Back home from going back home - with stuff to do.

It's been a while since I've had time to put something here, as usual. Kristie and I just got back from Thanksgiving in Alabama. It was nice to spend time back home with people I only see twice a year.

While I was at home I was able to drag my dad back around to a few places. This picture was probably the most exciting to get. We had to climb under fences and hike down from the main road to this spot. It's right where Turkey Creek runs into Locust Fork River. Excuse the camera strap...


This is Crooked Creek down in Sardis. I think I've figured out that Sardis Road used to be called Crooked Creek Road and Mt. Olive Road used to be called Buckshort Road.

This is under Buckshort bridge. That's Locust Fork River.

While I was home I was also able to go to one of my favorite book stories: Reed Books. It's a huge loft that filled to the brim with old books. I found a few books while I was there. I found a lot more that I wasn't justified to buy. I'll sneak back one day when I can spend more time digging around. Here's what I got this time:

An old book of recipes from cartoonists, some I've heard of, some not.

A book on cartoonist Rube Goldberg, an artists who's name has become associated with the crazy machines featured in his comic strips. He's one of the few cartoonists who was able to work in every aspect of newpaper cartooning: strips, editorial, panel, etc.

I've become a collector of Comic history books. Writing this course for SCAD has made me even more interested in ths history of comics. If you have any that you want to get rid of, just let me know. I borrowed Bob's copy of Harvey Kurtman's history book and I don't want to give it back until I find one of my own. I love comparing different accounts of the same events. It's impossible to trust any historian.

Reed books also had a perfect stack of old Eclipse comics. In that stack I found:

The first issue of Scott McCloud's Zot! I think it's interesting to see McCloud's early work. I use his Understanding Comics as a required text in my Introduction to Sequential Art class.

Chris Ware's Floyd Farland: Citizen of the Future was my most exciting find. It was published 3 years prior to his inclusion in Art Spiegleman's Raw magazine in 1990. Easily is least recognizable work and, although it's a fun book to read, I doubt that he'll ever let it go back into print. It goes for almost $2oo on eBay for rugged copies. I paid a buck for a mint copy of it. Ha!

I also found a book on successful cartooning by Carl Anderson (creator of Henry). It's by my bedstand right now, though.

--------------------

I am currently finishing up the history course for SCAD. As I continue to work on it, I am spending more time working around the house and finally starting my new Gobnobble short story. I also have other paperwork that I'm doing fro SCAD. It never ends. Sometimes I feel like I've sold my life to SCAD. I would feel the same teaching anywhere else and not be anywhere near as happy as I am here.

It's been rainy today.

CAF XIII this week at SCAD!

I'll try and get a better image to put on here, this is all I could find right off.

This is the official press release thing, so it's a bit formal.
I had to edit it down.
------------------
COMICS ART FORUM XIII
12 artists this year. A reception where their artwork will be displayed. It will take place at Pei Ling Chan Gallery, 324 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., on Thursday, Nov. 9, 6–7:30 p.m. Anyone interested in meeting them is invited to visit Pei Ling Chan Gallery at that time.
Workshops (10 a.m.–1 p.m.) and portfolio reviews (2:30–5 p.m.) for sequential art students on Friday and Saturday. The panel discussion (6–8 p.m.) in Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St. is open to the public.

This year's visitors:
Rodolphe Guenoden
R. Kikuo Johnson
Tracy Yardley
Tommy Lee Edwards
Mark Schultz
Adam Hughes
Phil Craven
Nick Dragotta
John Paul Leon
Cliff Chiang
Paolo Rivera
Scott Hanna

Scary House.

Kristie turned our house into a monster house. It's not easy to get a good picture.




I'm frustrated about not being able to work on my own work. I'm busting my backend trying to do all this work for things that aren't what I want to be doing. I'm anxious to get to a place where I can balance work for school and work for myself.

Hand-Lettering & Typography in Comics

Easily one of the coolest things about teaching here in Savannah is that I can design and teach a special-topics course. Here's a poster for a class I'm going to be teaching in the Winter Quarter.

Crow Quill demo.

A quick little in-class materials demo from my Intro to Sequential Art Class.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven is much closer to Thirty than I'd like to admit.

I've been particularly busy with school of late - things are about to level out I hope.

as part of my Survey of Sequential Art history course I discuss the effects of film on comics and vice versa. That discussion includes this image of non-animated films that were based on comic books or comic strips. Kristie put this together for me, she found all the images and everything. See if you can recognize them all...

