Alec Longstreth's Blog, page 27

Phase 7 at MoCCA 2011 this weekend!

Okay you guys, the MoCCA Comics Arts Fest is this weekend, April 9th and 10th in New York City and I will be there! I'll be tabling, as usual, with Greg Means of Tugboat Press. On Saturday I'll also be tabling, UNusual as it is, with my SISTER, Galen Longstreth! She will be signing copies of her picture book Yes, Let's!

We will all be hanging out at table H -10, which, as you can see on the above image, is right in a string of mini-comic and small press awesomeness. Right next to us are our homies from One Percent Press and a few tables down from that, you will see a big mass of people, lining up to get Joe Lambert's brand new book which is debuting from Secret Acres. And right next to THEM will be the Sundays anthology crew, who I think will have Sundays 4?

For the show, I will have copies of the first four chapters of Basewood, Phase 7 #015, all the Phase 7 collections, as well as my 24x7 book and issues one and TWO of Drop Target. Yes, that's right! Jon Chad and I just finished up Drop Target Zine #2 this weekend, so it will be debuting at this show. He's at table M4 (on the back wall) if you want to swing by and say hello.

There might be one other surprise at our table, but I don't think I can blog about it yet... you'll have to swing by the table to come see what it is! I only hope that it's not SNOWING in New York like it is in Vermont right now. I know April showers bring May flowers, but what does April SNOW bring? Ugh! Anyway, it'll be good to get out of town for a few days. I hope to see some of you in New York!

Walt Disney

A few weeks ago, I finished this great biography about Walt Disney by Neal Gabler. The unabridged audiobook was almost 40 hours in length, and during the WEEKS it took me to listen to it all, the thought of getting to hear the next segment had me racing to get to the studio each morning.

I haven't read a lot of biographies, so I don't know if this is common practice, but in this one, I loved the way that Gabler presented multiple versions of the same story. For instance, the creation of Mickey Mouse, which was a story told so often, it was no doubt embellished and dramatized over the years. Gabler presents not only Walt's version of the story, but MULTIPLE versions of the story which Walt told from various points throughout his life. Also his Wife's version (she was on the train with him, when he came up with the idea) and also his co-workers, including Ub Iwerks, who had a big hand in Mickey's creation and early life.

If any of you have read Phase 7 #010, you know that I was a completely obsessed, psychotic Disney fan when I was a kid. At an early age, I converted my closet into "The Disney Closet" and filled it with Disney comics and books and stuffed animals and clippings from magazines and drawings and anything else Disney that I could get my hands on. In my young mind, Walt Disney was a GOD.

I'm sure that's the main reason I found this book so fascinating. It was really strange for me to hear all about how Walt Disney was an actual PERSON, who like grew up and had a life and everything. Supposedly Gabler had full access to the Disney Archives for this book, so the level of detail in the accounts is often astounding. There are letters written by Disney and the many people surrounding him, transcripts from story meetings and dozens of interviews. Disney did a lot of interesting things in his 65 years, but I think the most interesting period for me, was the time when he was a struggling artist, and the first decade or so at his studio.

Reading about his artistic beginnings would be inspiring for any artist. He was dedicated and passionate, and he worked like a dog, day and night, honing his craft. And the first few years at the studio seem like one of those rare collaborative situations, where the right people come together and do unthinkably amazing things. If I learned anything in this book, it's that Snow White is one of the craziest, most ambitious artistic projects that has ever been attempted. And the fact that they actually pulled it off is just completely bonkers. You should rewatch Snow White. I did last week, for the first time since I was a kid, and it's absolutely breathtaking.

Cartooning is such a solitary pursuit, so it was really exciting to read about all these young artists moving out to California to work for Disney in the 30s and 40s. Disney basically set up an art school for them IN the studio, and they learned about figure drawing during breaks from their animation work. And from their ranks rose some of the artists I still worship today, such as Carl Barks and Bill Peet.

Sadly, (I think) the Disney Corporation got bigger and bigger and less and less focused, and the quality of their output sank rapidly, though there have been a few renaissances over the years (see Waking Sleeping Beauty for a great documentary about one such effort). As a naive little kid, my ultimate dream was to work as an animator at the Disney Studio. I now make about half my living as a professional artist (and the other half TEACHING art), and I know enough about copyright and trademark and contracts and whatnot, that I would NEVER work for the Disney Company. The instant an idea left my pencil it would be theirs forever, and I could never benefit from that work again. Obviously, I'm looking at this from a self-publishing standpoint, in which I would rather work on my own projects, with my own characters.

ANYWAY, this book was really great, I loved learning more about Walt Disney, and people should totally check it out!

Stumptown Comics Art Award Nomination!

