time is motion and the hands are fast

[turtlesoup]

Hello, my long-neglected blog! It's been something like forever since I wrote, and so many things have happened in that time. Most importantly: I've moved to Vermont and started classes at The Center For Cartoon Studies. Here's a picture of most of my classmates:



There was a dinosaur approaching.

I am having a fabulous time, although things are already so busy that I can hardly breathe, or mess around on the internet. Homework! Conventions and conferences! Socializing with an entire community of other cartoonists! It's enough to keep your head spinning.

Speaking of conventions and conferences, I'm planning to attend MICE in Cambridge, Mass on September 24! I'll be hanging out at the CCS table at some point during the day (schedule update when I have it), so feel free to come by and say hello! Both Fruitless and the Turtle Soup minicomic will be available. (I'm sorry for the lack of etsy as of yet; the post office is a little hard to get to here, and I want to make sure I'm all set up to get things sent out before I start trying to do it!)

But hey, this blog is mostly for art, huh? Well, fortunately, I have plenty of that. Doodles and classwork, check it out.




My friends are awesome, and I miss them all. ;)



My fantastic new roommate, April, found this amazing photoset and shared it with me (my tastes are kind of transparent). Several of my classmates found the imagery inspiring and decided to take a crack at it. You can see the extremely talented Sophie's take here!

CCS features a weekly diary comic assignment, sometimes with themes. The very first week, we were asked to write something loosely along the lines of "me and the 'Junc," and since I was apparently feeling kind of broody and sentimental for a few days, I wound up with this:


I ... really went overboard with this assignment, which is not the kind of thing you want to be pulling an all-nighter (or nearly all) for. Won't be doing that again! Still, I had a lot of fun with it, and even tried out some new techniques; I inked on translucent vellum, laid over my pencils, in order to completely skip the erasing/re-inking step of my process. I got this idea from Vera Brosgol's Anya's Ghost process post, and it worked really nicely; I think I'll pull it out again for biggish projects in the future.



The very first assignment we were given in any of our classes was this: pull three slips of paper (contributed by our classmates) out of a hat, each of which respectively indicated an animal, a profession, and an emotion (loosely defined). We were then asked to go away and design a character who could easily be "read" as embodying these traits; for additional credit, we could also draw three scenes of the character engaging in various activities.

My papers read "penguin," "policeman," and "morbidly fascinated." Well, two out of three isn't bad? (The teacher pointed out that giving him a slight smile might have helped to bring this across better.) I had an awful lot of fun with this, I must admit; it's not often I draw anything like it of my own accord! Also, the point of the assignment was to focus on visual communication, which is what comics are all about, so it's very important.

Wow, all right, sorry for dumping so much material on you all at once! I should post more often so that I can space it out better.

There's an awful lot more I could say about the content of my classes, but I'll save that for next time. I should get some sleep; I did stay up ridiculously late working on that diary comic.

Comments

[were_duck]

Ohhhh my god I love EVERYTHING.

Especially the Once and Future piece, wow. You are so phenomenally good at the details of the setting, and also the way your depictions of yourself transition from seeming unsure to confident and centered (more or less literally in the frame). The panel where you're furrowing your brows at the pencil is phenomenal, and I love the way you've captured your change in hairstyles and outfits, too. Of course, I am a big fan of the plot, too! You definitely went overboard but you have reason to be proud of that work for sure.

It's just great, and of course the penguins are awesome, I love your facility with different clothing styles and the way shirts and pants fold and rest on bodies relative to the poses.

<333

[darthbitsy]

I am really impressed. Both by the quality and quantity in the time you had. I'll try to get to Cambridge on Sat.

[rhivolution]

So brilliant--your work seems to have gotten even better--focused, mebbe?--in just a few weeks, if that makes any sense at all. And isn't offensive. It's late and my brain isn't working right.

But you are great.

[turtlesoup]

Aw, thank you so much! <333

You know, because I actually had to rush shading the comic pages (I was up stupidly late as it was), so I wasn't sure if the details were coming across properly. Whew.

[turtlesoup]

Thank you! And awesome, that'd be wonderful. If you get there and I'm not at the CCS table, text me; I'll definitely be around. I miss you.

[turtlesoup]

Oh, golly, thank you. I ... well, I've certainly been working extra hard to be clean and legible and readable, and I did that comic (in particular) in a more "professional" way than I usually do with my diary comics. I actually used a ruler to size, space out, and even out the panels, for instance. I don't know if that's part of what you're seeing? But there's also something really inspiring about the atmosphere here, so it's definitely pushing me to do what I hope is my best work. I appreciate it, hon.

[archersangel]

that penguin policeman absolutely deserved that doughnut