Sometimes I forget how much fun it is to draw other cartoon characters. Especially when you let yourself go off-model.
Other times, I forget how much fun it is to draw toitles.
You guys, it’s been a long, emotional few weeks, but I’m looking forward to being friends with you again.
In the last month, I completed, printed, and bound my thesis at The Center for Cartoon Studies, went to the MoCCA Festival in New York, received my MFA(!), and engaged in celebration and revelry with some of the dearest people in my life.
This will be a brief post, but I’m hoping to get back on the blogwagon pretty soon. I’ve been thinking a lot of thoughts lately, and I’d like to post said thoughts on the internet so that people can engage in a dialogue using all-caps broken language.
In the meantime, here are a couple of neat things:
Here is what this year’s CCS diplomas look like, drawn by the wonderful Elenoar Davis: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cartoonstudies/7188596442/
Here is the gift the CCS Class of 2012 made for faculty member Alec Longstreth (Careful! It’s 1.2 MB!)
Alec is moving back to the West Coast, so to thank him for everything he brought to CCS, we found a spread from Uncle Scrooge Comics by Carl Barks (Alec’s favourite cartoonist), and each student in the class redrew one of the panels in their own style. Here is the orinal spread:
I’ll post a more thorough reflection on my time at CCS in the future, but in the meantime, I’ll simply say thanks for everything, CCS.
And now to get back to Canada!
Hi gang. I know I haven’t been updating the ol’ blog very much these days. Sure, I post The Dailies once a week, but that’s barely even three minutes of distraction from work. What if I told you there was a way you could buy some of the longer things I’ve been working on, and that said things would offer you distractions from work that last upwards of fifteen minutes?
I’m talking, of course, about the MoCCA Festival in New York. I’ll be there again this year selling my comics, and making eye contact with strangers. Be sure to come to my table say hi to me, Andy Warner, dw, Nate Woots, and the rest of my cartoonist pals!
Here’s this year’s spread:
Unkindness
This 40-page story was the main project I’ve been working on over the last few months. It’s set in a small, prairie town in the early spring. The crows have returned from their migration early and they are behaving very strangely, though most of the townspeople barely take notice.
Last Mountain – Issue Zero
After years of being afraid to commit to an ongoing collection of my work, I’m finally going through with it. Last Mountain contains three short stories featuring cowboys, high school, immigration, forests, and looming invisible forces.
Ghost Rabbit
After Ghost Rabbit made The Comics Journal’s Top 30 Minicomics of 2011, I decided to print a 2nd edition of it. It tells the parallel stories of a little girl who is beginning to understand age and death, and a ghost rabbit.
Here is the poster I made for the 2012 Canadian Improv Games Saskatchewan tournament.
This year I tried to come up with an image comprised of incongruent elements, like an improv scene. Throw together a couple of unrelated characters, a prop. Boom! Instant improv scene! I’m telling you, this story writes itself.
And it’s a real tearjerker.
Late Dailies this week…
Posted In: Blog
Update: I was able to get access to a scanner, so The Dailies are up now!
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I’m going to be on the road home this weekend, so The Dailies won’t go up until I have access to a scanner. Possibly as late as Monday night or Tuesday afternoon.
But as many children have learned at this time of year, life is full of disappointments that you can’t control because you’re small, you don’t know most words, and you occasionally forget to go to the bathroom because Looney Tunes is on.
Anyway, keep checking back for new comics, and have a happy whatever-you-do-at-this-time-of-year.
dw, my friend and fellow CCS studio soldier, has been asking cartoonists to draw themselves riding various giant animals with him. So, here is a picture of me and him riding a giant platypus. Or are we just tiny and riding a regular platypus? Only science can say for sure!
Look! New Stuff!
Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies
In the studio is the place to be.
If you visit this site semi-regularly, you may have noticed a lot of changes over the last couple of weeks. It’s all part of my final project for Alec Longstreth’s Professional Practices class at the Center for Cartoon Studies.
Originally, I started designing a basic hub/portfolio at dakotmcfadzean.com, but I quickly realized it was redundant because most of the links directed you back here to my blog. SO! Instead I incorporated what I had into my blog, and set up a blank redirect on dakotamcfadzean.com. This will be the last major overhaul to this site until I get the time/guts to install wordpress and comicpress (or some similar thing) onto dakotamcfadzean.com, thus doing away with this subdomain silliness I’ve gotten myself into.
I have a pack of those coloured Staedtler pens that have been sitting unused in my sketchbook bag forever. And then one day I woke up and yelled, “Today I will draw with those pens I have!” And then I did. I’m so glad the internet is here, so that I could get that off my chest.
