Thai curry! It’s simply the yummiest combination of spices and flavors and its perfect for a pick me up anytime.
Who or what inspires you the most?
The thing that inspires me the most is when I take 10 minutes to stop and look—really look—at whatever is around me. Whether it is the beauty of world around me, the ingenuity of human invention, or the smile of the person next to me—I always feel like there is such a wealth of good and interesting things to pull from.
What cool travel spots would you most highly recommend?
Redfish Lake near Stanley, Idaho, nestled in the Sawtooth Mountains. It is stunningly gorgeous in the summertime, and holds a lot of nostalgia for me. Also the Johnson Shut Ins in Missouri are amazing. It is a series of cool rock formations with water flowing through, perfect for swimming and exploring.
If someone made a potion to summon you, what would go into the cauldron?
For me it is Thai curry, Enya’s Watermark CD, bright pink paint pigment, the smell of citrus, and freeze dried Milk Duds.
What do you love to do for fun?
I love reading Agatha Christie and Jane Austen out loud with my husband, and thrifting at the St. Louis Goodwill bins. I once found a gorgeous hand dyed area rug in all my favorite colors for $5. That is a dang good feeling.
Creative Process:
I am an idea girl. I love exploring lots of possibilities, visual ideas, and research before settling on a course, and even then—I like to leave room for things to shift and grow throughout a project. I never like to let any one project get too stale, so I try to set myself a new challenge for each to get outside of my habitual patterns, whether that is a new tube of hot pink paint or a specific layout of panels for a graphic novel page. I love the mistakes and happy accidents that occur when I am using analog media. I always find that there is some neat, unexpected outcome that way, and I try to implement that analog feel even when I am working digitally.
Awards and honors:
Young Professionals Scholarship (Society of Illustrators Los Angeles 2026)
Graduate Speaker at Sam Fox School Recognition Ceremony May 2025
Rose O’Neill Award For Distinction In Illustration from Sam Fox
School Society of Illustrators LA Bronze Award
Bill Tara Scholarship (SILA) 2025
Association for Mormon Letters Special Award in Children’s Literature
Published books:
The Book of Mormon Storybook Volumes I and II (self-published and authored by Josh and Sarah Sabey, 2023)
The Bible Storybook: The Old Testament Volumes I and II (self-published and authored by Josh and Sarah Sabey, 2025)
The Bible Storybook: The New Testament Volumes I and II (self-published and authored by Josh and Sarah Sabey, 2026)
Forthcoming books:
Mediums:
Gouache, Paper collage, mixed media, digital
Location:
St. Louis, Missouri
Specialties:
Board books, Book Covers, Graphic novel interior art, Humor, Illustration, Indie comics, Picture books, Slice-of-life, Spot art
Visit Maddie at:
maddiebakermakes.com
Instagram: @maddiebakermakes
Available for School Visits:
I’ve never done one but am totally open to it!
Published Books
Gigi Murakami
Bryant, AR
My name is Gigi Murakami, I’m an award-winning manga artist & illustrator, and content creator at the intersection of horror media, Japanese manga and anime, and alternative and nerd culture. My work overall blends Japanese manga art, vintage grind house poster art, and pulp comic aesthetics, while thematically focusing on the dark, dramatic, fantastical, and often introspective.
Colloquially known as “Queen of Horror Manga,” I have a handful of both traditionally published and self-published works, but am most recognized for my supernatural horror manga, RESENTER, which had a one-shot published with Viz Manga.
I’m currently working as art lead and executive producer with the anime company, NLite, on their sophomore film “WEBE”, operating my membership program, Midnight Cult, online store, Gigimurakami.store, and creating content on my social media.
Some fun, notable achievements:
In 2025, I received the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus Emerging Talent Award, presented by Bone creator Jeff Smith and partner Vijaya Iyer. I’ve also worked with numerous brands for social media campaigns, including VIZ, Kodansha, Wacom and more. Another cool thing was being able to be a judge for the Brooklyn Horror Film Fest and facilitate a giveaway between BHFF and Kodansha for lovers of both horror film and manga, like myself.
What was your favorite book as a child?
Probably Corduroy by Dan Freeman. It was actually quite scary for me as a child, but I loved it so much. I think Are You My Mother? by P.D.Eastman is the same for me as well.
What is your favorite food?
I really love Unagi Don–sweet eel over rice! I’m a sucker for fries as well!
Who or what inspires you the most?
I’m highly inspired by mangaka, such as Naoki Urasawa, Junji Ito, Katsuhiro Otomo, and Satoshi Kon. I find all of these creators to be fantastic. Their work has completely blown me away and has pushed me to create better stories.
Available for School Visits:
I’ve mostly been to Art Colleges. I went to the School of Visual Arts a few times, Parsons and the Queens Library. I’m always available to talk to schools and, especially, libraries–libraries were my sanctuary growing up.
Awards and honors:
SPX Ignatz Award 2024 (Nominee)
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus Emerging Talent 2025
Harvey Awards 2025 (nominee)
ALA Outstanding Graphic Novel for Children Awards 2026 (Honor)
Creative Process:
My process for making manga / comics involves creating a short outline of the story. From that outline, I’ll use a Japanese writing structure called “Ki Sho Ten Ketsu” to organize the main beats of the story and thats about as much as I’ll do for the writing process. I have hyperphantasia (vivid mental imagery), so I want to get to the draw stage as quickly as possible so I don’t lose the scenes (and hype) that I created during the outlining stage.
