Infinite Canvas, Infinite Schmanvas

The above from the fantastic site Cover Browser. Thanks, Terry.

Sorry I've been dark for a bit: a bout of actual, big time, paying work (shock! horror!) has kept me low, backing up my Robots and Monsters production, my comic work, and fun, too, dammit. I'd be lying if I also didn't cop to a bit of blog fatigue: about two years of being steadily into it, and after a while, a realization creeps into your head.

"Ugh. I just THOUGHT that. I have to WRITE about it, too?"

But what the hell. I've gotta give you SOMETHING to read while pretending to work, right?

I'll start by admiting that not ALL of my non-blogging time is spent working, per se. Some of it is spent "working", while Skyping with colleagues, and the discussion of
web comics and Scott McCloud came up, more specifically, his new (now, old) web comic, The Right Number. I found a discussion of web comics, especially amongst people not in the echol chamber (and also potential consumers) to be informative. Present at the chat are myself, Matt Rebholz, at UT Austin for his Masters in Printmaking, Terry Salmond, a San Francisco film maker, and Rob Ford, Director of Technology for a school dsitrict in Massachusetts, and webmaster for Kaiju Big Battel.

The thread picks up on The Right Number...

Joe:
I want the interface to be an intregal part of the story? Otherwise, it's just a schtick.
Rebholz
I see your point...What if the next panel was somehow integrated into the previous panel?...but that might get even schtickier.
Joe
The teeny next panel just throws me off without providing anyting else than just "Look what I did."
Terry
Yeah...I think if it was integrated a bit more
Rebholz
If he had to put a picture frame or window or something in every single panel
Joe
Plus,if the notion of 'zooming in' is intregal to the story...tell me why
Terry
Right.
Rebholz
Maybe it rhymes with this idea of the guy homing in on his perfect mate via his crazy algorythm phone number thing... I dont have a problem w/ the zoom
I think it does a nice job of approximating the sensation of looking from one panel to the next in a print comic...like your actual focus is fixed, so you cant shift it from one panel to the next...McCloud is much more of a scholar than a creator I think
Joe
Rebholz
Indeed....web comics are hard
Joe
true dat
Rebholz
joe knows that
Terry
This seems like a way of feeling out what works and what doesn't
Rebholz
The great thing about the interface is that it didnt require any movement within the browser window
Joe
True...McCloud goes on and on about "the infinite canvas", but I HATE those type of web comics
Rebholz
It becomes an inconvenience to experience it
Joe
The experience becomes about the creation rather than the story which to my mind...
is wack.
Rebholz
You need to somehow counterbalance or make the audience forget about the loss of the comic as physical object, which is a very important part of the experience....
like McCloud points out, part of the magic of comics is the compression and expansion of time- being able to see a whole span of time in one instant, by surveying an entire page for exaample
Joe
...and also the backwards and forwards flow
Rebholz
exactly
Joe
I like artists that add things you can go back and find later..."How did that fire start?"...
Rebholz
Like Ware
Joe
"Oh, he dorpped the cigar three pages ago."...Damn, I'd like just take this conversation and blog it
Terry
We'll just be outed as dorks.


And on webcomics in general:

Joe
Joe Q. Public doesn't find advertising to be as offensive as paying 25 cents...weird!
Rob
Right, but for the content provider it's a similar idea.
Rebholz
Its no suprise that people are more willing to endure advertising than pay for a product.
Joe
No...but as a sea change, just like having creator USING the web instead of just put print comics online, it is a difference in thinking about "selling" work...
a lot of comic artists still don't feel like real creators until some schlub plunks down 4 bux for a hard copy. Its psychological.
Rebholz
Do you feel that way?
Joe
Sometimes, but im getting over it
Rebholz
I think thats natural
Joe
It's how we were brought up
Rebholz
It goes back to the appeal of a comic AS object, if you value the actual physical comic, than of course youll feel more validated if you can hold something you've made
...I dont think its a bad thing nessecarily.


Beyond the fact that I talk too much, these are all very very smart guys, and what came through in the discussion was the web comics have still not broken through the main stream to arrive as a form worth paying attention to, yet. People can talk Penny Arcade and PVP all they want, but look at the content: it's so niche and concave, you can see yourself reflected in the opposite wall. We have yet to see a real breakout, popualr webcomic, along the lines of a Maus or a Persopolis. Could it be about form?

