An artist and his creation will come face to face Saturday, giving local youngsters the opportunity to help support a host of local charities.
Earthstar Smith, who penned the Richmond News' comic character Minoru the Raccoon, will join forces with the lovable and mischievous, "masked bandit" to sign copies of a colouring book featuring all the one-panel cartoons published in the paper so far.
"I am very excited about this," said Smith. "I'm happy that we're going to take the pages and put them together in a way that the community's children can come and express their love of the character, and at the same time support a number of worthy causes."
Smith and Minoru will be at Lansdowne Centre from noon to 4 p.m. For a minimum suggested donation of $2.50, you can get a copy of the colouring book.
Plus, $5 from all photos taken with Santa that day at the mall will be donated to Nite of Hope Richmond, Wildlife Rescue, Richmond Hospital Foundation and the Richmond Food Bank.
"When I first started, I didn't really think we'd be doing such a large signing like this," Smith said.
"A lot of what I have created as an artist has been distributed online. But one of the things I liked about this project is the physical medium with the printed newspaper."
