Hey, gang. Just a brief note to let you all know that I and my team have finished work on the project that has recently consumed our every waking moments, the forthcoming book Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One. Believe it or not, all 512 pages of it went to the printer today, with all 6 hours of companion video edited and ready to go. While I slept like a baby, my designer David Futato and lead editor Carol Person were up until the wee hours generating the final PDF documents. (Thanks to them both!) And while no one is going to accuse me of being overly timely—Illustrator CS5 started shipping about the same time as Columbus—I’m convinced that we’ve managed to create the best book that we could, as well as the best title in the One-on-One series.

The book should be available for purchase in about three weeks. For real. I’m no longer the boy who cried “Illustrator book!” I’ll actually have one.

As you might imagine, my sidekick Colleen had a hand in the project, which is why you haven’t seen much of either of us as of late. But my plan is for that to change starting today. In the next few days, I’ll post information on my Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced video series for lynda.com, which I completed last week. (It will be available in November as well.) I’ll include a hot little tip for vector rasterization. And I’ll post an excerpt from one of the lessons in the book. (I know I promised to do that a while back but what’s a few months between friends?)

Oh, and stay tuned for a free series of daily just-in-time-for-Halloween videos next week. Pen meets paper meets scanner meets Photoshop meets Illustrator to form one enormous real-world, follow-along project. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I’ll be unpacking my head. It’s good to be home.