Yikes, sorry for the two-week lapse in blogging. As the spring semester at CCS heads into the home stretch, things have been getting pretty busy around here. Plus there are a few upcoming comics shows looming on the horizon. I'm going to TWO this Spring!

First, will be the MoCCA Arts Fest, which is in New York City on April 9th and 10th. As ever, I'll be tabling with my old pal Greg of Tugboat Press.

Second, will be the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon on April 16th and 17th. I'll be tabling with Greg again, and for the first time with CLAIRE! who will be selling some zines she's making with custom-made patterns for making stuffed animals. She'll also have a few of the toys on hand, if people want to just buy them instead of making 'em themselves.

Also I found out today (from my friend Ryan) that Aaron and I were both nominated for Stumptown Comics Awards for our work on Walker Bean! Aaron for Best Writer and Best Letterer, and me for Best Colorist (obviously). Also the Elfworld book I was in is nominated for Best Anthology!

It looks like the voting ballot is open to the internet, so if anyone would like to cast their vote, we would appreciate your support! There are some great cartoonists on the list and there are handy links on this page, so you can check out everyone's work.

At these shows I'll mostly be pushing the new issue of Phase 7 (Basewood Chapter 4) and Drop Target #2, which Jon and I have been secretly working on for a few weeks now. There's one other SUPER EXCITING book that will be at my table, but I can't tell you about it QUITE yet... soon though! :)

Burned AND Undercooked no more!

Hey, remember back in 2005, when I bought a toaster oven with the money I made on my very first paying illustration gig? Well, I have been using it ever since. I think I can honestly say that I have used my toaster oven every single day for the last six years (except for the times I was out of town, obviously). Veggie burgers, fries, burritos, nachos, waffles, leftovers, uh... TOAST - you name it - if I eat it, it has been warmed or cooked in that little toaster oven.

I don't know who is in charge of DESIGNING toaster ovens, but the interface on this thing is kind of confusing. There's a top knob which goes from "off" to 450 degrees, and then up to "MAX." Below that, is another knob which has various settings such as "warm", "bake", "broil" and presumably the highest setting, "toast." Lastly, there is timer knob, which is coincidentally the only knob that I understand. You twist it to a numerical minute value, and it ticks its way back to zero, and then goes "DING."

Now, what's the deal with those two upper knobs? If I only turn the middle knob to "warm" but turn the top knob all the way up to "MAX" is that more or less heat than if I turn the middle knob all the way up to "toast" and the top knob only up to 100 degrees? What if one of the knobs is turned to "OFF" but the other is activated??? The first week I owned the toaster oven, I futzed around with these controls unsuccessfully until I finally figured out that if I turned the top knob all the way up to "MAX" and the middle knob up to "toast", the oven would get really really hot, really really fast. I have been enjoying burned AND undercooked food ever since.

Of course, when Claire moved in, she intuitively grasped how to use the toaster oven, making me feel like a complete idiot. It literally never occurred to me that just by lowering the middle knob one level (to "bake"), it would create a nice slow heat, instead of a horrible FAST heat, which just burns the outsides of things without cooking the insides. This simple truth has been like an EPIPHANY to me lately, and I feel like I have taken another big step down the path to not eating total crap food all the time.

I still say the interface design could be improved though! Claire and I housesat for my boss James and his family a few weeks ago, and when he was walking us through the house, showing us where everything was, I felt totally vindicated when he said, "This is the toaster oven. You, uh... turn this knob? Or... wait, this one? Hmmmm... Well, anyway, you get the idea. It toasts stuff." DING!

Sell Books Online?!

Man, did you guys know you can sell your used books ONLINE at Powell's? I just found out about this last week, and it's kind of blowing my mind.

You enter in ISBN numbers, and then the Powell's website will tell you which books they want and which ones they don't. Then they make an offer, which you can either be paid through PayPal, or you can get even more if you take store credit. Then you print out a shipping label and drop the books at the post office (THEY pay for the shipping). It's bonkers!

I used to do this all the time when I lived in New York, taking books into the Strand, but it's pretty cool that I can now do the same thing in my tiny town, which doesn't even HAVE a book store. So long used books I no longer want!

Sorry this is such a shameless Powell's plug, but my sister Galen DID used to work there, as did this guy Nathan whom she met there... and now they're MARRIED. Plus it's like the coolest bookstore in the world. So whatever, check it out!

Drawing Season

This winter has definitely been the coldest and most snowy one I've experienced since I moved to Vermont back in 2008. The joke at CCS every year is that it's not winter, but "Drawing Season."

It's true, the crummy weather outside has made it very easy to log a lot of hours at the drawing table, since there is no nagging desire to be outside doing things (though I guess I'm also probably playing a bit more pinball too...)

