Brian Chippendale has started loading up some comics on Picturebox’s new website called Puke Force.
Man you got to keep regular check-ins with What Things Do (previously mentioned here) or else you’ll miss serious new loads of comics. Great comics. Fortunately they stay there so you can read them in fits. Little features are being added like links to show you where you can buy copies of the actual comics. New artists are upcoming as well. Above is a bit of a story drawn by Ted May and written by Jeff Wilson. Learn more about the project on Inkstuds by listening to this conversation with Jordan Crane and Sammy Harkham.
Meathaus bros Brandon and Dash are included in Austin English’s 20 Questions With Cartoonists selection of interviews. Brandon’s page is here, Dash’s page is here. One notable thing is that all of the interviews feature a shot of the artist’s work space, such as Brandon’s comics station above.
Doug Gilford has a passion, and that is MAD Magazine. Doug Gilford’s Mad Cover Site has every issue’s cover scanned and cataloged for you to enjoy, including some alternate covers and back covers. My favorite page is the thumbnail page with every cover in one place so that you can search out favorites that you remember enjoying from your pubescent days.
Jonny Negron (previously mentioned here and contributor to Meathaus S.O.S.) wrote to let you know he’s got a new website up where you can read some comics and check out some art and of course there is also his Flickr area. Probably most of it is not suggested for your non-nipple/non-butt-centric compliant workspace.
Brandon, Michael DeForge and Frank Santoro had a nice chat with Robin at Inkstuds. Future comics are FUSION COMICS.
I love a perfectly tuned spoof. Wally Wood could draw whatever he wanted, even Peter Max as Bugs Bunny as psychedelic guru to Mickey Mouse. Besides thoroughly enjoying this, I got out of it that there are many benefits to yoga practice. The comic “Mr. Mouse Meets Peter Max” appeared in Peter Max Magazine and can be read here on Hairy Green Eyeball II. Wood also notably produced another Disney spoof for Paul Krassner’s The Realist, the “Disneyland Memorial Orgy” poster.
Hey there is this TED talk by Scott McCloud over here. How can future comics be “more comics-like than they have ever been before”? I don’t have a chub-on for these future comics, sorry. Until we get to the full body VR suits. Notify me then when my VR suit is ready. Thanks for the tip from Matt Hayes.
Amazing Facts…and Beyond! With Leon Beyond is the comic strip by the stalwart USS Catastrophe comics crew, Kevin Huizenga, Ted May and Dan Zettwoch (previously mentioned here) which you can read in a much more pleasing, larger size on their Amazing Facts blog.
Over on Comics Comics late last year Dash set up a conversation on his theory of teaching and learning a comics “house style” in college as opposed to a free-form approach. According to his proposal, everyone in such a class would study the formal qualities that make a selected house style work, and thus everyone would have the same baseline to critique the work from. Students would be studying proven, professional material full of solid examples of composition, pacing, and storytelling. When relieved of the pressure of becoming an instant comics auteur with a personal, fully-developed style and voice, students would instead be absorbing practical knowledge in school that would theoretically be used later in their personal, post-collegiate work.
John Kricfalusi has long argued a similar approach for students that want to work professionally in cartoon animation. His argument is practical. He has written of the need to educate the next generation of cartoonists in the methods that he uses on his own productions because in the past he has found that with each new production he launches, he needs to train his crew from the ground up to get the studio working at full potential. His learn-the-basics-first approach also focuses on copying a “house style” of animated cartoon drawing, the prototypical 1940s Hollywood cartoons featured in Preston Blair’s book. John’s blog is here and his ideal cartoon college curriculum is here where he has organized years of his insights into one place.
One post on John’s blog nicely defines the reasons to study what he recommends:
“The kind of animation I promote on my blog is entertainment animation that requires a lot of people to work on the same cartoons. We all have to share the same language and grammar, or there’s no way we can make a comprehensive community effort. Not every artist in a studio can just go his own way and make whatever mistakes he wants to make and call it his style. Each artist is subject to a director and a story, and needs the tools with which to make the story work. Or he won’t be useful.
You can be an independent animator if you don’t want to be part of a team, and that’s fine. No rules and if you work real hard and learn to promote yourself as a rebel, a small but maybe dedicated audience will be your reward.
The better you can draw though, the more choices you will have.”
Dash’s theoretical classroom goal—to study the essentials of comics creation—would be achievable, but it wouldn’t have a direct, obvious connection to a post-college job as much as a theoretical John K course in animation would. That is part of Dash’s point: “The more outdated and inapplicable the house style is, the better. They only have the understanding; they’re not being bred for a specific job that currently exists”. Students and instructors would need to take a leap of faith into such a reduced and highly focused course.
Dash’s thought exercise is a good conversation starter about how we should go about teaching and learning the language of comics (and by extension, animation, film, etc.).
