The third annual City Pages Comix Issue will be out today at a coffee shop near you… as usual, it features the work of many members of the Twin Cities Cartoonist Conspiracy, including the above image by Local Hero Kevin Cannon. This year’s theme is “Minnesota Nice.” Cartoons are already online for those of you who can’t wait to see it in print.

Join the St. Paul Cartoonist Conspiracy Cell and create a jam comic! This jam will be extra special as we will bid farewell to our friend and Twin Cities conspirator Mike Sgier. Mike is moving out to Philadelphia in a couple of weeks and this will be your last chance to jam with him in the Twin Cities! So, come on out, say goodbye to Mike and jam with us. It’s easy and fun! Just bring some drawing utensils, an idea for the jam, and a few bucks to get a tasty beverage — the baristas really do appreciate that.

The jam will start promptly at 6:30 and run until…whenever.

The meetings are open to anyone who wants to draw with us, and the results are posted here sooner rather than later.

To join us come to:
Cosmic’s Coffee Shoppe
189 Snelling Ave N.
St. Paul, MN 55104
(Northwest corner of Snelling and Selby)

More not than often we head on over to grab a brew at:
O’Gara’s Bar and Grill
164 Snelling Ave N
St. Paul, MN 55104
(Southeast corner of Snelling and Selby)

Bus info here.

Hope to see you there!

Aug 13, 2009 regular Thursday Night Comic Jam at the Church St. Café

Hey all, it’s time for our regular Thursday night comic jam at the Church St. Café, These jams run the Second and Last Thursday of every month and are easy to get to from public transportation.

(NOTE: We have two jams this week with a Sunday Comic Jam (CAM JAM #2) on August 16th.)

The Jam runs from 6:30 on August 15th and all artist are invited to
attend. So bring your favorite drawing tools and come on down and draw a spell.

Description: The San Francisco cell of the International Cartoonist
Conspiracy meets twice a month from on the second and last Thursday of
the month from 6:30-10PM
location: Church St. Cafe. 260 Church Street San Francisco, CA 94114

Getting there: There is public transportation on MUNI (and BART) to get to the Jam. Visit 511.org to find out more.

This is a Jam Comic from back in May 2009. I think this is one of the first comics where we noticed that when we work as smaller groups we produced stronger work.

The challenge for this jam was to do no dialog with the theme of starting a band. Each comic was created in small groups of two to the three people who drew on index cards. In many ways the process resembled doing a storyboard for an animated film. Each team also worked differently then the others with some diving up the story by character and others by scene.
Ready to read the comic? Click here to download the PDF and then leave comments on what you thing> CCSF: Making the Band

Well, it’s been a while since your artist pals in San Francisco uploaded some comics for you to read, but today we are going to change that.

This is the ‘Wrestling’ zine we created a few months ago. Artist teamed up and each was responsible for one of the characters and their actions. The process is very much like in 2D drawn animation where each artist/team handles one character only.

To read, click here to download the PDF>> ccsf wrestle zine(web)

And here is the awsome cover by Jaime Crespo

Comics, cartoonists, and the Roe Family Singers!

  More where that come from here!

  Thanks for coming everybody!

The Cartoon Art Museum bookstore and the Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco present:

CAM JAM #2: Once Upon a Time

Sunday August 16, 2009
Where: Cartoon Art Museum – San Francisco CA
When: 11am to 5pm

The Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco art group and the Cartoon Art Museum Bookstore are proud to present the second Comic Book Art Jam at the Cartoon Art Museum (CAM JAM). The event invites artist of all levels into the Museum’s lobby to create sequential art (i.e. Comics!) and to push their creativity.

Our Goal: To draw complete short comic book stories between 11am and 4pm, then to get them printed at the copy store nearby so artist can take them home.
NOTE: The price per-book cost will not be determined until we know what the final page count is.

Space: There is room for at least 18 artists, but no one will be turned away and every effort will be made to find space.

Optional Theme: Once Upon a Time.

In honor of one of the museums newest exhibit ‘Once Upon a Dream – the Art of Sleeping Beauty’ the theme will be Fairy Tales. Of course who knows if the Three Bears had superpowers or if Hansel and Gretel were secret agents?

Cost: The event is FREE and will be held in the Museums Lobby. All artists who participate in the Jam will get free admission to get into the Museum as well.

Goodie Bag: The CAM bookstore will also offer goodie bags for a $2.00 donation that will include: a bottle of water, sweet treats, ‘mood’ pencil, 15% off coupon, raffle ticket and other surprises.

