Alec Longstreth's Blog, page 12

Claire is Pregnant!

Well, last night Claire put up a post on her design blog about a maternity dress that she recently made for herself, so that is my signal that it's finally okay for me to talk about this news on the internet!

Obviously we've known for a while, and at this point all our close friends and family know. I'm sure many of you have been able to guess as much, given the well-worn path we've taken in recent years (getting married, going on a honeymoon, moving back to the bride's hometown where her parents still live, etc.)

This also explains why I have been finishing off old projects, like the 100 Watercolors book and the last issue of Drop Target and also why I am working to build up as much buffer as possible on future projects, like Isle of Elsi. I'm close to finishing off another top-secret project and I still have a few more on the to-do list, which I'm hoping to get done before the baby comes in January, including Phase 7 #021.

I am beyond excited to be a dad, but also a little terrified what this baby will do to my cartooning practice. If there are cartoonists out there with kids who have advice on how to navigate these first few years of raising a child while still making comics - I am all ears! Any tips posted in the comments below will be carefully read and much appreciated!

Vermont Bound!

Yikes, I blinked and another month has gone by! Claire and I are starting to feel pretty well settled in to our new place here in Santa Fe. We've done a few fun end-of-summer things which are specific to Santa Fe, including a visit to the SWAIA Indian Market and the annual burning of Zozobra. I've started a Santa Fe Flickr set where I am documenting a lot of this stuff, if anyone wants to check some of it out.

One of my little projects while we have been unpacking all our boxes was to organize my record collection. When my grandfather died, I inherited all of his old jazz records, and when I cleaned all my stuff out of my parents' house a few months ago, they gave me most of their old records, plus I dug up the records from my childhood. So many of these albums have such amazing cover art that, on a whim, I decided to start a Flickr set documenting this collection. Every time I listen to an album (to check for scratches/skips) I'll take a photo of the cover and write a little bit about it. Check it out if you're into that kind of thing!

Now that we're feeling settled, it's time for me to hit the road again! Tonight I head to Vermont for ten days so that I can teach my first two Professional Practices classes in person at The Center for Cartoon Studies. I'm bouncing around to give lectures in a few other classes while I am there, so it should be a fun, if not busy, trip. I'm also hoping to get a lot of cartooning and coloring done while in the distraction-free setting of White River Junction, VT.

My CCA teaching is also in full swing - I'm advising six MFA thesis students and running an online cartooning course - so my schedule is splattered with a plethora of meetings and deadlines. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my time zones straight (out here in Santa Fe we're on "MOUNTAIN TIME" which sounds very rugged). I've got students scattered all over the USA and even one in Korea this semester, so it's a lot to stay on top of.

Alright, well, here's hoping for some uneventful traveling. See you soon, Vermont!

Santa Fe, New Mexico!

Well, a lot has happened in the last month! I'm going to try and cram about four or five blog posts into one, since there is a lot going on these days....

So back in August, Claire flew out to Santa Fe and found us a place. Then we packed up all our stuff into a 24-foot moving truck and drove it from California, across Arizona, to New Mexico, arriving safely in Santa Fe. We passed through a crazy lightning storm for about four hours in Arizona, which was without a doubt one of the most stressful driving experiences of my life!

Our moving truck valiantly got all of our stuff here safely, and then died. On the morning we were going to return the truck, the engine wouldn't turn over and it had to be towed away. Unfortunately, the rental agency didn't do a very good job of keeping track of WHERE they towed it. This turned into a bit of a nightmare, trying to locate the truck so that we could finally close out our contract. It took four days to finally get this thing out of our lives forever!

Our new place is great - it's got about twice the square footage as our old place (with cheaper rent than we were paying in the Bay Area!) and we have slowly been unpacking all our books and studio supplies and everything. It's within walking distance of downtown and tons of grocery stores, drug stores, restaurants, banks, etc. It's also close to a few bus lines, so we are finding it very easy to get around Santa Fe, even though everyone here thinks we are crazy for not having a car.

