Congrats to ADDTF for one solid year of reading comics naked.

Also, welcome back ADD and In Sequence.

Did I miss anyone?

 
Fuck You, DaimlerChrysler



The story behind this insult can be found here, courtesy of Journalista.


posted by Steven at 3:24 PM

 
Housecleaning Redux

Homework is breaking me, so in place of news I'm just going to update with a few nice links, with little commentary.

Johnny Bacardi lead me to my first two victims, In Sequence, a weblog about the sequential arts, and Pop Culture Gadabout, who also devotes space to the comics. Or, two more reasons why I should call it quits.

Pop Culture Gadabout has a link to Mark Evanier's POVonline that promises us the collection of Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen comics, with extra special Curt Swan Superman facelifts. I never in my life thought that these would be reprinted. Huzzah!

In Contempt Comics and Ampersand not only make with the weekly strips, but also give up a hearty mix of politics and comics commentary in this blog and that blog. Once again, people who post with intelligence and frequency. I'm going to shoot myself.

I found out my pallie Perse was updating her site before she had a chance to tell me, and I was hoping to link to her current work in progress before she got around to contacting me. Last time I did that, she felt as if people were barging in on her while she was lounging around in her underwear, and I wanted her to feel that wonderful discomfort yet again. I may be too late, but her cat sure is cute.

It's right smack dab on their website, which I've already linked to, but I neglected to mention that the Montreal Comix Jam also has a blog running. I really love the idea of having such a narrowly focussed news site, devoted to a specific comics community. If I didn't have classes the next morning, I'd join in a heartbeat. I'll be sure to go in Spring. This I swear!

Over on Shane Glines one can find a nifty little promotion being concocted by the Toronto Comic Art Festival, an event which I've mentioned previously. For some reason, the TCAF site hasn't updated with this information. Thanks to Rich for scanning this in.

I've mentioned before that I'm taking Animation in college. This blog was meant to be about both comics and animation, but since my initial interest was in comics, that's the road it's taken. I'm not going to fight that, but I really need to delve a little deeper into the world I'm hoping to make a living in. That being the case, don't be surprised to see a few more links here and there to the subject. To begin with, local animator Nick Cross, of Spumco and Pyatyletka fame has designed the poster for Ottawa's student animation festival. You can also sample one of his disturbingly old-fashioned cartoons, Der Unterseefraulein.

There's an interview with his boss, John K. over at Animation World Network. Of particular interest to me was his rant against animation schools, specifically Life Drawing.

"They teach five-minute life drawings. Everybody brings in these scribbles! Just pages and pages of scribbly life drawings. And I ask everyone, “Ah, why does this look like a scribble?” “’Cause I did it in five minutes.” Why would you show a potential employer something that you drew in five minutes? How do I know you can draw a finished drawing? I know you can make scribbles, that’s great. What good is it? And I ask the teachers too. The only reason they do it is because sixty years ago the Disney studio — when Don Graham was teaching — supplemented their life drawing classes with gesture drawing classes. But you don’t give gesture-drawing classes to people who don’t already draw well. If you can already draw the human body and you know how anatomy works, great — now you can do a quick sketch. But they’re teaching you the last step first. So, if you don’t know how to draw anything yet, go ahead and draw really fast! How the hell can you learn anything? You can’t see what’s there in five minutes. You can’t do line of action with that. But meanwhile, the pose doesn’t have any line of action — because the model doesn’t know anything about animation. He’s not doing a gesture that has a line of action. But they still do it because the last generation of teachers did it, and the previous generation of teachers did it, and so on back six generations or something. But no one knows why they’re doing it anymore. They only do it because it says in the curriculum: “You must have gesture classes.” You know what I equate it to? The fall of the Roman Empire."

No, that doesn't sound like my class at all. Oh, for the days when I was in a real life drawing class.

Lastly, a small bone thrown to the few people who regularly come here via Barbelith, a few Grant Morrison drawn covers for a fanzine called "Fusion" (back cover on the second picture). Just because we disagree on the difference (or lack of difference) between sole-creator comics and multi-creator comics doesn't mean I don't adore you all to bits and pieces.


















posted by Steven at 11:28 PM