Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Anna McGlynn, chris ware auction, comics days vilnius, Fumetto, Girl Talk, Here, Iona Fox, Max, Puke Force, ratatà, Richard McGuire, rtve 3

Juan Fernández

Posted on April 13, 2016April 13, 2016

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08/17/2016

Juan FernándezAugust 16, 2016NewsJuan here with your Wednesday morning updates! the LAST DAY of the Daniel Clowes Benefit Auction, Jack Davis, John Baldessari, mixing colors, and more! ——————————————————————————————————————— Daniel Clowes Auction Items Up Through TODAY, August 17, 1pm EST All proceeds benefit the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. Check it aht! ——————————————————————————————————————— Drew Friedman on Jack Davis’ career as a TV Guide cover illustrator “TV Guide’s art director’s had a long track record of using some of the top caricaturists of the day for their covers and for interior work, including many assignments by Al Hirschfeld and more recently Ronald Searle: Jack Davis would eventually create nearly two dozen covers for TV Guide over the next dozen years, plus many interior drawings.” – Drew Friedman Read more about it HERE. (via The Comics Reporter) ——————————————————————————————————————— Wonderfully Offbeat Assignments That Artist John Baldessari Gave to His Art Students (1970) “In 1970, when conceptual artist John Baldessari was teaching studio art at the experimental CalArts campus near Valencia, CA, the assignments he handed out to his class were art in themselves. Humorous, confounding, sometimes very specific but often like zen koans, the assignments must have come as a shock, especially to those students with a more traditional sense of what constitutes art. They probably didn’t know that Baldessari was questioning art itself and in the middle of a crisis. That year he had taken all his previous painted work from 1953 – 1966 and cremated it at a San Diego mortuary. He turned from painting to photography. And he expected his students to rethink everything they thought they knew.” via Open Culture Read the rest of the article HERE. ——————————————————————————————————————— 271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book “In 1692 an artist known only as “A. Boogert” sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water. The premise sounds simple enough, but the final product is almost unfathomable in its detail and scope. Spanning nearly 800 completely handwritten (and painted) pages, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau, was probably the most comprehensive guide to paint and color of its time. According to Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel who translated part of the introduction, the color book was intended as an educational guide. The irony being there was only a single copy that was probably seen by very few eyes.” – via This Is Colossal More HERE. ——————————————————————————————————————— Listen to over an hour of background music from the 1967 Spider-Man Animated Series “The music from the 1967 Spider-Man animated series is jazzy and catchy. Unfortunately the music has never been released in a format that would allow us to enjoy it completely. I often wondered what it would be like to capture the music from a series that never did a soundtrack, but I don’t have to wonder any longer. YouTube user, 11db11, went through the entire run of the series and attempted to capture the audio in its complete form, removing voice and sound effect when possible. This labor of love, which I imagine took a good amount of time, is over and hour-long and an addicting listen.” – via The Retroist Further thoughts HERE. Dig even deeper with this old article from the radio station WMFU! ——————————————————————————————————————— Data Mining Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling “These guys have used sentiment analysis to map the emotional arcs of over 1,700 stories and then used data-mining techniques to reveal the most common arcs. “We find a set of six core trajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives,” they say. Their method is straightforward. The idea behind sentiment analysis is that words have a positive or negative emotional impact. So words can be a measure of the emotional valence of the text and how it changes from moment to moment. So measuring the shape of the story arc is simply a question of assessing the emotional polarity of a story at each instant and how it changes.” – via MIT Technology Review Find out more HERE. ——————————————————————————————————————— until next time! JF Share this page: [...]

02/07/2018

Juan FernándezFebruary 7, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan empieza el día con La Matadragones de Jaime Hernandez, La llegada de la Brigada, y una gira desde Lone Mountain! ————————————————————————————————— The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America – Jaime Hernandez with an introduction by F. Isabel Campoy In case, you’ve missed it, Jaime Hernandez is bringing a fresh take on timeless stories in his new collection of folktales,The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America . In classic TOON Books fashion, there’s a quality bibliography and appendix for those eager readers looking to dig deeper into these stories. As a great treat, it’s being released in Spanish and English editions, both paperback and hardcover. Guided by the classic works of F. Isabel Campoy and Alma Flor Ada, Hernandez’s first book for young readers brings the sights and stories of Latin America to a new generation of graphic novel fans around the world. Want to see how it all comes together? TOON Books has uploaded a nice selection of preview pages for you to dig into on their site. ————————————————————————————————— Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! “¡¡Último capítulo de la segunda temporada!! Y nos despedimos con una gran sorpresa; en abril publicaremos el primer número de nuestra revista de cómic hecho por mujeres, (¡al fin!) se llamará “Brígida” por Isabel Molina, Pati Aguilera, Marcela Trujillo(Maliki) y Sol Díaz.Les contamos de los detalles, las primeras colegas invitadas que nos acompañarán, las ideas para el futuro y mucho, mucho más. Además nos acompañan unos audios de un Patreon amigo, y un reporte de Panchulei desde Angoulême.” ————————————————————————————————— On a note of personal, North American interest: John Porcellino will be doing a small tour in support of his new D+Q book, From Lone Mountain (available March 20!). Please see below for dates. (Yes, Pittsburgh, lucky you, of course Porcellino will be stopping by Copacetic Comics.) Though I have some of the zines that this book brings together, I’m eagerly awaiting this collection of comics and stories by Porcellino. If anything, having this body of work together makes a nice package for non-comics readers to unravel into their lives. From Lone Mountain collects stories from Porcellino’s zine King-Cat—John enters a new phase of his life, as he remarries and decides to leave his beloved second home Colorado for San Francisco. Grand themes of King-Cat are visited and stated more eloquently than ever before: serendipity, memory, and the quest for meaning in the everyday. ————————————————————————————————— Collected from the thousands of pages of material that Frank has left scattered all over the digital landscape, these 4 PDF collections contain Frank’s best writing on comics and comics making from the past decade. Theory and process, reviews and discoveries, journeys both physical and spiritual. Check out the “Best of Frank Santoro” PDF collections, available HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 02-07-18 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 02-07-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