Every time I finish a chapter of Basewood, I take a break and work on a side project, so that I don't go crazy. This time I was working on a top secret project (cough cough) with Greg over at Tugboat Press. We'll spill the beans about it this spring, or "Mud Season" as it's called here in Vermont.

Anyway, I'll wrap that up tomorrow and then I'm hoping to tape down the first page of the last chapter of Basewood and start penciling it. It'll be the first tiny step of a very, very long process. One thing that's going to make it move a little faster though, is this great new podcast that Claire turned me on to, called Stuff You Should Know.

I bet most of YOU already know about it, because I guess it's consistently one of the top podcasts on iTunes, but in case you don't know about it, you should check it out. It's kind of like RadioLab lite. The podcasts are only like 20 minutes and they just focus in on one topic, which the hosts Josh and Chuck research and then expound upon. And unlike Radiolab, there are HUNDREDS of these podcasts, so it'll keep my pencil moving for a few months at least, if I space them out a bit.

Well, I hope everyone is staying warm and getting lots of drawing done (if that's your thing). Happy Drawing Season!

FRAMES and The Pinkerton Diaries

Two of the creative idols that I have spent a good deal of my life worshiping will be self-publishing two very idiosyncratic projects this year.

First up is George Lucas's "FRAMES" book, which I have to say is one of the weirdest ideas for a book I have ever seen. It is basically hundreds of still frames from all six of the Star Wars movies, in order, in a book, all hand-picked by George Lucas. I guess this took him two years? StarWars.com has a video all about it where they get into the specifics of the project, but the bottom line is that each set costs $3,000.00 and comes in a giant wooden box, plus it's signed by Mr. Lucas. They are only making 1,138 of them, and I do NOT need to own one.

Second up is The Pinkerton Diaries, by Rivers Cuomo, which Karl recently described on Weezer.com:

"The Pinkerton Diaries" consists of Rivers's compiled journal entries, school papers and letters from 1994

A Simple Solution for Sickness

I talk to my parents back in Seattle every week, and whenever I happen to tell them I'm sick, my Dad usually says something along the lines of "Excellent! Another chance for you to strengthen your immune system." My Dad is a doctor, which I guess, explains this favorable outlook on illness.

This is my longwinded way of saying that I was sick as a dog this week. I made it through my class on Monday no problem, and then on Tuesday, about half way through Senior Thesis Seminar I got a really bad headache. By the time I made it home after class, it had blossomed into one of the worst migraine headaches I have ever had. I spent the rest of the day in bed, trying to remain motionless and to avoid all light and sound.

Somehow, that was just like a horrible "Coming Attractions" for a four-day feature presentation of fever, sore throat, coughing, sneezing and more crushing headaches. It feels like I get sick a lot, maybe because I have been IN, or teaching AT colleges for the last... 6 years? There are plenty of other CCSers who are sick right now as well.

Usually I "soldier through" and try to keep working even when my body is very clearly telling me it needs to rest. This time, however, my body had Claire as its ally. I was told to rest, and rest I did! For an unheard of FOUR DAYS, I did very little at all, except lie in bed and feel miserable. I can happily report that I am now feeling better, and that four days of doing nothing is much better than my usual two weeks of getting a small pile of work done and feeling like crap the whole time. So here's to common sense and caring partners!

Speaking of which, Claire has finally launched her website! She's going to be posting some of her old toy designs, illustrations, commissions, gifts and other various projects and hopefully soon, some of her newer ones too. I'm pretty excited about it. Obviously I'm biased, but I think I can honestly say that she's one of the most creative people I've ever met.

The only other thing I have to report is that earlier this week, just before I got sick, I became extremely frustrated while trying to deal with my student loan lender, and so I finally just wrote them a huge check which put an end to the whole business. It'll mean pinching some pennies for the next few months, but I'm saving a couple hundred bucks in interest by cutting it short, and it feels great to be out from under their thumb. There are many PEOPLE I can think of to whom I am indebted (including my parents and my late grandmother who also helped me pay off much of these student loans) but I longer owe one red cent to any COMPANY on earth!

Rapidographs and Markers no more!

Every time I finish a chapter of Basewood, I take a month off to work on a side project, to clear my head before I dive into another year (or more) of work on the next chapter. This month off is also a great time to experiment with my cartooning technique, since I strive to keep all of the Basewood pages consistent, which usually means drawing the same way I did when I started drawing the project, six years ago. Needless to say, when Basewood is complete, I will never draw that way ever again.

I've been having a really good time inking my latest pages (for a TOP SECRET project, which I will announce in a few months) and one of the main reasons, is that I have sworn off using rapidographs and markers!

