San Francisco Report.

I spend this past weekend in San Francisco. I knew I was in San Francisco (because I got on the right plane and) because the buildings looked like this:

Plus you can see boats in the bay from China Town.


I didn’t take many pictures at the exhibition (because it seems particularly unprofessional in a setting where I’m trying to be as less of a dork as possible).



I had to get a picture of Mike in his mini-comic felt sandwich board:


…as well as this fun drawing on the side of a building.


I was able to talk to many people there (artists and editors and such), and felt really good about the show. APE is the nicest convention that I’ve ever been to. San Diego Comic Con is a great event, but it’s such a circus. APE is a bit more focused and laid back. I was able to talk to editors about coming out for SCAD’s Editors’ Day next spring, and a few artists about Comic Arts Forum in the fall

It seems odd to visit San Francisco because so many of my friends are out there. Patrick (my best man) is still living out there (when he’s not doing lighting design for a traveling show). I got to meet his girlfriend, who is lovely. She designs fancy clothes and owns her own business. We all met on Saturday night and went out for some fancy sushi and Andie met us there. Andie is living in San Francisco while Natasha works on a documentary for a few months. I think they should move to Savannah, but that’s just my opinion.

Then on Sunday night we met Ian, his girlfriend, and his sister. All lovely people. We had some Mexican/South American tapas. Mmmm.

The worst part of the trip was flying back on the plane of course. It was an all day thing.

Now I'm back to working on SCAD paperwork. Ugh.

Getting Ready for APE.

I silk-screened the covers to my book for APE. I had to have Kristie help hang the prints as I pulled them. She also took these pictures.

Notice the FLCL poster on the wall. I had to use my laptop for music since I don’t have a decent sound setup in the garage. The garage is more spacious that it looks.



Don’t ask about the mess I made in the bathroom when I was exposing the screen… We don’t talk about it around the house.

You can read the story here:


I’ve got to figure out a way to keep these files from looking so pixilated online.

Fluke!

Saturday Mike and I travelled up to Athens for the Fluke mini-comics festival. I must say that the show seemed much better than last year. Still a good turn out, but the quality of the work seemed to rise a bit.

Several scad kids were present including Mike (seen above),

Kevin and Tyler (Tyler didn't exhibit),

Jon (and what's-her-name),

Brett,

and Alex.

Those not pictured, but present include: Joe, Barbara, Pranas, Amy, Andrew, and probably someone else I'm forgeting. There were several other scad kids there but weren't exhibiting.

It was a fun show, just as before. After the show we hung out at Drew and Eleanor's little home for quite a while. As to be expected this was delightful. Many thanks to both of them for being so wonderfully hospitable and warm (the transition from the cold night into their heated house was easily the best experience of the chilly night). They have at least one really nice cat - the other I didn't have much a conversation with. It was nice meeting Yoder, Robert, Patrick and Chris Wright. A perfectly delightful evening indeed.

Our cat may not live through the day...

This is why cartoonists who have cats should never leave the lid off the ink when they step away from the drawing.
I've spent the last hour and a half cleaning up cat prints.


Argh.

Still not enough sleep around here.

Kristie's been working hard on her ceramics stuff in preparation for her national TV debut. I've managed to pencil 6 pages in two days time. Tonight I've laid out the rest of the story. I didn't have a steady enough hand to ink, so I'll save that for tomorrow.

Kristie's been up until 4 the last few nights working on her stuff. I just stay up as best I can, I don't have the willpower to stay up like I used to.

I did manage to make my best batch of Welsh Rarebit ever tonight. Kristie even hate it. She responded with a round of cinnamon toast - a Duncan staple of late.

We're watching To Kill a Mocking Bird now. These people sound like they're from Georgia, not Alabama...

I tried to be nice to Kristie, but she made ugly faces at me. I guess I've learned my lesson.

Fluke is next weekend!

Later.

A desk, some pages, a cat, and a tour of walls.

So here's my current work set up. You may notice the fancy set of Rapidograph pens that I got for my birthday. Or you may notice that I use a sock to clean my brushes. Or you may notice the mug of earl grey tea in the floor - the mug is from the same set as the mug I keep at work. It's not that I like the mug, but I can't seem to find one that I like better. And we all know that anyone who drink earl grey does so only because Capt. Picard did. You may also notice that the Real GhostBusters/TMNT curtains have yet to be replaced in my office. This is of course despite the fact that Kristie's put fancy nice ones in the living room. You may also notice that Randy Travis is playing on iTunes (just between Iron&Wine and A3 on shuffle).

Here are a few of the pages I've been working on, spread about on the floor in an "oh, I've dropped these drawings" dada sort of way.

Our cat Bunny found a better perch for bird watching.

--------------
Now for a tour of the things that we've got hanging in our house. Today we'll focus on art work.

This is a painting by Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner. It's called Space Hamster.