04/24/2018

Aaron CockleApril 23, 2018NewsAaron here today with Global Art Comics; Frank in Italia; Print Slam #8; Paradise Systems; Cy Twombly; Remote Mind Control ————————————————————————————————— Save the date! April 27th: SPRING GROUP SHOW | GLOBAL ALT COMICS! Featuring work by Trina Robbins, Mary Fleener, Lauren Weinstein, Powerpaola, Gina Wynbrandt, Conxita Herrero, Tommi Parrish, Gabrielle Bell. ————————————————————————————————— Do you have any peculiar habits or routines before starting to draw? I try to do drawing warmups. I like to copy Archie comics. It lets my brain draw without thinking, without inventing. And Archie comics have a type of cartoony realism which I think is perfect to copy. Ideally, I warm up for 30 minutes or so before beginning to work on my own comics. Although as my comic nears completion, I warm up less because I feel confident about my direction. Also, I obsessively make coffee on the stovetop with my Bialetti caffettiera. I have to drive far away to find Lavazza coffee at the Italian grocery in a different neighborhood. American coffee is crap. Frank Santoro is interviewed at Fumettologica, in support of the publication of Pompeii in Italy, and Frank’s trip this week to Naples Comicon. An excerpt from the Italian edition has been posted as well. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Paradise Systems: Woshibai, Lisk Feng and Jun Cen in conversation April 27, 2018, 6-8 PM Shanghai-based cartoonist Woshibai reads from his new book Migraine, newly released by Paradise Systems. Woshibai will be joined by New York-based cartoonists Jun Cen and Lisk Feng in conversation about Chinese comics and the illustration community. Jun Cen will also have copies of his book Negative Space availanble, which was recently published in China. ————————————————————————————————— Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 Through April 25, 2018, 522 West 21st Street, NY Cy Twombly: Coronation of Sesostris Through April 28, 2018, 980 Madison Avenue, NYC ————————————————————————————————— ‘EM stands for electromagnetic.’ Curtis Waltman at Muckrock found some good graphics in a recent Freedom of Information Act request: As part of my ongoing project looking at fusion centers’ investigations into Antifa and various white supremacist groups, I filed a request with the WSFC. I got back many standard documents in response, including emails, intelligence briefings and bulletins, reposts from other fusion centers – and then there was one file titled “EM effects on human body.zip.” ————————————————————————————————— Vison Box – 4-24- 2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-24- 2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/11/2018

Juan FernándezJuly 11, 2018los Cómics / NewsHartley Lin at Comix Experience; Drawing A Dialogue Episode 13; CARTOON DIALECTICS #3 by Tom Kaczynski and Clara Jetsmark; Shortbox U.S.Distribution – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Hartley Lin Talk with Brian Hibbs at Comix Experience Here on the site, Chris Anthony Diaz offers us some great documentation of Hartley Lin‘s talk at Comix Experience from this past June. After his Young Frances (published by Adhouse Books) book signing, Brian Hibbs interviewed Hartley Lin for the Comix Experience Graphic Novel Club, San Francisco, Wednesday evening, June 13, 2018 You can watch the interview HERE. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Review – CARTOON DIALECTICS #3 by Tom Kaczynski and Clara Jetsmark Nick Hanover, Your Chicken Enemy Inside the pages of Cartoon Dialectics #3, Tom Kaczynski and Clara Jetsmarkforce you to consider the cheerful yet ominous reach of the nostalgic blob, that cultural motivator that compels us to look backward even as we’re moving forward. Connecting nostalgia to Trump’s Make America Great Again movement as well as the styles and tastes of progressives and, in its potent final section, Kaczynski’s own relationship with his past, the central question of Cartoon Dialectics’ third installment isn’t “How did we get here?” but “Why do we keep returning here?” When I spoke to Kaczynski in 2013, that question weighed heavily on both our minds, running through our discussions of gentrification, global warming, the mystification of technology and beyond. Kaczynski told me that the frequently bleak stories collected in his impressive work Beta Testing the Apocalypse were inspired not by dystopian works but his interest in utopian fiction and his time growing up under communism, a system that was itself utopian in design but nonetheless broke down in execution. Responding to a point I made about the negative outcomes of his stories, Kaczynski said: “If my stories seem really negative, it’s only because I’m examining the negative to see if a positive can be teased out eventually.” – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – U.K. Based ShortBox Rolling out US distribution Zainab Akhtar: I’m happy to share some good news today: ShortBox is partnering with White Squirrel to offer domestic fulfilment to our US-based customers. What this means is if you’re based in the US and want to buy ShortBox, you will no longer be charged international shipping rates, but a domestic rate, with packages shipping through the US postal system. (Read More) – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Vivir para Contarla – Jesus Cossio Entrevistado Pablo Turnes, Revista Kamandi Jesús Cossio (Lima, 1974) es uno de los autores contemporáneos de historieta más notables de Perú. Su trayectoria como historietista comenzó en el circuito limeño de los fanzines pero fue sin dudas con Rupay – coproducido junto a Alfredo Villar y Luis Rossell – que su obra comenzó a generar interés y a ser conocida por fuera de las fronteras nacionales. Su trabajo sobre la memoria del pasado inmediato siguió con Barbarie (Lima: Contracultura, 2010). Además de dar talleres, ha organizado exposiciones y presentado su obra en otros países como Argentina – al que estuvo invitado para el festival Viñetas Sueltas en 2009 y 2010 – Brasil, Colombia, Venezuela y más recientemente los Estados Unidos. Tuve la oportunidad de ver su presentación en el ICAF en 2017, y fue francamente estremecedor su relato tranquilo pero sin concesiones, como quien habla con la certeza del que ha comprobado e indagado en lo más terrible de su sociedad. Cossio no es verborrágico: va al grano y es exacto como un bisturí. A partir de ciertas inquietudes sobre la dimensión ética de su trabajo, sus propias posiciones y compromiso, se generó este diálogo a la distancia. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Drawing A Dialogue – Episode 13 New episode of Cathy G. Johnson and e jackson’s, Drawing A Dialogue is up! They are building off of the stereotypes in cartooning we discussed in Ep 12, specifically how fat bodies are depicted in the media. It’s a great listen. Listen here. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Suzy and Cecil – 07-11-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

