NYC Con Final Report

On the 7 train from Queens we were serenaded by local musicians.

After getting back to Philly from NYC and back to school, I thought I'd post some final thoughts and final pics from the con.
Shaka and Spidey dance-off!

I think the show was good overall . It seemed to run very smooth from my perspective, but again I had no booth or table, but load-out Sunday seemed to go well. I had friends who did brisk business and some who did merely OK. I suppose that is the way with every show, some peoples best, others worst show ever!

However to my eyes it's clear from this show that the ongoing split and separation of the fandom into separate tracks as it were at these shows is really happening. You can see the distinct layering and comics is now even more marginalized and the fans walking the floor are even more defined into separate categories. Superhero, manga, animae, toys etc.




I always observe the crowds at shows and try and get a lay of the land, what seems to be happening, maybe what trends are happening within the business by the type of fan I see, the make-up of the bulk of the fans attending, and I don't mean the costume makeup.

It is clear to me now, the trend I saw first hand a few years back at Megacon in Florida has only continued to grow. That is the growth of the fangirl, the show this weekend was packed with groups of teenage and early 20 something Grrls paling around some fully dressed in cosplay, some only wearing the cat hats etc.






But they were there having fun, en mass. There seemed to always be something going on as far as costume shows the whole time, or at least every time I went past that part of the con. There was really an endless parade it seemed and something going on there and I think that is a huge draw for many fan girls.


This I think is a great thing for girls, and fandom, because as I joked several times this last weekend, the only boobs you used to see at cons were the ones on guys.
But you know, these gals don't give a frig about Marvel Comic or DC or any of they old guard stuff, and I don't blame them, those are clearly boys power fantasies. And despite the cute gals dressed as Powergirl or Green Lantern, most of the costumes worn by gals are non superjock.




How the big companies in Babymania have failed, for here is the next 2-3-4 generations of readers and they are gone, they are reading comics, but not the ones they publish, and you know what? Many of their boyfriends are the same way. I know that even from my experience in teaching that the average class of 20 students will have only 3-4 students who read a Marvel Comic, but they all love cartoons and animae and manga. Nobody seems to talk about these things, at least I haven't seen it. This is a big downer for the hobby, because without the next waves of readers the old wave is now crashing on shore and there are not enough 20 something male readers to offset the crash. Dollar books bins are the norm now, back issue sales, once the backbone of comics retail has shrunk. Last year at the Wizard Philly con, most retailers were selling toys, not comics.

The other thing I see is the continued growth of toys. The hand made plush-monster-one-eyed-dolls. The little custom vinyl toys etc. I heard more than one toy retailer at the show say they were sold out Saturday.
fans chilling out on a bunch of pillows...a great idea for tired feet.

I think were are in the big transition time where comics will shift a lot in the next 5 years. More web comics, more graphic novels and the continued marginalization of the pamphlet and the walled city of Babymania which serves no one well except the babymen. Comics certainly will continue to exist but we will have more versions from cell phone comics to web comics and more.

I also have to report that I had dozens and dozens of people say how much they were looking forward to the Batman Brave and the Bold show and that the babymen were just all kinds of wrong. I also had dozens of people come up and say they not only laughed their asses off at my posts on that subject, but also agreed with me.

Another thing I see it the continuation of the artist/gorilla publishing phenom. With printing coming down in price, the growth of on-demand printing there are a lot more artists able to self publish their work in formats far removed from the old mimeographed fan books of old. The power of the artist now to directly connect to his audience as my great buddy Alberto Ruiz has done I think is another trend we will continue to see. the only thing hurting us artists is the escalating price of tables and availability of space.
Alberto and Stephen Silver

For now I think the NYC comic will continue to be at least 2/3-1/3 comics, but I can see clearly comics or the direct market pamphlet is declining and other forms of fantasy entertainment is continuing to grow AND compete withe comics for the fans $dough$. I think it will compete with San Diego for some folks as that show has become almost too big and it's more about Movies that Comics.

The question I have is how long till Hollywood decides that this show will be Show East as San Diego has become Show West II. This show is more comics centric but I wonder how long?


The Dr. Sketchy booth
Basil Golgos!
Jamar Nicholas and Thomas Zahler
Ronn and Janet Sutton
Lee Weeks

Will Rosado,me, Jamar Nicholas, Mike Hawthorne
Sometimes the Hit comes from yer best friends!