Everything in this part of the process is done in Clip Studio Paint. Once the writing is done, I’ll create a few sketches of the main characters and get their designs settled before moving onto storyboarding. I create the dialogue, character blocking, panels, and panel composition all at the same time— just trying to transfer what’s in my head onto the storyboards. During this process, the whole comic is thumbnail size, but is large enough to cleanly add dialogue and everything else I need. Once I finish, I’ll screenshot each of the pages onto my large size, manga work file, and just trace over my initial sketches and finalize.
My process for illustration is roughly the same, minus the story outline.
What do you love to do for fun?
I enjoy watching movies, reading manga, gaming (although, I don’t have so much time to game these days), and traveling.
Location:
Brooklyn, NY
Published books:
The Sinister Sisters and Other Terrifying Tales – Are You Afraid of the Dark? Graphic Novel #2 (Abrams, 2024)
RESENTER (VIZ, 2024)
Hello Darkness #16 (Boom Studios, 2025)
RAZORBLADES (Tiny Onion, 2025)
Paroxysm Vol V (Mysto Press, 2025)
Forthcoming books:
Mediums:
I started my career primarily using traditional tools, but now use mostly digital tools, such as Clip Studio Paint with my 24-inch Wacom screen display for making manga and comics. For illustrations, I move between digital, watercolor, or Copic markers to get the job done.
Specialties:
Advertising, Black & white, Book Covers, Character design, Graphic novel interior art, Horror, Illustration, Inking, Manga, Middle Grade, Mystery, Packaging, Penciling, Sci-fi, Writing, Young Adult
Visit Gigi at:
Published Books
Dusty Higgins
Bryant, AR
Dusty Higgins is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator who began his career working in newspapers as an editorial cartoonist, illustrator, and graphic designer. He’s worked in branding and marketing, as a professor of digital media, and as an animator/director (Star Forest). He fell in love with storytelling at an early age, drawing comics in elementary school, later writing and drawing three different comic strips four days a week for his college newspaper.
Higgins’ debut graphic novel, Pinocchio Vampire Slayer, was a 2010 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens from the Young Adult Library Association. Higgins has a Masters of Fine Arts in Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design, although that’s not nearly as impressive as his homemade pizza, cultivated from years of practice. When he’s not creating or cooking, he enjoys spending time with his wife, two children, two dogs, and a Venus fly trap named Vinny.
What do you love to do for fun?
I grew up waterskiing on the lake with my dad, who did so with his dad, and I happily take my children to the lake to sling them across the water as I continue that tradition.
What cool travel spots would you most highly recommend?
The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Hong Kong is a treasure I’m happy to have been able to visit. The stairway up the mountain to it is lined with a hundreds of uniquely posed golden Buddha statues, and it was an inspiring place to visit.
Available for School Visits:
I enjoy talking with kids and giving them a behind the curtain reveal of what professional artists do, talking about ideation and explaining how artists start with sketches to create a blueprint, and what that work goes through next. Basically explaining to them why that how to draw books starts with circles and squares to make a bear, and how even people like me still do that. I like to bring in examples of work that I’ve done to show how things get made and what they look like in early examples versus and then show them what the final product that they see actually looks like. I’ve done this both with graphic novels as well as animation. I like to end the presentations with a group exercise, usually letting the students help me ideate a character or a short four panel comic, depending on how much time we have.
Visit Dusty at:
Website: https://dustyhiggins.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dusty_higgins
Bluesky: @dustyhiggins.bsky.social
Creative Process:
I once had an older, and wiser, colleague who taught painting describe to me how they would teach students the process of painting using a projected image over time. They began by projecting the image completely out of focus, so that the students would only see blurry shapes. The initial paintings would be abstract forms. But every so often, this professor would tweak the focus, slowly bringing the image into a sharp perspective. Each time, the abstract forms would be rendered to a finer degree, before the students finished their painting. My approach to each project I work on is much the same. I work in digital media, traditional mediums, in motion and static, and even in writing. The method works for all of those mediums, and can even inform a different approach to the medium. Begin simple and broad, then I analyze, refine, and repeat until it’s done.
Awards and honors:
2010 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens, Young Adult Library Services Association
2015 Junior Library Guild Selection, Junior Library Guild
2017 Junior Library Guild Selection, Junior Library Guild
Specialties:
Action-adventure, Animals, Black & white, Board books, Book Covers, Branding, Character design, Coloring, Concept art, Editorial, Fantasy, Graphic novel interior art, Humor, Illustration, Indie comics, Inking, Lettering, Middle Grade, Mystery, Non-fiction, Penciling, Picture books, Sci-fi, Slice-of-life, Spot art, Storyboarding, Typography, Writing, Young Adult
Who or what inspires you the most?
Nature. One of my go-to things to do when I’m feeling uninspired is to grab some gouache and my art travel bag, and find a nice spot for some plein air painting.
Published books:
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer (SLG Publishing, 2009)
Pinocchio Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater (SLG Publishing, 2010)
Knights of the Living Dead (SLG Publishing 2011)
Turok, Son of Stone Volume 1: Aztlan (Dark Horse 2011)
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer Volume 3: Of Wood and Blood part 1 (SLG Publishing, 2012)
Pinocchio Vampire Slayer of Wood and Blood part 2 (SLG Publishing, 2012)
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Complete Edition (Top Shelf Publishing, 2014)
Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape: Attack of the Alien Horde (Simon and Schuster, 2015)
Valkyrie Beer Delivery (Stela Publishing, 2017)
Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape: Rise of the Robot Army (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
Forthcoming books:
Location:
Bryant, AR
Mediums:
digital, ink, watercolor, gouache
Published Books