10/20/2017

Sally IngrahamOctober 19, 2017NewsSally here with Ann Nocenti, Julia Wertz, Sarah Glidden, and many more women and comics and news! ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Beat has a great interview with the incredible Ann Nocenti (above). Edie Nugent sat down with her at NYCC to discuss her upcoming project – the “sci-fi political thriller The Seeds with artist David Aja for the Dark Horses’ newly minted Berger Books imprint“, and her legendary career as a comics writer and editor. She speaks of her experience working in comics in the 80s, compared to later on: “Nocenti: What’s strange is that there were so few girls in the industry, that it was the opposite of sexism, I think. You know, I had Archie Goodwin and Denny O’Neill coming into my office talking to me about story–asking me if I wanted to write a story. I had, you know, Larry Hama, Al Milgrom, he had all these wonderful men in comics.They were all really encouraging. Ralph Macchio gave me the Daredevil to write. Denny gave me my first story, and they were extremely encouraging of the idea that a woman wanted to make comics…even the idea that a female wanted to write Daredevil. Nugent: So you felt industry support. Going all the way back. Nocenti: I wouldn’t call it industry support so much as it was bullpen support. This is pre-Internet So everyone was right there in the office. I was mentored by Louise Simonson, who basically taught me everything. Across the hall, you had Joe Duffy writing Star Wars, and then in the bullpen, we had Marie Severin…a powerhouse. So between me and Marie’s generation, we did have sexism. I mean she did so much in the industry and in the business, and she’s kind of unrecognized. She was right there on staff doing sketches when they needed them and covers when they needed them. So her generation–I think there was maybe more sexism than in the ’80s, ’cause you’re talking a post-’60s, ’70s culture, post-women’s liberation, you know, and so we were encouraged. I probably I felt more sexism when I came back to comics at DC and I was working with Gotham, in the Bat family. All those guys individually are really nice, but it definitely felt like a boy’s club.“ She goes on to talk about The Seeds (which I can’t wait to see – David Aja’s art in Hawkeye was so good! so that paired with Ann’s writing?!) and close to the end of the interview she speaks eloquently about why comics always pull her back. It’s a great interview with a powerhouse of the comics industry in her own right. Read the whole thing HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I can’t wait to get my hands on Julia Wertz‘s new comic, Tenements, Towers & Trash, which reviewers are calling “dazzling” among other sparkly things. She herself hasn’t been able to say much about the book or go on her planned tour for it, as the fires in CA have called her home to be with her family. But The New York Times and Hyperallergic both have reviews of the comic this week and plenty to say. From Parul Sehgal’s passionate review on The New York Times: “The city rises majestically in these pages. The crowded panels evoke the jostle of urban life. Your eye doesn’t know where to settle; there’s so much to absorb. Wertz loves New York down to its guts: the pneumatic tubes that stretch the length of the island and were once used to send gusts of letters from one post office to another. She loves the arteries of the subways, the lungs of the parks. She goes uptown to sketch movie theaters in the Bronx and peers down to the bottom of the Hudson River, the “ watery grave” where illegal pinball machines were dumped by the city in the 1970s. She unearths so many strange, wondrous facts that my exclamation marks in the margin resemble elaborate Morse code.“ Read the rest HERE. Hyperallergic offers more pages from the book to tantalize you in their review, and is equally glowing. Read that one HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The Nib is running Sarah Glidden‘s comic The Art of War, which was originally published in Spanish in El País Magazine. She draws herself (above) looking at Goya’s painting titled “3rd of May at Prado”. The comic is about the interaction between a viewer and a famous piece of art, and like all of Sarah’s work, is thoughtful and thought-provoking. Check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— In other words/images Annie Mok is on Episode 24 of Comic Book Decalogue on The Comics Journal – listen HERE. Rob Clough is working through his recent comic show mini comics acquisitions, so there are reviews of comics by Jen Lisa, Katie Fricas/Sara Lautman/Cara Bean, Lauren Weinstein/Gale Galligan and others on High-Low recently. PEN America‘s Illustrated PEN series presents Ajuan Mance‘s Requiem for a Hot Comb – see it HERE. Our Comics, Ourselves has a review of Kabi Nagata‘s My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness – read it HERE. Lauren Weinstein‘s latest Normal Person strip for Village Voice is a #MeToo story. Comics Alternative Interviews sat down with Sophie Goldstein to discuss her new book House of Women (Fantagraphics, 2017). The A. V. Club takes a look at Maggie Umber‘s Sound of Snow Falling, and the value of comics as a record of natural life. Zainab Akhtar found herself once again forced to leave a social media platform due to the horrific harassment of internet trolls, following a Twitter fallout with the Lakes International Comic Arts Festival. Send her some love and support via her Patreon – HERE. In a somewhat out-of-character move, The Comics Journal offers a review of the new film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women – which is apparently an interesting flick, but one that still fails to present the compelling/mysterious truth behind the creation of Wonder Woman. ————————————————————————————————— Connor Willumsen says ‘Cartooning is a lot like magic’ in this video, directed by Fatine-Violette Sabiri. It offers a glimpse into his head space and a look at his new comic, Anti-Gone (Koyama Press, 2017). Read Brian Nicholson’s review of Anti-Gone, HERE. Get a copy of Anti-Gone, along with two zines by Connor – a 20 page bootleg, and a special collage zine – as well as a unique Anti-Gone drawing, as part of the exclusive Connor Willumsen bundle from Comics Workbook – available HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-20-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-20-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

04/13/2016

Posted on April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Juan Fernández here with an especially internationally focused news round up: Chris Ware Benefit Auction; European comics festivals this weekend; Comics talk at the Prado; Max vs. Hieronymous Bosch; Cohete Comics Colombian Blastoff; Real Talk – Girl Talk; Chippendale chats Puke Force.

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Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency Fundraiser Auction – CHECK IT OUT HERE!

**PLEASE NOTE: The Copacetic Comics Company is managing this auction on behalf of Comics Workbook.**

This is a BENEFIT AUCTION for the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. It is part of the ongoing fundraising campaign to get the Rowhouse Residency up and running and serving students. All proceeds of this auction are going to Comics Workbook to defray the expenses involved in realizing this goal. This auction is a continuation of the now completed Rowhouse Residency IndieGoGo campaign and other fundraising efforts.

The eight items were donated to The Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency Fundraising Drive by one Mr. Chris Ware. Each item in this auction has been hand packaged and signed by Mr. Ware and was shipped by him directly to Comics Workbook for the purposes of being auctioned here to raise funds for the Rowhouse Residency.
Comics Workbook would like to express our profound gratitude to Chris Ware for his support of the Rowhouse Residency.

CHECK OUT THE AUCTION HERE!

Featuring Jim Rugg | jimrugg.com/
Video by Michael Pisano | michaelpisano.com
Soundtrack | Johann Sebastian Bach // Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen, BWV 43 – 7. Aria: Er ists, der ganz allein // performed by Michel Rondeau

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###Eurozone Fezztival Spezial###

Ratatà!

Macerata, Italy’s festival of illustration, comics and self-publishing, Ratatà is happening this weekend! From April 14th to April 17th Macerata will be packed with exhibitions, workshops, meetings and events. Illustration and Independent comics will be the focus.
More info here.

