05/05/09 - Educational Opportunities

Some comic/cartooning educational opportunities coming up this month (don't wait to check this out as these classes will fill quickly!).

School of Visual Arts (SVU) instructors and authors of Writing Pictures and Drawing Words, Matt Madden and Jessica Abel will lead a two week Summer Intensive Comics Seminar at SVU in NYC:
http://mattmadden.blogspot.com/2009/05/pre-mocca-art-festival-class-summer.html

Matt is a good teacher (I attended his one-day workshop at OSU's Wexner Center last summer) and can help you get through the inertia often stymieing a new cartoonist. Some additional info taken from Matt's blog:

Starting the day after Memorial Day, Jessica and I are offering an intensive 2-week class at SVA, the goal of which is to learn how to make comics by writing, drawing, and printing a minicomic in time for the MoCCA Art Festival the weekend of June 6-7. We'll teach in the mornings and afternoons will alternate between open studio time and visits from a group of stellar guest cartoonists: David Mazzucchelli, Becky Cloonan, Tom Hart, Gary Panter, and Kim Deitch! Each will have a three hour session that will be a combination workshop/craft talk/crit.

The roster's filling up fast so sign up sooner rather than later. Info below, registration info here.


If you can't travel to New York then this may be for you: Bobby Chiu's Schoolism is offering a "Build a Powerful Comic Book Portfolio" online course taught by Alvin Lee:
https://www.schoolism.com/
Click on the sample video link to see and hear Alvin critiquing a students work. There are two tuition rates: you can get reduced rate if you opt out of instructor feedback. This "self taught" option saves you more than half the cost of the regular rate!

05/05/09 - NPR Story on Adults and Drawing

When did you stop drawing for fun? If you are the average adult you probably stopped sometime in your Elementary School years. Somewhere along the line many decide they just aren't "good enough" and stop.

NPR ran a story today (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103818071) about why adults stop drawing and Mo Willems, a cartoonist and children books illustrator wants to get adults back to drawing and doodling. To quote Mo, who has been working with NPR on their Radio Cartoonist series: " Cartooning doesn't have to be realistic...if you can write your name, you can draw a cartoon. Your name is series of letters in the right order and a cartoon is just a series of shapes in the right order".

Visit the web link for an audio archive or maybe you can catch the story today on your local NPR radio station. Here is a link to Mo's blog with even more content: http://mowillemsdoodles.blogspot.com/

05/0109 - Wolverine Movie Opens and Free Comic Book Day

Free Comic Book Day is tomorrow! The new Wolverine movie opens today! Here is a video talking about both!



Here is a list of Kentucky comic shops - visit with your friends, family and young ones!

04/11/09 - National Illustration Event - Mazza Museum Summer Conference

Just as comics has the often mentioned (at least here on this blog) OSU Comic Library and Museum - children's picture books has the Mazza Musuem on the campus of Findlay University in Northern Ohio.

During the week of July 13 - July17 2009 they will have their 17th annual summer conference. There will be numerous notable presenters including James Gurney of Dinotopia fame who will be speaking there Wednesday July 15th in the morning.

Here in Lexington the University of Kentucky Library has a group with a similar mission - The McConnell Center seeks to study and support childrens literature.

04/10/09 - National Events - Redstick Animation Fesival

Animation doesn't get the attention it deserves here on the CCG blog - but I definitely couldn't miss the opportunity to spread the word about this soon to happen event in Baton Rouge, LA: the Redstick International Animation Festival! The Festival runs from Wednesday April 22nd to Saturday April 25th 2009.

There are discounts for students and educators - passes for the screenings are free. Some of the workshops your Gold Pass will buy you are:

• Drawing Dinosaurs
• Guerilla Animation
• Video Game Development

I also discovered a, here to unknown, compatriot comic creators group - The Baton Rouge Cartoonists Society! They will be teaching children's cartooning workshops during the festival.

04/10/09 - Regional Comic Event - SPACE

Coming up April 18th & 19th in Columbus OH is SPACE - Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo.

The Friday (4/17/09) preceding the Expo the newly renamed OSU - Cartoon Library & Museum will have an open house from 3-5pm.

03/03/09 - Next Meeting Time

Our first meeting of 2009 will be Sunday March 29th, 1:30-4:30pm at the Beaumont Branch of the Lexington Public Library. We will be meeting in the large conference room (on the right side as you enter). See the CCG Calendar link for more details.
Please contact me if you have some ideas on what you would like to talk about or work on. I have some ideas but would love to get more input from those of you who will be attending. If you are new and wondering about what we do at our meetings see the CCG Mission Statement (WIP) link.

