Hourly Comic Day

Posted In: Blog

I’ve never participated in Hourly Comic Day before. Luckily this year, fellow CCS student Melanie Gillman piqued my interest in the exercise.

The results are below. Now, granted I did these during the final stretch of the Golden Age project (to be posted soon), but I also found out that my life is crazy boring. Most of it is just me doing repetitive tasks in front of a computer … but in a good way … I guess? Oh God, what am I doing with my life?

Anyway, results are below…

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HOLY SHIT

Posted In: Blog, comics

So, the big final project for the first CCS semester is a group anthology project. The class is split into groups selected by the darkest most secretive divination techniques available to CCS instructors (an online psychological test if rumours are to be believed), and we must produce a cohesive anthology together.

I was placed with Sean K., Moody, and Amelia Onorato. AKA team best-friends-in-a-car-listening-to-Celebrity-Jeopardy clips-from-SNL. Seriously, it was an awesome group, and I’m pretty happy with what we managed to pull together.

The book focuses on each of our personal reactions to religion in our lives. There are personal stories, historical reflections and fiction as well.

Anyway, the plan is to do a larger print run of the book so that we can sell it at MoCCA, SPX, and other cons. In the meantime, here are some samples of my contribution…

The rest is a secret, but you can read more about everyone’s anthologies at the Schulz Library Blog, written by our super-cool librarian Caitlin McGurk! If you want to read the whole story, wait until I someday get a paypal account set up or come to MoCCA!

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Bibliomancy Assignment

Posted In: Blog, comics

We were assigned this project just as we were starting our anthologies. It was a stressful time in the semester! Basically, the premise is this: you get a book, pick a random page, and a random sentence on that page, and then you use that as the start of your story. Do this two more times for two more plot points. The idea is to encourage different stories than you would usually tell.

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Happy Holidays!

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

Every year, The Center for Cartoon Studies sends out a Christmas Card to a bunch of supporters, visiting artists, alumni and other community members. And this lucky guy got to do this year’s card.

Why yes, that is CCS spiritual founder Inky Solomon masquerading as good ol’ Sandy Claws. Though this was James Sturm’s suggestion, as my initial sketches just had three elves working. That’s why he’s the headmaster at Hogwarts, and I’m still trying to get wingardium leviosa to work.

Anyway, this was the first thing I did after classes ended. It was a Christmas miracle!

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CCS Diary Comic #12

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

So very close to the end of the semester. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone. In fact, I can’t believe how fast life has gone. Fellow CCSer Sean Knickerbocker saw this and said “Ha ha ha! You’re so sad!”

And he’s right. I better watch it or I’m going to get a permanent reputation for doing depressing comics.

And yes, that last panel is a reference to this.

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CCS Diary Comic # 11

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

I’m constantly catching myself humming songs from games and cartoons that I haven’t heard for five, ten, or even twenty years. This is one of those times…

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Oh, Fletcher Hanks

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

In Steve Bissette’s Survey of the Drawn Story, we are required to do two essays during the semester. My first one was about Frank King’s Gasoline Alley. I haven’t written any real essays since my undergrad, so it was great to stretch those muscles again.

Of course, because this is the Center for Cartoon Studies, there’s usually the option of doing any assignment as a comic. And so for my second essay I did a mini comic about Fletcher Hanks. The upside of this is that I had a lot of fun trying to imitate Hanks.

The downside is that I spent so much time drawing and coloring the comic, that the content of the essay isn’t exactly hard-hitting, revolutionary stuff. Oh well! There’s not much I can say about Hanks that Paul Karasik hasn’t already said better. I strongly recommend picking up the two volumes edited by Karasik. They contain all known work by Hanks, but it’s worth it just to read Karasik’s comic about his research in Volume I.

Though it’s best to read Hanks’ work in small doses. It has strange effects on the brain.

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How Romantic!

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

We recently spent some time learning about Romance Comics at CCS. Robyn Chapman came in to share her vast knowledge of all things comical and romantic. After  we covered the history of romance comics in Survey of the Drawn Story, Steve Bissette assigned each of us an era of romance comics in Drawing Workshop. We then had to design our own covers authentic to the assigned time period.

I was given ‘The Swinging Sixties”, which for the purposes of this assignment was about 1966-1971. This was long after the Comics Code Authority had been introduced, so while the covers weren’t particularly racy compared the pre-code comics, they did demonstrate a hilarious misunderstanding of counter-culture. I guess that’s what happens when a bunch of out-of-touch old guys get together and try to figure out what’s hep with the kids.

Dig it:

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CCS Diary Comic # 10

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

Seth has discussed this with much greater eloquence, but it was still sort of fun to draw a cartoon brain.

One of the nicest things about being at CCS has been talking to other cartoonists about those quiet, indescribable aspects of drawing comics.

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CCS Diary Comic # 9

Posted In: Blog, Center for Cartoon Studies

I’ve found it a little difficult to come up with interesting diary comics now that most of my life consists of sitting in a chair moving a pen back and forth. Luckily my brain doesn’t seem to sleep when I’m sleeping…

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