Open letter to female Avengers

Brought To You By: The Spacepope.

I was bored at work today.

it's been too long.

i haven't been arting for too many reasons. but I wanted to drop a note here about this site i have recently learned of:

The Grid System is an incredibly useful and interesting site about grids. grids make the world go, as any comics artist would know first hand.

i think seeing the philosophy behind their use in other fields is pretty valuable. also directly applicable to all the web stuff today's cartoonist/illustrator is pretty much obligated to do.

happy holidays, and may all your type adhere to a baseline grid.

Design By Humans shirt

I did this illustration the other day and figured I'd give it a shot as a t-shirt design over at Design By Humans. Check it out and if you like it, please vote for it. If you don't like it, vote for it anyways (I've got student loans to pay!). Here is the direct link: http://www.designbyhumans.com/vote/detail/25972

in stores tomorrow:

POPGUN 2:

featuring a story by Ulises Farinas with colors by Ben DeRosa. See previous post for some preview pages.

Art-Burn Team-up GO! Popgun 2 preview @ act-i-vate.

Act-i-vate has a posted some Popgun 2 previews, including Leaf & August by Ulises, with colors by me (Ben).

read it!

batman? who?

haven't seen the new batman movie yet, but...

tintin wins easily, i think. hopefully the next batman movie will reflect this (crossover?).

(photo by me. hooray)

Giraffe-man is going to be a huge hit...

Here's an interesting piece on alex ross, photo-reliant/mimicking art and what it's done to comics. The comment section is mostly worth reading as well.

What drives me crazy though, (even if i agree with the central premise: ross=lame, fumetti-esque comics=suck) is how photo reference has somehow become a catch all pejorative term for quasi-plagarism/lazy/crutch-for-the-unskilled.

Photo reference doesn't mean photocopying, tracing, duplicating, or stealing a photograph. Photo reference means just what it sounds like. It's reference. It's the visual research you do, so you know and understand what it is you're planning to draw. Let's imagine I'm drawing a comic that features a giraffe (yes, the imagination is a terrifyingly powerful thing). I have a vague idea of what giraffes look like in my head. I know they have long necks, and sort of look like a cross between camels and horses, but beyond that it's pretty fuzzy. How long is the neck in the relationship to the body? They've got those knob things on their heads, but what exactly do they look like? and where exactly are they on the head; are they behind the ears, or between the ears? And what the hell kind of ears do they have? Shit if I know off the top of my head.

photo by digitalART2

photo by cornstaruk

photo by Wildcat Dunny

Oh, that's what they look like. Now I can draw any giraffe I want. Thanks, photo reference. And thanks, baby giraffe...

photo by Ron D’Raine

Creative rights may be in some serious trouble

Sal Amendola just forwarded this email to his class:

"FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS’ PARTNERSHIP

A Million People Against the Orphan Works Bill
http://www.petitiononline.com/Stop2913/petition.html

The petition is now the 7th most active on www.petitiononline.com
Let’s shoot to make it first.
Please keep the signatures coming by forwarding this email to any interested parties.

Remember: you don’t have to be an artist, photographer or performer to be threatened by this bill.
Anything you’ve ever posted on the internet would be exposed to commercial infringement unless you’ve registered it with a couple of large corporate databases.
These databases would then control access to your intellectual property.
That threatens the passive copyright protection all citizens now take for granted.
And that threatens our personal property, freedom of speech and the right to privacy embodied in copyright law.

For more information about Orphan Works, go to the IPA Orphan Works Resource Page for Artists
http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00185

If you received our mail as a forwarded message, and wish to be added to our mailing list,
email us at: ipa@twcny.rr.com Place "Add Name" in the subject line, and provide your name
and the email address you want used in the message area.
________________________________________________________________"



So, sign the petition and do everything you can to pass this information along.

Alex

Girl who leapt through time

This week the ImaginAsian theatre is showing the girl who leapt through time. I don't know much about the movie but the Ad was pretty interesting, and I am sucker for time travel.
Any one wanna go?

An internet hug from Ira Glass

A nice piece that certainly applies to anyone making art.



parts 1, 2 and 4 are pretty interesting as well.

Know Your Rights!

actually, Complete Control would be a better Clash reference for this story...

caution: when you see this label, run:



so chances are you may of heard of the new tokyopop contract-y thing[pdf] going around. apparently it seems to be written in "friendly" non-legalese ("hey stupid, you should be able to understand this!"). it's actually written in sleazy con-artist-ese.

anyway brian lee o'malley has posted a reponse on his blog. it's definitely worth a read. he breaks it down, and nails all the important bits. go read it.

in closing, fuck tokyopop.

James Bond

Penguin Books updated the James Bond novels with new cover designs featuring the art of Michael Gillette, proving that books should be judged by their covers after all. If you bought any of these, I think you'd be obligated to store them cover-out on your bookshelf.