May03
At least it is for my current assignment for the Stanford Medical School on the minutiae of cholesterol and heart-attack-related chicanery.
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Check out the cover to Hard Hats, covering the 1970 riots of the same name in downtown manhattan, here: www.archcomix.com
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Pullitzers, Eisner Nominations, Foundation Funding – Comics Journalism Gains Momentum
April 18th, 2012 |Posted In: News
The past few weeks have been a veritable mini-golden age for comics journalism, as the slumbering behemoth that is the mainstream media slowly but surely wakes up to the storytelling potential that illustrated reportage affords. First up is the editorial cartoonist machine that is Matt Bors, who in addition to being the comics journalism editor over at Cartoon Movement, cranks out an inordinate number of editorial cartoons for the syndicates every week. This week he was honoured as a finalist for the Pullitzer, hot on the heels of his Herb Lock Prize. Next is another comics journalism standard bearer, Erin Polgreen, who in addition to being a keystone at the Media Consortium has recently been awarded a Women Entrepreneurs in Digital News Frontier Grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation to kick off her latest project, Symbolia – a soon-to-be-launched tablet magazine focusing on showcasing illustrated journalism. Susie Cagle, another member of the Graphic Journos collective, was honoured by the Society of Professional Journalists for her coverage of Occupy Oakland, and Josh Neufeld got a well-deserved Eisner nomination for his piece on the protests in Bahrain, Lines in the Sand. Editors, take note!
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From Busan to San Francisco: The new Stanford Graphic Novel Project is (almost) here!
April 13th, 2012 |Posted In: News
Two (and a bit) semesters in the making, I’m pleased to announce that the new stanford graphic novel project is almost here. The story is based on an SF Chronicle piece, “Diary of a Sex Slave” that ran in 2005, highlighting the plight of a trafficking victim who was tricked into coming to the US from Korea, ending up in brothels masquerading as massage parlours in LA and San Francisco.
The course, now in its third year, offers 20 students the chance to write and produce a graphic novel from scratch over two (fast-paced) semesters. We split them into a team of writers, thumbnailers and artists, then switch some of them into scanning/colouring and eventually layout in indesign. You can check out previous years’ graphic novels here. This year’s book weighs in at 160 pages and relies on extensive picture reference and documentation passed on to us from the original reporter, Meredith May, at the Chronicle. It’s a big evolution from Pika Don, the previous graphic novel, which only featured single tone spot colour. As you can see from the sample page below, this year we went for 3-tone gradations of colour to fill out the line work more. More soon.
Sample page showing the US/Mexico border crossing
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News galore: panels, conferences, courses and an archcomix exhibition
February 8th, 2012 |Posted In: News
2012 is already looking to be a busy year for me, I’m pleased to say. From May 24-28 I’ll be in Phoenix, Arizona for the International Communication Association’s Conference, talking about comics journalism, followed a month later by the Woodstock Digital Media Festival, where I’ll be discussing visual storytelling on digital platforms. Straight after that I’ll be reprising my comics course at EPGY, Stanford’s Summer program in late June, followed immediately by my second stint at Idyllwild Arts College, near Palm Springs, California (that’s about 1.5 hours east of LA, non-yanks). Click here to find out more about the 1 week adult class I’m giving at Idyllwild, and here for 2-week youth (14-18) class.
I know it’s a long way off, but I’m also delighted to say that this December there will be an Archcomix exhbition at Studio Unfiltered in Pleasanton, where I’ll be displaying select pages from my latest comics journalism projects. The reason I chose to work with SU was because of their “art for social change” ethos, realized in the fact that one third of all sales will be donated to an anti-trafficking NGO. But of course if you can’t wait for the festive season, you could always head over to the Archcomix online comic art repository and order a page directly through this site.
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Kudos to Matt Bors, Tjeerd Royards and Caroline Bins over at Cartoon Movement for their excellent comics journalism work on Haiti and the ongoing plight of the thousands of disenfranchised people there, now that the mainstream media circus has predictably gotten bored and rolled out of town. What’s especially impressive is that CM has turned the mic over to Haitian journalists and creators to give them a chance to tell the story in their own voice, as opposed to the traditional 3rd person reporting we’re used to seeing. Here’s the first instalment of a comic by Chevelin Pierre & Pharès Jerome, “Tents Beyond Tents” that you should check out.
As if that wasn’t groundbreaking enough, there’s also an innovative mash up of comic art, audio and video in another related piece, this time focusing on the LGBT community in Haiti and the precarious nature of their survival in the tent cities:
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