I suspect, like a lot of cartoonists of my generation, I started using rapidographs after seeing Robert Crumb use one in the documentary Crumb. I thought it was a "real" cartoonist's tool that would somehow help me draw better. And granted, the first time you use a rapidograph, it is one of the best drawing experiences you'll ever have. But then you have to clean it. All the time. If you don't draw with a rapidograph EVERY SINGLE DAY you have to clean it again. There was even the phase where I got really GOOD at cleaning the rapidograph. I could take it apart, clean it and put it all back together blindfolded in just a few minutes, like an assassin cleaning his rifle. But eventually the high maintenance level of this tool drove me insane.

The first rapidographs to go were the small ones. I soon learned that it was much easier to crosshatch with a real dip nib, like a hunt 102 crowquill, or a 513 EF mapping nib, or a G-nib. And for REALLY small detail stuff, I started using a .01mm micron marker, instead of the super finicky .01mm rapidograph. But I still used the larger rapidographs for inking panel borders and speech balloons.

But I've now realized that with a steady hand, and a speedball B nib, I can get the exact same line with NONE of the rapidograph hassle. Plus a dip nib uses REAL ink, instead of the grayish watery ink of the rapidograph.

At some point I also started inking all my lettering with micron markers, which I do not recommend. Even using the amazing "Magic Rub" eraser, the micron ink lifts up and turns grey under erasing. It might be a little slower lettering with a real dip nib, but it looks better, and again, it's real ink.

So now everything I'm using to ink (#2 watercolor brush, 513 EF mapping nib, G-nib, B3 B5 and B6 speedball nibs) are all dipping out of the same ink, and I'm loving how it looks!

Anyway, the semester is already in full swing here at CCS and I'm doing my best to get back up to full speed with everything I have to accomplish each week. I've been feeling a bit under the weather, which is crazy, because the low for tomorrow is 23 degrees BELOW zero!?! Winter is going strong here in Vermont. Stay warm everyone!

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

Claire and I returned last night from our trip to Florida, where we visited The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which was EPIC. We only brought Claire's camera with us, so she's got all the photos over in her Universal Studios Flickr Set. Links below will go to her photos.

"Harry Potter Land" (as Claire and I took to calling it) is located in the "Islands of Adventure" park at Universal Studios, and it basically consists of the main street of Hogsmeade, and then the Hogwarts castle. All the buildings on main street are covered in a thin layer of fake snow, which I thought would be really weird in warm, sunny Florida. Luckily, visiting in January meant that it was actually pretty cold (low 40s on the day we were there) with clouds and everything! It felt about as authentic as I think it could.

All in all, we spent about 4 or 5 hours in Harry Potter Land. The line for the castle ride was about an hour, which included walking through the castle and seeing all kinds of cool stuff, like a bunch of moving, talking portraits, Dumbledore's office and the defense against the dark arts classroom.

We also spent about an hour in line to get into Olivander's wand shop. This was WELL worth the wait, because Claire was chosen to test out some wands! The first wand she tried had a unicorn hair core, but she totally fragged up the wand shop with that one, so next she tried lumos with a very evil looking wand (with a skull on the end of it and everything). That didn't go too great either, but finally a 9" hazel wand with phoenix feather core chose her and all ended well. I bought a wand too, which I think I'm going to start using in the classroom, instead of a pointer :)

We spent the rest of our time wandering around, looking in all the window displays, which were really well designed with all kinds of witchy and wizardy artifacts. Each storefront had its own custom made hanging sign, plus all the buildings are kind of off-kilter and wonky. This might be weird, but I think my favorite part of the whole Harry Potter Land was the interior of the Three Broomsticks restaurant. It felt so real. I only wish I could have gone in ALL the buildings... and also live in the castle forever.

ANYWAY, we ended the day by going on the two Harry Potter roller coasters: The Flight of the Hippogriff, which was pretty tame, and The Dragon Challenge, which gave me wicked bad motion sickness. I pretty much spent the rest of evening trying NOT to puke my guts out after that one. Yee-haw.

Claire did a really good job of planning this trip for a time when the park wasn't too crowded. Everyone said it was really slow, but even so, it seemed crowded to us. I can't even imagine trying to check out that place at full capacity! All the non-Harry-Potter parts of the park seemed totally empty, so it was definitely the hit attraction. If you are a big Harry Potter nerd, I would highly recommend making the trip! Even if you don't buy a bunch of stuff it's cool window shopping and checking out all the shops, just like a real trip into Hogsmeade from the books!

Well, back here at the "Hogwarts of Comics," school starts up again on Tuesday, so I'm frantically trying to get all my stuff together. It's going to be a busy semester. On top of all my teaching duties, I'm also going to be drawing the last chapter of Basewood and coloring the next Walker Bean book. I'll be a busy bee! Buzz buzz