This past Monday was the twenty-sixth–and final–week of our collaborative Twitter project, the Animal Alphabet. The project began as an offhand comment by me on Twitter that I was thinking about drawing an animal in my sketchbook for each letter of the alphabet. Fellow cartoonist and friend Rob Ullman, though, had the good sense to recognize the possibility of something bigger and proposed that he and I should each draw an alphabet’s-worth of animals and post them on Twitter concurrently.

Somehow, though, the project blossomed into something far more wonderful than I could have ever imagined: a weekly collaboration among dozens of artists (well, I’d have to go through the archives to get an exact count, but, well, there were a lot of folks who participated) from various corners of the globe. Participants included casual sketchers and professional artists; there were entries from five year olds and entries from the artist who storyboarded Inception and was then drawing The Hulk for Marvel Comics.

I couldn’t be happier with what this project (unexpectedly) turned into. For six months my Friday nights began with selecting and penciling some odd animal and my Saturdays usually involved inking and watercoloring that drawing. As I type this on a Friday night, I feel like that’s what I should be doing.

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who participated. Thank you all! I hope you had fun. As someone who wound up as the unexpected organizer of the project, I sure did. Special accolades, though, are in order for those few folks who completed an animal drawing for all twenty-six letters of the alphabet…

The Animal Alphabet Lifetime Achievement Award Winners:

Isaac Cates

Sam Wolk

Lupi McGinty

Andrew Neal

Rich Barrett

Henry Eudy

and me!

The Final Animal Alphabet Project:

So here’s the full twenty-six week Animal Alphabet project:

http://animalalphabet.tumblr.com/

My Animal Alphabet Drawings A-Z:

What’s next?

The Animal Alphabet is done, but lots of participants have expressed an interest in a follow-up A-Z/alphabet project. I’ll be posting a some thoughts about that tomorrow and soliciting input from folks. Stay tuned!