No Swimming

I worked on a short story for my friend Luis' anthology. It's a themed anthology called Decadente. Stories were to in some way address the idea of "The End Of The World".  I was honored to be invited to participate.

Here's snippet of my comic:

My story is only two pages long. I was doing good to get it done at all. You will be able to read my entire story--in addition to countless others--in the book once it is published. I will keep you posted.

A Good Man

Joel and I started a band. It's called A Good Man. Matt is our bass player now. So it's a trio, really. We've only played a couple shows.

I wasn't in Savannah when Joel recorded the first album, but I do all the artwork. 

We did a limited edition run of discs with hand-pulled 3-color booklets. Only $6. This was a lot of fun--I really want to do more stuff like this. 

Here's the shirt design. It's a steam-powered car-boat. I've got the screen made--I just need to get around to printing them.

I also have a fancy big poster design all ready to print (screen made and paper cut) that I'm really excited about. 

DEEP Anthology

Chair of SEQA Anthony Fisher was working with a local middle school on a project called DEEP. I can't remember all the details of the program (because it was a few years ago that it started up). Recently they put an anthology together of poetry written by the middle schoolers and illustrations by SCAD folk. I chose two poems to illustrate--sadly I can't find the copies of the poem with the student names. One poem was entitled "Whisper Night."

The other was called "I Hate My Costume."

Here are some of the sketches that went into the process.

And Also Much Cattle.

Scott and I finalized the script on our comics project. We've been working on it for almost 3 years I think. He lives in Alabama, so we've been working slower than I wish we could. 

 There are about 70 scenes total in the entire story. It's going to be a massive project and is the most solid thing that I've ever worked on.

It will soon be the primary project in my comics-making life. We've been finalizing the character designs for a couple weeks now. 

It's Toboggan Time

I made a Christmas card this past year.Two-color screenprint on craft-cardstock.

See--it's a pun on toboggans... In the SouthEast, they are hats. Everywhere else it's a sled.

So much, so much!

So much has been happened since my trip to White River Junction for ICAF back in September.
The next few post will just be a recap of what all has been going on.

ICAF 2011

I've been doing so much that I haven't found time to post anything.

I was able to give a paper at the 2011 International Comics Art Forum. This year it was at the Center for Cartoon Studies, so I was finally able to visit that school. My camera is absolute crap, so I don't have any good pics.

I'll write more later.

Cleaning the lettering pens.

It must be Fall--I'm cleaning my pens for my SEQA 386 Hand-Lettering and Typography for Comics class. A few hours soak in Windex usually does them pretty good.

Hair Cut Guts Redux

Since I reworked the cover of Playing to the Haircuts, I decided to throw some some gray tones over the inside pages. The story is really just a few pages of Julie and Fred vaudevillian banter. Everything looks fancier when you print it on cream off-white paper. Here's a page.

Playing to the Haircuts - screenprinting.

Each year my Mini-Comics class picks a theme for which we all create a mini-comic. These go into a box set. In 2008 we did the Ology Anthology where each person chooses an area study; I created a comic called Nephology (the study of clouds). In 2009 we did the Hat Box where everyone chose a different hat to base a story; I did a comic called Herman's Dunce Cap.
In 2010 the class did a set of stories based on Rhyming Disorders (I forget the name right now). I was knee-deep in department chair duties, so I didn't get to make a book that year.

This year (2011) we did the Hoakum House Theatre, where everyone created a story of a Vaudeville act. I created a dinky little story called Playing To the Haircuts (which means that your act is so bad, the audience is leaving). A requirement for these sets is that the cover must be silkscreened. Here's what I did for my vaudeville cover. It's a plum-colored Canson paper (quite a tooth) with light mint ink:

That's what went into the set, but when I printed another round I wanted to add a second color to the print. Sometimes when I want a second color on a print but don't want to burn a second screen I'll just tape off certain areas on the under-side of the screen and print a transparent layer over a few sections. Here's the taped-up screen:

I blocked off the background so that the characters would have the yellow layer. You can see the blocked off areas from the squeegee side when I hold it up the window:

I printed it up and it looked like this:
I didn't like it, so I re-taped the screen opposite (so the background would get the yellow ink):

That's the final version.