Tony Moore
Steranko!
Phil Hester and Greg Thompson
Ric Remender
Playboy cartoonist Doug Snyed

I always wondered if this was the building Kirby based the F.F.'s headquaters on?




Me, Chris bailey, Will Rosado and Jamar.

Jerry Ordway and me.



the Fantagraphics booth.
Hulk has no BARS!

My friend from Estudio Villagran, Pearla

APRIL CREEPERTINS

The April installment of the Creepertins.

NY Comic Con Day 1

I had a great time at the show yesterday. Sorry I missed some peeps like Jerry Ordway Remender...you never see everyone. Booth and table free I was able to roam and yack, press flesh and do business. I like this much better honestly, been a while since I was a tourist at a show. Hung with my buddies Jamar a lot, saw Mike Hawthorne, Alberto Ruiz, Stephen Silver, chitted a chat with Tony Moore. I missed a lot of people so I'll try and hit them today.










The show is busy, but kinda' low key, figuring in it's NYC it seems way lower stress than San Diego. No over zealous security, and the thronging masses were in full throng at times but still, from the last SD it was much more bearable. Maybe because we don't have that lady yelling at people constantly from the address system to not run, stop, drop, and roll, etc. In fact I don't remember even one announcement. I hear sales are slow for some comics from many people but I think TOYS are doing well, many people say they are sold out of their stock. Lots and lots and lots of girls, many, many cute. it's the rise of the fangirl I think....lots dressed up. I think there are several distinct layers of fans to these big shows now, and while I think NYC is more comic centric than San Diego, I think many fans were there (at least 50%) for a lot of other stuff besides comics. There seems now a younger set of fan, female, in packs, there for their animae and manga, or even some superjock stuff, dressed up as their fave heroine. the like the attention. I think some people just come in and just skirt about for free swag. Saw plenty of babymen, but I have to say, maybe their numbers are dwindling a bit, they are being replaced by Grrlz. Scott and I saw two omega class babymen waddling out as we walked up to the show. Both were slathered in sweat, hair slicked to the sides of their heads, carrying swords and bags of booty.

Had great Thai food last night. I'll follow up with a big post show report Monday complete with lots of pics. It's back to the world of fine arts in the morning.

U Arts Storyboard Class

On top of all the freelancing and schooling of my own I teach a weekly storyboarding class at U Arts in downtown Philly this semester. It's a great class of students and it's pretty large, so luckily the class is six hours long which really gives me the opportunity to do in-dept crits and have a lot of lecture time as well which includes some drawing lessons as well as some weeks showing films or cartoons.


This week my best bud Scott Cohn came down to visit and he came in for his second visit with the class, so he did some guest critis like a visiting artist. The class was finishing up their comic story assignment, and some were really well done, funny and...disturbing, in a funny way of course. I'll try and post some of the best ones next week. There are only three weeks left now in the semester and for some who are seniors, they are getting that nervous uncertain feeling all seniors get when the end suddenly seems to loom up at them.

Clayface

Here are a few shots of my sculp from my Monday morning class. We have I think 2 weeks or two poses left of this model. I hope I can get him done, but I doubt it, well done only to a point since the class is pretty short. I am having a blast though, I really love sculpting. It's amazing how just a few pushes of the clay can suddenly really get the form just right. I wish i could have entered the Stewarston competition at the school, but I just don't have the free time. I will be so crunched till the end of the semester I just don't have any spare time.

New Yorker Style Cartoon-color

Here is the second cartoon colored. I did it in Photoshop this time just to save time and not have to hassle with my printer and the watercolor paper.

New Faux New Yorker Cartoon

Here is the next in the series of faux New Yorker cartoons I am doing for the local ad agency, Lunchbox. There will be 4 in the series, so now I'll color it up and start the next one.

Life Painting--the next step

yesterday was the uninstructed life painting session. It was an "ehh' session. the light was so completely different I basically had to repaint almost everything I did last week. I mostly used my palette knife this week to load up the fat over last weeks laydown.

Some days it's a battle!

Undreroos in a Bunch

I find it funny how some peoples underroos got all in a bunch because I called it as I see it. A guy who actually knows things and does this as a living. I won't get into long personal debates and lower myself to calling people names.If someone wants to discuss this in person I'll be at the Twomorrow's booth at the New York Comicon next weekend.