The chat has two seemingly disparate threads: that the notion of Infinite Canvas is tiresome and not helpful to the enjoyment of the comic, and that the physical comic is desirable, but ALSO that the desire is there NOT just for print-comics-that- happen-to-be-online, which is what most web comics are. To my mind, this all means that comic artists, and especially web comic artists, need to stop bitching about being the underclass of artists, being so 'disrespected' and such, and need to start creating great, compelling ways to view their stories. And while there's been some great experiments, it sure hasn't happened yet.

To round out this talk, I present Dr. Nordten, the fantastic web comic by Thomas Gronle-Legron and Holger Marsielle, two German guys I just so happened to present with in Seoul. These guys may be having the conversation that we in America with all our Scott McClouds should be having. And once I get Thomas to send me a link, I'll be posting their 3D version. Maybe the future of comics...lies in microfilm?

Nerve Comix Issue

Just a quick note to urge you to check out the new issue of the online magazine Nerve, which is the new comics issue. I often get emails from people asking me about new stuff to check out, but I'm no Drawn: sometimes I'm too busy to actually find cool new stuff, myself. This Nerve issue has some nice introductory strips from some radical rising-but-under-the-radar artists such as Leah Hayes, as well as more established folks like the untouchable Paul Pope. Chynna Clugston has the best one on there (she's like a girl Evan Dorkin!), and even Sophie Crumb's strip isn't half bad, considering the fact that she's busy carrying around that last name like an albatross. On the whole, pretty good stuff. Also, more than half of the artists are women: that's a nice change of scenery. There's also an awesome article comparing TMNT to Sex and The City. Outstanding!

Sketchblog 6/3/07

After all that rigamarole over the past few months, I finally see nothing but wall-to-wall drawing on the horizon, and that, to use a tautological dialect that hasn't been seen on these pages in many months, is a right hearty sight for these salty eyes, me hearties. Above is a sampling of the new Robots and Monsters additions, with more on the way. Below is an avatar from a project that I just finished, which I'm OK with, considering what They-Who-Shall -Not-Be-Named asked for (don't ask). I'm not usually a fan of this type of made-for-Wacom, GI Joe coloration. I think it looks weak and cheeseball normally, but it's passable here. And with more jobs being worked on, a new episode of TBV in the works, and a super-secret project nearing completion, I'm thinking that for the next couple of weeks, this blog is going to be nothing but drawings, drawings, drawings. w00t!

Tintin in the Land of Hollywood

The raiding of the temple happened slowly at first. A few keen-eyed grave-robbers here or there: a Philip K. Dick jewel, a Jules Verne bauble. Occasionally done right, more often done terribly, those of us In The Know could shake our heads and scoff, comforted in the knowledge that the true sources lay hidden, wellsprings that continued to delight those that cared to look for them. Then, the onslaught came, starting, oh, I'd say right around here.

I can't fault Hollywood for grave-robbing: I love movies. I went to film school, for chrissakes. And for every unmitigated disaster of a movie adaptaion of comic books or other imaginative stories, there's also some incredibly successful ones that make you love everything about it so much more. Unfortunately, Hollywood has a nasty tendency to recognize the brilliance if imaginative works, and then trying to substitute imagination for special effects. It takes a light touch , and an adding to the artistic effort, not just a rote copying with CGI, to make something like this work. And when it does work, when the creators do care enough to invest their own love and interests into it, it doesn't matter that the special thing you had to yourself now has a huge audience. So what if the douchebag in the next cubicle knows who Harvey Pekar is now: it was a great flick.

But this impending Tintin behemoth on the horizon makes me more nervous than anything that's ever been announced. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past week, you prolly know that Steven Spielberg has tapped Peter Jackson to finally head up the rights he decided to exercise, that of the long-awaited Tintin movies, a 3 picture deal that either has phenomenon or debacle written all over it. And my jittering excitment is tempered by a fear, that seems to harken back to my teen angst days as much as my art snobbery of Herge's mastery.

