Allie makes comics!

Just a little update today. I'm on the home stretch with my thesis project (and only beginning the journey of this book, which has a title now: Asylum, as in seeking) ... and probably I'll wait to share more peeks at it until things are handed in.

However! Today we hung an art show of CCS student work at the Hotel Coolidge in downtown White River Junction (if you're in the area for some reason, come check it out!), and for that I needed to finish a two-page spread from the second chapter a little head of schedule. I can't resist posting this thing.

( Welcome to the marketplace. )

Also, while most of my life plans are severely up in the air at present (CCS commencement is on May 18: after that ... we'll see), I'm starting to compile a 2013 convention schedule! Keeping it relatively light this year, given all the upheaval I'm expecting, but still quite excited about it. I'll be tabling with the indomitable Betsey Swardlick at MECAF in Portland, Maine on May 19! A super fun show, right on gorgeous Casco Bay, with some amazing guests lined up this year ... and I'll be debuting minicomic versions of the first two chapters of Asylum. :)

I'm hoping to attend CAKE in Chicago on June 15 & 16, but things are a little up in the air, so I'll update on that later. And I've just submitted my application to MICE (September 28-29, Cambridge, Mass), so we'll see about that as well! However, I will be tabling at SPX in Bethesda on September 14 & 15, with my deeply talented classmate Joyana McDiarmid and the Queerotica Anthology! By which point I hope to be debuting at least the third chapter of Asylum, although we'll see.

It's an exciting year any way you cut it! I must get back to my pencils, but here are ( a couple of miscellaneous little strips I've doodled of late! )

I hope you're enjoying spring (if you're in this hemisphere)! It's a beautiful sunny day in Vermont today (which, contrary to the opinions of some of my colleagues, is what I would call perfect cartooning weather). And hey, maybe keep my former city in your thoughts, as well as the other places in the world that are experiencing such trauma and destruction this week ... I remain shaken by the bombing at the Boston Marathon, grateful that my own friends are safe and sound, and sad and angry on behalf of a place I love and the people who are suffering there.

New Year, new sheepish blog apology! Learning to juggle a regular web presence with the rest of my life and tasks is definitely an unmet goal. Not a resolution, per say … I prefer to make January an occasion for a reaffirmation, of sorts, of more personal aspirations. As you can see. (Also, here. The holiday card that I totally failed to send out to half of my recipient list, again. Fie. Maybe I’ll send a few out at random through the year to surprise people!)


With the start of my final semester, and my thesis deadline looming a terrifying three months and change ahead, I’ve been delving deeply into Ash’s world, which has been sprawling out in all directions. Soon you will have some actual pages to take a gander at, but meanwhile have some ( sketchy things! )

For the timebeing … that’s all; she’s writing. But here, have a few odd bits of illustration and such to tide you over! The season of giving is just behind us, after all.

( Recent drawing round-up! )

Lastly, in mid-December I finally launched my own homepage, AllieKleber.com. It’s intended primarily to serve as a point of first contact for my online presence, and a portfolio to show any prospective employers or interested parties … up to date work, process posts and other information will always be posted here! (For more-or-less realtime glimpses at art as I make it, you can always follow my tumblr, although as always, be warned: some material there is pornographic.)

Back to the drawing board! (I wish. Back to scripting. Drawing board soon!) Mwah!

Illustrations from (the front of) a business card, and personalized letterhead!

Ah, so, hello there! I know I dropped off the radar for awhile, but I promise, I'm still alive. I had a bit of internal struggle this summer, to tell the truth; these things happen, but I got through it and I'm back. And let me tell you, I have been working on plenty of projects in the meantime.

I'm now in my second and final year as an MFA student at the Center for Cartoon Studies ... my thesis year, if you can believe it (I can't always). A pretty intense time, but to balance that I've been trying to dial back my approach a bit and experiment a bit. Also, I've been attending a bunch of conventions! You might have seen me at SPX in Bethesda (shilling away at the CCS table), MICE in Cambridge, Mass, or most recently, Paint & Pixel in my own hometown of Northampton! These days I am tabling with Quintuple Ruffle, an awesome collective of classmates comprised of myself, April Malig, Sasha Steinberg, Laurel Lynn Leake, and Joyana McDiarmid.

Check out this photo to see Laurel, Joyana and myself at the very first official Quintuple Ruffle table at MICE! Thanks to the always lovely crew at We Got Comic Issues for sharing their pics.

Anyway, to start off the thesis year on a productive note, the esteemed faculty here at CCS tasked us with producing sixteen finished pages of comics by this week; it didn't matter what they were, so long as they were comics. I decided to combine an experiment of my own with an assignment from my advisor and artistic idol, the esteemed Carla Speed McNeil. As per Carla's instructions, I attempted to complete each of these pages in one day (and for the most part, I succeeded); as per my own, I didn't do a whole lot of advance planning. The settings and events in what follows were loosely inspired by dreams I've had, but I wrote them on the fly. Now that I've made my deadline, I'm planning to sit down and see if a larger story will emerge, because the bits and pieces that have come to me so far are very intriguing! But at this point, it's a mystery to me ... and I find that oddly inspiring.



( Continued under here! )

Now that I've completed that wild ride, I'll be making some important decisions about which projects to focus on for the rest of the year! I think my thesis will take the form of an anthology, so there will be several ongoing stories (and probably some shorts), most likely including Goodness Knows (stay tuned for that first chapter that I promised way back in May). But will I continue to mess around with dystopian cities and refugee societies of young people living in abandoned buildings? I had some plans to develop something involving this pair of characters as well ... we'll see.



I'll be back next week with some spooky material to share, and soon after that with a rather salacious announcement. Speaking of which, I can now be found on tumblr as well, but please be warned: there there be adult material. Not safe for work, and probably not for family members!