Webby was pretty freaked out by the move, and spent the first week hiding behind various appliances. She's slowly settling back into her old routine and spending more time out and about. Patty did much better with the move (an old pro!) and seemed to be very happy in the new house. She was hopping around, exploring her new space, lounging in the sun, enjoying her hay and veggie treats and generally acting very normal and well-adjusted. One morning, about a week after we arrived, however, she seemed a little lethargic and was only lightly munching on her treats instead of happily devouring them. She was drinking a bit of water but just seemed kind of sleepy. Claire and I went to a party at her Mom's house and when we returned four hours later, Patty was dead. :(

It's hard to tell if it was the shock of the move, or if it was just Patty's time to go. We like to think it was the latter. She was getting up there in age (8 years old!) and she almost slipped away a year or two ago, and was only brought back by a veterinarian's skill, so she might have been living on borrowed time as it was. Either way, she is now reunited with her beloved Selma. Patty was a very sweet bunny and she will be sorely missed. R.I.P.

Our whole first week here, Claire and I have been running around Santa Fe

getting various utilities turned on, setting up our bank account, getting our new driver's licenses, setting up a new P.O. Box (listed on the homepage!), etc. etc. etc. We finally got our internet connection working on Monday so I have been playing catch up ever since.

Ironically, after having spent a lot of money, time and energy getting out of California's Bay Area, Claire and I will be returning there this weekend to attend the wedding of some close friends. It'll be surreal traveling back to a place that feels more like home, but isn't any more. Hopefully when we fly BACK to New Mexico it'll start to feel more like home. I'm looking forward to getting settled in here.

Anyway, I created a new Santa Fe Flickr Album where I will be posting photos from my various adventures out here in the high desert!

P.S. Right before we left, I finished my 100 Watercolors illustration project. I released a 100 Watercolors book and eBook, which collect all 100 Watercolors and document the process and tools used to create these paintings. I am also selling some of the original paintings!

P.P.S. Jon Chad and I just released the seventh and final issue of our pinball zine Drop Target! It is currently available for online ordering.

Your Comics Will Love You Back! FREE eBook

In preparation for my upcoming month of teaching at the CCA MFA in Comics program, I'm overhauling some of my old lectures.

While looking through everything, it seemed like a good time to make my old lecture notes, Your Comics Will Love You Back! available as a FREE eBook, over on gumroad.com.

The notes have been available to read for free on this website for years, but I figure it'd be nice to make a PDF that people can pass around more easily, or enjoy on their eReaders. I feel like this also solves the requests I've had over the years, to put the book into print, which I have been reluctant to do because of the hassle of order fulfillment.

Anyway, if you know someone who is at the beginning of their journey into comics, maybe point them to this eBook. It's chock full of information about the first steps a cartoonist needs to take to draw, reproduce, distribute and promote their comics!

Here We Go Again

Late last night I returned from two weeks in Vermont, where I was teaching summer workshops at The Center for Cartoon Studies. It was a busy stretch, with days spent teaching and nights being used to try and put together the last issue of Drop Target with Jon Chad. (NOTE: we did not get it done - it'll be available in early August!)

While I was gone, some big news auto-posted over on my illustration blog. My wife Claire and I are moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico at the end of July! The Bay Area is quickly becoming too expensive and Santa Fe seemed like a natural place to head next, since both of Claire's parents still live there. It's going to be an adventure! As you can see here, the packing process has already begun....

In between now and the move, I will be very busy teaching at the month-long intensive for the CCA Comics MFA program here in San Francisco. I'm looking forward to meeting a new group of students and to help them shape their thesis projects.

This is all to say that things might be pretty quiet around here until August, at which point we should be set up in our new place... wherever that may be!

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Well, Claire and I returned from our honeymoon a few days ago. I have been attempting to play catch up through the fog of jetlag and last night I finally managed to upload some photos from our trip onto Flickr.

I took about 1300 photos on this trip (about 300 of doors), so the Flickr set is really just the highlights. Only the best for you, internet! We visited Edinburgh in Scottland, my family's ancestral homeland Langstroth Dale in the Yorkshire Dales, the medieval town of York and last of all London. It was a fantastic trip! We saw so many wonderful things and I learned a lot and gathered tons of reference photos for various projects. I'm sure once this horrible jetlag wears off I will feel well rested and reinvigorated from the trip... or at least I hope so!

I've got two weeks at home before I fly back to Vermont for the Center for Cartoon Studies Summer Workshops. We've still got a few slots left, so if anyone wants to come hang out and learn a bunch about drawing comics, come join us!

Honeymoon!

Today I finished painting the last of my 100 Watercolors, after seven years of working on the project. The remainder of these paintings will continue to auto-post every Tuesday and Thursday over on my illustration blog, but for me the project is pretty much wrapped up!