Special note: kuš! will present a special exhibition by it’s artists Anna Vaivare, Ingrīda Pičukāne, Līva Kandevica and Zane Zlemeša. Present at the festival will be kuš! editor Sanita Muižniece and the artists Anna Vaivare, Ingrīda Pičukāne and Zane Zlemeša.

Comics Days Vilnius
Also this weekend, starting Thursday is Comics days Vilnius. Comics Days Vilnius is the first comic festival in Lithuania, just south of the home of Latvian minicomics publishing powerhouse, kuš!. It’s exciting to see the start of a national comics festival. The goal is to promote the development and the recognition of comics in Lithuania. It will be held this weekend, 14-16 of April 2016 in Vilnius. Check out the Comics Days Vilnius program and learn more.

Fumetto

Last but not least, Fumetto in Lucerne Switzerland begins this weekend April 16-24. Fumetto has a long tradition in being THE exciting gathering for artistically ambitious comics making in Europe. This year marks their 25th anniversary. Lots of gallery shows and workshops. Lectures by Ben Katchor, Matt Madden, Jacques de Loustal, Joost Swarte, Goele Dewanckel , Gabrielle Bell, Tom Gauld, Edmond Baudoin & Cédric Villani. Not to be missed!
For more information, visit them online.
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Aquí – Here
Ediciones Salamandra has released a nicely produced bit that captures the Richard McGuire’s joy and curiosity as he speaks about the latest iteration of his lifetime’s work Here. Hands down one of the most passionate, human works in the comics medium.
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Santiago García, Francesc Capdevilla “MAX”, Laura Barrachina, Ana Galvañ, David Rubín

Radio 3 in Spain put together a comics round table featuring David Rubín, Ana Galvañ, Santiago García y Francesc Capdevila and “Max” recorded live at the Prado Museum in Madrid. Really interesting discussion moderated by Laura Brrachina on the interdisciplinary fluidity of contemporary comics making in the visually fragmented 21st century. Tons of excitement about comics. Escuchen aquí/Listen here!

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Max vs. Bosch
To celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of Hieronymous Bosch, the Prado has commissioned Francesc Capdevila “Max” to translate the work and energies of the Dutch master into a comic. Max has created (and has sent off to the printer!) El Tríptico de los encantados (una pantomima bosquiana) a 72 page Boschian revelery. The book is structured around 3 major paintings, The Garden of Earthly Delights, Cutting the Stone, and The Temptations of St. Anthony. Max did away with the biographic and focused on coming up with a narrative that would take you from one painting to another in an elliptical narrative.
Aprendan más sobre esto proyecto/ Learn more about this project.

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…4,3,2,1 -Blast Off

Cool comics publishing news in Colombia: Laguna Libros has launched a comics imprint – Cohete Comics. Following in the spirint of Laguna Libros, Cohete Cómics is to be an editorial labororatory that explores the possibilities autobio, documentary and fiction comics. Their first books will feature work by Pablo Guerra, Henry Díaz, Sindy Infante, Bernardo Fernández, Camilo Aguirre and Diana Ojeda.
Check them out and Have a look at what Cohete Cómics is up to!

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Girl Talk

Rod and Cone Press, run by my inspiring friends Iona Fox and Anna McGlynn, have launched their newest book, Girl Talk. It’s a collaborative comics anthology featuring comics inspired by diary entries. They just finished putting together all their copies and it looks stellar. Girl Talk features comics by Cooper Whittlesey, Anna McGlynn,Iona Fox, Hannah Kaplan, Alyse Burnside. This comes on the heels of their previous release, My Pace, a collection of idiosyncratic, satisfying and raw comics. Sure to be of equal caliber, gut punches galore.
Hop on over to their site to learn more about the launch and how you can pre-order a copy. I can’t wait to get mine.

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Brian Chippendale talks with Alex Dueben over at Comic Book Resources about the nitty gritty of Puke Force. Soak it up!

Chippendale: I’m not converting many haters. Haters of comics, or ideas like mine probably can’t even figure my damn personal mark-making language out, let alone find the plot. I’m laughing at you, not with you.

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That’s it for today! Stay tuned for a very special announcement around noon…

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Anna McGlynn, chris ware auction, comics days vilnius, Fumetto, Girl Talk, Here, Iona Fox, Max, Puke Force, ratatà, Richard McGuire, rtve 3

