After close to two months since moving into my new house, I finally have a decent workspace…finally.
Archive for December, 2006
On my way to work this morning I stopped at a gas station. I filled my tank and went inside to pay. I grabbed a coke and headed for the cashier. Before she could ring me up I realized I wanted a pack of chewing gum and went back to the shelves to get one. As I was walking back to the counter a middle-aged man with a cup of coffee approached the register. Seeing me he offered to let me go ahead of him. I said, “That’s alright, man, go ahead of me.”
Jokingly he said, “Well, OK, can I have your coke then, too?”
I laughed and said, ” Here, you want the keys to my truck, too?”
But, rather than laugh, he looked outside to my Toyota Tacoma, and asked, “That your truck?”
When I acknowledged that it was, he said, “That’s alright, I’ll keep MY truck.” and as he turned to leave he said, “You know, You’re ruining our country driving that truck.”
?????
Can anyone explain this to me? How am I ruining “our country” by driving a Toyota? It gets better fuel mileage, it’s built better, and, to me, drives better than any other truck on the road. I’ve owned it for six years now, and the most serious (expensive) problem I’ve encountered with it was when a piece of gravel cracked my windshield on the highway.
Is this about jobs, maybe? My truck was built in one of Toyota’s twelve North American plants here on this continent. As for jobs, Here’s the numbers, straight from Toyota.
Toyota manufacturing established operations in North America in 1957 and will operate 15 manufacturing plants in North America by 2008. There are more than 1,700 Toyota, Lexus and Scion dealerships in North America which sell more than 2.5 million vehicles a year. Toyota directly employs over 38,000 in North America and its investment here is currently valued at more than $16.8 billion, including sales and manufacturing operations, research and development, financial services and design. Toyota’s annual purchasing of parts, materials, goods and services from North American suppliers totals more than $28 billion. According to a 2005 Center for Automotive Research study, Toyota, along with its dealers and suppliers, has generated nearly 400,000 U.S. jobs, including jobs created through spending by direct, dealer and supplier employees.
I should have told that schmuk that it’s ignorance and outdated prejudices that is RUINING our country, not vehicle preference, and, IF, by some chance I am ruining our country by driving a Toyota- then Selah! I won’t be losing any sleep over it, that’s for sure!
Michael Gerard and myself have been working together for several years. We collaborate on lots of projects, but the one that brought us together was Hot Lunch. A comic about a lay-about trust-fund heir, who finds himself on a karma-induced journey to redemption, we managed to produce a couple of strips and a full-color first issue. This past spring we set out to write a follow-up issue….and that’s about where things started to go south.
There were no personal issues within the collaboration. Mike and I just ended up being too busy with our respective course loads and extra-curricular activities to pull it off. We managed a script and storyboards, but when the started drawing the actual book, we found our learning-curve had significantly steepened. So much so, that our second book looked nothing like our first one. This wasn’t an unpleasant development, just unforeseen. Based on that, we decided that before we could continue our story, we would both prefer to go back and punch up (read: redraw) the first issue. Y’know, make it more cohesive overall. We were also fresh off of a rejection for a self-publishing grant which was causing us to rethink our pacing, styling, etc. Ultimately (since #2 was supposed to be course work), we decided to create something that was Hot Lunch related, but not a second issue- so we wrote “TV Dinner”, an apologetic aside about us, and why there was no Hot Lunch #2. It’s still in the works, just post-poned indefinitely. Have a look and enjoy!
Hot Lunch “TV Dinner” PDF
- Download Hot Lunch “TV Dinner” PDF
Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or greater.
Tonight! 8PM! ESPN2! Top-Seeded and returning Division 1 Champion Appalachian State University Mountaineers will face off against No. 3 UMASS at Finley Stadium in Chattanooga, TN.
Hi-Hi-y-ike-us
Nobody like us,
We are the mountaineers, mountaineers, mountaineers,
Always a-winning,
Always a-grinning,
Always a-feeling fine
You bet, hey!
Let’s get TWO!
