About

A lizard.. I’ll take two dozen please. My mom tells a story of nearly having a heart attack when a toad popped out from my rear pocket as she dropped my jeans into the washing machine. I was six, and it seemed I always had some small creature in hand; snakes, toads and lizards, lots and lots of lizards.

7th grade Louisiana
State Science Fair By middle school she would come home to find an owl carcass boiling on the stove to be cleaned and assembled for a science fair project. That was after the goat and duck skeletons.

I loved animals and loved fantasy works like Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. I imagined entire worlds for my creatures we as humans couldn’t see. Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Chapter XII, Alice's Evidence.

In the real world, I had a menagerie out back; sliders and box turtles, various snakes and lizards, frogs and toads, chickens and rabbits and even a caiman, with all the cages and enclosures I could cobble together from wire and wood scavenged from the neighborhood.

From seventh to twelfth grade I placed at the state level science fairs and planned on being a scientific illustrator, when I wasn’t cartooning of course.

High school science type stuff Almost loved to pieces, Wonder Wart-Hog, Captain Crud and Other Super Stuff I began seriously cartooning, or cartooning seriously, in 10th grade after seeing Vaughn Bode’s The Masked Lizard in Kurtzman’s paperback collection of college strips, Wonder Wart-hog, Captain Crud and Other Super Stuff. I was on fire, and started my love affair with comics by doing a strip, Terrible Terrapin for my high school paper, The Parlez Vous. Even after starting a literary magazine for the school, they let me graduate, and I was free.

One of my Bonkers strips for The Vermilion Funny thing, when I tried to arrange a double major in art and biology at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, I was informed by the iron-fisted, no-nonsense German department head that I would not be wasting my time with art, and could jolly well do that on my own. I ground away at my Zoology while cartooning for The Vermilion, the university paper.

Eight hours under blisteringly hot lights to produce my three-minute stop-action animated 16 mm film, Pressed Varmints Second Issue of Cerberus Magazine But, since I was footing the bill, I began studying whatever interested me, like film, history and writing, while also putting out my own magazine. By the time I was almost ready to graduate with an eye on being a saurologist, or lizard scientist, another funny thing happened: I defected to the art department.

In the art world, drawing had become passé, so to be an illustrator, someone who actually drew, I had to complete the two-year advertising design program to finish in Applied Art. I finally graduated magna cum laude and Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society from USL in 1977. Since I had been fortunate enough to be employed running a weekly newspaper, The Acadiana Journal, as managing editor, staff artist and writer, and then as art director for Media Associates Advertising Agency while I was in school, it made sense to finish what had paid my way.

Clovis Crawfish and Etienne Escargot,
by Mary Alice Fontenot and Eric Vincent I did my first Clovis book, Clovis Crawfish and Etienne Escargot, while working at Media Associates. It was a series by Mary Alice Fontenot that had been around since I was in grade school.

Then, after doing loads of logos, annual reports, print advertising and writing, and directing lots of radio and television, I moved to Houston, Texas from my hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana after getting married.

Editorial cartoon for The Houston Post Airbrush illustration for The Houston Chronicle - Lifestyle section I t was dog-eat-dog in boomtown Houston, and I beavered away at production work for various agencies before doing editorial cartooning for The Houston Post and then working as a Lifestyle illustrator for The Houston Chronicle.

Clovis Crawfish and the Orphan Zo-Zo by Mary Alice Fontenot and Eric Vincent I did another two Clovis books, Clovis Crawfish and the Singing Cigales and Clovis Crawfish and the Orphan Zo-Zo, which was named a Children’s Choice Award winner for 1984.

Eric Vincent as Mark in Robert Patrick’s Kennedy’s Children directed by Lee Brasseaux for Brass Ring Productions 1989 Bobbie Bender as Lonnie and Eric Vincent as Skip in The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, part of A Texas Trilogy by Preston Jones, directed by Darla Whitman for LCT 1989. The Oil Bust of 1986 crushed the white-hot economy of Houston, and I moved home to Lafayette to work at several agencies before landing my own science fiction comic, Alien Fire, with writer-friend Anthony Smith. We did three critically acclaimed issues before the economy claimed that too, though I continued working in comics as a penciller, inker, and colorist on a variety of books. Along the way, I did community, then professional theater and considered being an actor, like my parents.

Alien Fire by Eric Vincent and Anthony Smith. Aesop's Fables by Eric Vincent During an appearance at a comics convention in Dallas for Alien Fire, I finally got to meet Harvey Kurtzman, the genius who had inspired me with his Mad Magazine and that little paperback collection with Vaughn Bode given to me on my 14th birthday by my pal, Steve Mathews. Before moving to Pittsburgh I did several of the new Classics Illustrated for Berkeley-First Paperbacks; Island of Dr. Moreau and Aesop’s Fables. Two more years of comic work followed and then I headed to Charleston, South Carolina in 1990.

Sculptural illustration for Beer Magazine I began expanding my repertoire by seriously pursuing three–dimensional illustration, both sculptural and cut-paper, winning national and international awards once I began working at Advertising Service Agency as an art director and illustrator. While there I also did Dinosaur Dreams and a collection of my stories and cartoons, Ten Miles of Bad Road.

Hand drawn cel animation for Hearing Health Solutions from Ohio ENT for The Bosworth Group Computer animation for Charleston ENT for The Bosworth Group Leaving ASA in 2005, I opened my own production company and produced commercial and corporate video and film. Most ambitious of all, I started GryphonPix Film Productions to produce movies. We continued to do lots of TV commercials, winning awards for both our computer animation and traditional hand-drawn cel animation for The Bosworth Group.

Setting up for a scene with Aesop narrating one of his fables Shooting Cold Soldiers with Nick Smith aboard The USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot's Point Naval & Maritime Museum Along the way, we helped Nick Smith with the production of his film, Cold Soldiers, and even did some muppetry for video adaptations of comics.
Zootimus Prime helps out during a recording/editing session for Audible Recorded Books
Funding was difficult to find, so after creating a 90-minute award-winning movie for the Patriots Point Naval Museum and a number of corporate videos, I pulled in my horns and settled into audio book production for ACX/Amazon Audible Recorded Books.

My children's book imprint Mystic Kitty Books I continue to produce audio books and have several picture books and YA novels in the works for my own imprint, Mystic Kitty Books.

I’m here in Charleston with my very talented wife, Dianne, who paints in oils and has her own art school and art therapy practice. I’ve taught art with her for over 15 years. You can visit our school at www.artconnects.us. Art Connects Us Art School

Rags requests a slice of my pumpkin pecan art pie with Comet Tailed Moth Top My son William is a fine musician and artist, now a fourth-generation artist for my family. We have two cats, Zootimus Prime and Sweetie, a small black dog named Rags, shown here requesting a slice of my pumpkin pecan art pie, and yes we have fistfuls of toads and many dozens of lizards around to give the place some class.