Juan Fernández

Posted on April 13, 2016April 13, 2016

Explore

The Black Callus Interviews: Tyler Landry

Kurt AnkenyMarch 25, 2016Interviews / Resources / Tool TalkTyler Landry has been working at a furious pace lately. I feel like every time I look up from my own drafting table, Tyler is dropping some new comic on the scene, usually oozing mood and style, and generally being just great exercises in atmosphere and design. He’s had work published online by Study Group, as well as many projects on the Comics Workbook Tumblr. In print, he’s published several well-received works under the shared label Clavicle Cocoris, and his latest work, Vile #1: The Coward’s Hole is coming to stores in May, also from Study Group. Kurt Ankeny: I know you work sometimes digitally and sometimes in analog media. What are your preferred tools for each technique, and how do you lay out your workspace? Tyler Landry: I was asked something similar recently, and I’ve been thinking about it a bit, and I really don’t have any set in stone prescribed standards when it comes to tools and workspace. I’m sure this will make a lot of people angry, especially those who wanna know which pencils to buy, or which brush-set to use, or shit like that. I know that if you’re looking for certain specific, consistent final results your choice of tools can be critical—but the more comics I draw, the less I care about those kinds of things. Let’s see now… Stories come out of thin air for me, so where I begin can change—but generally I’m drawing, thumbnailing, or mocking-up sequences on whatever is close by. I’ve got heaps of sketchbooks, index cards, sticky notes, paper scraps. I wanna record these ideas as quickly as they come, so it’s literally whatever’s available. I suppose I prefer pens and fat markers for this work, because it’s gotta be fast, man. No silly lingering. Whether I plan on working digitally, or on paper, I’ll always start out this way. If I can’t touch the work, especially at this raw idea stage, it has no permanence for me, and it will slip away. This work happens anywhere—at lunch, at the coffee shop, at my desk at work, or while I’m watching TV in bed at night. Kurt: I get that, completely. There’s often a sense as an artist that you don’t want to miss that initial spark that makes an idea exciting. For me, however, I often find that ideas that I churn out immediately fade in importance to me, where ideas that keep bubbling back up in my mind tend to create…more lasting? satisfying? work. Have you ever run into that, or do you just find your mind works oppositely? Tyler: There’s always a few duds in the initial deluge, but even the less complete drawings and snippets of words tend to be seeds destined for big growth. I find too, that if I linger on an idea and work it over too much that it turns into garbage, and I’ll either scrap it or return it to its first version. I think most of the best stuff comes at the beginning for me because I’m not inhibited by what I’ve begun turning the story into, subconsciously censoring myself. Kurt: Interesting. So you find your stories best in a Jungian sense, by tapping into that primal dream-world that we all have floating within us, is that fair? Tyler: That’s not a bad way to put it, yeah. Every comic story I’ve ever done has come out of nothingness. I’m slowly learning how to interpret and condense all of the chaos and more efficiently transform it into useful material (pictures/words/narratives). Kurt: Ok, so you have all these condensed ideas on various scraps of paper/notebooks, and then? Tyler: I spread these scraps and cards all over my drawing table, or on the living room floor, and just start arranging. At this stage the only real workspace requirement is…well…space. I just need lots of room to arrange things. Whatever sat in sketchbooks gets translated to cards or sticky notes or whatever so it can be sequenced too. Always on papers, always drawing by hand. This hands-on arrangement is the best way to make sense of my ideas, by far. I find I have to revisit this process a number of times before I get what I want—always adding a new bit here, cutting an old bit there—till it feels totally complete. Kurt: How much space are we talking? Because I often like to do this as well, but I run into the problem of “if I lay out the whole thing at once, I have to step so far away from it that I can’t read it”, and can only process it on a macro level. Are you processing at a macro level at this point? Just trying to see large shapes and spread layouts for whatever it is your after? And what is it that you try to capture on a macro level, design-wise? Tyler: I always consider it per spread. The biggest picture anyone will ever get of the work, visually, is per page (in a web/phone scroll) or per spread (in print), so that’s how I arrange at this stage. I end up arranging by moments, or by scenes—essentially by spreads or groups of spreads, depending on the length of a discreet scene. I’ll work one out, set it aside, and spread out another. I’m looking for the pacing and completeness of ideas first, then I adjust the visuals—flipping cards for position/direction of forms, replacing a drawing with a different image representing the same moment/idea, or adding new drawings to lengthen a moment. I only consider things between spreads/scenes once I begin to feel like I’m covering everything story-wise and I really know exactly what I’m dealing with chronologically. Then it becomes about things like intensity in one spread, versus breathing space in the next, or whatever sorts of dynamics or glue the story feels like it calls for. Kurt: So, not the whole story at once, gotcha. Just spread-by-spread… Tyler: If I plan on working digitally, I’ll photograph these arrangements, and use them as rough guides under my digital drawing. They don’t need to be precise. Analog setup might involve a light table and redrawing overtop of the cards, or just translating them by eye, in spirit, to paper. I have an old animator’s cartooning wheel, and I just stick a lamp behind it. For a while I would do some underdrawing in coloured pencil, mostly just to make sure I was nailing the layout and proportions, but I’ve all but given it up—it’s just too slow and fussy for me, and it can really contribute to flattening my results, so I just straight draw over the sequences in ink. Here’s where people are gonna get pissed off at me… Pretty much every comic I’ve drawn naturally in the last few years has been on regular old shitty copy paper, often with a photocopied grid on it, inked with dying sharpies of all sizes and whatever smooth, black pens I can find. There are a handful of reasons for this, but the biggest one is speed. I just want to get the work together so I can scan it, and have it set up for reproduction. I also tend to draw a page, or a portion of one, and get that “I fucked this up” feeling, so I trash it and restart. Much easier when your materials are dirt cheap. My space for doing this is a standard drafting table. I’ve got a rubber cut-mat, heaps of paper, things that make marks, tape, my story cards, and I just draw. Page after page. Kurt: So what are the other reasons other than speed in your choice of these materials to make the final work? And are all of these dying and fucked up markers just naturally occurring, or do you do stuff to them to fuck them up to the point where they’re making the marks you’re after? If you don’t fuck them up on purpose, what’s the point at which you know they’ll work for what you want them to do? Tyler: I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have destroyed markers, rotten brushes, or crusty old ink bottles lying around. I don’t wreck ‘em on purpose for any specific effect, I just never throw them out until they’re actually not making marks anymore. With that said, I suppose I just pick up something when I think it’ll work for me. For instance, dying markers are great for tonal gradient in otherwise flat black work, and one of my favourite parts of them is that they’re a little unpredictable, so I use them sparingly and in places where I can let a little chaos occur. They also translate well to high-res bitmap art. Crusty gross magic happens when the software has to decide between only black pixels and white ones. Another thing I like, and am just learning how to use to my advantage, is the uncomfortable balance between tools that really aren’t meant to compliment each other. Fat bent marker tips, leaving bled out blobs on the ends of their lines mixed with a mutilated dried out brush, mixed with ballpoint pen, slightly bled out in more deliberate strokes, and hair-thin where i’ve drawn more quickly. Yup. There are a few exceptions to this cheap and dirty rule. When I did Likeness I used a Pentel brush pen. Primarily because of the ease of getting mixed thick and thin lines with a single stroke. It’s a little more organic than mechanically building up those thicks and thins, and it served me well for that project. I also used it a bit for portions of Clav City—again, a case of ease with thicks and thins, and separating organic content from more rigid stuff. Otherwise it’s been sharpies, miscellaneous brands of thin ballpoint/gel style pens, and a few occasional heavy-handed dumps of crispy, ill-treated, cheap brushes and dried up rehydrated india ink. My original pages are probably disintegrating as I type this. Kurt: All the best artists rarely care about what their originals are going to look like, years down the road. I’m often paranoid that my insistence on using stuff that’s going to last is keeping me from doing my best work…but anyway. Let’s talk about line quality. What do you look for in your linework? I see a copy of Domu on your desk, and you often work in what Toth would’ve called a “dead line” which is just a line with little to no variation in it. Like from a ballpoint or felt-tip pen. And then you flavor it with spotted blacks that are rougher and contrast with those clean “dead” lines. So are you after different things when you choose to use the brush pen, and what drives your decision about which tools to use on a particular story? Tyler: I borrowed Domu from a friend, and only just started into it, so I couldn’t say much just yet. Otomo has always had a very deliberate, precise, line-quality-aware rendering style, though. I think I used to try to work that way, but I’ve really been trying not to climb anyone else’s tree these past few years. I’ve been trying, bit by bit, to strip all of the style and decoration and residual aping from my work, and reduce it to its barest necessities. When it comes to mark-making tools, I choose based on what kind of visual language I think will benefit the feel of the story. There’s a certain smooth elegance to the brush (or brush pen), something I used heavily in Likeness because it dealt with things in the natural world, human bodies, flab, muscle, jungle creatures, and the moods varied from sad, to furious, to tender. There’s a more rugged quality to writing pens, which is I what I used when I did Lonesome, about a crusty old prospector, scrubby, unforgiving nature, and fear. I try not to think about flavour in every stroke. I choose some tools overall, and apply them in the moment as best I can to compliment each