04/28/06 - Bluegrass Festival of Books

WOW! Two weekends in a ROW! It's amazing when you look up and actually see the opportunities right here in Lexington, Kentucky! OK, let me explain: last weekend we had the wonderful Women Writers Conference with some really inspirational comic creators and now this weekend we have another major event of interest to creative folk.

This Saturday, April 29th at Lexington Center, UK and Joseph-Beth Booksellers are presenting the Bluegrass Festival of Books, http://www.bluegrassfestivalofbooks.com/.

Of special interest to me is this workshop:

PICTURE THIS! THE ART OF THE CHILDREN'S BOOK		1:00 PM Room: Thoroughbred 5
Join three of today's most talented children's book illustrators as they discuss their craft. Panelists are Loren Long ("The Little Engine That Could"), Susan Meddaugh ("The Witch's Walking Stick") and Pamela Pease ("Derby Day"). The moderator is Chris Ware from the Herald-Leader.

Comic Discussion for Teens - Beaumont Branch Library

The Beaumont Branch of the Lexington Public Libary will be having a discussion about comics Tuesday April 25th 2006, here is the event listing:

Comic Characters
Beaumont Branch, 7:00 PM
Who is your favorite comic book character? Spiderman? Batman? Or do you prefer the villains? Take a look at your favorite comic book heroes and villains through discussion. Create your own comic book character. The focus will be on characters in the Marvel and DC Universes. Feel free to bring comic books that feature your favorite character.
12-up

This looks to be a good event for some of the younger comic creators here in Lexington.

4/10/06 - WWC and Women Comic Creators

The University of Kentucky is hosting the 27th annual Women Writers Conference here in Lexington from Thursday 4/20 to Sunday 4/23. Last year Pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonist, Ann Telnaes was a keynote speaker - this year several women involved in comics will talk or be involved in comic related discussions. Some events are free and some you have to pay a registration to attend (see website or call them for more info). Lexington's own Sara Turner of Cricket Press and Make Like a Tree Comics will be in a quorum at

ArtsPlace on Saturday 4/22
3:30 pm
Arts Place—free & open to all
THE GRAPHIC NOVEL QUORUM
Part literary artist and part visual artist, the graphic novelist works with many media to create new worlds, or to tackle the real world. Leading women of the business, Phoebe Gloeckner, Lauren Weinstein, Amy Kim Ganter, and Lexington's own Sara Turner will talk about it all. Moderated by OSU Cartoon Research Library curator Jenny Robb.
Signing will follow



I just discovered Sara as a comic creator right under our noses - hers and Jerzy's MLAT Comics site is very nice with some wonderful tutorials and beautiful examples of their work. Other guests of comic interest are Phoebe Gloeckner, Lauren Weinstein and Amy Kim Ganter - see the presenters link to find out more about these women.

Lauren Weinstein Friday 4/21

10:45 am
Lexington Public Library–for subscribers
MASTER CLASS—Jane Vandenburgh: The Architecture of the Novel, part 1 (reservations needed)
ROUND TABLE—Heather Raffo: Oral History and the Creative Impulse
CURIO—Lauren Weinstein projects and performs her graphic novel work

Make sure and go out to support this wonderful event!

03/04/06 - Animation Studio in Danville KY!!

Hey guess what I just found out about? Grace Animation Studios in Danville, Kentucky (just about 45 minutes out of Lexington for the geographically challenged) had a section leading story in the Business Monday of the February 6th Herald-Leader. Christopher Turner is the head of the studio and the creator of the Avenging Apes concept.
Here is a link to their website. Amazing, huh?!!

03/01/06 - Lexington Comic Show

In case you haven't heard; there will be a Comic Show in Lexington on Saturday April 1st 2006. No, this is not an April Fools Day prank! This one day show runs from 10AM to 4PM and is being hosted by Comic City Comics out of Nashville. Here is a link to their site with more info about the show. There hould be several local and regional comic creators in attendance so it looks to be a lot of fun! CCG hopes to be set up there - stay tuned for more details on that.

02/27/06 - Cool Illustration Sites

While browsing the magazines at Joseph-Beth, our local independant book seller, I saw a website mentioned in Illustration Magazine (a nice mag with lots of 20th century American commercial art) called american art archives. Guess this shows a personal bias to realistic figurative art but I don't think I'm the only one that will enjoy looking through these great galleries. Lots of new discoveries for me here!!

