I finished my Face Book 09 assignment weeks ago. Upon looking at other kids’ work, I decided to redo the whole thing from scratch. I came up with this design instead:

i love inking with nibs

Audio: Passion Pit.Manners / The Jealous Sound.Kill Them With Kindness
Visual:Trick R’ Treat / Ponyo / Princess Mononoke

Wow, i’ve been doing SO much stuff, I’ve forgotten to blog.
Cartoon studio class on Thursday was probably my favorite. I don’t think I’ve laughed as hard in a class ever. We were broken up into teams by table and given phrases to draw. Three minutes to brainstorm and one minute to draw. I got “Lonely Han Solo walking down the beach”. He was frozen in carbonite and dreaming of Chewbacca. With the Death Star was setting in the background, instead of the sun.
Alec Longstreth tells us that inking will cramp up your hand if you do it too long. His advice is to go buy a bottle of wine with a plastic cork. Drink the bottle. Pull out your power drill and drill a hole in it long ways. Slip you’re brush through and it doesn’t cram your hand as much. GREAT advice, what with the drinking and power tools.
Then Friday I helped stuff some bags for a festival they had on Saturday. Did some homework.
The pub next door was having some promo where I won an Otter Creek hat, tshirt, and glass. I then got into a discussion with a second year about Watchmen and 300. Then I met some kids from the theater company.
Saturday it rained during the festival. I spent 40 bucks on local comics. Hung out and went to karaoke night. Comic kids slash theater kids slash festival people equals fun.
Sunday was lazy.
The Decemberists are playing this Sunday. I’m riding up with some kids. That’ll be fun.

audio: Matt Pond PA.Several Arrows Later / Bright Eyes.I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
visual: 300 / Hellboy II / The Mighty Boosh S1

2009 marks the fifth year of the CCS summer workshops. We started this year’s session with Create Comic, our 5-day cartooning intensive. 32 students, aged 16-60, traveled to White River Junction to learn about the basic building blocks of comics. They were led by expert faculty including Steve Bissette (Taboo, Swamp Thing), Robyn Chapman, (Hey, 4-Eyes!) Jon Chad (Leo Geo And His Miraculous Journey Through The Center Of The Earth) and Alec Longstreth (Phase 7). Our guest faculty member was Nick Bertozzi (Salon, Houdini: The Handcuff King).  This was Nick’s first visit to the CCS classroom.  His enthusiasm and know-how really energized the class.

Nick Bertozzi assists a student during an inking exercise.  Click here to see more photos of the workshop.

It was whirlwind of activity (for both our students and our faculty!) Create Comics covers the concepts essential to building comics narratives (such as character design, world-building and page composition). Through lectures and class exercises, students apply these concepts to their own comic pages. The workshop culminates in the creation of a group comic anthology. This year we produced two anthologies staring kid explorer Sally Switchback and side-kick (and living compass) Rupert the north-facing cobra.

I have been involved in Create Comics since 2005. It is the most intense, challenging and rewarding aspect of my work here at CCS. I could never pull it off without help. This year, two terrific interns came to Vermont to lend their hand with the workshop. And wouldn’t you know it, they are both talented cartoonists and self-publishers!

Michel Valdes chronicles his life as middle school teacher in his zine School Daze. Caitlin McGurk offers autbio comics and rants in her mini comic Good Morning You. Both of them offered a report, in comic book form, of their experience during Create Comics.

Click here to read Michel’s full report.

Click here to read Caitlin’s report.

Our summer workshops have come to a close, and the faculty and staff are taking a much needed 2-day holiday. I’ll be back soon to report on our second workshop session, Cartooning Studio!

- Robyn Chapman

Deux livres pris à Angoulême et édités par l’Employé du Moi, maison de Bruxelles plutôt intéressante et ludique. Le premier livre est du dessinateur Frédéric Fleury et fait suite à un précédent ouvrage du même nom, mêlant dans une veine autobiographique, des anecdotes intimes et des vignettes quotidiennes, plutôt drôles et incisives, souvent sans effet de manche, parfois tombant à plat, parfois touchant au coeur. Un peu comme dans la vraie vie. Ici, le plus étonnant, c’est le sens du rythme, le découpage, le montage de ces pages, qui défilent comme des instantanés que l’on soupçonne à peine liés entre eux, mais qui se découvrent au fil de la lecture de vraies affinités, d’indicibles échos. Mêle si je préfère le travail de dessin de Frédéric Fleury, que je trouve plus immédiatement fou, il y a quelque chose de tout à fait saisissant dans les deux volumes de C’est Triste, qui pointe un peu de la condition humaine, de l’absurde et du banal. Un peu ce que soulève aussi le Phase 7 de l’Américain Alec Longstreth, qui faisait figure dans les couloirs d’Angoulême de bûcheron barbu perdu, cousin de Will Oldham ou Neil Young. Son livre est issu d’une série de comics auto-édités et autobiographiques. On y suit, notamment dans une histoire centrale assez prenante, les pérégrinations de l’auteur dans sa quête pour devenir, justement, un auteur de comics. Drôle, modeste, pointilleux, le livre offre une vision de l’esprit humain pris dans son travail, dans son désir de se sublimer, de dépasser sa condition pour atteindre un statut à part. Hanté par son art et sa pratique, Longstreth nous renvoie à nos propres angoisses, à nos peurs de ne pas parvenir à être nous-mêmes.