The fact is that for the babymen types, there is an embarassment about comics. That they read them beyond the age when most people stop. Thus they feel the need to defend comics and something not silly, or for kids. It's grown up man, look, they curse and fuck now! Lookit Powergirls tits!

I mean look at my Wolverine shirt man, that's badass! Look't the blood! There is a lot wrong with this and it is so inbread and deep within the roots of the comic biz on every level, from Pro to FAN, to retailor that you can't fight it. The fact that today most comics are not for kids has nothing to do with Kids themselves deciding they don't want them.

There was really something different, more mature about the previous generation of creators, the greatest generation as I call them. There was a time when many of them also felt bad about drawing comics, not comic strips, no, comic books. As the 60's came and the rise of Marvel happened that seemed to dissappear. I think guys like Kirby and Stan thought of themselves as entertainers in a much broader way than most guys of my generation do. Sure we entertain, but it's in the small clubs if it's comic books. Comic strips still reach millions and that was always the Holy Grail for Kirby's generation, and for some of mine too. That was mass popularity and very often mass wealth. Comic strips have never had the negative stigma comic books did. Adults produly read the strips on the train, in public on the way to work. A 30 something guy reading X-men in a Sin City t-shirt still looks like a geek. There has been a big disconnect even within the entire comic world. The a skisim between comic books, comic strips and animation.

The geek culture has risen, and become more acceptable, yet people still giggle at a grown man reading a superhero comic in public. The comic guy from the Simpsons. However I have to say people always think I have a cool job and it's stunning how many people still remember comics and have no idea they are still made. This happens so often with people 40 and over. It's not that they dislike comics, but they have no idea they still exist, and thus their kids often don't either. Thus another part of the catch-22.

The babymen still wince and cry at the very idea that the fact is Adam West's version of Bats is as legit as Timm's or Adams or Bob Kane's. The existence of one doesn't mean the others are not legit. But the fact remains that this new show, Batman Brave and the Bold will be many, many kids first exposure to the character, and the bulk of people watching these cartoons have no idea about any of these other versions fans and babymen enjoy. There is no 70 years of history and continuity to an 8-year-old.
I had no idea that Johnny Quest was based on Terry and the Pirates. I just loved the show. I was the demo the network was aiming at.

A kid just likes the show because it's cool to him most of the time irrespective of the creators influences. Fan's get that, Babymen don't.

The bottom line to the network is that the age group, the demo they are aiming the show at and selling the advertisers on, watch the show. If they kids don't watch, the toys don't sell, the rate they can charge for adversting drops and the show makes a short 2-3 year run, maybe enough for syndication to recoup their investment on DVD etc. Network TV is even more brutal, sometimes shows run two episodes before they are axed. The zealot fans who then try and write into save their fave show will do so in vain as there are never enough of them to insure ratings. That's reality.

A lot of things have changed in the 12+ years I have been working in animation, the whole landscape economically is really different now. Affiliates don't want cartoons, the rise of Nic and CN, Disney, now Toon Disney, etc. Seperate brands aimed at specific demographics even within the same company. For instance, the Disney Channel is really aimed at girls now, the Hanna Montanna demo, while Jetix is now aimed at boys.

Batman Beyond was an idea not spearheaded by Timm and Dini, nope, that was the toy company saying they wanted a new show with a younger Batman because the sales on the toyline was slowing. The Timm and crew came up with that idea, they were given the first shot at it, rightly so, but the network could have as easily gone with somebody else if their take didn't resonate with the clients. As a pencil slinger working in this environment you have a lot of outside forces effecting you that you have no control over. You can work on a show like Samurai Jack that was awesome and beautiful, fun, etc., but SJ never connected with the kids enough, not enogh toys etc., that really make the company the big bucks. So it goes away. A new head of the studio can take over and decide to shitcan the old guys shows, like the new lion eating the old lions cubs. I've been witness to that too, something fans don't ever really get to see, but they will notice when the show they like seems to be shifted all over the schedule...that means they might be trying to kill it off. Yeah, weird shit that has nothing to do with how well I do my job but might cut it short.

"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

It seems that the last few posts I have posted on the blog in regards to the situation of the comic biz and the Babymen has hit a cord with many, many of my fellow comic fan and professional as well. I guess these are thoughts and feelings I have been dealing with and stirring around in my head, steering around as well as a professional. As a kid the batman show was such a big event, everybody was so excited to watch it every week, both my brother Dave and I were just fixed on it and the other Irwin Allen shows. It seemd to be a cool thing, popular and we didn't take it as being silly or feel they were getting the essence of the character wrong, and ok, I was like 7-8 years old. But those shows fuled my playtime as well and Dave and I had plenty of action figure including the Captain Action withe the Batman disguise, Corgi batmobiles, etc.That's what this new Batman Brave and the Bold is supposed to be, the same thing I'm sure the network and toy producers want.


