It’s been awhile since the last update, and finals week means no time for draw! So you get another bird painted on a photo (BPOP)! En-wah.
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Seeing as it’s end-of-semester time and I’ve got piles of grading and writing in front of me, I figured I should spend Friday night adding pictures of birds to National Geographic photos. It’s maybe not a comic in the strictest sense – lacking any textual or sequential aspects, after all – but I like it. So in lieu of any other ready-to-post content please enjoy the new featurette: Birds In Things.
I’m back, and I’ve brought Duckbox with me! I’m not sure whether to officially designate this “Chapter 2″ of the Duckbox Saga, but if you want to think of it that way I’m sure it’s none of my business.
In the course of my MFA curriculum I came across the course Comic Books and Film, taught by comic book writer Jai Nitz. It’s been an interesting supplement to my various Lit and workshop courses, and for the assignments we draw comics. This go-round we were to diagram a story arc from a preexisting book, movie, or show. Die Hard seemed like the obvious choice. So in case you’re in an argument with friends and need concrete evidence of how John McClane thoroughly executes story structure, here it is. Enjoy!
This was requested by a patron at Lakota Coffee like a year and a half ago. He asked for a drawing of himself riding a dinosaur riding another dinosaur, carrying a shoulder-mounted crocodile launcher. And he wanted it to feature his awesome straw hat. The rest was up to me. This is what a came up with many months later. Not a comic per se, but I think it’s a pretty passable amusing drawing. And of course, here is the full-size version, since I keep uploading over-sized drawings.
I haven’t put anything up in a little bit, so I thought I’d dig back into the past and present a sketchbook drawing I did a while ago. Melchior the Archmage has appeared before, but never established much a presence. I’ve been putting a lot of time into a long form project based around the character and his attempts to assimilate to the bizarre ways of life of modern suburbia (a small taste of which is presented above). So this guy may be showing up a lot here lately. And since the above is poorly resized (remember – it’s a sketchbook drawing, not a finished comic), here is the full-sized version.
Well that last strip was a fun interlude, wasn’t it? But the hubbub has mostly died down and I figured I’d get back to the Box. The cartooning is in a bit of a flux right now – I feel like the Wildlife Facts were fun, but not all that exciting; Duckbox has been good, but I think it might require occasional breaks so it doesn’t wear thin; and apparently if I come home drunk and draw something incendiary I can get a lot of traffic and a lot of people telling me I’m a shitty artist.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah – I might take a bit of a Duckbox pause for now (unless I get people agitating against that) and fool around for a while. I’ve got some random strips I’ve been sitting on for a while, so I think I’m going to just experiment and have some fun. Who needs focus in a webcomic anyway?
As mentioned in my last post, I travelled last week to the AWP conference in Chicago. While I was there, I attended a panel about finding jobs that support writing outside of getting a professorship in English. What promised to be an interesting discussion basically turned out to be four people saying “get a perfect career, where people pay you to do what you want to do.” Which is basically the equivalent of saying, “if you want to get rich, just make a bunch of money!” While there are a lot of people who are models of doing something worthwhile, putting their hearts into it and achieving success through brute force and determination, I feel like I’m constantly inundated with commentary from people that pretty much boils down to the above sentiment – want to be a successful writer? Well, just write stuff and wait for someone to give you a million dollars! There are a lot of people out there who basically lucked their way into notoriety by being in the right place at the right time, ready to look down their noses at those of us who haven’t managed to follow in their footsteps and just be great, because all you have to do to be great is decide that you feel like being great. Fart.
(Also should be noted that I drew this comic around 3:00 this morning after a good number of drinks, so the art is very… organic to the moment.)
I sat down on Monday night to draw several Duckbox strips in anticipation of my absence for the AWP conference in Chicago. Instead I decided I should devote all my time to drawing this strip featuring painstaking “computer” lettering and massive amounts of black space. Maybe I’m understanding now why other cartoonists let software do some of that work for them. The point is there’s no backlog for me to draw on at this point, but I shall be back as soon as I am able.
And again: feel free to draw your own Duckbox or YLG strip for me to post and lavish you with credit for. Now’s your time to shine, loyal reader cum aspiring cartoonist!
Wow, has it really been five days since my last update? Whoops. I’ve really been trying to get a regular rhythm going, at least as long as I’m truckin’ along with Duckbox (meta-comedy-pun. Woo!). But now might not be the time for that, since I’m going to Chicago tomorrow for the American Writers & Writing Programs national conference. I have a strip drawn for Thursday, and hope to find some time to draw in between sharing beers with famous writers and shamelessly self-promoting (networking). But there may be some slight interruption of regular YLG updates over the coming week.
Unless anybody wants to volunteer to draw a guest comic….
Seriously. Anybody. All are welcome to share this burden of love.
