Roy's Doty's Leap Year card -- Carpe Diem!

Roy Doty has been illustrating books and magazines since the 1940s. I first came across his work around 1970 when I acquired an old stack of Popular Science magazines from the 1950s. He did (and still does) a regular comic strip called "Wordless Workshop," which showed you how to make something cool without using any words to describe how. That's difficult to pull off, but Doty's clear and precise drawing style was (and is) up to the task.

When we started MAKE in 2004, I was overjoyed to learn that Doty was still illustrating. I wrote him and asked if he'd like to illustrate our puzzle page. When he said yes, it was a dream come true.

To celebrate Leap Year, Doty sent out this delightful card of a Rube Goldberg-style machine designed to get you out of bed. Doty sends out a card for nearly every season and holiday. I think it's because he finds a lot of joy in life.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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univac

His work is so amazing, complex and fun! Great to see this.
CordableTuna

Waaait a second… The mouse bit at the top right corner doesn’t work!
Freddie Freelance

I work for Salary so I don’t get excited about Leap Year Day, it’s a freebie for my employer. To make up for this I’m planning on spending several hours finishing up my RPM Challenge entry.
Stefan Jones

One of my college friends is having his ninth birthday today. His wife is putting on a Star Wars themed kiddie-party, with an R2-D2 cake and a Death Star pinata.

In a few years, his son will have had more birthdays than he . . .
dculberson

You’re right! The mouse will never take off that way.
airship

I’ve loved ‘Wordless Workshop’ since I was a kid. Even before I was allowed to hammer a nail by myself, that comic made relatively complex projects easy to figure out. It’s a perfect example to point to when people say “comics are worthless”.
Lex10

My remix of Roy Doty’s “Wordless Workshop”
http://www.glyphjockey.com/2008/01/wordless-workshop.html
Sue Grant

thanks for this post, what a wonderful graphic :)