Tokyo Day 03 - Shinjuku

After taking care of some business this morning (as is the case when you are anticipating 52 student arriving in a unfamiliar place), Dove, Jason (the other Jason - Ray's friend) and I traveled around to get used to the city. I wanted to go to the hotel from Lost in Translation, so we make our way to Shinjuku.


There was a nice park there (Shinjuku Central Park). A young lady playing some sort of fancy stringed instrument. The photo is not nearly as interesting as audio would be.

Even in Tokyo Saturdays are for yard sales! That's Park Hyatt in the far background (our destination).




At the Park Hyatt:

We were making our way to the New York Bar and Grill on the top floor (52). That's the abr from the film). Here we are inside the elevator:

The view was lovely...



We were told that the bar was closed (I don't think it was) so we didn't get in. We were not dressed for the dining room for sure. We then made our way back through the park. We foud a homeless shanty-town area:


A father/son round of catch:

Father/daughter time at the yard sale:

Back toward the station I noticed a manga add for beer:

We had a fantastically authentic lunch at a yakitori hole in the wall. (BTW, it was Jason's birthday!):

Back in Ginza (our home town) the main road is closed and turned into a walkway on the weekend:

The vehicles here are so cute!

Sun down happens around 4pm.

Atmospheric perspective:

The students and artists had a fancy (sit down on the floor, no shoes) dinner after they arrived and checked into the hotel (around 9pm). Tomorrow we're off the Ueno Park and at least one of the three museums there, maybe more.

Check out Jason Maurer's Blog (he's the animation professor for the trip) he's got cool video of the trip so far. He'll be updating regularly as well.

Tokyo Day 02 - Meiji, Nakano, & Akihabara

Our first full day in Tokyo. This is down from our hotel. We've walked around most of the day (all of the day).


Dove draws all the time. Here he draws some guy in the subway.

After taking care of business this morning we traveled to the Meiji Shrine, which was my favorite thing today.
It's an absolutely lovely place.
Before entering in the main shrine one must wash one' hands.


There was a shine of a different kind...

We also went to Nakano:

And after a trip back to the hotel, we made out way to Akihabara.





Dove draws some more (Ray looks on):

Sachi sorts through her cards.

I love the advertising and public warnings in the subway.

More subway.

Here's a store the sales a ridiculous array of screentone:

The amount of dojinshi produced and available is amazing:

Note in this manga shop how the are two sides shonen on one side and shōjo on the other.
I didn't see the "no cameras" icon until after I took the picture. I was asked to not use my camera.

Tomorrow Dove and I are to get lost on our own. We'll see if we make it back...

Tokyo Day 01 - Travel to Japan

Chicago Hare airport:

A sandwich place that salutes the graphic arts:

From the airplane (I think we were over canada or some other such glacier):

More glacier:

Dove in Tokyo airport:

Jason with a compass and map (only getting us slightly turned around):

We wandered around after Ray showed up.







Too tired for any substantial narrative this morning. Today we take care of stuff. Tomorrow the students arrive. I still have a cold.

Getting Ready for Tokyo!

Alright. Let's not even talk about this last quarter - I'm still trying to recover. Ugh.

I'm leaving for Japan tomorrow morning and I'll be there for over two weeks.
I've got a new bag (fresh with a Snoopy patch).

I've also got all my stuff packed and ready. I've got got plenty of reading material for the 16 hour plane ride. I'm going start taking my reading more seriously. I don't know that I'll be as serious as Mr. Jarrett with his fancy manga reviews, but who knows...

Okay. I've got to try andf get some sleep. International travel tomorrow!

Where's Mr. David?

So I've been busy with scad stuff lately. That's my excuse for doing so little of my own work.

Kristie and I traveled to West Virgina last weekend. It was good to see Brent and Sabrina. We spend the whole time hanging Kristie's show. It took a while to get it up and finished.


She'll have it all up on her website soon, but for now you can see more about it on her blog:


While there we drove to Marshall of "We are Marshall" fame where Sabrina works as a pregnant research librarian. This is the statue right outside the library:


I managed to squeeze about 20 minutes into this burrito drawing for Mr. Jon Jones' The Daily Burrito. Last week was Harry Potter Characters, so I felt inclined to give him a Neville Longbottom (Longburrito). See other burritos at his website (link above). I didn't even bother to fix the halo in the shadow... How lazy.


This past weekend saw the first of the SEQA Graduate Student Workshop. Here's Geoff sharing his approach to marketing and selling your work.


This friday is, among other things, when Mia presents her Storytelling, Scripting & THumbnailing process. After her, Fish show us the secrets of Adobe Illustrator comics. Everyone should come to see it. Woo hoo!

School is already crushing me.

See. I've been working on Moonshine a little bit. I've been doing lots of other things. Like completely reworking the Alternative & Experimental Comics class. I'm really excited about this coming quarter. I've got lots of fun classes. Intro is always fun. Alt/Exp is looking good. Grad Studio will surely be fun. I've got a few surprises for everyone this go around...


I know it's time for school because I just spent the last few hours working on a slide show lecture for the Alternative class.


I've also been working on a secret project with my good buddy Scott. I've been spending a good bit of time getting used to working with a tablet.


My summer reading challenge is still underway. I had intended to reread the whole run of Cerebus. All 6000 pages plus any annotations, forwards, afterwards, etc. I'm half-way through The Latter Days (seen on my bed above), which is the next to last book. The end is in sight. If you've ever read it all, you know it's no small feat. After Cerebus I'm going to dive into Madman Gargantua (which I finally received after waiting 8 months for shipping delays - I ordered it for Christmas with gift money). You may also notice that I still sleep on pillowcases that feature He-Man and Mickey Mouse. I've had then since I was four. I will never let them go. Never.


Kristie's been working herself to death for her show. More on her site here.

Back to the Moonshine... For a little while, at least.

I've only got a few weeks before the SCAD Fall quarter starts up again. I'm already up to my receding hairline in paperwork for the forthcoming school year. I'm still trying to wrap up assessment stuff from last spring.

Since I got back from San Diego I've traveled back to Alabama for Kristie's brother's wedding, I've been fighting a nasty cold (a post-San Diego tradition), entertaining guests (my parents came in for an extended weekend), dealing with SCAD paperwork, prepping for classes (I'm re-working a few of the courses I'm teaching) and other such distracting endeavors.

I hope to get as much done on this Moonshine story as I can while I'm out of class. You can see one of the more recent pages on the desk above. I've got another project that I'm hoping to start up with a friend in Alabama. I need something to give me a break on this big project. I don't realistically see myself finishing it for at least a year or two. I'm counting on at least one more summer to work on it, maybe two. Given that amount of time, I imagine that a side project would keep me sane. I'm really looking forward to it.

I've read most of the books I got from San Diego. Maybe I will take the time to write a review of one or two of them. I'm back to reading the Cerebus collection - which I hope to finish before classes being. I'm up to Rick's Story, so I don't know if I'll make it but I'll get close.

Kristie's still plugging away on stuff for her show. We're both sick of this summer heat. I hope to find myself in Atlanta next summer. I want to teach for a quarter at SCAD-Atlanta. I don't think I'll get a chance to teach the Survey of Sequential Art class here in Savannah any time soon (except as an online class). I think they'd let me teach it up there if I can get enough people to take it. Maybe I could teaching some other basic course up there as well to give Shawn the opportunity to teach something else he'd like to run. I guess we'll see.

I'm officially on Jabber these days under the scad sanctioned id: daduncan@im.scad.edu
If feel inclined to say hello, feel free.