01/25/09 - Gaming Event in Louisville next weekend

Conflux should be an interesting event! It is coming up in Louisville next weekend (Saturday 1/31/09) and is hosted by Brennan Moody of www.Bluegrassmagic.com. This looks like a fun time for Magic card gamers and fans of fantasy art (I was informed about this happening by local painter Sal Villagran who will have a table there).

For more information contact skullman@bluegrassmagic.com. If you go: make sure and visit Sal's table and help support our local talent.

Salvation in a Newsletter

In the spirit of full disclosure I need to clarify that following is an extract of material from ConceptArt.org / Massive Black's website posted here by one our CCG members. - J.Gilpin, CCG Coordinator.

In an effort to give back and to begin to take on bigger challenges as a community, ConceptArt.Org has been quietly working to solve the pending Orphan Bill (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqBZd0cP5Yc for more information on what we are up against and what we desperately created a solution for).

The new viewer is here: http://www.conceptart.org/search/index.php?cat=bestof&forumid=5

This summer we helped send thousands of emails to the members of the US House and Senate to stop this bill. What did we get in return? Canned email form letters thanking us for sharing our views. The bill drafts went the House and Senate anyway. The artists, professionals, and creative organizations who were trying to protect artist rights were ignored by the US government completely. Realizing that even a hundred thousand signatures wont stop the copyright bill, at least that is how it looks from here, I got to thinking what we have to do to solve the problems right here at home.

Artists having to pay to be in searchable registries is potential problem number one. I believe this will be left to the private companies based on my research into who is supporting this horrible bill and what businesses are opening preparing for it. I went in and checked the domain registry to search to see if people were buying the domains (registermyart.com, artregistry.com, etc..etc...) and every one I searched was gone. This was the red flag that began the real push to solve this assault on artist rights. The corporate sharks are already preparing to feed it seems.

Since the business world reads the laws and tries to capitalize on the loopholes, it is obvious to me that this would happen. Money is already flowing that direction. My guess is the art registries will launch as soon as the law passes or shortly thereafter, unless some miracle happens. Smart buggers but not smart enough. Imagine the photographers who take five hundred images a day or more...ugh. Artists cannot pay for this service...at least those I know who produce quantities of work...and none should have to.

Anyway, that problem is now solved in low tech fashion here: http://www.conceptart.org/search/ind...rumid=5&page=1 ConceptArt.Org has created a search system for locating art and artists, essentially cutting off the paid registry industry before they can even get off the ground. Click the images and find the original thread. Click the artist name and contact them directly. This also keeps these readying companies from acting as middlemen, between the searcher and the artist who they wish to hire. There is no room for that in our business.

I designed and we rebuilt all our databases and set up conceptart.org servers to handle up to 200 terabytes of secure storage. This service is entirely free and is a gift to the community from ConceptArt.Org. It is also nice as you can now browse through the images on the site very quickly. What used to take a week to view, now takes hours. Released in this viewer are five hundred thousand images. More will be added shortly. When you post on the forums your images go in the copyright search registry we created. It is all automated for you. Just keep doing as you do and at least your work can be found. The watermark will be site wide, and contains the appropriate information.

You can search best of (five star threads) for fun...or from each forum if you click the "forums images" text tab...there are a ton of ways to look for stuff. key wording is in progress. That is the final piece of the basic search tool.

The idea is to simply kick the entire start up registry industry in the nuts before it can even learn to stand up by taking action ourselves.

Anyway...just some thoughts...my vision for where this heads is deeper than this but it should at least help some, i hope. I spoke at length with Brad Holland and others involved in putting up the fight for artists rights and we have solved two of the biggest issues.

1. That artists could have to pay for their works to be registered and protected in the US, and there is evidence supporting this.
2. That these companies would then act as middle men between prospective clients searching the databases by requiring the company or person searching to pay them for your information.

Obviously, these problems must not happen.

There are other problems being solved, as related to this bill and this is just a first step in the best defense is a good offense mentality when it comes to artist rights. If we sit around and wait for someone to provide these solutions it is going to cost us dearly. Instead, we are taking action.

Happy New Year too!


Jason Manley
Founding Director
ConceptArt.Org
President
www.massiveblack.com