Today we’d like to introduce you to C.S. Jennings.
Hi C.S., can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. You can include as little or as much detail as you’d like.
“When did you first know you were an artist?”
I really had to think the first time I was asked this question. What an odd concept, I thought. Why not ask a bird when it knew it could fly?
“I never knew,” I finally said, “Making art has always been a part of the fabric of who I am.”
You, me—most everyone—drew, created as children. I just never put the crayons down.
BRUSHES WITH THE SPARK
In college I was pursuing a graphic design degree. Mine was a family of accountants and lawyers. Drawing did not appear to be a financially viable career. I could always find a job at a magazine, newspaper, or agency, right? I’m happy to say this idea was challenged by two events.
The first, on a movie date. The LION KING trailer came on. Remember it? The sweeping camera move! The parade of characters all throwing their legs up in the air! This was the beginning of Disney’s renaissance era. American animation hadn’t looked like this in a while. I was immediately taken in. With that last drumbeat crescendo, I was speechless. I wanted, NEEDED, to be a part of it, to animate. My date looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Why are you crying at a children’s movie preview?”
Not long after, I found myself at an AIGA chapter meeting. A panel of illustrators talked about their craft and work, what their day-to-day was like. I thought of myself as a cartoonist, but was now presented with this idea of being an illustrator. AND it was something I could make money doing?! To lock in this new revelation I visited a book store. Standing in the children’s section, I vibrated with inspiration and desire.
With both of these things, I didn’t know what my path was going to be. My illustration professor added a private study for me—I’d already taken the courses the university had to offer. But animation? I had so much time and money invested in my degree. I had no idea how that was going to happen.
When we touch purpose in our lives, it’s not always clear how it will manifest. Regardless, the spark is lit.
AUSTIN CALLING
For a few years I took day jobs in graphic design. I illustrated at night.
Then, a call from my parents who lived in Austin. The Chronicle had an ad seeking animators for a Richard Linklater project. The only skill required was the ability to paint or draw.
I drove from Fort Worth to Austin. The tryout was—check this out—they sat us in front of a drawing tablet. Put a stylus in our hands. Showed us the basics of how the drawing software worked, software NONE of us had ever seen, and GO! Animate!
I got the gig!
COMMUNITY MATTERS
SCANNER was the perfect introduction to the creative community in Austin.
The production brought together not only seasoned animators, but fine and modern artists, concept people from games, comic book illustrators—name the genre, someone in that discipline animated the movie. In Fort Worth, I was the only person I knew who drew. Now I was in a building full of artists!
At this point, I’d published my first author/illustrator picture book with Sterling Publishing (now Union Square & Co.). ANIMAL BAND was inspired by my big blue cat, Rock. What kind of shenanigans did he get into when I wasn’t home? Animals of all kinds invade my home and make music, of course.
The literary department of a local college invited me to be on a panel to talk about children’s books with author Liz Garton Scanlon and author/illustrator Don Tate. I still can’t believe I was asked to present with those two titans of kid lit.
I did not know there was a vibrant collection of children’s literature creators in the metroplex. Through them (and author Cynthia Leitich Smith) I became a part of the Austin chapter of The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Once again, I’d found my people.
People who understood rejection. Deadlines. Making books. Trying again. Celebrating one another’s successes. A brilliant and kind collection of humans.
THE IN BETWEEN
Things were quiet in the animation and publishing parts of my life for a few years.
A SCANNER DARKLY had become a cult favorite, but like most indie movie productions, the studio disbanded following completion of the animation. I returned to design work as a creative director.
In my own time I was illustrating books for publishers like Dial Books for Young Readers, Capstone, and Scholastic. The work felt good, I was proud of it. But it wasn’t the creating of stories and worlds I hungered for.
What I WAS doing, however, was learning the structure of the different types of children’s books.
How character design is informed by the emotions of the character. How a page turn creates the ryhthm of a story. How the eye moves through the spread of a graphic novel. And most importantly, how to meet a deadline. Meet the deadline and you’ll find yourself on the top of any art director’s assignment list.
WHEN THE PHONE RINGS, LET IT FIND YOU WORKING
In my life things come in twos.
