Blog Archive
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Pittsburgh 'Zine Fair 2011 - Sept 1st. 5-10 PM
Exciting times are upon us, denizens of the crinkled realm. The Pittsburgh Zine Fair is being held for the first time ever on Thursday, September 1st from 5pm-10pm. The Zine Fair will be held at A.I.R. (Artists Image Resource) in the North Side and will feature over 30 vendors, workshops, hands-on demonstrations on letter-pressing and screenprinting, readings, and discussions!
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CCS App comic scanned: Must be touched up a little more.
Everyday, a little more gets accomplished. The physical comic now exists digitally (Enjoy it at your leisure.) I learned my lesson from the previous Bü Kowski story and have made sure that the flow of pages makes sense on your computer monitors. In Pittsburgh I’ll be printing the comics, seeing as how the printer here in Cleveland isn’t the hottest on the block. Good enough to make a prototype, though. It will be printed on a soft sandy colored paper to further the agricultural theme.
For the moment being, the title page is a placeholder. I’m working on a cover and back cover the run more in line with the black and white contrast of the rest of the story. Additionally, the title is just going to be “Stori”.
Tomorrow, my dad is taking the day off from work and I’ll be taking my day off from comics to spend time with each other, so don’t expect too much from me, maybe just the final retouching of the strip in Photoshop, but I bet you won’t notice many of the differences.
What I’ll be working on concurrent with the printing in Pittsburgh will be on -a short story told in pantomime entitled Polar Bear Protector. It’ll be my first work in color. The high hope would be for it to be silk screened with two colors, light blue and black. -a Kama Sutra of my own made using accordion folds. -fold style comic that overwhelms the reader with a suffocating grid that expands out to 11”x17” -A collected anthology of my work in the last year including strips, sketches and one pagers. (This will be my Indesign boot camp)
Oh and if you know of any good online tutorials for Illustrator, shoot ‘em my way. Until then, I’ll be watching assorted youtube videos, developing the most haphazard work practices possible.
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Finished inking
It’s 4 in the morning and I’m finished with the 24 pages of my Center for Cartoon Studies comic. Tomorrow I’ll be working on the computer end of things scanning and retouching. Stay tuned and you’ll find the finished pages in tidy black and white glory.
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Wiggling to show you that I'm back
I’m currently working on my application comic for the Center for Cartoon Studies. I’m chugging along at a good pace on the 26 page story. The plan is for it to be 4.25 x 5.5” in black and white, stitched together. I’ve intentionally made it such that this story, although clearly a CCS application, will be just as readable to anyone who doesn’t know what the CCS is. That way I can trade and sell it at SPX, PIX and in Pittsburgh’s comics shops and have the readers of it both understand it and hell, possibly enjoy it.
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The Travel Begins
Lena and I are off to Spain in some hours, so I thought I’d give you a little morsel to remember me by.
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Poetry and big blotchy illustrations. Heavy on the Stuart Davis influence(via Bill Boichel)
Here’s a link to my most recent work: a poetry chap book. I’d written some poems, so I thought that I would put them together. Of course, to keep it as viscerally entertaining as anything else, and to make it a little more obtuse, I illustrated the work. Nothing spectacular, but it was a great exercise in using Adobe Indesign. I’d never used it, but thanks to youtube video tutorials, Adobe’s help online, patience and persistence, it was finished. I can now proudly say that If I need to print anything comics wise I don’t need to figure it out all on paper and then transfer it to Photoshop. As old fashioned as that might be, no one had taught me anything else. Hell, no one taught me how to paginate. So, as all things in the world of one, trial and error and then some happy accidents (like the portrait I did on the third page of my beloved Lena’s dear poodle, Einstein.)
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Bü's Mansion - Lionel and the Punks
Here you go, as promised. My most recent comic, Bü’s Mansion - Lionel and the Punks. This is the longest continuous narrative that I’ve done since last year’s Rinfon and it feels really good to have done and to have it look as nice and crisp as it does. I’m printing this mini on a creamy off white and it’s looking fantastic. I’m currently trying to figure out how to package it. I still don’t know how to silk screen so that’s not an option. Nevertheless, I’m thinking of hand cut decorations on coverstock that is off a heavier grade. I’d love to sell these for a dollar, because I know that people will actually buy them. Nevertheless, $2 for a mini comic of this hand crafted flavor doesn’t seem too steep. Any more, though and it seems unreasonable. Hell, I’d have a hard time paying $3 for this.
The pricing issue is a weird one, isn’t it? I feel excited to cough over $2 and feel like I’m making out with a great deal, while for $3 I feel like I’m missing something. And yet for $1 I feel like what I’m getting isn’t worth anything. Maybe I just don’t know how to quantify money in qualitative terms well enough…
NOTA BENE: Below are the spreads, therefore read horizontally until the middle of the spread and then move downwards.
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The Next Three Months: Spain and then some
I have the incredible fortune of traveling for the next two months in Spain with my girlfriend, Lena. Lena will get to fully experience a true Spain with me, completely in Spanish, we’ll both get to work with cheese-making and meat curing and I will get to research a comic that I have planned.
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Why is it so hard to get my hands on some Moebius?
It’s been a good day. Yesterday I finished pencilling out a solid storyboard for a comic that I’m making for my application for the Center for Cartoon Studies. It’s going to be a cute one with some sexy ink.
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Drawing off the rust
I have a great friend, Eric, who studies design and excels at drawing. On the whole he is a muscle memory freak. Skateboarding, playing a drumkit, improvising on the guitar, woodworking, playing sonatas on the piano, given enough time, he can always get down any routine perfectly. It’s amazing. I love him for it and often envy him. At the end of the day though, I’m not him and I have to face that my motor coordination is not like his.
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