Day one of the festival is made up of presentations and panels. Including mine!
Here’s a photo of the lineup. I’m on there!
You’ll see that I’m in the 4th slot, right before Jeff Smith. Probably the only time in my life that I will be the opening act for Jeff Smith. I’m just glad I didn’t drive everyone away so he was presenting to an empty room.
The comics scholars roundtable featured three grad students who are working on integrating comics into their studies. I learned a lot of graphic medicine, and the integration of comics into art studies. Shaheen Bradley showed us some of his comics work, and he’s a guy you should check out.
The second panel was Brian Carini, who talked about developing productive comic making habits. He’s a busy guy—father and husband, editor of The Scribbler, and tech guy for his day job. Yet he still finds time to create a staggering amount of comics work.
Key takeaways: Journal Drawing is a worthwhile endeavor because it gets you in the habit of drawing every day. I’m going to try this. It’s good to purge your ideas into a notebook or sketchbook. Deadlines are crucial for getting work done. Get up early and start your day as a cartoonist. Make a list of accomplishments for the year.
Next up was John Novak, talking about how he colors comics. Mainly he showed us a bunch of comics that he had worked on and how he thought through the process of coloring them. I was able to ask him what the purpose of doing flats was if you already knew the colors that you wanted to use, or at least a rough idea. He said that the main reason you mess around with flats is if you are having someone else do them for you. Then you can make all the color decisions once you get them back (I’d love to have someone do flats, in that case!) But I think I’ll stick to my current method. It works well for the types of comics I draw. I will probably do a post on how I color comics soon. Stay tuned!
Next up was my presentation. I don’t have anything to say about it. You’ll have to ask someone who was there. My parents showed up, though!
I sent my parents on a behind the scenes tour of the Billy Ireland so that I could watch Jeff Smith’s presentation. I’ve seen him do a bajillion presentations (he lives in Columbus too) but I’m always interested in what he has to say. He walked us through the process of creating Rasl and Tuki and the research that he completed. He’s an old school guy; I get the feeling he’s more likely to wander over to the library than go alone to find stuff out.
I really like his working method. He said that he started out with the germ of an idea and then thinks to himself: “What would be cool to include?” He then finds a way to work this in.
I took some pictures but I was far away, and caught the shoulder of the person in front of me. So you get the fuzzy Bigfoot version of Jeff instead.
Other notes: I was able to meet Leonie Bischoff and give her a few suggestions about what to do in the city that might be of interest to someone from Belgium. And I got to try Smashburger for the first time.
Tonight I’ll be at an event for special guests and I can’t wait to meet a lot of the other special guests. But I’ll save that for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to a very full day—a slate of presentations, hearing Kate Beaton and Art Spiegelman present, and meeting a bunch more people.
And don’t forget that my book Checkups, Shots, and Robots comes out in November! Preorder it here.