Here's the rub:

I am a rabid Tintin fan, ever since a very young boy,when I found a battered copy of The Calculus Affair at a book sale at the local branch of my town's library (and I still have it!). Anthony Lane has a rather pedestrian article in last week's New Yorker about Tintin that really doesn't illuminate anyone that has vaguely paid attention to the life and work of Herge. The long and the short of the piece explains away most of Remi's life as an effort to make up for some of his more racist carictures and collaboration with the Nazis by ennacting the indefatiguable wunderkind reporter as a kind of soul scrubbing boy scout, righting wrongs with an innocence Remi lost long ago in 1938. And I just call bullshit on the whole thing. Not just Lane's article, which, while a bit vanilla, is more or less quite accurate with the facts. I call bullshit on the whole Deconstructing Tintin thing.

There are some wonderful books taking apart the books, the characters, the man, the life, the times. Even some incredible comics that do the same. But the thing is, it's just too close for me. It takes the fun out of it. It's like taking a picture of a long lost relative out and going on a four hour lecture about why light turns silver halide into images the eye can see. I guess I can see it's informative: but it doesn't make me appeciate the person in the picture anymore or less. And this is just the beginning.

Within 2 years, Tintin will be on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and Rolling Stone, that scumbag lead singer from Coldplay will wear a Haddock teeshirt onstage during shows, and Paris Hilton will name her new dog Snowy. And the Tintin that I know and love, the Tintin that is mine and rests on my bookshelves, the books whose spines contain crumbs of crackers eaten over them long ago, the Tintin who prompts puzzled looks when I wear him around, but that gets a look of knowing recognition by 1 out of 50 Americans, that smile that spreads across their face, that wink and nod I get...that Tintin will be gone, and I'll be left to pick up the pieces.

-> As a less curmudgony aside, (finally) check out the Seoul pix here! Woohoo!

Homeward Bound: The Uncomfortable Journey

I'm sitting in the lobby of my hotel in Seoul, waiting out the time until I get a plane to come back home. All in all, a successful and enjoyable visit, I think. The presentation went well: there's wasn't as many people there as I had hoped, but that was kind of the theme of the SICAF this year: the poor chair, the former Korean trade ambassador to the US (super nice guy: we talked a lot about American football, which was cool) had this rictus grin of defiance on his face when it came to the numbers, so I can't blame them too much. The crappy thing was that we were a bit hurried with our talk because we had to make way for the SIGGRAPH presentation, who wants to create a SIGGRAPH Asia. I can understand: the Koreans really want SIGGRAPH in Seoul, so they're willing to rush along the stupid "artists" they invited to talk, but it still felt lousy. I'll tell you, though, these suits were an embarassment to the organization: lame jokes, shouting at Koreans as if louder makes them understand English better, and Powerpoint presentations in which every single they say is written out on the slide. It was like an Edward Tufte nightmare. But I got told by a professor Digital Storytelling at Tokyo University that my talk was "enlightening", so that was an ego boost.

In other news, I dunno if it's just because SICAF is in town or what, but the TV stations here are chalk full of American movie versions of Marvel comic books: in the past three days, after coming home from the bar, I've seen X-Men 3, The Hulk, and Spidey 1. Something struck me about them today, besides the over all lousiness. Jon Favreau, if you're out there, whatever else you do with Iron Man, this I decree: you CANNOT use a sequence of DNA or vaguely scientific macroshots in the credit sequence under goofy music. It just doesn't work. I don't know who's lame idea this was, or if it's next to the Stan Lee clause for all Marvel movies, but this baloney has GOT to STOP.

OO! DNA splicing! OO! Hypodermic needle injecting something green or blue into skin! OO! Some douchebag holding up a test tube to the light! Let's think outside of the box on this one, okee, Jon?

Im n yr Korea, eatin yr Kimchee

Hullo folks- still in Korea, still eating veeery mysterious food, still can;t gte my damn camera to upload photos to weird Korea blogger, and about to do my presentation today. (Fingers crossed.)

A few observations from yesterday:

•The Engrish here (or, as I was told by a local, Korglish) is pretty outstanding: besides most Western style restaraunts (pictures coming soon, I promise!) being named after English words (no surprise there), the words they choose are especially weird. "Delicious" , "eat", or "Burgerhouse" would be too obvious, I guess. No, the Koreans decided to be a little different and name their Western restaurants after English modifiers: I've seen "With", "Actually", and my favorite, "This". But the Outstanding Korglish Of The Week goes to a young girl spotted walking through a mall yesterday, who wore a tight pink teeshirt that said

"Happy? HIV!"

