Cartooning Exercises Part 1

I want to give a big thanks to Laurie at Dreamland comics for hosting my signing a couple weeks ago. I had a great time and got to talk turkey with fellow artists Elliot and Art. I'd also like to thank Rickey Gonzalez for alerting me to the fact that Burning Building Comix got a nice notice in the latest Best American Comics Anthology. It's in the back under Notable Comics of 2008, and thanks as well to Jessica Abel and Matt Madden who picked those titles. Pretty sweet. Now if only I could get a comic in one of those awesome anthologiesSO I've been putting this off for too long, but I mentioned before how I wanted to go through the Ivan Brunetti book, Cartooning. The book has multiple lessons and I'm going to put myself through the paces to try and stretch my cartooning psyche. Not to mention expose my piss poor doodling skills. Might I also ask anybody else who is interested to join in following along with these exercise. So here are my first three.

Exercise 1.1 : This exercise includes 6 drawings five different times. You're to take the same item and draw it 6 times in varying lengths. Starting with 3-4 minutes, then 2, then 1, 30 seconds, and 15 seconds. You start with a Car then go to a cat, a castle, a telephone, and a self portrait.

Exercise 1.2 : Draw 25 quick doodles of famous cartoon characters from memory.

Exercise 1.3 : Draw 100 doodles in 5 seconds a piece drawing images from your stream of consciousness. Don't stop to think about it. (This was very hard for me for some reason.)

So you'll have to either get the book, or take one of Ivan's classes to get the full explanation and reasoning for the exercises. Of course I highly recommend the book, and plan to get through all of them and post them here as they are completed.

Halloween Launch

Reminder that I'll be doing a signing of my comics along with Elliot Serrano and Art Baltazar at Dreamland Comics in Schamburg this Saturday November 8th from 1-3 pm!




Happy Halloween! Belated I'm afraid, but the holiday kicked my ass this year. Been really busy in the last couple of weeks with all sorts of projects. Top of the list had to be Van's Halloween costume! Emily and I have challenged ourselves to make Van's costumes from scratch each year. This year we weren't really sure what to pick for the costume seeing as he was old enough now to understand it better. So I thought about some of his favorite things, and since he's been absolutely obsessed with airplanes lately, and since one of his favorite DVD's is Duck Tales, (I'm so very proud of this fact) it was a natural to make him a costume of every ones favorite crash prone duck billed pilot, Launch Pad McQuack!

So it's basically just a WW1 fighter pilot outfit, with some webbed feet, a shock of orange hair and a rubber duck bill that van didn't want to wear.

As you can see, Emily did a fantastic job with the sewing! The whole thing is handmade aside from the pants.

But what pilot costume would be complete without a plane? This was my end of the costume, and this was also made from scratch. Half way during the construction I realized that the damn thing was too big and too fragile for a two and a half year old. Oh well. I'm sure he'll destroy it in good time, as it's only made from foam core and duck tape, with assorted cardboard and spray paint. I did actually use reference from the cartoon to get the details of the plane right, although I obviously played with the proportions.

in other Halloween news I carved my pumpkin with the knife of my white sox love. Below is the result; a mix of the old 80's sox batsmen logo and a jack o lantern.

Also went to the windy city comic-con a week or so back. What a great show. And by all accounts, from what I heard in talking to people at the show, it was busy and successful. I saw a bunch of friends there, and meet some new people as well. It was nice to go to a show that was small and creator focused, the kind of show I've wanted here in Chicago for years, as Wizard World leaves a lot to be desired.

Got to swap books with Jeff Brown, Jeff Lemire, and Neil Brideau. Jeff Browns latest, Sulk, filled with all Big head stories is a blast and quality as always from Jeff. Jeff Lemire was also super generous and swapped me a couple of his trades in the Essex County Trilogy. A beautiful, sad, tale and Jeff is quite nice to boot. Also meet Neil Brideau who I knew from the Indie Spinner Rack Forums. Neil and I swapped as well and his books are fun and creepy in the rich tradition of Gorey, Addams, and Tim Burton.

I also stopped by the table for Short Pants Press, a local distro/publisher. I picked up their new anthology The Short Pants Observer, and meet Sarah and Kristin. The Observer is a quality package, nicely put together with some great comics that were all quite different from each other, (always nice in an anthology). You can check it, and all the other quality wares out here.

Also bumped into Elliot Serrano again, and did yet another interview with him! This time for the Red Eye. You can check that, and Elliot's other coverage of the con here. And don't forget about the signing!
One more thing! Phew, lots of crap to cover right now. The new bindledog cartoon is up! Adam, Jay and I have been working on this one for a while. It's a cartoon featuring the lovable logo character bindledog. I hope you find it sad and cute.