02/22/06 - Next meeting and Instructional Link

Our next meeting will be Tuesday 2/28/06. I had to correct the blog header: we meet the second and last Tuesdays of the month. I may post some more about the upcoming meeting - may try to produce an agenda of what we will be doing.

Found this at newsarama in a series called One Step about breaking into drawing comics (thumbnails specifically) which is part of an ongoing series. Check it out.

Please email me or comment on this post to let me know you will be attending on the 28th. Need a head count possibly for handouts.

02/19/06 - Project 1: Exposed

Show us what you've got!!

No. Not that, silly.
Now is a good time to post a link or your actual work from Project 1. Let's see what everyone has done!
My roughs are on my personal art blog.

02/09/06 - Local Pulizter Prize Winner Speaks Out

Joel Pett our editorial cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader was on National Public Radio's All Things Considered this past Tuesday (here is a link to the story and audio file archives) talking about recent news events regarding cartooning and the right to free speach. I hope you all listen to his audio editorial.
I may be crossing a line with this post (this is not a blog about politics) - but I think cartoonists should be watching these issues quite closely. Have you noticed how many news stories talk about the images without showing them? How can there be a public discourse about this without seeing the objects of so much controversy? Mostly I object to those who are propagandizing and inflaming the Danish cartoon situation with misinformation to provoke violence and destruction. Surely, if anyone is breaking moral laws, it would be them.
Here is an interesting story regarding that - http://www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/
And here are the comments of respected comic artist: Joe Kubert - http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=60690

2/2/06 - Robert Kirkman Appearance

Robert Kirkman will be at A+Comics on Wednesday February 8th from 4PM to 7:30PM for a public appearance and book signing. In case you haven't been paying attention; he is a local Lexington comic book writer who has written several independent titles and recently several books for Marvel. His "The Walking Dead" and "Invincible" series have been very well received by readers and critics alike.

2/1/06 - Good meeting & New Template

We had a good meeting last night with several new people showing up. Hey John and Ken! Since some folks hadn't had a chance to get the script for Project 1 we will extend the due date to our next meeting on 2/14/06 (Uh-oh, that's Valentine's Day - let me know if we should cancel/reschedule?). Oh, now I've forced your hand - you MUST post a comment.

By the way, what do you think of the new page template "Minima Ochre"? "Son of Moto" didn't differentiate main content from sidebar well enough for me...might try "Rounders".

01/26/06 - Building the Team

I have sent out invitations to some CCG members - if you have responded you should see your name added under Contributors in the left column of this blog. If you don't see your name and you responded to the invitation email let me know and I will send out another invite. You have to follow the link that comes in the email invitation. You may need to copy and paste the url into your browser - clicking the link in your email might not work.

Membership will allow you to post to the blog - not just add comments to existing posts. This should allow us to share and exchange work in the online environment.

Scott R - can you tell me how to set up a subscription service (for folks that don't know RSS) like you have on your project blog?

01/24/06 - First Post & Project 1

Hi! Welcome to a blog about our local Comic Creators Group. I have inherited the organizer role from Jason "Wolf" Hicks who started this group in 2005.

My intention is to use this space as a way to keep members up to date on events and meetings.
Other possible use are:

1.discussion of comic creation,

2.post your comments to the blog item,

3.sharing work: text and images,post a link to your site,

4.getting/giving constructive criticism of yours or others work,

5.sharing relevant links to other sites,
and probably lots of other things that don't come to mind now.

This is my first blog, so beware, I will probably make lots of mistakes along the way. Kind hearted suggestions as to how to make this blog better are welcome.

At our next meeting (we meet the first and last Tuesday of each month) January 31, 2006 we have an assignment due: Justin Fox and I decided to make a project so that we would have some specific work to help one another with.

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Project 1 (due 1/31/06)
Layout the first four pages of Robert Kirkman's (our local comic writer celebrity) zombie comic, The Walking Dead (the scriptbook is available at A+Comics for $3.95).

Work from the script not the actual comic (that's cheating!)
Here is a link to great website by Scott McDaniel (of DC comics Nightwing fame) http://www.scottmcdaniel.net/ It uses frames so you will have to go to Drawing Comics in the top left frame and then Sequential Art #1 in the bottom left frame. Here you can see how he works from the script to create thumbnail layouts and finished layouts.

These layouts shouldn't be finished drawings , instead they should show the panel layout and size and give a rough indication of what is happening. These should be half size (7.5"H x 5"W) or smaller (based on an original art page size of 15"H x 10"W). Bring your layouts with you and/or post lnks to your images in a comment.