Category Archives: Lessons

Scott McCloud in Albuquerque

7000 BC, Events, Lessons

Wednesday, July 18 | 7:00 pm | The Art Center Design College | 5000 Marble St NE | Albuquerque, NM

Comics are changing fast, both in the kinds of stories they tell, and how their creators tell them. Thanks to the graphic novel movement, the manga invasion and the growth of webcomics, the story of comics in America is more exciting and unpredictable than ever.

As a part of the 50-state tour for Making Comics, author and comics artist Scott McCloud will be stopping in Albuquerque to put all these trends into perspective in a fast-moving visual presentation at The Art Center Design College (map).

Presented by 7000 BC, North Fourth Art Center, and The Art Center Design College.

Tickets are $10 ($8 for students), available at the door.

Strip: Undressing Comics

7000 BC, Events, Lessons

Opening Reception: June 1 | 6:00-8:00 pm | VSA North Fourth Art Center | Albuquerque, NM

Exhibtion: June 1-July 21 | VSA North Fourth Art Center | Albuquerque, NM

Workshops: June 16th and 30th | 10am-4pm | VSA North Fourth Art Center | Albuquerque, NM

N4th Gallery in VSA North Fourth Art Center has joined with 7000 BC to present Strip: Undressing Comics, an exhibition that exposes the process of making sequential art. The exhibit provides a unique look into the processes and products involved in comics creation. Fourteen creators from 7000 BC showcase nineteen projects, demonstrating a wide range of work across a variety of media and subject matter. The show documents the stages of taking an initial idea to finished product, from scribbled thumbnails to email exchanges, from photo reference to printed book.

In conjunction with the show, 7000 BC will be conducting two day-long workshops, open to the public ages 15 and up, that will guide participants in making their own comics.

Strip: Undressing Comics is sponsored in part by The Art Center Design College.

For more information, or to register for the workshop, send an email.

Update: Some photos of the show coming together.

How to Make Mini-Comics

Cartooning Lessons, Cartoonist Conspiracy Li'l Library, Lessons, mini-comics, Projects, Useful Information

We recently completed work on the first volume of the Cartoonist Conspiracy L’il Library (to be used at this weekend’s Mouth Off event at The Center For Book Arts)… How to Make Mini-Comics. Click on the image below to download the pdf… then print it out, cut it up, fold it, staple it and learn. Please note that this is a pretty big (4MB) file, so please help conserve our bandwidth and only download it if you intend to use it.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License. It may be printed and distributed freely. It is intended to be an educational tool, and it is our hope that it will be widely used as a “textbook” for teaching how to make a mini-comic.

Thanks to Adam Wirtzfeld, Bob Lipski, Maxeem, Bud Burgy, Zander Cannon, Kevin Cannon, Dank!, and Eric Lappegard for helping me (Steven Stwalley) put this together.

Note that any cartoonist who is interested can contribute a volume to the new Cartoonist Conspiracy Li’l Library. This is intended to become a downloadable pdf library of cartooning tips and techniques in mini-comics format, all using the above creative commons license. Let us know if you’re interested.

Interesting Articles From the Comics Reporter

Cartooning Lessons, Lessons, Useful Information

I was just perusing Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter website and ran across some articles there that I thought would be of interest to you all (check them out at the links below). While you’re there you may want to subscribe to The Comics Reporter blog as well (which is the main page of his site). Tom provides some of the best coverage of comics news on the internoodle.

Why Should I Make a Mini-Comic

Getting Published — Comic Books

Getting Your Daily Newspaper Strip Syndicated

Places to look for Cartooning Gigs

Cartooning Lessons, Lessons, Useful Information

There are enough cartooning gigs appearing online these days that I can no longer keep up with them, although I’ll keep trying… there is a list on the top of the site (and the left side of the home page) of things I’ve heard about and got around to adding, and we have a section of the message board here that anyone can post their opportunities to. Fortunately there are other places to check as well!

Conspirator Andrey Feldysteyn does an excellent job keeping up a list of cartooning opportunies, with a focus on international cartooning and gag comics competitions (among other things).

The Comics Journal message board has frequent opportunites that pop, particularly for the small-press cartoonist:

Here is another newer site called comicjobz.com focusing on various general cartooning gigs.

The Digital Webbing forum used to be a good place to look for more mainstream comic book industry gigs, although I don’t see much of that there these days glancing at it.

I’ll post more of them here as I run across them… please post others on the message board here if you know of them!

Creative Commons Launches Tool to Reclaim Your Old Copyrights

Cartooning Lessons, Lessons, Useful Information

There is an interesting post on Boing Boing today regarding the Creative Commons new “Termination of Transfer” tool for regaining old copyrights.

“Creative Commons has a new “Termination of Transfer” tool that could change the way that copyrights work in America forever. If you’re a creator who’s signed over your copyrights, the law lets you get them back from your publisher, label or studio 35 years later, no matter what your contract says. However, the process for reclaiming your rights is incredibly complicated, so practically no one can take advantage of it.”

This tool is intended to change that situation. Hopefully it will be used by many, many cartoonists who want to reprint old work, but who lost the rights for whatever reason. Read more about it at the link.