If you haven’t heard of ComicSpace, it looks like you probably will soon… it is a rapidly expanding myspace clone aimed at cartoonists and comics enthusiasts. The Conspiracy now has a home there, so won’t you be our friend?

I’ve been having some fun recently building a holiday site called NOSLO.com for the company I work for as a flash developer/animator (OLSON)… NOSLO is the holiday of the future where you send “Sacks of Joy” to your friends and loved ones to spread the joy. Here are the “Sacks of Joy” I’ve animated so far.. send ’em to your friends and spread the joy, if you’re inclined:

Sack of Joy #1: Joyous NOSLO Song

Come spread the spirit and sacks of Joyous NOSLO, the holiday of the future, with this rousing NOSLO carol.

Sack of Joy #2: The Soul Seal

No one can resist the charms of The Soul Seal. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #3: Snowcat

The flying feline of the frozen frontier. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #4: Come Take a Trip in My Airship

An animated plea for aerial romance from a more innocent era. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #5: The Mustache Game

Are you man enough (or facial-hair-challenged woman enough) to triumph over the challenges of the mustache game? Only one way to find out. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #6: Fuzzy Love

An animated fuzzball expresses affection in a manner congruous to his deeply damaged fur-lined psyche. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #7: In Space No One Can Hear You

An animated astronaut explores the aural possibilities of deep space exploration. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #8: The Magical Unicorn

Magic! Sparkles! Fancy! The delirious joy that can only be expressed through a unicorn and a rainbow, or through inhaling fumes of magic glitter glue in a confined space. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #9: The Fractal Weasel Tree

Traditions! No Joyous NOSLO holiday would be complete without summoning and chopping down a Fractal Weasel Tree. Joyous joy! Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #10: The Marshmallow-Loving Chihuahua Vs. The Teacup

Whether you lean towards oolong, jasmine or mint you’ll feel compelled beyond your own will to help this marshmallow-loving chihuahua defeat the sinister teacup. Joyous NOSLO!

Sack of Joy #11: The Little Blue Bird of Joy

Sometimes it takes a little blue bird to remind you that, in spite of life’s hardships, joy can be found regardless of circumstance. Joyous NOSLO!

in addition to subscribing to this blog via your favorite newsreader, you can now subscribe to the blog via email here. If you have been subscribing to our email bulletin, you may want to do this, since the bulletin has been discontinued (although event reminders will still be sent out to that list for the time being).

Cartoonists Chris Ware, Jim Woodring and Joe Sacco have all just been awarded $50,000 each (along with a number of other folks in the arts) by the newly formed "United States Artists." Read more about it here.

This is encouraging. Cartooning is no easy way to make a living, and unlike most other arts there are few grants or fellowships. The Xeric is the best known one (the only other one I can recall hearing about was specifically for caricature or political cartooning). It’s nice (and probably unprecedented) to see some excellent cartoonists get appreciated by an arts fellowship. Woodring I know has cut down greatly on his cartooning output in recent years, and turned more to painting… cartooning paid him so little it’s hard for him to afford to do it. Seeing as he is, in my view, one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, I hope this money will give him the luxury to draw a whole lot of comics.

Things are changing… comics are no longer read exclusively by people who frequent comic book stores. Things have changed immensely in the last few years. Chris Ware and other comic book cartoonists are doing comics for the New Yorker and New York Times, graphic novels are one of the fastest growing sections in most American libraries, some comics are making the best-seller lists, and now this.
Hopefully cartooning will become a viable way to make a living for more and more people.

I realize these aren’t cartoons, but I love the muppets… Jim Henson’s work always seemed in the same vein as animated cartoons for me. I ran across these great Wilkins coffee commercials that Henson made on YouTube the other night.

These are some of Henson’s earliest work (apparently from the late 50’s). They are all probably about 15 seconds, and are mostly extremely violent and often hilarious. This has to have been some of the most outrageous humor on tv at the time. All follow the same routine, but deal with it in different inventive ways, sometimes they fall totally flat or are just corny, sometimes they are totally hilarious (and often corny as well).

If you dig the clip, there are 8 more of them on YouTube to go through as well.

If the Fleischer Brothers had been Japanese, they would have probably made something like this.

Here are some tutorials and other information that look interesting that I’ve run across on the web recently, although I haven’t read most of them thoroughly yet…

Artbabe’s Jessica Abel provides information on making comics, selling comics and getting comics.

Michael Halbert provides some tutorials on doing scratchboard work.

Article on making comics by the late, great Virgil Partch.

Neil Gaiman provides a template for leaving a literary will.

Also, here is an interview with the founder of the Cornstalker comics collective, which offers a lot of information about starting an online comics collective.

A new comic ebook is now on-line from the artist of the Cartoonist Conspiracy Cell of San Francisco, CA. It features a unique challenge where the participants strove to avoid words and to draw natural disasters. You can find the 8 page e-book(pdf) in the gallery section of this site. We would love to know what you think, please tell us your comments, kudos, critiques, etc. by leaving comments on this post or visit our thread on the message board.

The artist who participated are:

Page 1: (cover) Doc Popular, Jeff Plotkin, Brian Kolm

page 2: Jeff Plotkin – URL: geocities.com/happyfreakshow/

Page 3: Brian Kolm – URL: AtomicBearPress.com

Page 4: Jeffrey Mulletti

Page 5: Doc Popular – url: DoctorPopular.com

Page 6: Meredith Scheff – URL LadyCartoonist.com/

Page 7: Mike Hale – URL wobblyart.com

Page 8: Brian Kolm – URL: AtomicBearPress.com

This isn’t comics or cartooning related, but writer/philosopher Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of The Illuminatus Trilogy and author of numerous other fine books, is very ill from post-polio syndrome and is in need of financial aid as he can not currently support himself and needs 24 hour healthcare. More info can be found here, here and here. Fortunately, some people have organized a fund to help Wilson… two days ago he couldn’t pay his rent, and now things are looking better.

You can donate to him via “send money” on paypal to his olgaceline@gmail.com email account.

Wilson is my favorite author and has been a huge influence on me… indeed, there probably would not be a Cartoonist Conspiracy if I had never read Wilson. If you haven’t read any of his books I can’t recommend them highly enough. You can order his books here.

Although our blog is set to syndicate the entire content of our posts, for some reason it is currently abbreviating them in the feeds. You may want to check the link to the original posts to make sure you are reading the entire posts, if you are interested in them. I’m assuming this is because google is making changes to the blogger system, and they probably have broken something in the process (since this worked fine last week), so hopefully this will fix itself.