Meet Tim Jacobus at ValleyCon 2026 in Fargo, October 23 to 25 at the Fargo Air Museum.
If you grew up reading Goosebumps, you already know Tim’s work. Tim is the artist behind the original Goosebumps book covers, starting with Welcome to Dead House in 1992. He and R.L. Stine put out a book a month for about a decade, and Tim went on to paint more than 100 Goosebumps covers, from the original series through Goosebumps 2000.
Those glossy, slightly-off covers were painted by hand in acrylic on illustration board, with a sable brush and an airbrush for that polished finish. Tim picked up airbrushing in his late teens, painting motorcycle tanks and cars. His trademark warped perspective took off with Egg Monsters from Mars, when he bent the cabinets and tiles of an ordinary kitchen so the scene felt just a little bit wrong.
Stine was usually still writing each book while Tim painted its cover, so Tim worked from a short synopsis. He sketched tiny thumbnails, drew up the best two or three ideas for Scholastic to pick from, painted a small color study, then spent about a week on the final art.
A New Jersey native, Tim heads Jacobus Studios, a fixture in commercial and book art for more than 35 years. He has guided the studio from brushes and paint to a fully digital workflow, and every piece still starts the same way: with a simple scribbled sketch.
Tim Jacobus at ValleyCon 2026: Goosebumps Artist
Find Tim on Celebrity Row at booth TS-03, and catch his panel on Saturday, October 24 at 1:30 PM. Check the full ValleyCon schedule for the room, and get your tickets before you go. Ask him about his favorite cover; he says the answer changes all the time.
Tim Jacobus’s iconic Goosebumps covers
- Welcome to Dead House (1992), the very first Goosebumps cover
- Say Cheese and Die!
- Night of the Living Dummy
- The Haunted Mask
- Egg Monsters from Mars
- Curse of Camp Cold Lake
More from Tim Jacobus: Official website