other and the thing I’m trying to convey in any one panel or drawing. I’d say just as much as the tools, the way in which I compose and control the drawing has a lot to do with the final flavour of it. Where Likeness and Clav City have more structured, controlled, clean setup, even a bit of underdrawing, Lonesome was all off the cuff, ink on the page, no preparation type drawings—full of energy and mistakes all the way through. Kurt: Ok, so what should I make of the fact that one of your most visceral works, Shit and Piss, is done in the dead-line/crusty spotted blacks style? Is it because this is less warm than the Pentel brush style….less…human? Or should I just not make anything of it at all? (laughs) Tyler: You more or less hit that nail on the head, yeah. When I set out to do Shit and Piss, I had intended for it to be much more sloppy and mean in its execution—but I lost a certain level of visual clarity there. That’s my super anal, “all things must be perfect” nagging voice guiding me a bit too much. I didn’t have the confidence to proceed with the madness, so I decided to go for something so plain that it was almost dull—pretty far down to the other end of the spectrum. It was partly its lack of humanity, and partly a bit of a challenge in simplification (in some aspects). Kurt: Ok, I have this pet theory, and it pertains to this thing I think you’re describing. And that is: it’s very difficult to make an “arty” SF piece, because if you want to explain/guide the reader through a weird/foreign/alien world, you need to be clear so that they know something is weird, or alien, and so that they don’t just throw their hands up and say “what the fuck is going on???” And that need for clarity imposes certain limitations on the way you present the story. Do you find yourself running up against this in your work? I feel like you tried to get past this with The Jaundiced Eye… Tyler: This is a REALLY GOOD question. In retrospect I think I’ve played in the same sandbox as your pet theory, but never interacted with it directly. In Shit and Piss, the desire for clarity I’m speaking of was purely (initially) a visual one. The ability to describe a creature, a room, a pile of bones, etc. as clearly as possible felt essential to me. It’s also lent the story a particular layer to its identity, overall. But that’s all surface. Those things don’t require the absolute to-the-detail clarity I had originally aimed for, and their purpose as devices, lending/bending meaning to certain aspects of the stories really only requires their mere suggestion—something I really felt I succeeded in achieving to a much larger degree in The Jaundiced Eye—thanks for noticing. The limitation I see in overindulgence in “clearing everything up” like that seems to be one of potential. When reducing everything to its technical, clinical definition (which is what it feels more and more like to me), you lose the potential to let it speak for itself and add its own depth to the story. You also run the risk of beating people over the head with identifying things, or shifting the balance of focus onto less important aspects of a given thing. Comics has so much room for subtlety, a veritable mille feuille, and I feel like i’m just lifting the topmost layer. Kurt: I liked The Jaundiced Eye because it really felt like a weird style, like cut out stencils that were sprayed with a fucked-up airbrush. It was jarring and disorienting, which I felt added to the story’s mood tremendously. I also am interested in what you said about “Crusty gross magic happens when the software has to decide between only black pixels and white ones.” So you’re using the computer’s choices in the final art too? Do you play with the Threshold settings (in Photoshop) a couple of times to find the best version of the bitmapping to your eye? Tyler: Thanks! The Jaundiced Eye was a tough nut to crack. I had these little ideas about pointy hats and an oppressive fear cloud hanging over a village for a while, and I actually boarded out the whole story a bunch of months ago and it’s just been sitting, waiting for the right treatment to justify its existence. I drew the first spread 3 or 4 times in a different hand/tool/style to try and figure out how it wanted to be shown, but no luck. Stuff was too fussy, too contrived, didn’t serve the feel I was hoping for. One evening I was doing some wicked loose drawing with really dull pencils and had a proper eureka moment. The idea of swaths of crumbling noise with just minimal detail for recognition’s sake punched out—that was it. I found a couple of PS brush tool combos that worked and the thing took me no time at all to draw—just painting in huge fields of mess and cutting back silhouettes from them. This story didn’t see any of that black and white magic transformation because it was done 100% digitally, and I kept the greyscale very smooth and soft and anti-aliased, so everything was kinda set up ahead of time to do its job. The magic tends to happen for me when I’ve scanned art with gradients, or when I decide to paint tone or gradient digitally, in a soft, greyscale sort of way—and then convert to bitmap. It’s just how hard I hit the threshold. Usually just a matter of adjusting levels a bit for the results I want. Kurt: Since we’re on the topic anyway, let’s get into how you work digitally… Tyler: When I’m working digitally I work in a more reductive way. What I mean by that is that I generally apply much more black than I will need anywhere, and shave it back with an eraser—something that differs a lot from my analog drawing process. Workspace in this sense is pretty sparse—I use a Cintiq and work in Photoshop. I draw primarily in one black layer, often with one additional black layer set to 40% opacity so I can get that secondary tone in there. I usually use just a couple of brushes I made myself from scans of old drawings—a couple for ragged lines/blobs, and a couple of others for spatter and gradient tones. Recently I made use of some of the famous Kyle Webster’s brushes to do The Jaundiced Eye, but that’s about the only deviation I’ve made to date. Kurt: And let’s talk real technical: how do you set up your pages for print: dpi, scan rates, any special tricks you use that give you the print job you’re after with these projects? Does it vary significantly between black & white or color? Tyler: Whether scanned or straight digital, I usually work at 600dpi. I’ve been told to work higher, but with a bunch of layers and large(ish) pages, I tend to get drawing lag which makes it pretty unworkable. I work pretty much exclusively in Photoshop, because I know it, and I can achieve pretty much anything I care about in it. I also tend to save my pages as individual PSD files. I know some people do some major huge spread files, or entire story files, or use smart objects or whatever, but I keep it pretty simple. I don’t like all that shit getting in my way. As for the work itself, anything that’s straight black, or flat coloured, I work in plain bitmap—that is no anti-aliased edges. Every pixel is black, or white. Gives much more crisp end result when going to print—I’ve found. I’m not a pressman, though, so my tricks don’t go too deep there. I don’t do much “color” work, other than flats like I’ve done with Likeness and Hermit Crab Real Estate, which are essentially straight black layers printed in a color other than black. In that respect, it really doesn’t vary much at all between straight b/w and color work for me—except that I trap my colors properly (combination of applying a stroke and hand painting in some of the non-uniform stuff) since they’ll be printed in separate passes. Shit and Piss has been totally black and white, right down to the textures I crafted and paste into the “tone” layer. When I do the covers, it’s a free-for-all, methods-wise, anything goes, eventually creating a duplicate, baked flat, converted to CMYK and tweaked for balance as best I can. Clav City, and Lonesome use a couple of transparent colors/tones that overlap to give an additional color/tone—but being made for the screen as they were, they’re just plain old PS layers with multiplication/transparency applied to them. Translated to the page, I’d be reworking them similarly to the previous examples, flat layers, trapped, relying on transparent inks, or a full 4-color process to keep the balance and legibility. All of the setup/process I just described is becoming a bit stale for me, as most of my recent work has been done with slight variations on the same methods—so I may be exploring a new approach soon. Something to refresh me, and the work. Kurt: So, what’s coming up for you as far as work, and what are your personal struggles in your art as you see it? What are you trying to attain that you feel you haven’t yet? I’m curious as to where artists are aiming, how they envision their “perfect” masterwork and what it contains. What kind of influences or ideas are you trying to put into your art that you feel you haven’t figured out yet? Tyler: Upcoming work includes quarterly (I hope) installments of Vile, via Study Group. Each of these will be a unique story, under the common banner of Vile. I also plan on doing two more Shit and Piss tales, then to collect all five in a single volume. Those are the hard commitments I’ve made. In addition, I’ve got a pile of stories in various states of early note-taking, card-drawing, narrative building. They’ll all find their way into finished-ness sooner or later. I’ve got a story about future life on Mars, a sort of “interview” with a vampire, a folly of youth story with heavily relevant societal undertones, a book of landscapes, more chapters of Clav City, and so on… My personal struggles stem from and guide my aspirations. I grew up copying style. Always. I was a fan of so many painters, illustrators, cartoonists, and spent years just learning how to execute like they did. The fundamentals came later when I realized I hadn’t any voice for sharing my own ideas, and needed to build up from the ground again. I’m forever trying to shed the trappings of stylistic shackles—either by purposefully altering my visual approach every time I draw a new story, or by drawing at such a base level that style doesn’t even come into play. I’d love to someday be able to execute my drawings on a completely raw and primitive level, using only the bare necessities. With those ideas constantly nagging at me, my deeper more longterm aspiration is really just to continue to expand on and really develop my ability to tell relevant (I hope) stories within the medium of comics. It really is capable of so many wonderful, dynamic, and infinitely subtle things, and I want to explore, invent, and master them all—built up around stories that actually matter. To someone. Somewhere. Many thanks to Tyler for taking the time to discuss all of this over email! Kurt Ankeny is a cartoonist working in Ipswich, Massachusetts. He’s the co-author of the Santoro School Handbook for Making Better Comics, and the author of Saltwater Snow, A Bomb, and the upcoming In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home, which is currently being serialized on the Comics Workbook Tumblr. You can find him on Tumblr as well as at www.kurtankeny.com. Share this page: [...]