The Jenkins' Lawn

I haven't done very much in the way of postable work - so here is something from my sketchbook.



I'm still working on my History Class - which has all but destroyed me.

I hope to finish the script on my next gobnobble story and then get to work drawing it so I can really start to write the Morris Moonshine Murder story.

Adventures on Turkey Creek.

Thank so much to everyone who has expressed their concerns for Kristie.
----------

Here's something for you to look at.

I'm working on drawing a new story before the end of the year - it's another story with the same characters. While I'm drawing that I'm writing a much longer story (I dare not use the phrase 'graphic novel' when I know it's just a comic). It is a much more serious story about a 1950s 'murder' mystery that happened around where I grew up. I took a few days to go back home and try and get some reference and understanding of the area. Much of the trip was about family history, too.

My dad and I wondered the woods and creeks for the better part of a day - I dubbed our quest 'Adventures on Turkey Creek', my mom helped me in the library combing through microfilm, my grandparents cleared me up on a few places that I wasn't quite sure about, Brent (Maze) helped me find a few places, Kristie's grandmother gave me some information on local history (in addition to what my parents already gave me). I am in debt to them all and I am sure I'll be asking for more help later. The research department at the Linn-Henley building in Birmingham helped too.

I present to you a small sampling of the many images taken last week. Nothing too fancy.

Back to Savannah.

I spent the last week in Alabama working on a bit of research for a book I'm going to do next year. (I'll post a bit of that pretty soon).

My trip ended abruptly when I had to come home to see about Kristie who found herself in a wreck. It was pretty rough, but she's fine. My little red truck was on the news.

I thank God Kristie was okay, and that Kevin was able to come take care of her while I made the six and a half hour drive. He also took these pictures. Special thank to Kevin and April.

penny dreadfuls and Anna Paquin

Formulating this history class has got me spread way thin. Not to mention about 30 books spread about our living room. PLUS we have to go home this weekend - which means I might as well just give up.

...and why do like Almost Famous so much, huh?

Go Outside! - again.

I'm having issues with my scad web space. Grrr... So here are the 3 pages that may or may not have shown up for you on the previous post...

A new short - Go Outside.

As a theme for a mini-comic my grad class chose 'Big Animals and Small Kids - or Big Kids and Small Animals.'

This is my contribution.

San Diego - after the fact.

I realize it's a bit late (a week and a half) to be posting ComicCon stuff, but with other mess going on I'm doing good to be awake. Developing the eLearning course for scad is killing me - it just takes too long. Not to mention the round of malaria I suffered through last week - or the aweful trip home (being stuck overnight in texas) - I am officially boycotting American Airlines.
Enough complaining. The convention was good this year profession-wise, so that's good.


The day before the convention we went over to the Hotel del Coronado.






We walked over to the beach as well. I think it was more like we went to the beach and walked over to the hotel.







I noticed a feeble attempt to get grass to grow. I thought it was cute. Our grass grows faster here in Savannah than we can cut it.




Just as last year, we rode the trolly back and forth - just a little further this year. I have decided that San Diego is not for me. I don't like the town that much. I like San Francisco much more. Diego's a little too surfy and beachbummy.




Imagine this line of people times about 30 - then wrap it around the convention center, in the unusually hot and sweaty air. This is the line for those who didn't pre-register. 2 hour wait? 3?





This Bane goober was everywhere I looked. I saw him everyday.




It was great seeing people that I hadn't seen in a while, plus getting to meet lots of new folks. I always enjoy looking at all the cool comics artists out there. I must admit it's mostly nice to not be there for the same things 90% of attendees are. There's never a line to see the people I want to see and everyone wants to talk and likes seeing work and mini-comics.
My favorite finds this year? The Sam and Max sketchbook by Steve Purcell and a cool book from First Second - American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang.

I start a new story this week.

Groceries.

All finished with this story. (Click image to read it - or the sidebar) Tomorrow begins the annual trip to San Diego Comic Con International blah blah. I'll spend today getting ready - packing, making copies, making books, etc.

Six pages.

I've got six pages done (sort of). No letters yet. ten more to go.
Notice that I'm not going to ink them - graphite only, thank you.

Who wants to mow my lawn?

Bunny Hides from the Rain.

It's raining here in Savannah. Bunny (our kittie) doesn't much like the rain. So she hides under me while I work on stuff.

Kristie's family have finally been given the okay to travel home - so the house is back to normal (as normal as can be expected). Kittie handled the vistors pretty well, but I can tell she's glad to have the house to herself again.