This is one of a few such big projects that has recently come to a close, including a busy semester of teaching. It's shaping up to be a very busy summer for me as well, with two weeks of June spent in Vermont teaching Summer Workshops at The Center for Cartoon Studies and three weeks of July in San Fransisco teaching the summer intensive at the California College of the Arts MFA Comics program.

It is in this moment, as a lot of things are ending and a lot of new things are about to begin, that my wife Claire and I are finally going to take our much-delayed honeymoon! It kind of feels like it's now or never, so we are heading to England for two weeks. Neither of us have ever been before and we are both extremely excited. We leave tomorrow.

I am going to take lots of photos so I can write a big post about our trip upon our return, but for now, this post serves as an official notice that all Phase 7 and Drop Target orders will not be sent out until I return, and I don't plan on answering too many emails on this trip either. You have been forewarned, internet!

To England!!!

Broken Age is out!

As a follow up to my 2,000-word post about video games from last year, I just wanted to say that Double Fine released their new adventure game Broken Age last week, and I have played it, and it is FANTASTIC.

I loved the story, and the characters, and the writing, and the art style, and all the puzzles. The simple addition of being able to switch between two characters felt like a huge leap forward for adventure games. Whenever I was stuck on a puzzle, I'd just switch over to the other character and make progress on their storyline.

Since my last video game post, Double Fine has also made the documentary about the making of Broken Age available to the general public, via YouTube. It's an amazing glimpse into all the hard work that it takes to make a game like this.

Now that they have an adventure game engine built, I hope this will be the first of many such adventure games that Double Fine puts out. I guess time will tell!

Carl Barks Historical Tour

Last week I flew up to Seattle, where I emptied my parents' house of all my remaining childhood stuff, and then my father and I drove it all back down here to California.

As we were planning out our route, I noticed that we would be coming very close to Grants Pass, Oregon at the end of our first day of driving. I happened to know that this was the final resting place of my all-time favorite cartoonist, Carl Barks, so we decided to plan our trip so that we could visit his grave to pay our respects. We also decided to swing about two hours out of our way the next morning to visit Merrill, Oregon, where Carl Barks was born.

I called the Hillcrest Memorial Park beforehand because the cemetery is over 30 acres in size. They very helpfully gave us a general area to search. We arrived around 4pm and it only took about 15 minutes to find his grave site. He is buried under a beautiful pine tree, right next to his wife, Garé. I never got to meet Mr. Barks while he was alive, but his work has influenced my life in more ways than I can say. It was very moving to pay my respects to this great man.

I've created a Flickr Set with photos from this trip and specific directions for finding the grave site, with the hope that other Barks fans who may want to pay their respects will be able to do so more easily.

The next morning we headed to Merrill, Oregon which was just two hours East, over a winding road that went up through a mountain pass. We managed to find the local library in the basement of the Merrill Civic Center building on main street. There, a very helpful librarian dug up a special edition of the Lost River Star (Merrill's now-defunct newspaper) published in 1995 all about Carl Barks. I've created a PDF of the document if anyone would like to read it - it's got some interesting history about Barks and his relationship with Merrill.

Based on some vague directions we attempted to find the original Barks family homestead, which was "falling apart" on "the edge of town" but after criss-crossing Merrill three or four times we're not sure we ever found it. Anyway, it was very interesting to see the area where he grew up. It really put a lot of his early stories into perspective.

We made it safely back to Alameda, though I've been sick with a nasty cold since we returned. I'm slowly on the mend, which is good because I've got a lot of work to get done in the next couple of weeks, before Claire and I head out on an adventure. But more about that later, for now it's back to my various projects and teaching assignments. Everyone is working hard as the Spring semester comes to a close. It's going to be a busy summer!

2015 CCS Summer Workshops!

Although I am not hitting the road for any comic conventions this year, I will be traveling to the East coast this summer to help teach some summer workshops at The Center for Cartoon Studies.

Specifically, I'll be working with the Create Comics group (Ages 16+) from June 15-19 and the Cartooning Studio group (Ages 18+) from June 22-26. So if you'd like to live, breathe, eat, dream and make comics for a week in Vermont, sign up! A good time will be had by all. CCS is one of my favorite places on earth, so I always look forward to a chance to head back there for a burst of comics inspiration.