If you are 30 years old and angry that some cartoon on TV isn't getting the character right because it's aimed at kids, designed for kids---then you have a serious fucking problem, and the cartoon is the least of it! The good stuff, the good cartoons, stuff Timm and Crew did can be enjoyed by a kid, or even adults, and that's great. But we have Adult Swim and shows like Venture Brothers where the whole thing is to aim at us adults using the familaiar icons of the past. That's part of the joke. And you caan have the draker edge in the batman films, but I still think if you go too far you eventually weaken the concept , corrupt it and then you loose the heart. you also make it seems like eveything else...

The recent passing of Charlton Heston also fits and flows into this all as well. Heston was really to my mind the prototype-action hero we have today like Arnold, or had I should say, the current crop of soft, pretty featured Hollywood leading men being more like girls standing in wet panties compared to Heston. It might be a byproduct of getting older to look back and think things were 'so much better back then." But in many cases or at least in comic and film I think they were, sure there was a lot of crap, but there is a lot more of everything now and a higher percentage of it is crap, and very expensive crap. Sure Soilent Green is a fun, kinda' cheesy movie, like Planet of the Apes. Like Kamandi was. Fun. A fun comic for a 10 year old kid like me who also happened to like Soilent Green and West World. But if you took those concepts today, that idea and try and sell it to the Babymen crowd, forget it. It can't be fun, nope, all one note, retread, grim gritty. You have to take Soilent green and show the people being turned into food in as gross and ghastly as possible, you leave so little to the audiences imagination...no participation.

I have read things like One Piece and Narrutto and Death Note and they, the Japanese are doing with the medium of comics what we used to do as an industry and don't now. they make stories that appeal to different levels of maturity and for people who like different genres as well. Hell, just for different people period! At one time it was pretty standard here. You had Kirby who appealed to a kid, then maybe Neal Adams who appealed to the older reader, and then you could even step up, Dr. Strange, Warren mags or even undergrounds like Zap, Slow Death, etc. You has Mary Worth, Blondie, Eek and Meek, Steve Canyon, Dick Tracy, B.C., Peanuts all on one page and nobody seemd to get outraged or upset at one being silly and one being "real". people just read them and accepted them all in the 'world of cartoons". That day with strips is sadly gone too as we all have been reading about the steady decline of the American newspaper. And more people read strips than ever read comic books and adults bought the papers and the material was aimed at them, kids also loved the stuff too, but the direct market is so anti that idea.

The equivalent of those books from the pre-direct market today struggle to sell 1500-10,000 copies, I know, I've worked on many and have friends like Rick Remender who does too, and works hard at it.

There is also a pretentiousness today in comics that there wasn't back in the 60's, 70's and 80's that is very apparent today in comics. It's ironic I think, that while I feel the comic biz is in some respects in it's worst state in many regards as a profession, ( no effective raise in page rate since the mid 90's) and as a biz, comics have never been more "in the news", more accepted, more popular. So, why is there this disconnect between the popularity of comics as a medium, being adapted into films, TV, graphic novels coming into their own, being actively purchased by librarians and librarys all over, appreciated by popular and learned minds, read the world over by millions in strips, manga, etc., yet the average comic shop, the Walled City of Babymania is like some ghastly blighted backwater full of the mentally, socially "tarded" and most importantly, business wise the village of the damed!

Dammed if you can find anything much beyond the offerings of the top tier of the Big Two-Three publishers in the average strip mall comic shop. Dammed if you can find any manga, any humor books, dammed if you can find the owner who's interested in selling more comics, growing his business.