SCHEDUAL:

11 am – Museum Opens. Bring your comics, portfolio and favorite drawing tools on down and come ready to create.

Warm-up art challenge: To get ready to draw we will have a warm-up art challenge. Inspired by the by the evil fairy Maleficent who is seen in the current exhibit ‘Once Upon a Dream: the art of Sleeping Beauty’ our challenge will be to draw OUR interpretations of the great Disney animated villains. The artwork will be posted in the bookstore afterward and everyone (including the museum guests) can vote on their favorite and the winner will be picked at 4pm. Also, with the artists permission the art will be displayed both in the store as well as used for a Halloween window display.

11:45 am – Let’s get started!

We will regroup into teams of 2-3 artists to create a variety of different art jam collaboration through out the day with a goal to finish our comics by the end of the day.

Lunch Break: Artist can take a break whenever they want with a bag check available at the front desk. The CCSF and Cartoon Art Museum are not responsible for the loss of items.

…

3:30 pm – The home stretch to finish our stories by 4 pm.

4 pm – PENCILS UP! Time to stop.

– Members of the CCSF will take the artwork and run it over to a local copy shop to produce some books which (hopefully) will be ready by 5pm at the latest. (See 5pm.)

– We will count up the votes for the Warm-up Art challenge and Contest and pick a winner. You do not have to be present to win.

– Network, Chat and Clean up.

5pm – Mini comics of the days work will be available to the artist at the cost of printing. (We might require the help to assemble the books.)

– After jam drinks and snack at a nearby establishment.

Legal stuff…
*By participating in the Comic Jam you give permission for the CCSF to post your work on-line and to print a one time run of books to be sold to the participating artist at-cost. Extra copies will be sold to the general public as fundraising for the Cartoon Art Museum and CCSF.

RSVP:

If you think you will be joining us, why not drop us an email so we can get an idea of the number of people attending. Email organizer Brian Kolm at theatomicbear@gmail.com with your RSVP and/or questions too.

Cartoonist Conspiracy website: http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/cartoonist-conspiracy-sf?hl=en&pli=1
Twitter Updates: http://twitter.com/cartoonistSF/
Facebook: look us up as Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco

Cartoon Art Museum: http://www.cartoonart.org
CAM Bookstore Twitter: http://twitter.com/CAMBookstore
CAM Twitter: http://twitter.com/cartoonart
CAM Bookstore on Facebook: friend Sparky Joe
CAM on Facebook: search for Cartoon Art Museum

CAM JAM #1 2009

I just put up a gallery of photos of all the issues in the little funny sideshow, which you can see here.

little funny is an ongoing series of mini-comics boxed and sold out of an old cigarette vending machine.

The little funny set 1 box sets each contain 6 accordion-style mini-comics.

The 6 comics in a set 1 box are randomly selected from the 29 issues in the first set.

Boxes sell for $2 each.

They are only sold out of a vending machine currently housed at Altered Esthetics gallery.

They will make their premiere at the BIG FUNNY show opening this Friday, August 7th, 2009.

Sorry there hasn’t been a 7000 BC jam comic for a while — we were all safely hiding in our undisclosed location. But now our tale can be told: Meanwhile, In The Bunker.

Scenes form the August meeting/workshop, where this jam was (mostly) created are at the Flickr stream.

If you have work in BIG FUNNY, you will be able to pick up your 6 creator copies during the jam.  Please stop by and pick them up Thursday, cause although you CAN pick them up Friday at the opening, its just easier all around to do it the day before when there arent a couple hundred people milling about.  THANKS again so much for your brilliant contributions!

The Minneapolis Cartoonist Conspiracy meets at 6:30 until 10:00 the first Thursday of every month at Diamond’s Coffee Shoppe in Northeast.

Generally, we draw collaborative “jam” comics, socialize and drink caffeinated beverages. Afterwords, we often have uncaffeinated beverages somewhere else.

The meetings are open to anyone who wants to draw with us, and the results are posted here sooner or later (and sometimes even printed).

Diamond’s Coffee Shoppe
1618 Central Avenue Northeast
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Bus info here.

Please spend some money at Diamond’s while you’re there, even if it is just a cuppa coffee… they are excellent hosts, and we wanna stay welcome there.

Big Time Attic hosts our monthly jam meetings at Diamond’s… they will be supplying us with a big old plate of pastries or something. Thanks fellas!