09/18/2018

Aaron CockleSeptember 17, 2018NewsOld Drawings; Flocks; ‘Against Clarity’; Her garden, a mirror; RM; NYABF 2018 ————————————————————————————————— This South African cave stone may bear the world’s oldest drawing Other finds have included 100,000- to 70,000-year-old pigment chunks engraved with crosshatched and line designs, 100,000-year-old abalone shells containing remnants of a pigment-infused paint and shell beads from around the same time. ————————————————————————————————— Shea Hennum reviews the new book by L. Nichols, Flocks The way that Nichols visually renders these pleasures is similarly worth noting. Throughout the book, Nichols signals emotional states by drawing arrows towards himself. These arrows sometimes take the form of lightning bolts, scraggly and castigating lines, or straight lines annotated with mathematical formulae. Whenever he is made to feel bad, insulted, or harassed, he represents this by drawing a line—literally—from the elicitor to himself, as if to say that these figures are pushing in on him, enforcing themselves on him. The lines coming at him are signs of oppression and hate. He reverses this to represent the love he feels in communion with God, rendering those scenes with a halo of lines emanating outward, emerging from within himself. This is part and parcel of Nichols’ broader aesthetic, which merges expressionistic portraiture with elements of naturalistic cartooning. The world is, by and large, rendered realistically so that it resembles the world and the people resemble people. Nichols renders himself, however, as a doll—alternately resembling a ragdoll and a crash-test dummy. This method of portraiture makes Nichols’ self-image infinitely pliable, and, I imagine, less emotionally taxing for him to manipulate. We see his body altered—in some cases, expressionistically disfigured; in some cases, literally disfigured—and Nichols can be explicit without being graphic. He can affect us deeply without it repelling us with viscera. The story is a deeply emotional one—that is, it is about emotions, emotional turmoil and distress—and Nichols affectively renders that core thematic visually. He makes it felt in not just what he draws but also in the way he draws it. ————————————————————————————————— Against Clarity Austin English continues his deep dive into comics, art, and art comics, this time looking at work by Megan Kelso, William Blake, 400 year-old paintings from India, and some contemporary political cartoonists (to name a few). A masterpiece like “Three Trees of India”, an illuminated 16th-century manuscript (sometimes on view at the Met), feels like a grand lost artifact of sequential art that, again, fits uneasily with contemporary comics’ self-conception as vessels of clarity. The peaks and valleys of emotion that this work suggests has been traded for a photocopy of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, which in theory sounds fine, as Bushmiller’s simplicity rivals the complexity of Blake. Yet few (if any) cartoonists are Bushmiller. ————————————————————————————————— Her garden, a mirror Chitra Ganesh continues her exploration of gender and power in a futurist imaginary in this solo exhibition taking as a point of departure the utopian, feminist, sci-fi novella from 1905 called Sultana’s Dream by Bengali author and social reformer Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. These new works in printmaking, sculpture, and video engage art historical and literary sources to further reimagine the roles of the individual and the collective during periods of societal turbulence. Curated by Matthew Lyons. ————————————————————————————————— Reclamation Project: Rob Clough reviews Josh Bayer’s RM Bayer veers from an open page format with no panels to hand-drawn panels. He carefully employs a lot of negative space in order to let his drawings breathe a little and to make the otherwise blocky aspect of his figures more legible in terms of their actions on the page. Bayer is once again interpreting the drawings of Sal Buscema here, a master storyteller in terms of pacing, panel-to-panel transitions, and clarity, and he maintains these aspects of the original art while putting his own unique stamp. ————————————————————————————————— http://nyartbookfair.com/ ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

Michael Deforge’s Sticks Angelica: Folk Hero Release Tour

Chris Anthony DiazApril 6, 2017The Diaz ArchiveMichael Deforge signed his awesome new book from DRAWN & QUARTERLY at Comix Experience, Wednesday, April 5, 2017, San Francisco. All photos colored by Graham Willcox Share this page: [...]