If these guys owned a supermarket they wouldn't stock Milk, or Eggs or anything but the three types of food they liked, forget having a selection, forget advertising, forget inventory, tracking sales, etc.
In this set-up, how can the business have a hope of surviving long term? The fact is there are a few good retailers out there, and we know them all. it's about 300-400 shops tops. They order well, order a variety, have a good staff, have a store that people would feel good going into if they were a teen, a kid, dare I say...a girl or a woman. Those shops order the Indy book, the alternative books, stock manga, put it in the front, have books for a wide audience, like a regular book store. But there are not enough of these shops to offset the negative or bad shops and that's why all the indy cartoons make little or no money, why you don't have more Bones, or Stranger in paradise, etc. that's because there is not enough good shops to support an artist or writer making this type of book. The retailers just won't fucking support you, even if they could sell your book in some cases. They don't care, they don't want your business. Nobody seems to be really talking about this stuff, about the real 8 million pound gorilla flinging shit in the room. Without growth, and continued attrition at what point does the tip point, shark jump, Kirk beam up for the last time? I know some people will read this and say i am the angry guy holding the sign saying the end is near...and first I am not really angry, more resigned, and also I think just saying how things really look in maybe a more realistic way than many people in comics do. I thinks it's partly because of the mindset of being insulated from reality, comics is very insular, and the fantasy that we will be saved.That soething or that Superman will somehow save us. And why aren't more people with a lot more at stake in this game than I have feeling the same way, and more importantly talking about it?

I don't see hundreds of new shops opening or hundreds of new faces in the cons or in the shops. It's the same dam people.

last year something happened. I didn't go to the comic shop for 8 months, the longest time I have gone without buying or looking at a single new comic book since I stared buying them as a kid and certainly the longest run as a pro of not venturing into a shop. And guess what---I missed nothing. Same grim heroes "posing". Sure, there are some swell comics out there and I picked up a reprint of Scalped my fave current comic, and the Gorlon Parlov Punisher comics and a few hex comics by Brenet I missed, some few Hellboy's and Hellboy related stuff like the Abe Sapien comic, Umbrella Academy, an Ashely Wood comic, but dame the mainstream Marvel, DC stuff just seems so unappealing. I just look at stuff and put it back and wonder how anyone but the hard core 50k fans will even want to buy this stuff? I did see other stuff I liked but frankly now I wait for trades, I just have too much crap I need to get rid of as it and then i have these piles of comics sliding around now and it's a mess and a hassle.

Nobody that know of has posted any numbers on how many comic fans we have left. And by this I mean direct market fans? I say it's 150K tops since the average books sells what-- well under 50K now and the top books sell 100k or so. I figure if the top book sells 150k, that means the fact is there must be 15-20k of those issues bagged as extra copies, as store stock, etc., because these guys still think this shit will be worth something. From the numbers I see posted on the Beat and elsewhere and from my own info from fellow pros and people in the trenches the numbers today suck sliced donkey meat! I think the average cartoonist today, especially the new guys and gals coming up might seriously do better to put ether work up on-line in color for free to build a readership and not waste the thousands of dollars to try and sail that boat in the stagnate, hostile direct market. More about that in my next post.

DRAW! Magazine Nominated For An Eagle Award

Draw! Magazine along with two more of my fellow Twomorrow's family magazines, Write Now! and Back Issue have been nominated for an Eagle Award. You can go and vote for DRAW! here and also for several other catagories such as best pnciler, inker etc.

The Walled City of Babymania

I have never had so many comments on a single post as the one on the new Batman show and my mini-rant on the foibles of the comic biz/hobby and the Babymen. Seems I struck a nerve with many and struck some Babymen square in their diapers.

Those who know me well have long known of my sadness and frustration with the comics biz on many levels, chiefly the retailer and the fickle fan and my disdain of the Babymen and what I called the Walled city of Babymania, better know as the local comic shop. Don't get me wrong, I do love comics, but comics as a medium and in a much broader sense than most, even many of my fellow artists. I am also an artist an so my judgments and opinions come not from the average fans POV but from a guy who makes his daily bread actually creating comics. there are a few good comic shops like Captain Blue hen and Showcase but most are the very cliche of the Babyman den, and nobody but a babyman will ever want to go in there or be welcome to.

I should also come clean and say I never buy or bought comics for stories, I buy comics for art. That doesn't mean I don't want a great story too, ideally you should have both, but a good story drawn poorly is just something I can't even waste trying to wade through. It's like watching a bad movie, you flip the channel.

