Austin Light, 2006 alumnus, published his book “Movie Title Typos” Sept. 22. Light has spent most of his career writing professionally, but has always enjoyed improving his illustration technique.
“I’ve always written professionally, art has just been a hobby,” Light said. “I’ve always liked to find art challenges to help improve that area.”
In 2014, Light participated in an event called Inktober where artists draw and submit their art with #inktober throughout the month of October. Light wanted to participate, but struggled with having to think of an idea every day for the entire month. One of Light’s coworkers showed him a post on reddit that was a compiled list of movie title typos, where one letter had been removed from classic movie titles. Light was inspired by the list and decided to illustrate them.
Light’s coworker encouraged him to compile a gallery and share it on reddit at the end of the month. Light said he was surpised at the response from the online community.
“I felt (overwhelmed) almost immediately,” Light said. “I posted at 9 a.m. and about an hour and a half later, it was on the bottom of the front page, and it just kept climbing up and up.”
Light said that comments flew in every minute asking for posters and T-shirts of the illustrations he had created. He spent the majority of that day responding to messages and comments. Not long afterwards, Light looked into Chronicle Books, a company that publishes books in the same genre as Light’s gallery. On the company’s website, Light found an open-submission page, where writers can send in any work to be considered.
“I sent them a one-sentence email with a link to my reddit post saying ‘If you’re interested in this, here it is,” Light said.
An hour and a half later, the company responded and said if he could draw more detailed renditions of his original work, they would take it to their pitch meeting. Light frantically spent late nights illustrating in more detail and within a week, had a book deal with the company.
Light said he hopes that this book will be the first of many. He hopes to visit Harding’s campus in the spring to meet with English and Art majors who have the same love for writing and drawing that he does.
“Movie Title Typos” is available at Barnes & Nobel, Books-A-Million, Target, Amazon.com and other online retailers.
