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Ok, so it’s been a while since my last update – I can happily report it’s because I’ve been juggling deadlines for the past few weeks. That, and being at San Franciso’s Alternative Press Expo and starting a new semester back at Stanford teaching the graphic novel project. For your aural delight here is the recording from the panel I moderated at APE on “Exploring Comics Journalism”. Thanks to Matt Bors, Susie Cagle and Jen Sorensen for their contributions.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/25001907″]
As ever, the fruits of my recent labours will be posted soon, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for now. What better opportunity could you want for perusing the archived non-fiction comics waiting for you behind the tabs at the top of the screen? Hover over them and then choose a comic to read from the drop-down menu.
In the meantime, above are some panels from my current project in progress on Alcatraz – check out the Alcatraz page for more details and the story behind them.
Pardon the brief hiatus, but I’ve spent the last little while with my head down working through the historical record with Paddy Hirsch, Senior Editor at Marketplace, on ways to make the financial crisis easier to understand and accessible to the general (ie. non-economically-minded) public. The fruits of our labour are now up online at Marketplace to coincide with the 3rd anniversary of Lehman Bros’ collapse – check out the 2 minute animation below and the rest of the comic here.
As promised, see below for a brief sampler of the anthology produced by students in my recent graphic novel course at EPGY. This preview features work from Beiatrix Pedrasa and Heywood Ye – all the more impressive considering they only had 12 days to put their stories together. More previews will be posted shortly, so support this new generation of visual storytellers and come back/share the link/tweet/shout it from the rooftops etc.
Now that spring break is here, I’m hunkering down (yes, old worlders, I’ve been in the US too long) to get the first part of my graphic novel, Hardhats, done once and for all. Problem is, the more me and Nikil revise it and check for edits/inconsistencies, the longer it seems to become. So now I’m on the last page – just wrapped up the penultimate page this afternoon (I’ll scan in a few pages for your viewing pleasure now), but I still have a redraw to do before I tackle minor edits. One of the stranger things about embarking on a project of this length is the fact that I have to rein in my drawing style to how it was when I originally started this, way back in 2009. I’ve come a long way since then, preferring my 0.3 micron to my once favourite Pentel brush pen, so I find myself straddling the older style so as not to disconcert the reader.
NB the meticulously clean work area
To mix things up, I’ve also finally got around to working on my mashup of Goya’s The Shooting of May 3 1808, which you can see to the right of the pic (experimenting with how well bristol board takes watercolour washes. Results thus far: not so well). My take, if you can make it out, swaps out the spanish and napaloenic troops for iraqis and private contractors – a precursor to my nisour square interactive piece (also in the works), which I’ve mentioned in previous posts.
There’s nothing quite like the race to the end of term to catalyse a depth-charge of creativity. The past few weeks have been busier than normal as I’ve spent hours hunched over final cut and flash (as opposed to the drawing board and scanner), busily hashing out my first mini-interactive documentary site (produced with fellow Knight Madhu Acharya), on Bhutanese refugees and their integration into the Oakland community. The screenshot above gives you an idea of the homepage layout, which in the final published version allows you to choose different chapters of the story to explore. I’m currently tying up loading/streaming issues with the FLV files, but aside from that I think it’s good to go.
Now that I’ve got to grips with Final Cut and Flash, I can move to phase 2 of my project, namely combining video and audio within comics pages to give online readers an interactive multimedia comics experience as they explore news events. Looking back at the “to do” list I put up at the end of January, I’m pleased to say that I’ve hit all the goals:
I’ll next week with news of some future projects, as well as some previews of the above – including my first experiment with text animation in After Effects.
Hit ‘previous’ for the full lowdown on Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex speech, and the first part of this comic. Scroll down to read about what I’ve got up to over the last month at Stanford.
From President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, 50 years ago last week:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
A fitting match with my comic on the US/UK military base currently occupying Diego Garcia, first conceived off only a few years before Eisenhower’s term of office came to an end. Click here to read the full comic.
Borderland, the comic I did with Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova last year, just got a great review from The Comics Journal, together with a review of the latest issue of World War 3 Illustrated, which is carrying an extract from What a Whopper – talk about a double whammy:
Borderland is easily the most focused and best-looking work of his career…The stories are all different (and horrifying) enough so as not to start to drone; rather they succeed in grabbing the reader’s attention and raising awareness.
Above is a continued sequence from Hardhats, my graphic novel in progress, set in May 1970 at the height of anti-Vietnam sentiment. Hit “previous” to read from the start of this little interlude. It being Martin Luther King day here in the US, celebrate it wherever you are in the world by listening to one of his speeches on Vietnam here: “the press generally won’t tell you these things, but God told me to tell you this morning…” RIP MLK.
I’m now only a page or two from finishing the first third of my graphic novel, Hardhats – which you can read more about here. The above panels are part of a flashback sequence as two of the main characters talk on their way to an anti Vietnam protest at the Federall Hall in downtown Manhattan. I’ll post some follow-up panels over the next few days. Please leave your comments! You can also checkout my latest sketchbook doodles and watercolours here.
Remember to scroll down – news and updates are just a scroll away, under the fold.