I don't expect the babymen to ever see what I'm talking about, they can't. But the fact is their taste is not the taste of a large pool of average readers, it's the taste of the fetishist, the niche collector. They so resist change and want such a limited type of product that unless you have been following this stuff for years it's really not something the average reader could even get into. Even back in the 80's you had a big variety of comic, from Richie Rich, Archies, Conan, Rock, CarToons magazine, the Warren mags, Heavey Metal ( when it was good) Marvel, DC, Goldkey/Western all of which published a much wider selection of book. Now almost everything is superjocks, some kind of zombie and if it isn't---it doesn't sell worth a crap. And by sell I mean enough to make the creator a few grand minimum an issue, or a livable wage.

But the sad fact is since no new kids in any real number are coming into the hobby of comics and falling in love with them for a few years and since 90-95% of retailers are the worst kind of dumb businessman you can imagine, who don't seek to build more customers, and definitely not kids, it's a double whammy. There has been to my observation over a 10 year unraveling of the old idea of what the comic biz was always about driven faster to it's doom and bust by the speculators.

Chiefly I see that our hobby was alway a: impulse, cheap entertainment, collecting/hobby. Comics were for most of their existence a form of cheap entertainment and an impulse buy at the local supermarket, drug store, newsstand, mom & pop, etc. The direct market is all we really have left now as nobody else for the most part wants to carry the darn things anymore. Even the WB stores didn't want to carry them as they were too much hassle to stock and didn't earn enough money per foot space. 2 waves (at least) of kids have come and gone since the boom-bust of the 90's, where at NYC shows I'd see cliques of kids toting boxes and backpacks of comics around to get signed, sure that the certificate of authenticity and my signature would mean they were sitting on gold bars!
But those kids are now in college and have long since abandoned comics like Britney Spears, pogs and buying CD's. and nobody with the real means to do anything about it has reversed this trend so only the die hard fans...the Babymen are left, clinging, clinging, clinging. Now not all fans are babymen, but 80% must be. And thier taste is the real issue as I see it. Since they can't emotionally move on they must drag down these children's concepts with their adult fantasies. so catwoman isn't a jewel thief, she's a dominatrix. Mary Marvel is a big boobed superslut. Fun is an outlaw concept, comedy, Pffffft! And so it's the snake eating it's tail now.

And they are the fans who drag boxes at cons have graying temples. Sometimes it's a dad with his some or kids, but more often than not I see hardly any kids at cons and no kids in the comic shop outside of Free comic book day. The kids I see reading comics are in Borders reading manga, that's the generation that has skipped right past the Walled City and they are never coming back. the next wave probably isn't coming either and the big companies now realize their futures are not tied to publishing but to licensing to keep the whole thing going. one of the ironic things I find most amusing now is how people beat their chest like Tarzan (another character nobody gives a F**K about) when a books sells 100K. the sad fact is almost every book out now would have been canceled when i started in the 80's as a pro. At that point books selling below 60K or so were axed. What I want to know then is how can books that were deemed unprofitable at higher numbers in the mid 80's can now be deemed profitable in today's market when they cost more to produce and sell less?

Riding the Blind Contour

I thought I would post some of the blind contour drawings I have been doing in my sculpture class. Each Monday the teacher, Rob Roesch has us spend two twenty minute sessions drawing the model before we start sculpting. The first several weeks it was all blind contour drawing. In recent weeks he's let us mix up blind contour with regular observational drawing. I mix it up using different tools to draw with marker, pencil, ballpoint, charcoal, etc. Sometimes I combine them all in one drawing. To be honest the first couple of weeks I was 'F this!"



But I've come around to just letting the drawing be more of an exploration and I have loosened up. Today I even did some drawing with my left hand (the one above)which came out much more angular as I searched for all of these angles running through the figure.

I'm also posting here the second pass at the figure in Carolyn Pyfrom's class. I really fought hard to get the shadows unified and now I'm going back in with the palette knife and punching in the colors. Carolyn gave me a great crit today and that helped a lot. these last weeks of school are flying by fast. I still have a fair amount of work to do on all of my projects, and have to decide which pieces to put in the spring prize show.

New Cartoons Announced and the Babymen

This week cartoon Network announced it's new line-up of cartoon fare for the fall and next year. Two of the cartoons, Secret Saturdays and The Batman: the Brave and the Bold I work on. I was a storyboard artist on Scerect Saturdays and I am currently a charcater designer on The Batman. The Saturdays will premiere this fall and Batman Brave and the Bold will debut next March, but I suspect there will be a good chance they will push the date back as they did with Secret Saturdays.

