Brian Crane is an American cartoonist who created Pickles, a comic strip featuring a retired couple, Earl and Opal Pickles, their family, and their family pets, Muffin and Roscoe. Born in Twin Falls, Idaho, Crane grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He began drawing at an early age, according to accounts by his mother, and hoped to grow up to be a comic strip artist. Crane served a mission in Uruguay and graduated with a BA degree from Brigham Young University in 1973. As he got older he didn't think he had the writing talent or sense of humor to be able to come up with material for a daily comic strip, so he became a graphic designer and art director, working for publishing companies, art studios and advertising agencies. When he got near the age of forty he began reminiscing about his childhood dream of doing a newspaper comic strip, so he created Pickles, a strip about an elderly couple, their daughter, their grandson, and their pets.
Career
Pickles was syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group in 1990, and today appears in nearly 1,000 newspapers around the world. In 2001 it was awarded the prize for Best Comic Strip by the National Cartoonist Society. In 2005 and 2011 he was a nominee for Cartoonist of the Year by the same group. In 2013 he won the Reuben award for cartoonist of the year from the National Cartoonists Society. Crane creates Pickles by hand from a studio in his home in Sparks, NV. His daughter Emily colors the daily and Sunday strips for him. Brian and his wife Diana recently celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary and are looking forward to the birth of their 18th grandchild in October.
Awards
He received the National Cartoonists Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award for 2001 for his work on the strip. In 2013, in a tie with Baby Blues co-creator Rick Kirkman, Crane received cartooning’s highest honor, the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year, for Pickles.
Personal life
Crane married his college sweetheart, Diana Long, and they have seven children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and sometimes draws LDS temples or :Category:Latter Day Saint periodicals|periodicals as background props in the Pickles comic strip. Crane lives in Sparks, Nevada.