After re-reading my post on the Tarquin Engine, I came to a realization. My work on Hot Lunch along with fellow artist and collaborator, Michael Gerard, has carried me through many mediums as well as many techniques, both traditional and non-
For starters, it was a hand drawn and inked series of 10″x10″ panels, we worked large for maximum detail and had fun telling a story full of non-sequiteurs.
From there we scanned the work into digital format which ultimately became templates for intaglio (etching) plates. Using those twenty plates (5 of which were screened to produce the title image as a 4-color intaglio) along with 43 others, we “published” a single copy of the “Psychedelic Transubstantiation” as an oversized “broadside” comparable to the, now-historic, newspaper comics of the past.
After that, the lovely Lauria Lovestrand-Trout, came on board and offered traditional coloring to our original drawings. Once again, we scanned in the work and this time we printed (zine-style) a run of 60 booklets sized 5″x5″ to hand out to friends and faculty.
And this is about what we found out about lulu.com, and put together the final, “polished” book. Lately, I’ve been fooling around with a Flash template, too, known as the “Tarquin Engine”. Designed for “interactive” comic viewing, it’s quite easy to use. I started out trying to make it harder than it was, but once I knew how, changes and edits were simple, almost monotonous.
So overall, now, I have taken one body of work and with it have:
-learned the merits and failings of collaborative work
-explored traditional print/publishing techniques
-explored “house” method of comic production; draftsmanship, lettering, penciling, writing, etc.
-explored contemporary print/publishing opportunities (both commercial, and online print-on-demand)
-explored alternative print/publishing methods (laser printer,bone-folder, hand-bound saddlestitch)
-offered digital content in the form of downloadable pdf’s, gif animations and flash animations
funny, what started as a class project, has brought me all this experience, amazing how something so small has the ability to bridge that much distance..
Amond Jackson, has been a friend and collaborator for a couple years now. His work ethic is unmatched by all but his own appetite for knowledge. He tinkers, he plays, he builds, engineers, and composes works-his studio is indicative of ingenious improvisation both technically and musically. He does all this and more on a daily basis and if there is an opportunity to learn something more, he will take the time to do so. He is not unlike a juggernaut in living his life. See and Hear more at: Salem Psalms-dot-com.
There’s been plenty of arguments within the comic industry of late debating the merits of online publishing vs. traditional print/syndication. We live in a brave new world of publishing opportunities and avenues are open to independent creators wishing to deliver content to audiences in ways that traditional means have not been able to provide so far. We are at a crossroads in our history when the disappearance of comic strips from the pages of newspapers (much less the newspapers, themselves) seems extremely possible, if not outright imminent. The web boasts opportunities unheard of for comics creators of all walks of life, while the features section of our local newspaper looks more and more like an elephant’s graveyard full of tired beasts waiting to expire. Creators like Scott Kurtz, Kazu Kibuishi, Michael Jantze, Scott McCloud and Dave Kellett have all found relative success online. While Johnny Hart, Bil Keane, and Mort Walker limp off to some unmarked grave.
In searching for ways to establish myself, and put my work “out there”, I have dabbled in some non-traditional techniques and started to take advantage of “advancements” within the digital realm.
One of these is lulu.com. An online, print-on-demand service, lulu.com is cut-rate, easy to use, and convenient. Want to publish a book, but don’t want the risks of a burdensome print run to self-distribute or pay for? How about if you could professionally print and bind a run of ten in order to shop around at a convention or pass out as a promotional to test market interest? lulu.com is the place! Look here for a copy of Hot Lunch:Psychedelic Transubstantiation our “print-on-demand” offering, also a perfect, last minute gift idea for you harried and hurried, holiday shoppers.
For those less atavistically inclined- pure digital content can be delivered using a flash template known as the Tarquin Engine. You control the design, content and layout, and the Tarquin Engine tackles the rest. Economical, and easy to use, even those people ignorant of Flash can use this template effectively. Here is the same “Hot Lunch” tale, done up as an interactive “hyper-comic”. Just click Start.
[swf]/wp-content/flash/hl-pt.swf, 450, 300[/swf]