Here’s the fifth installment from Alex Bullett at the Create Comics Workshop:

On the last day of Create Comics, students gathered to read the student anthologies and critique their individual pages. After lunch students were free to go. Some filed out but many stayed for portfolio reviews from Robyn Chapman, Steve Bissette, and Alec Longstreth. Being both a faculty member and the Create Comics Coordinator, Robyn had a lot on her plate this week. Because of all her planning, the week went smoothly. Students found her lecture on zines and mini-comics inspiring and left the workshop planning their future mini-comics.

Hey 4-Eyes! Copyright Robyn Chapman, Cover Illustration by Derek Kirk Kim

Robyn’s zine Hey 4-Eyes! has all the elements that make handmade comics so personal. The silk-screened cover has a wonderful tactile quality. The zine even comes with a pair of paper glasses in the back. This attention to detail seems resonate with readers. These elements were applied to both of the student anthologies. The students a left with copies of the books they made, as well as insight into the world of creating and publishing comics.

Phase 7 #13
by Alec Longstreth
Self-Published

There aren’t enough good things to say about Ignatz-winner Alec Longstreth and his comic series Phase 7. In some of the series’ latter issues, Longstreth writes about his personal history with comics and explains the story behind Phase 7. Arguably, his more personal stories have made those issues his best minis to date for the simple fact that people want to know more about how their favorite cartoonists operate.

It’s this personal touch that made Longstreth’s multi-authored mini The Dvorak Zine such a hit. When he draws himself looking right out at you from the page, concerned and familiar, it’s almost like a celebrity endorsement and suddenly you’re like, “Yah, Sally Struthers, I really do care about the hungry displaced African kids! I just needed reminding.” Or is it just impressionable little ol’ me? Well, personally I think Longstreth’s nonfiction comics make drab bits of information feel fresh and memorable.

Its with this same level of infectious enthusiasm that he approaches this latest issue of Phase 7. Even though this issue is just a recycled comic he wrote for a class back in college (more filler until he can finish Chapter 3 of “Basewood”), the topic is just as relevant today, because Issue #13 is all about art history! And when isn’t that worth knowing more about?

Something I love about Longstreth’s books is the way he organizes a page. In each cell, he makes space for language first, then in tandem he adds shapes that miraculously don’t compete with the bubbles. He does a great job of spotting the overall tone of a page, getting the grays and blacks just right, meticulously using crosshatching styles and textures that have a body of their own to fill out a page with beautiful shapes. It sounds almost like an elementary description of how everyone makes comics, but when you see it done right, like in Phase 7, it becomes clear that not everyone is making comics it this well. In the world of mini-comics, it feels like eating a 4-course made-from-scratch meal on Sunday at Grandma’s when you’re used to your parents just taking you to McDonald’s because they’re lazy and tired and sick of feeding you. Too much? Well, in summary, it makes for a really pleasant viewing experience.

In Issue #13, the author walks his reader through a brief history of art that illustrates everyday life from ancient Egypt to the autobiographical comics of today. The part I found most fascinating came at about the middle of the issue when the art history time line finally got to the invention of film cameras. I never before considered how much impact photography had on modern art, that most modern art movements were basically a reaction to the immediate accuracy of capturing real life on film and how it freed up artists to think conceptually, working with concepts and paint, rather than real life. So that was interesting. The book ends with a focus on the illustrious illustrative career of Norman Rockwell, which was also interesting.

Even though the comic had to follow a certain format dictated by Professor Stewart at Pratt Institute, it has a great flow. I didn’t even notice the comic moving towards the boxes it had to check off to meet the requirements of the assignment. Issue #13 has a good, natural thought progression that’s highlighted and emphasized by the art. It’s definitely a good example of how comics can contribute to academia. It’s probably just the issue you should show your teachers to convince them you too should be able to write comics instead of papers in school. NOTE TO OUR READERS: For a professor to okay this kind of diversion from a proper essay is highly unusual. Professors, in general, will not really let you do this. They won’t even accept a critical essay in poetic verse in place of a proper critical essay on an epic poem, according to a very cheesed off grad student I once met.

The latest issue of Phase 7 is available right now for $3 + shipping through the artist’s website. It is 24-pages long, black ink on white paper, legal digest size. If you like it, you can even order a subscription that will get you the next 4 installments of Phase 7. Whadda deal!

- Sarah Morean