Me? I'm drawing with my left hand and typing my Survey of Sequential Art E-Learning Course Development stuff with my right.

I'd rather just watch more Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (my new favorite cartoon).

Older PillowHead Story

While I'm working on my next book, I though I'd put up an older story called "Attack of the Bed Bugs!!!"

It was when I was going to call the book PillowHead Todd instead of Gobnobble. Since PH isn't the main character I've chosen not to title the book after him. Also note that PH's colors aren't the definitive version... I've lost a lot of my old files and could only find this version.

Who wants a book?

I've got a small number of books made, so if you want one just e-mail me and let me know you'd like one.

one cloud gets lonely.

Here the whole comic.

cover with titles

Here's the cover with the titles. The colors look more true. Something went crazy with the other file. Don't believe the other file. It tells lies.

working cover.

I'm working on the cover today. I'm not super happy with it so far, but I'm going to go with it just because it's more important to be done with it and start and new book.

I think I've decided to make the next book a set of shorter stories, using different drawing styles maybe.

A Rainy Day...

It's raining pretty hard here in Savannah as we wait on Trpoical Storm Andrew to arrive. He doesn't seem to be that special so far...







This rain reminds me of the monsoon season in Tucson.







Alright, I've got to get back to working on finishing my book.

Round One - Editing

I've finished with the first round of inking. Actually I finished on thursday, but have been busy with other stuff since then. I'm now going thru and finishing up drawing, correcting mistakes, etc. This shouldn't take too long. I'm putting my school stuff on the back-burner for the rest of the week while I finish this book up and start my next one.

I will however have to go to work tomorrow - since after spreading these pages out I realize that I left a page on the copier at work...

Five new pages.

Today was my first day off. I was able to get five more pages inked. I haven't scanned them yet, but I will tomorrow. I've put a better more 'official' image linking to my new story in the 'comics' section - just over to your right.

Comic!

I'm putting this link up here really quick. These pages are in the rough stage - no clean up yet.


Click here to read pages from One Cloud Gets Lonely.

Inked Pages.

I'm in the process of inking the pages and finishing up this book. I want to post them in order - but in a format that's actually readable. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that yet...

The Family Chicken!

Here's Kristie's new website!
The Family Chicken
http://thefamilychicken.net

Lettering!

So I haven't quit working on the book, it's just not a particularly exciting part of the process (unless you really like hand-lettering - as I do).

I have finished lettering the book (all 22 pages). I still have to ink the pages - at which point I will also do the word balloons and panel borders (jobs usually associated with the lettering stage).

The trained eye will note the following: David is drawing his comic pages slightly smaller than the standard 11x17. The curtains featured in the studio are TMNT and The Real Ghostbusters. That's an adorable Tomy solar powered bobble-head. Although he keeps a copy of Wally Woods "22 Panels that Always Work" on his desk David rarely uses it.


You may also note that David has almost all of Luc Besson's "Adventure et decouverte d'un film" books (lacking only 'Atlantis' and 'Subway'). He also subscribes to Giant Robot - a magazine that never fails to inspire him on at least some level. (on a side note he also subscribes to the Comic Journal, National Geographic, Following Cerebus, Newsweek, and sadly enough Entertainment weekly.)

Kristie has been working super hard on her website (a fancy feat of Dreamweavership if ever there was one). It'll be done soon.



I'm also finally getting around to putting this picture of the official plush PillowHead up here. It's from Mr. Patrick in Tucson (not to be confused with San Fran Patrick). I will never be able to sew as good as this, ever. It's pretty fancy, indeed.

Anywho, now I've got ink all this funny book mess...

Big Mama and Jimmy.

In Graduate Sequential Studio my students have a one-day one-page project to connect two random photographs. Afterwords all the comics and photographs will be collected together into a joint narrative. Nothing complex or difficult, but usually pretty fun.

Here's my contribution to the project - linking an image of a pool-player named Big Mama and a weepy school-boy named Jimmy.














Here are the original photographs.

YardBird Watchin'

Here are three pages that I pounded out tonight in a few hours. It is for the Fluke festival anthology.

Page 22.

Here's the last penciled page. I've still got to letter and ink them all... That'll take a little while now that I've started teaching again. I know I didn't get as much done during my break as I had hoped, but I think I did pretty good. My goal is to be able to put out 4 books a year.

I'm teaching a new class. There's also a bit of drama at work, which makes me very unsettled...

Page 21

Just one more page to go...