Drawn

Gabrielle Bell’s Comicumentary from the San Diego Comic Con.

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

via BoingBoing

Bonus: Jillian Tamaki at Comic Con.

If you haven’t been reading Sin Titulo by Cameron Stewart – go check it out. The weekly webcomic is about a guy investigating the death of his grandfather and gets sucked into a surreal underworld. It’s over 100 strips deep and it just won the Eisner Award for Best digital comic. I ate the whole thing in one sitting and loved it.

ICameron says the comic is “a series of personal exercises for me, one of which is to allow myself to be comfortable with less-than-perfect artwork, as long as the storytelling is clear.”

He also did a little YouTube walkthrough of his illustration process… (Wacom Cintiq in Manga Studio, then shading in Photoshop.)

Also of interest:
The Other Side by Cameron Stewart
Cameron Stewart Illustration Blog

I’m sad to report that the phenomenally talented, Ignatz award winning and dear friend to people and pets alike, Laura Park, is in sore need of emergency back surgery (specifically, a discectomy). Even with insurance, she still needs to raise $3500 which she hasn’t got, and that’s where you, Drawn’s faithful and charitable readers, can help.

She has set up a donation page to help offset the cost of the surgery and any amount you can spare will be greatly appreciated. And in return, you will be highly rewarded knowing you’ve helped out an extremely gifted artist return to the craft she loves; creating comics and paintings that are sure to slap a crooked smile on your face and plant an olde tyme song in your heart.

Oddly enough, Laura was featured on Drawn! nearly three years ago to the day, regarding the subject of artists and lower-back pain.

AMAZING UPDATE! Thanks to everyone’s extremely generous donations, Laura reached her goal in less than two days! I know that things are awfully tough right now in this lousy economy, and that’s what makes this miraculous achievement especially touching. Thanks so much from Laura Park and Drawn! for reaffirming our faith in the charitableness of the artistic community.

Cul de Sac creator Richard Thompson has started posting his strip daily strip on his blog along with “some kind of commentary or apology or justification”. I like to think of it as the DVD director’s commentary for my favourite comic strip.

And as someone who lives and dies by his RSS reader, I can say that this is now the best way to read the strip online.

Today King Features launches Oh, Brother! a new comic strip by my friends Bob Weber Jr. (Slylock Fox) and Jay Stephens (The Secret Saturdays, Tutenstein, Oddville). Bob and Jay have a true love for and a history of making great kids comics, and Oh, Brother! is no exception. The strip follows a rich tradition of mischievous cartoon kids, and its clean designs and pure silliness make it the perfect heir to John Stanley’s Little Lulu.

Oh, Brother! is also the first syndicated newspaper comic strip to be given the full webcomics treatment of being delivered free online on its own clutter-free site, as opposed to being trapped in the ugliness, lack of RSS, and near uselessness of sites like Comics.com, GoComics or King’s own Daily Ink.

“TACK’S CARTOON TIPS have been pepared for the purpose of aiding those desirous of entering the field of Comic art. I have used these “Tips” in my personal instruction classes with marked success”

From a Flickr slideshow / scan of B. “Tack” Knight’s 1923 instructional book on cartooning.

Over on his Flickr account, Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley shares an interesting look at how the flow of panels his comics has improved from earlier volumes.

Take this page from Book 3:

And compare to one from Book 5:

So great. Plucked from an old Pogo comic book, here’s Walt Kelly’s Albert Alligator reciting Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.

Jon McNaught‘s new graphic novella from Nobrow Press, Birchfield Close, is a most perfect little treasure of a comic.

Printed with a restrained three colours, the short book is a gentle, unassuming reflection on time, place, and sound. It’s not so much a story as it is a snapshot of suburban life. The sights and sounds of a sleepy, mundane evening become the beats and rhythms in the poetry of a neighbourhood.

It’s a lovely, precious little piece of nostalgia. It makes me hungry for more comics-as-poetry. I was unfamiliar with McNaught’s work, but am looking forward to discovering more of his work. His website offers up a decent amount of his other comics work, all of it as equally reflective. He has an uncanny ability to perfectly capture moments in time. His comics feel like real memories.

I’ve just reread his minicomic Broadcast, available to read on his website, three times in succession, marvelling at how he plays with colour, sound effects, and pacing.

Here are some panels from another story of his, Pebble Island.

His blog features more of his work, including some lovely-looking prints. I am officially a fan.

Graham Annable (born June 1, 1970, in Canada) is a cartoonist and animator living in Portland, Oregon. He is the creator of Grickle, published by Dark Horse, and one of the founders of the Hickee humor anthology (published by Alternative Comics). Annable has created works for the television, film, video game, and comic book industries. His
self-produced short animated films are popular among YouTube watchers.

Graham recently released a best-of compilation of his comics through Dark Horse, The Book of Grickle.

Drawn!: You have a new book out, The Book of Grickle, which comprises some of your short comic pieces. Is this a continuation of your previous books, Grickle, and Further Grickle, or is there some overlap?

Graham Annable: I’d say overall it’s a collection of my favourite pieces spanning from 2001-2007. It contains a selection of stories from the previous out of print Grickle and Further Grickle books and sprinkled amongst those tales are mini comics and hard to find stories I’ve done over the past few years. It feels great to have them all together in such a nice little hardcover package.

D: How would you define Grickle? If not the word itself, then the body of work. Is it an umbrella term for all your personal work, or is there something specific and Grickley about the stories and art you release under hat name?

GA. I would say it’s an umbrella term for the style and types of stories I seem to create. The name comes from the many nicknames my Dad used for both my sister and I growing up. When I first compiled the stories into a home-made booklet years ago “Grickle” just felt like the right unifying name for it all. And it has ever since.

Read the rest of this entry »