12/19/2017

Aaron CockleDecember 19, 2017NewsAaron Cockle today with Black Dada; Why, Comics?; Laura Park; Ai Wei Wei (in NYC); What is Bias in Machine Learning? ————————————————————————————————— Adam Pendleton and Black Dada Here are a couple pieces about Adam Pendleton’s excellent Black Dada Reader: Interviewed in his studio, Pendleton is quick to point out that the book, like much of his work, has always been an experiment. The Reader began its life as a spiral-bound book that lived in the artist’s studio, an attempt to create “a collage in book format” of texts that inspired him. “Originally it was an in-studio publication, in the sense that it wasn’t really meant necessarily for a wide distribution,” he explained. “It was really meant for me to refer to in the space of the studio while I was working on different projects. But I did hand out maybe a dozen copies, maybe more, to the people who would come to the studio, or people who were interested in the work and or the concept of Black Dada.” ————————————————————————————————— Panter/Groening DIY Here is an excerpt from Hillary Chute’s book, Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere, at the Lit Hub blog: The punk scene that launched cartoonists Panter and Groening was part of a larger punk movement that hit America, and the UK, in the mid-to-late 1970s. Both political and aesthetic, the punk movement, which often registered as a visceral or even violent response to mainstream pop culture, encouraged people to create their own culture across many different forms of production. This includes, most famously, the music that came to be known as punk rock. Punk culture often consolidated around bands, particularly their live performances, and the independent labels that developed to put out their music, along with the art and graphic design that went into their promotion—as well as the fanzines that articulated their ideas and goals. The “do-it-yourself” ethic is the defining feature of punk culture and production. As Jaime Hernandez, the creator, along with his brother Gilbert, of the famed long-running series Love and Rockets explained, he never realized he could be a cartoonist until he got involved with punk. “Then I thought, ‘Oh, this is kind of the same thing,’” Hernandez told the novelist and comics writer Neil Gaiman. “They were all the same to me, so if you could do that with punk, you could do that with comics.” ————————————————————————————————— A Cartoonist’s Darkly Magical and Autobiographical Work At Hyperallergic, Sarah Rose Sharp looks at the Laura Park exhibition and residency at the Columbus Museum of Art: “When you’re doing autobiography, you realize our lives are very repetitive, so a sense of magical realism starts to seep in there,” said Park, who cited British-American cartoonist Gabrielle Bell as an admired peer working in a similar vein. For example, in the story “Office32F,” Park’s comic stand-in discovers a miniature and mysterious office in the walls and baseboards of her apartment, apparently devoted to the task of close-monitoring her daily existence. The tale is equal parts cute and unsettling, with the protagonist taking cues from miniature written reports, which criticize her unkempt birdcage, but also lead her to finding a tiny pair of red mittens caught in a spider web and bizarrely soaking them in bleach and flushing them down the toilet. The specificity of Park’s visual and literary descriptions adds a sense of the uncanny to even the most quotidian urban activities, like Strangers on a Train, which captures moments while riding public transportation. ————————————————————————————————— Good Fences Make Good Neighbors Public Art Fund has a great interactive site detailing the current Ai Wei Wei installation in NYC. Ai Weiwei conceived this multi-site, multi-media exhibition for public spaces, monuments, buildings, transportation sites, and advertising platforms throughout New York City. Collectively, these elements comprise a passionate response to the global migration crisis and a reflection on the profound social and political impulse to divide people from each other. For Ai, these themes have deep roots. He experienced exile with his family as a child, life as an immigrant and art student in New York, and more recently, brutal repression as an artist and activist in China. The exhibition draws on many aspects of Ai’s career as a visual artist and architect, and is informed by both his own life experience and the plight of displaced people. In 2016, Ai and his team traveled to 23 countries and more than 40 refugee camps while filming his documentary, Human Flow. ————————————————————————————————— The Trouble With Bias (in Machine Learning) Via Boing Boing: “The Trouble with Bias,” Kate Crawford’s keynote at the 2017 Neural Information Processing Systems is a brilliant tour through different ways of thinking about what bias is, and when we should worry about it, specifically in the context of machine learning systems and algorithmic decision making — the best part is at the end, where she describes what we should do about this stuff, and where to get started. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 12-19-2017 – by Cameron Arthur —————————————————————————————————Joanie and Jordie – 12-19-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/05/2018

Caleb OrecchioNovember 5, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with another ancient comic strip. This time it’s Happy Hooligan by Frederick Opper. ————————————————————————————————— This seventh installment of Frederick Opper’s Happy Hooligan from the turn of the 20th Century is another strip I think about often. The olde platitude of the drunk Irish bum being carried away by the malevolent cop, the obstruction of the free spirit. The classic one-two of the vaudeville era. What makes this strip funny is the thought of work, or even hearing or reading the word “WORK,” is enough to throw our hero into a panic on the street. The idea is compounded by repetition and the seemingly infinite prisons-of-the-mind a tramp is prone to by avoiding “WORK.” There is a metaphor for cartoonists in here somewhere but I’ll leave it up to individual readers to find their own meaning in this. What I like about this strip is the aforementioned repetition. This is key in comic strip comedy (not to mention comics themselves), but today’s example is different from the kind of repetition found in Swinnerton’s strip from last week. The Swinnerton strip “held” the “shot” for the entirety of the drama, whereas this strip holds the “idea” for the joke until the punchline. The punchline simply serves as a “FIN” and indicates the audience should stand and clap now. The more interested I become in these early comic works the more I realize that these guys really did write the rules for comics. Yes yes I know this is a redundant statement, but it’s funny to me that these idea of repetition I’m obsessed with served as a comedic tool. To my point, you can’t repeat images unless there are multiple images, and when you sequence these multiple images you get a comic strip. I’m trying to say that our form was birthed in comedy and the tools and techniques we still use today were made to tell a joke. Make sense? I love comics. I like to ramble on and on about these things. Maybe I’m not saying anything new here, but I like thinking about these ideas. What are comics and how did we come to do what we do now? To find out you have to go back over one-hundred years. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 11-05-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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