One of the things I enjoy about this new Batman cartoon is the fact we are going back to a kinder, friendlier Batman. A Dick Sprang version, which is the guiding design principle we are working from and there still is a slight echo of the BT styling, which is a nice break from the grim and gritty. Let's face it, these cartoons are for children, young children 5-10,12 years old. Cereal eating, fruit rollup snacking, toy buying kids, not 30-something, 40-something bitter bee babymen who want these characters in adult situations. The message boards are already full of babymen angst about the show, how they hate the art, the idea of a kid friendly Batman and I have to just laugh at the rediculous comments. IMO one of the biggest resons comics suck ass and have since the 80's is the rise and overtaking of the biz by the Babyman fan and the loss of kids reading comics as a hobby. Now we are stuck with an aginging fanbase with limited taste, long memories, a twisted taste where the comic heroes have to be dark, gritty, sexy, adult...REAL! Humor, the most popular form of comic in the world is the least popular form of comic in the direct market. Fans don't realize what an aberation the direct market has become and how out of step it is with the rest of the comic reading world. I include it all, strips, manga, you name it, but superheroes are a niche with the smallest fanbase. The top books crack, what 100K? Try having a TV show with that number.

If they made TV cartoons the way the babymen wanted the shows would fail to reach enough ratings to survive. I also realize the fans on the web are probably not always the best sampling in any fan base as they are always the extremists. I loved the Batman comics as kid, I love the Batman TV show, the funny, corny Adam West, and millions did too. I think you can only darken these concepts to a degree and for a certain amount of time before you play them out, and face it, these concepts have really been played out anyway. 70 years of these characters pumped at you in every medium by the big corporations means there is little fresh that can be done. Fans never forget, the Babymen especially, and that's part of their problem, they can't move on, They want everything to be exactly as it always was, which is infantile. Batman should probably be played out for you by the time you are out of college. That doesn't mean you still can't enjoy the art, story or concept, but realistically these characters can't age with you. They must remain ageless and we must graduate and accept that as readers of any children's fiction. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy it like Harry Potter, but Harry Potter's story ends, and he won't grow old with you.

Fans also forget the only reason any of this stuff exists is for $$$. The show exists to sell ads and toys and such, and for no other reason. That doesn't mean it can't be good or entertaining, but these corportae giants want big buck returns. Kids have been abandoned by the direct market, they now read manga or are fans of animae as that's what they are exposed to and have easy access too. No new kids come in waves to comics like they used to, no wonder back issue sales, the backbone of retail has all but dried up. No new kids means no new fans to want to read the older stories and the old babymen have everything already.

If the animation biz was run like the comic biz they would be out of biz. That doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of crap and a lot wrong with TV animation, there is, but they are reaching a big audience, they are diversified in a way comics long ago abandoned.

Friday's Smears

This is the last pose in Pyfrom's class, and this is the second pose. I worked on it last week and halfway through this week I wiped it out and restarted.
Here is another quick sketch I blasted out on cardboard in ink and whiteout on the commuter series I am developing.

Ideas, Ideas...

I have some ideas for a series of paintings I'd like to do starting this summer on commuters and people riding on the subway in Philly. Commuting is a new things for me this year since starting school. I take the EL/Subway from 69th Street down the 15th and walk over to either PAFA or Uarts depending on the day. I'm just exploring now, so I will probably do a lot of sketches and studies to get a better focus and feel on what I want to do. This is 4 x 5 on cardboard with ink and Lumina bleed proof whiteout.

Comics and animation is a "one-off' type thing, where you draw something once and it's done. Exploring a subject like this in depth will be kinda' new for me.

Sculpting Away

This is the second week of the last pose in my sculpting class. This week most of my time was spent repairing my sculp from the damage it suffered from lipping down, or falling off the wire armature. When I unwrapped it it was hanging , split. like meat on a hook. I had to go in a rip off everything from the waste down, wrap additional wire around the armature to "grab" the clay to prevent it from sliding down the armature do to the wetness and the weight of the clay. It was a pain, but that's the process, always liquid and at any moment disaster can strike, so you have to roll with it.

Next week I hope to finish getting the rest of the figure roughed in and then to start to refine it. I am also working on the final sculpture in Nochellla's class which I hope will be pretty interesting. I'll start on it this weekend by making a brain in super-sculpy.

Only 4 weeks left in school now and those will go by like lighting!