First, Craig Staggs, who’d been on my animation team on SCANNER, had secured a contract to animate a new Amazon Prime project, UNDONE, starring Bob Odenkirk and Rosa Salazar. He was starting up a new studio, Minnow Mountain with his partner Steph Swope, and would I come on board to help run the animation side of things? Absolutely! We did two seasons of that show and then joined up with Richard Linklater again on APOLLO 10 1/2 for Netflix.
I’d gone to New York City for the winter conference of SCBWI. At the end of a day, the other kid lit creators met at a restaurant. Our conversation the casual one you have with creators you’ve just met. Craft. What we thought about the day. Getting to know each other. The man next to me said, “Wait. YOU’RE C.S. Jennings?” Though I’d illustrated lots of stuff I didn’t have THAT kind of name recognition. “Yes,” I said—and that’s how I met my agent. 🙂
THE NOW
Today my creative life moves between animation, illustration and children’s publishing. I’ve created PET SHOP RACERS, a three-book graphic novel series for Disney. With Penguin I’ve made the picture books WHOA PANDA! and MY BIG BOOK OF TEXAS, and the forthcoming graphic novel series WILD TAILZ with BISON & BEAR.
Readings, book festivals, interviews, and school visits are parts of the expanding side of my publishing career. MY BIG BOOK OF TEXAS won a Critic’s Choice award in the Austin Chronicle’s Best of Austin 2026 awards. That was a thrill and an honor.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
THE CHALLENGES
As the story of a creative life mine may seem ordered, tidy. In reality, my journey to this point has been decades.
One of the big challenges is we don’t know how long anything is supposed to take. When it doesn’t happen in my timeline, it can be discouraging, disorienting. Why was there all of this success, and now things are quiet again?
Though I keep planning and working, I don’t know what’s next. There have been moments, sometimes entire seasons of time, where I feel untethered, disconnected. I can only do what I know: Keep the pencil moving. The journaling going. Do what there is to do.
I’ve come to respect the seasons in my life. Each holds learning and preparation for the next. And sometimes, all we’re being asked to do is receive the quiet. To take a few breaths. To not only find our footing, but ourselves, before the work of making and deadlines begins again.
Discomfort points the way. There are times where I pick up a book, or encounter another creator’s social media account and it’s a gut punch. It’s not jealousy. I don’t want to BE them. They’re doing something that resonates with me, something I am looking for in my own work. I try to understand what that is by engaging curiosity. Picking up my tools in a new way, or a new tool altogether.
Consistency. But not relentless productivity. Presence. Returning to the work.
A 94-page graphic novel doesn’t happen overnight. It happens hour after hour. It’s built over a series of months. And so the relationship I seek with my craft is really one of presence. Not feeling the pressure of a deadline all the time, but coming back to the work. Spending time with it. Finding my voice in what I want to say through each book.
“I’m not an artist. I wish I was.”
People say this to me all the time. And then they’ll tell me a story about someone who criticized something they made. A teacher. A parent. Somebody who blew out that spark.
But creativity lives in all of us.
Art is at dinner tables. It’s on dance floors and playing fields. And I think a lot of it is found in self-grace. Giving yourself permission to answer that gnawing little desire to make something.
Because when you start, your taste is going to be better than your skill. Of course it is. So make the thing anyway.
Lose yourself in it the way we did when we were kids. Crayons on paper. Making marks. Color. Shape.
Just keep the crayons moving.
“When did you know you were an artist?”
We’ve been one this whole time.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
– Bison & Bear: Book 1; Graphic Novel; 2027; Penguin Workshop
– Bison & Bear: Book 2; Graphic Novel; 2027; Penguin Workshop
– Bison & Bear: Book 3; Graphic Novel; 2027; Penguin Workshop
– Bison & Bear: Book 4; Graphic Novel; 2027; Penguin Workshop
– My Big Book of Texas; Picture Book; 2026; Grosset & Dunlap
– Whoa Panda!; Picture Book; 2025; Nancy Paulsen Books
– Pet Shop Racers, Book 1; Graphic Novel; 2025; Disney • Hyperion
– Pet Shop Racers, Book 2; Graphic Novel; 2025; Disney • Hyperion
– Pet Shop Racers, Book 3; Graphic Novel; 2026; Disney • Hyperion
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
See above.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://csjennings.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howdycsjennings/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CSJenningsIllustration/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-jennings-94964a6b/
