About
Story, Inspirations, Author, Comics
Story
Art Geek Zoo is music fantasy adventure that centers around a penguin (Pick Wingvey) and his mystical guitar friend (Crunchy). They want to succeed as students in the prestigious Zoo College of the Arts Polytechnica. Early in season one, they're allowed to enter school on a probationary basis. Soon after that, a guitar pedal with a vendetta joins their band. Season one ends with Crunchy's past catching up to him. Season two picks up with Pick and Crunchy in some serious trouble. Pick a place to start reading Art Geek Zoo.
Inspirations and Philosophy
My love of guitar, fantasy art, martial arts, and Anime are behind the scenes in Art Geek Zoo. I hold the belief that all people are creative and can find their creative voice to explore their limitless talent. Last but not least and a little Zen-like, I believe that all creative pursuits share common disciplines and act as a window upon one another to gain new perspectives.
Hello, I'm Rob Stenzinger, a person well-suited to tell the story of Art Geek Zoo. I am an artist, guitarist, martial artist, and a guy on a journey trying to connect with you via comics and story telling.
Let's go back to the beginning. By the time I entered kindergarten I knew I was an artist, constantly drawing Snoopy. In elementary school my favorite characters to sketch were Opus, Dungeons & Dragons monsters, and sci-fi spaceships.
I illustrated my first book around age 10 (about 100 pages). It was a book my dad wrote and as the complexities of families go - the experience was both awesome and terrible. Illustrating his book also cemented my interest in computers. To produce the finished art I used a Mac 128K mouse in Mac Paint and scanned (via Thunderscan) inked art I'd done using a light table.
At age 15, full of teen angst and energy, I started playing guitar, kept drawing (now in addition to the traditional favorite sketch subjects add: Wolverine, a constipated penguin and beautiful women), and kept playing with computers.
I grew up believing that I'd be a cartoonist. That was true until my late teens / early twenties when I stopped believing and tried to seek a more "practical" way to make a living. Inspired by video games and the idea that I could live the dream of combining art, programming, and music, I started a garage-band style game development company in 1994. This led to early internet 1.0 consulting, which led to an enterprise IT architect role. Whoa, wait - before I knew what happened about 13 years flew by and I was deep in corporate America. I still sketched on occasion during those years, usually for my hobby / side-projects developing game worlds and writing music with friends. In my late twenties I began to study Tae Kwon Do, becoming a brown belt in 4 years. My TKD studies increased my Zen-like attitude and in February of 2008 I convinced myself to focus more and share my art.
So now, After almost 2 years of Art Geek Zoo I feel almost-confident to say, as my teenage self always knew, I am a cartoonist.
I live in Minneapolis with my wife and consult independently as a User Interface / User Experience designer. I also do fantasy art illustration and commissions. I have big plans for Art Geek Zoo and look to make this my full-time focus in the very near future with your encouragement and support.
In addition to the main Art Geek Zoo story, a few other comics and art collections live on artgeekzoo.com. You can explore these comics with the book-chapter-episode menus above, the Latest Comics list, or the Comics menu on the right.
- Art Geek Zoo: A music fantasy adventure story. Start at the Beginning. Start at the current Chapter.
- AGZ Mini: Short Stories and Parodies in the World of Art Geek Zoo.
- Rob's Sketchbook: Characters, Jokes, and Miscellaneous Ideas from my Sketchbook.
- Rob's Day-Off (Sort of): One-offs, short-series joke comics.