21.9.11

Well, Fancy Seeing you Here!

I'm finally back at school, and with access to the incredible school scanners. In fact, my internship this year is scanning an enormous backlog of one of my professors, renowned comic artist, and all-around awesome human being, Stephen Bissette! Most of you reading this blog post in the next few days will probably have been linked here from his blog, in which case, thanks for the shout-out, Steve!

So, the last time I touched this blog was right when the spring semester was winding down, and here we are, three+ months later, as the fall semester of my final year of grad school picks up. What did I do with my time this summer, you ask? Was it worth neglecting to post any new and interesting things? To answer those questions in reverse order, yes, and: traveling. I did not spend more than two weeks in any one place between the 1st of June and the 1st of September. I took lots of notes, and lots of pictures, and while all of the ones from my transcontinental railroad trip (oh yes, I took the train from Los Angeles, California to New London, CT; it took three days and two layovers in Chicago and Washington, D.C) were erroneously deleted when I tried to recharge my new phone to my old iTunes account (there was much cursing), the MEMORIES still remain. The point is, I have tons of crazy stories that need to be commemorated with exaggerated blog posts and mini-comics, and I will be bombarding this blog to make up for all of the neglect.

Among some of the places I visited:
1. The Isle of Palms, SC
2. Charlotte, NC
3. Rehobeth Beach, DE
4. Philadelphia, PA
5. New York City, NY
6. Malibu, CA
7. Topanga Canyon, CA
8. Los Angeles, CA
9. Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut (in the train)
10. Bordeaux, France
11. Jersey City, NJ

This summer. It was the best summer ever, you guys. And it will never happen again, but I'm ok with that. THIS SUMMER, I LIIIIIVED! Look forward to comics! :D

But enough talking--here's some artwork! One of our first assignments this fall was to create a 10-Panel Pitch, an entire story laid out in ten strategically timed comic panels, with a description of the action contained therein. I outlined a story about a sort of alternate-history post-WWI world, where "gentlemen architects" of the upper class of society like to pass their time by designing aesthetically pleasing feats of architecture that they then have to immure one of their family members within the cornerstone in order to construct (a secret practice known only to the Architect's Guild and the construction workers, who don't care what the Patricians do with their daughters). The Bridge of Arta is an actual place, with its own Wikipedia article and everything, and apparently at one point in history it was actually a thing to bury ladies in building foundations, or kill kids and mix their blood in with the mortar to bless an edifice and ensure it stood forever. NONSENSE, UTTER NONSENSE, ALL OF IT. But terribly, terribly interesting nonsense.







If I ever have enough time to wrestle with perspective and architecture, I would really enjoy fleshing this pitch out and making a go at it :)

20.5.11

It's SUMMER VACATION!!!!

Although the weather is doing its best to put a damper on things. I don't mind the rain, but if it must it could at least be in the form of thunderstorms. Enough of this drizzling! HARRUMPH.

Since last we chatted, I figured out how to turn on the backlighting for my keyboard, helped out at the Center for Cartoon Studies graduation ceremony (which can be viewed here!), packed up all my stuff, put a deposit down on my first apartment for the fall, moved back home, and printed out a bunch of extra comics*.

*not necessarily in that order, but mostly in that order.

How many comics, you ask?


ALL OF THE COMICS.


What you can't see beneath ROCKALL are copies of AVAST, my group's Golden Age assignment from Spring Semester, and Holy Shit, the comics anthology I was a part of for our Fall Semester final project; neither of which I ever blogged about. Would you like to see a sample from Holy Shit? Of course you would:



Why can't I get these to line up? Weird.


Anyone going to Heroes Con next month? Because I will be down there in Charlotte from June 3-5 panhandling these works of art and you KNOW you want your very own copies. This offer is too good to pass up!


Also: business cards!


Thus ends the product placement, I swear! I'm still in the process of unpacking my car and trying to Tetris all my belongings into my old bedroom (there is a distinct shortage of bookshelf space to handle my exponentially increased comic and zine collections) and I still need a 3-prong to 2-prong power adapter before I can set up my home office so unfortunately there won't be a Wunderkammer update this week. In positive news, however, I've been hanging out with my bffl Amy of [citation_needed] fame a lot over the past couple days and my family's boat went in the water today!


