On new years eve I joined a bunch of artist to draw into the New Year. My cohorts were T, Nick Paz, Jeff Plotkin and Jeff Walker.
We meet at Japan Town Center in San Francisco for dinner at Mifune (http://mifune.com/) for noodles then after walking around the mall we headed to Johnny Rockets on nearby Filmore St. where we drew until 11:30, eating fries and drinking shakes. Then we headed down town and into the new year.
A great way to start 2011.
Overheard at Johnny Rockets: (a drunk regular was talking with the staff near 11:30 and one of the waiters told him to “talk with your inside voice” like a school kid. LOL
On October 24, 2010 I will be part of another CAM-JAM at the Cartoon Art Museum as part of their 1st annual ‘Ghoultide Gathering’. I am helping to organize the event and I will be creating art as well. The challenge will be for each participating artist to draw one of the cards of the Tarot deck which will be scanned on the spot and will be added to a poster that will show all the cards and be fore sale as a fundraiser for the museum at the bookstore in November.
BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE to the GHOULTIDE GATHERING….(details are subject to change)
WATCH: the Tarot Card Comic Art Jam -all day
Watch as local artist draw the cards of the Tarot for a special fundraiser art print for the museum.LEARN: Try your hand at drawing creepy creatures at our in-gallery art table.
EXPERIENCE: STORM of “Heroic Tarot” doing X-Men Tarot readings all day.
STORM was voted SF Weekly BEST OF AWARD and is the author of the comic “Princess Witch Boy”. (stormantic.com)
MEET: Jeff Baham signing his book “An Unofficial History of Disney’s Haunted Mansion”
Jeff is founder of Doombuggies.com and co-host of Mousetalgia podcast (mousetalgia.com)
DELIGHT in Johnny Dismal’s cute and creepy creations he will be selling as prints and stuffies. (dismalthings.com)
WOW: There will be treats, tricks and prizes! Don’t miss this devilishly good time!
Well, another 24 Hour Comic Book Day has come and gone. It was only yesterday that I arrived at Mission: Comics and Art to set up and now the final results are here on-line.
The challenge for 24 Hour Comic Book Day is to completely draw a 24 page comic in 24 hour. The comic can be in any style, size, or media. The challenge is a personal one with you competing against yourself to push your boundary, learn and grow. The challenge lets you see what you are capable of doing in a limited amount of time. The only rule is that you are to create (write, draw, plan) the comic during the event. The challenge is great since even if you don’t finish you still win by learning a lot about how you create.
This year, my meta-challenge was to do a holiday themed comic, possible based on the classic story of the Nutcracker. Besides reading a synopsis of the original story, I did nothing to influence the creation of the comic. I also new that I wanted to add some sci-fi/fantasy elements that were not in the original story. When the even started I started by doing some quick character drawings of Clara, the Nut Cracker, Uncle Drosselmeyer and the Rat King. To start with this was all ready getting to grand, but I still moved forward, excited for the challenge. I started penciling the pages with a light blue Color-Erase pencil on my templates (24HCBD_2010_template ) figuring out the Beginning and Ending. I quickly began to fill in the gaps, but with the story not working too well and the scale being bigger then 24 page it swelled to 30 pages. I knew that I wanted to start inking the story by 1/3 into the event and at that time I still had story gaps, but decided to ink/render the parts I knew were keepers hoping that inspiration and a better idea of how much time left would be my inspiration.
I started with a pass of inking the panel boarders and then cam back and tackled select panels that would help me get a fell of what the comic might be. Soon I was inking full pages with some relief after another one was completed. I also made an effort to jump around to render pages at the end of the comic too so the last thing someone sees would not be my worst work. The process worked and soon blank pages and holes were being filled. By sometime after midnight I knew that the comic would lack dialog since I had given myself so much art to do, but that is OK since I felt that the work would still be well worth the while. I was sure glad to have things pre-penciled since there is nothing like trying to figure out story when you are lacking sleep.
The final comic is far from perfect, but there are places where I really felt I was in ‘the Zone’ and that I was getting a lot of the process. At the bottom of this post are a few Do’s and Don’t that I got from the experience.
HERE IT IS! READ MY COMIC ON-LINE
(Click on the image below to read the comic, or follow this LINK) Feel free to comment below or on Facebook/Twitter and let me know what you think.
NEW Thought and Do’s and Don’ts for 2010:
- K.I.S.S
- Have and beginning and ending early on.
