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During the Ann Arbor Comics Art Festival -- aka A2CAF -- in June, cartoonist Jerzy Drozd interviewed his fellow author-illustrator Ben Hatke about his work. The two were on the third floor of the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, standing in front of the framed works that comprise the exhibition Ben Hatke: Art and Adventure:

Explore the plucky heroes, eerie monsters, and fabulous realms of artist and author Ben Hatke in an exhibition of original art from his picture books and graphic novels. Illustrations and watercolors from Nobody Likes a Goblin, Zita the Spacegirl, Julia’s House for Lost Creatures, and a few surprises. (The exhibition runs through August 31.)

The talk between Drozd and Hatke runs 41 minutes. Pressed for time? Grab the MP3; the conversation works fine as a podcast. Or if you want to skip around, see the list below with the topics discussed and their times in the video/MP3:

00:00 Working in watercolor
03:02 Using different tools to create
04:02 Talking about perfectionism
06:33 Writing about powerlessness in Nobody Likes a Goblin
09:40 Zita’s magic superpower is friendship
11:12 Amassing friends is power
13:10 Rejected panel from Nobody Likes a Goblin
15:11 Process and drafts
20:32 How Hatke's daughter saved a page and the myth of the lone genius
23:21 Collaboration
25:05 Live writing exercise
28:40 Deciding what to show or not show on the page
29:41 Hatke’s path from learning basic watercolor to the detailed style he has now
31:24 Starting small to create epic tales
34:25 The small things that led to the big thing in Zita the Space Girl
36:52 Do your stories come to you sequentially or in bit and pieces?
38:32 A good author is open to being surprised by stories
40:43 Favorite kind of painting process?

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.

Ben Hatke: Art and Adventure is on display in the downtown library's third floor gallery through August 31.