F*** trees, I climb buoys, Motherf***er


There is so much headroom down in that cabin and it makes me so happy. Totally makes up for getting my good pair of jeans all mucked up with harbor slime while helping to launch the dinghy.

NEXT WEEK: WUNDERKAMMER.

5.5.11

All The Pages. ALL of Them!

Today was the last day of classes for my first year at Graduate School. For comics. I'm livin' the dream! But where has the time gone?! I'll tell ya: it's gone into making this final project! And now probably a lot of this upcoming week until the Seniors graduate will be spent hanging out at parties; today's, the first of a presumed many, was a reading party so us First Years could check out the Seniors' stuff and vice-versa. It was awesome! I got to trade for a couple of amazing comics and even sold a copy of ROCKALL like a real professional, haha; thanks, Carl!

Three whole dollars, and suddenly I'm a legitimate cartoonist, haha! Back in my day, that would have bought 300 Swedish fish at the local corner store, or 60 Bazooka Joes. I'm rich! RICH, I TELL YA!

Speaking of ROCKALL, here are the last pages of Part I:









TO BE CONTINUED! Unfortunately not until next fall since I'm going to finish the story for my Senior Thesis :( But! I have a couple summer projects in the works and, of course, Wunderkammer is back in business!

4.5.11

Even MORE Pages!

For those of you not subscribing to my Twitter account (I'd encourage you to, but most of my tweets are nonsensical real-time comments about terrible movies I've found to watch on TV), The Center for Cartoon Studies trivia team beat the pants off of the Dartmouth teams! So what if trivia happens in a pizza place where lots of beer is consumed, and it's Ivy League finals week? I got a Sam Adams shirt! And I'm selling us short, since we usually do better than many of the accredited school's teams and we come up with better team names every week. SO THERE, Dartmouth!

There are FIVE pages up tonight, since otherwise I would have had to split up a two-page spread. Time for some juicy gossip and geography!









Last three pages up tomorrow night, as well as the back cover!

3.5.11

More Pages!

I'm off to Hanover to pit my trivia knowledge against those stuck-up rich snobs at Dartmouth, but here's a quick update for pages five through eight of ROCKALL! Meet the neighbors:









It's sort of disheartening that in two blog posts we're already halfway through something that I spent months making, haha. Check back tomorrow for the next four pages, and wish me luck for tonight! It's the Toonies vs. The Ivy League--place yer bets!

1.5.11

I LIIIIIIIIIIVE!

Oh hey, everyone! Remember how, about nine months ago, I was excitedly yapping about how I got accepted to Cartoon School and would be making comics all of the time? And then I didn't update for the ensuing, aforementioned, nine months? WELL I DIDN'T DIE, I'VE BEEN MAKING COMICS. SO MANY COMICS. And you will be hearing all about it soon, since we just handed in our final projects and I suddenly have free time to do things like write verbose blog posts to make up for lost time--but you've all been waiting long enough to see new stuff! Am I right, or am I right? Or amirite.

SO! Over the next week or so I'll be uploading the 16 pages of my first year mini-thesis project, which covers the first part of what will be a longer story that will probably be my senior thesis for next year. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the cover and first four pages of ROCKALL:











ROCKALL's a spin on the traditional Irish and Scottish selkie folktales, entirely drawn by hand on smooth Bristol board using a Pentel Brush pen and an ink wash. Oh, and all the characters speak in Brogue! 8D

But what about Wunderkammer?! I hear you say; because, really, that's the only reason you've all been so patient and stuck around through my terrible internet etiquette. If all goes according to plan, Wunderkammer updates will be resuming by the end of the month! Those pages will be uploaded to the main site, nolens-volens.net, and I'll be taking down everything non-Wunderkammer related over there and repost it here, along with new stuff. It's time to get my act together! HONESTLY! I need you all to collectively slap me through the intertubes.