- Penciling first gives you structure to fall back on when you are tired. Keep it simple, but make sure you can understand what your trying to show/say
- I found that I did not use all the reference I loaded up on my iPod and with the stores Wi-Fi to find specific things it was not needed. I could see having 1 page of reference as part of Meta-Challenge though.
- Limit your art supplies. In the end I only used a Light Blue Color-Erase pencil, White-Out pen, Pentel Brush pen, PITT brush pen, small tip brush pen, a Sharpie Pen and that was it. I also had some black ink and brushes to do some washes if there was more time. I would not bring every tool you have, but have back-ups for when the ink runs out.
- Set a Meta-Challenge to help you get started and focused. This year there was: a Holiday story, a comic based on O Henry, a comic drawn with mostly Bic pens, and a 3D comic with photo material taken before hand. As long as the comic is written and drawn during the event, your OK.
- Bring a cushion to sit on cause folding chairs hurt your butt after 24 hours.
- Take breaks, stretch, eat, and drink water too.
- Go in with a positive attitude that you will get something out of the experience and don’t give-up.
- Have fun.
Hey, thanks to everyone who came to the CAM-JAM 2010 #2 at the Cartoon Art Museum this last Sunday 7-18-2010. It was a lot of fun and our team did some nice work.
Hey all, just thought I would drop a note about things going on with yours truly.
- I perticipated in the Cartoonist Conspiracy SF comic jam last week and you can read the results on-line. See if you can find my pages. Click on the image below.
Hey all, I thought it was time to give a bit of a follow-up to the CAM-JAM comic jam at the Cartoon Art Museum that I helped organize with the museum’s bookstore.
I would say it’s the most successful event yet with 16 participants helping create a 40 page mini comic. There is a link at the bottom of this post to read it on-line.
First off, we did not reach one of our goals of printing the book in time for folks to take home with them. We have tried twice and at this point we will probably re-think that part. It was also raining, but that is something we can not control…yet.
Sunday Feb 21, 2010 was a rainy day, perfect to sit inside and draw with new and old friends. We had just the right amount of artists to fill the lobby at the CAM. Most folks arrived promptly which was nice. When you don’t know how many people are attending, having 5 show up right on-time is a relief.
The event was really energizing, fun, and everyone created amazing work. The theme was Samurai and Superheroes, but no one drew any superheroes.
Here is a video of my taken by Cathy. I wish my voice did not sound like a Muppet on recordings.
11:30 am- We started with a character design mash-up warm-up which was great. The drawings feature mixing up established pop culture icons which are twisted in different ways to make something new. Samples can be seen below or in the web-edition of our comic. Thanks to Marti for scanning the drawings during the event.
CAM-JAM character mash-ups
12:00 am- Next up was a break and then Kristin Barrett of General Pencil Co. demonstrated their brand of watercolor pencils and gave everyone a set. She did a great job and was really fun and interesting. You can find out more about their products at http://www.generalpencil.com. A big thank goes out for there sponsorship.
- We broke into groups of 2-4 artists. Everyone started their comic by working from a randomly created Haiku poem generated on-line. This seemed to be a good limitation to get the juices flowing and then we just started to create our comics. We drew actual size on 5.5″ x 8.5″ cover stock and we had a selection of brush pens, ink and brushes to use. BTW Brush and Ink was one of our themes for the event.
- Around 5pm we stopped our work with 5 unique stories of the Samurai. I tried to tape down the pages into a dummy of the book so we could go and make copies at Copy Central, but it too long. But we did have a long Mini Comic of 40 pages, including a snazzy cover to show for our hard work.
We packed up all our materials and put away the tables and chairs. Thanks to Amy and David for helping us and for giving us a bit more time after their quitting time. Afterward a group of us went to Mel’s for some food.
The next week I scanned the files and had them printed at Costco Business (great service and prices) and stappled them in time for the Cartoonist Conspiracy SF comic jam on Thursday Feb 25, 2010. I handed some out at the jam and then mailed others the next day. The book is really amazing and we should all be proud of what we created together.
A big thank you has to go out to Heather Plunkett and the staff of the Cartoon Art Museum and Bookstore for their support, space and help. A shout out to Kirstin Barrett for sharing her products and the wonderful samples. And of course a big thank you to everyone who participated…
Cameron Forsley, Maggie Tran, Lindsey Stapleton, Eric Haddad, Aurora Sofia Alcantar, Jeff Nevins, Rick Lucey, George Webber, Pat Tong, Mike Scagliotti, Audry Soffa, Jeff Plotkin, David Mann, Rena Simon-Igra, Alan Groening, and Cathy Notter.