Saturday Mix: The Commonality of language

Today I'm posting a bit of a mix that I think shows what I am doing as an artist on a weekly, daily basis. The range of art or images I work with as both a student and as a working cartoonist/illustrator. It is so typical of my life to spend one part of the day working in a completely different way, thinking in a different way, in essence having a completely different voice or using a different language. Now some of the root of the language is common, like perspective, anatomy, line, volume, tone, etc, but drawing from observation or drawing from imagination are really different worlds, especially when you factor in that commercially I work in very different ways. This faux new Yorker style cartoon has some similarities with the Batman character designs I am doing, or even closed form drawing I might do in class, but really not much with the painting I might be doing maybe outside of the compositional issues.

For some this might be too "scitzo" to deal with, but it's something I have always done in a way, since I was a kid. I might like or copy Neal Adams drawings but still love Kirby, or Chuck Jones or NC Wyeth. I was and still am constantly being bombarded by multipule infulences or languages visually, school of thought and ways of working that seem to even clash. Each artist has something unique about the way they put down a mark, make a statement visually. Even those artists who must camleon-like blend together like the Disney animators still had individual personality come through in their drawings.

Unlike many artists, critics and worse--TEACHERS I don't have that prejudice between a drawing by Degas or Rembrant and one by Kirby, Schulz or Glen Kean. Instead I am looking for and drawing upon the commanality in the works, "what works" in all good drawings and paintings as well as the specifics, the difference or the articulations of the language that each medium or piece requires to be successful.

I realize of course the reasons any piece of art is created is where maybe the biggest differences are. Some art is created because it has to be created, the artist feels so compelled, so infused or pregnant with the idea they must give it birth, spit it out. Some art is created simply to sell something, a magazine, illustrate a concept or product, to make you laugh, etc. The last year or so has been a very important one as it has helped me better define my thinking and language on these issues and subjects and caused me to both examine and draw upon all I do and to also seperate or draw distinctions that help also clarify my work and my better articulate my language as it were. This is something that is really endless and something all good artists I think must do all of their creative life, this process has also I think helped me not only be a better more focused artist, but in turn be a better teacher.

The Final session-4 weeks to go!

There are 4 weeks of school left with one crit week, the last day of each class. it seems the semester just flew by in a huge rush of plaster, paint and charcoal. Today was the final pose with Lisa and the final session on teh still lifes set up in the still life room. I snapped a pick so I may go back and finish the still life up a bit more. I stayed after and helped Jill and the ofther students break down the still lifes set up. We start fresh next week for the last drawings or paintings.

In Carolyn's class we have one long pose left and one painting we have to do from life outside of the class. I'll either do a self portrait or maybe paint a friend depending on the time constraints. There are things I like about both of these paintings and things I don't, many things, but it's all good practice though to be honest I feel pretty frustrated at times doing them.

lisa-3rd Session

yesterday was the 3rd session on painting our latest model, Lisa in my Life Painting class with Carolyn Pyfrom. I basically went back in and repainted on everything, adjusting the overall grouping of the tones so the figure doesn't have these sections of shapes strung together. Carolyn was very helpful in her crits and really gave me some good insights and I feel I'm clicking in her class more and more and getting what she is talking about. One more session on this Friday and then we have one last long painting to do and one outside assignment to do and then that's it....summer.

Male Sculpture

Today was the day I've been waiting for in sculpture class, the day when we really get to sculpt the standing model. Last week we built the armature, or rather I was able to save myself at little time by appropriating a cast off armature whaich I had to play Doc Frankenstien on. I made really fast progress today working from the live model, moving the modeling stand around as I modeled to catch different views I and went through a bag and a half of grey clay. My sculpture teacher was very complimentary on my progress. It felt great to slap that clay on there and mush it around...I can't wait till next week.

March Creepertins

Here is the March installment of the Creepertins

Friday Paint Day

Friday is amy all painting day at school, and so it's my favorite day, though it can be frustrating and taxing too. Standing on your feet from 8:30 till 4 is very tiring. This is the second pass at the new still life in Jill Rupinski's calss. of course i always set a challenge for myself by diving on the difficult piece. We have one more week on this so I might even take some time over the weekend to paint on it a bit. This one has a ways to go for sure.
This is the second pass on the figure from last week. I liek parts, hate partsm so we have two more shots at this for me to either redeem it or totally ruin it. The subject or lesson is paint the figure IN the space and to try and get the light and sense of atmosphere. I feel the space is there and part of the figure, but there still needs to be a lot more work overall to halp tie things together.