This by a fellow that terrorized Tucson with in Grad School. Little does Mr. Ian Kimmerly know that I'll be visiting him in April... Hmm... Patrick, too, for that matter.

Here's a painting by Jamie Adams, a recently married friend with whom I shared much time in undergrad in Montevallo. I haven't sent him a wedding gift yet. Not even a card. I did used to have his email... Not even a call (I don't have a phone #). Surely he'll stab me next time I see him.

A toner drawing by Ken Procter, a professor in Montevallo. He traded me this for a drawing of Kristie playing Nintendo.

I tried to take a picture of the tiny Barbara Chapman drawing I have on my wall, but it was too blurry (even worse than the ones I did post).

I guess that's it for today. I also updated the links over there on the side -->

New banner and other things as well.

Oh, blogger - you're changing so much. I can't even figure out how to manage this mess of a weblog. I've thrown together a new banner - that's really the best I can do now. There's some other mysterious errors on the page somewhere (who knows). Blogger has some sort of fancy design mangager untility that scares me. I'm too used to butchering html to let it go. I'll get up the nerve some day. Maybe I should do some sort of fake test design blah blah blah.

Here's a cruddy four-page thing for my Grad Studio's class anthology (80s Cartoons is the theme). Mine of course is the worse of the bunch, granted I didn't have pressure of getting a grade for it. I could explain the idea behind it, but there is really no excuse for how sloppy it is.

As it turns out, the e-Learning folk didn't really go for the crazy photo, so I had to try again...


I've been making progress on my short Gobnobble story. I'll get a few shots sometime tomorrow maybe. I've been trying to take of some stuff around the house (as well as wrapping up school stuff). I guess I've still got some more scad stuff to do...

Ugh.

Now what do I do?

You may not believe this, but I just finished my Survey of Sequential eLearning course. I submitted my last set of captions for the 546 images used in the course, an example of my own work, an image of myself trying to look professorish, and a suggested set of readings for Unit 3.

Of course there may be a few edits here and there in terms of typos and spelling errors, but nothing major. They have a proof-reader who will catch all that stuff. I've also requested that I get a final read-through before it goes up for official consideration. Other than that, I'm done. DONE!

So now what do I do? I should grade work from my Intro class, but I left it at work. I'll get it tomorrow sometime. Should I run around the neighborhood? Nah, I'll wait for Kristie to get home. I've been working on this class since the summer. I left all of my inking supplies at school, so I don't guess I'll be inking today. I'll get on that tomorrow.

I'm going to spend tonight finishing my research organization for my Moonshine Murders book. The 50 years worth of newspaper articles are a bit of a beast.

I've been watching the Twilight Zone all day and must admit that finishing this eLearning course feels a bit like a Twilight Zone episode. Rod Serlin's ominous voice: "Professor Duncan thought he finished with his onLine course, but an email that he would recieve shortly would bring his new found sense of optimism crashing down around him."

Students who take my online course will think I look like this:

A Fine Powder of Bitterness.

The past few weeks have come and gone with little in the way of truely gratifying progress in any of my endeavors. I've got a few pages inked, but not enough to get excited about. I've been working on the captions for the 546 images that are used in my Survey of Sequential Art course. The developer has begun to rush me on this step and the quality of the work is suffering. This has happened as EVERY STAGE of this process. If SCAD would rather have quantity over quality, then that becomes their legacy. I'll be happy to be done with it.

Teaching 5 different classes is killing me. Every night I'm working right up until midnight only to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to do it all over again. Ah, the daily grind has ground me to a fine powder of bitterness.

The forth-coming 5-year plan that I will undertake as SEQA Assessment Coordinator is like a giant looming on the horizon. Of course it will run me over sometime next month. Sounds like fun.

Maybe next quarter will be nicer than this one.

Hello...

IT has been a very long time since I was able to take the time to update this thing. Since last I posted I have finished developing my history course for the most part. 150 pages of text and 500 scanned iamges later, all I have to do to finish is write captions for all those pictures - which is no small feat.

I've been putting all my focus on school work for the past few months. I'm teaching 5 classes, developing this on-line comics history class, and working as department assessment coordinator.
It's a busy time, but it's almost over. I've been honing these new classes that I'm teach, so that's really been the toughest thing.

Next week is a good week here in the Sequential department. On monday illustrator and comics artist Peter Kuper will be giving a lecture at the school's Red Gallery. Then on thursday comics guru Scott McCLoud will be giving a big fancy lecture at Trustee's Theatre. Plus, get this, my Graduate Studio class will be having a critique that day and Scott McCloud will be participaiting in it. What fun. I teach Studios I & II and Dove teached Studios III & IV. For this critique we will combine in to one class (about 20 students total). It should be fun.

My personal work as suffered greatly because of the history class and these other classes. I have manged to pencil 12 pages and ink one, but as soon as I can I want to blaze through this story and get started on my murder mystery so that I can have part of it ready to present at APE (scad is sending me out there) in late April.