This time I respond to an Art SoundOff entry by Owen Jollands, who submitted some thoughts on how we might apply more scientific thinking to our art analysis. Having no scientific background of my own, I share how teaching comics classes has improved my own journaling and reflection.
It’s dawned on me that I haven’t done any proper “art journaling” for this Art Soundoff challenge, so I take a break from my essays to share and reflect on some of the things I’m working on today.
This time I share a few thoughts on the experiment I’m running with the Boulder and Fleet webcomic. I’m posting the comic natively to several different channels and observing different results from each of them. Tapastic, in particular, has presented some interesting challenges in terms of interface and surprises in audience interaction.
After going through my weekly ritual of digitally gathering inspiration reference materials (in prep for this week’s LIA Cast), I realized that I haven’t quite solved the problem of cataloging and reviewing digital reference files. Today’s TPD is comparing the benefits of physical “reference morgues” vs digital ones.
I’ve been shifting gears a lot today and facing the challenge of keeping focus. So I share a few of my thoughts on how I try to stay focused and get through my to-do lists.
This time I share the surprise I’ve felt in how relaxed I’ve been about the Boulder and Fleet webcomic. Surprise invites the question “why,” so I explore what is different between this webcomic and others I’ve run, which leads me to some thinking about goals, vision, and an author’s expectations in terms of audience.
Thunder Punch Daily is back for a month of daily updates! Why? Because Rob Stenzinger and I have launched a creative challenge for the month of November, that’s why!
In this episode I talk about my experiences with Inktober, the reasons behind the Art Soundoff Challenge, and how I prepare for a journal microcast.
Talking about walking the line between eerie and cute on CAG!
In this special unscheduled episode of the Comics Are Great! show I’ll be joined by Eric Orchard, cartoonist behind Maddy Kettle: The Adventure of the Thimblewitch, published by Top Shelf. Maddy Kettle is a plucky young girl who faces witches, vampire bats, and spider goblins, yet never loses hope or refuses help when asked. She is assisted by friendly ballon-riding bears, banjo-playing raccoons, and vampire bats. So is this a creepy story or a light-hearted adventure? Maybe it can be both, thanks to the special affordances that only comics can offer!
Join us for a discussion on how comics is the perfect medium to blend opposite elements together and produce something new.
Whatever your stance on cosplay, one can’t deny that it’s an active arena in fan participation with media. Is it simply a distracting branch that interferes with the “pure” transactions between fans and creators? Or is it a means for fans to enrich their participation with the creations themselves? When fandoms form around a creation, how should a creator respond?
This time I’m joined by Rachel Ashley-Lovelace for a discussion on the culture of fandoms and cosplay and how they might coexist with the creative forces that inform them.
AADL Production Librarian Anne Drozd also drops by for another round of book recommendations!
Links mentioned in this episode (thanks to Eric Klooster for collecting the links!):
Comics Are Great! returns with a battle between kid and adult authors!
We grown-up cartoonists think we know what kids are and aren’t picking up on in our work. After all, we were kids once! But memory can be fickle testimony, so in the next Comics Are Great! I’ll be joined by 12-year-old cartoonist Connor to talk about what he perceives to be the anatomy of a good story for kids.
If you haven’t seen Gregg and Connor in action, they led some events at the 2014 Kids Read Comics festival in Ann Arbor, MI. You can see their banter during the Kids Comics Award show held that weekend here. Links mentioned in this episode (thanks to Eric Klooster for collecting the links!):