Marvelous.

•Seoul seems to have an obsession with shopping malls: I can only assume that a burgeoning country, which 50 years ago was not a global economic player, that undergoes such a drastic economic jump is a bit in love with a newfound sense of consumerism. But the tourists maps here neglect temples and museums in favor making sure to list not only the all the megamalls and shopping complexes, but the 7-11s, as well. Huh?

•I was introduced to the practice of "booking" today, in which Korea youth with not enough time look for love in a very efficient manner. We stumbled across a booking club quite by accident, and I have to tell you, it seems to be a pretty smart way of doing it for the busy yuppie. The deal basically is that this club, with music and drinks and the usual accountrements, has a bevy on vested waiters. The guys come in and sit down, the girls come in and sit down, and the waiters are supposed to have a good eye at matching people. The waiters rush around, pulling and push the girls in front of guys, and trying to make matches like a giant game of Memory. Then, the two match-mades get to chat and see if the match is right, or if they pass, and wait for the next victim to be plopped in front of them. Apparently, really good match-making waiters, or bookers, who have a good eye for who is a good match for who, make a good living, and are in very high demand.

And who said romance was dead, eh?

I'll be presenting today and the coming back tomorrow, pictures and all. And then, back to the good stuff. New episode on the way! w00t!

Touchdown

Hello from scenic Seoul!

Finally landed and settled after a hellaciously long flight, and my first experience with SICAF. The flight was made mildy more entertaining by a bevy of South Korean businessmen. Let me say that South Korea is not a miserable country one needs to forget the plight of. So I really have no idea what these guys were drinking for. But let me tell you: South Korean businessmen (or at least these fellas) are like fratboys after winning the Rose Bowl. To say that they took advantage of the free drinks on flight could be considered an understatement. Suffice to say, 8 whiskeys later, when the guy closest to me fell out of his chair into the aisle and began to roll around and giggle, it was time to land.

I expected someone to pick me up, but due to miscommunication no one did, so it was a hectic few hours figuring out where the hell to go. But I'm here now, and having successfully managed to master the Seoul subway system (a breeze, natch!), I'm feeling better about my situation. I still kinda feel like an idiot American for not knowing another language like everyone else here. That's something to fix. Soon.

I visited the Seoul Expo Center, where they showed me the set-up they have for The Basic Virus, and it's all very professionally done and looks great. Thanks to Hong-Kwan Lee and his minions (seriously: he snaps his fingers and guys go running) for putting in so much effort for it. Also got interviewed by the South Korean blogosphere. I hope I didn't say something that might have gotten mistranslated:

"Seoul, South Korea: Comic artist Joe Alterio sez he puts mole rats in his underpants for fun and profit."

My camera is acting weird, but hopefully it will clear up, and I can post some pix soon. Stay tuned.

bOINGED to death.

Phew.

What a weekend.

RobotsAndMonsters.org, after getting bOINGed and later written up in the Boston Globe's Ideas Section, took off like a rocket, forcing my hand to shut down donations earlier than expected. It probably also means that we cut off some additional funding, which breaks me up a bit, but I had to stop the insanity sometime: as of this writing, we raised over $8300 (w00t!) for the cause, from over 15,000 hits to the site, which is just stunning to me.

The consequences:

A.) We reached our fund raising goal, and then almost tripled it.
B.) I'm going to be drawing robots and monsters for a very, very long time.
C.) bOING bOING has a power heretofore unheard of when it comes to "underground" interests.
D.) This link gets me misty-eyed in Amelie-esque, sappy, I-guess-we're-all-connected- somehow-kind-of-way
E.) All of the above.

(Turn to next page for answers)

In any event, thank you to everyone for stopping by and donating to such a good cause. Rest assured, your 'bots and 'sters are on their way (Eventually. Those at the back of then line: well, they'll make great Christmas presents!). Check out a continually expanding gallery of them here, and keep in a mind that R and M will be reopening later on as a more expanded project, with different artists, different causes, merch, links, and a whole lot more, so stay tuned. Email me if you want to get put on the mailing list, or know an artist who wants to help out.

As a reminder, I'll be leaving for South Korea on Tuesday, for my presentation about mobile comics at SICAF. I'll be posting photos and updates of the trip when I get chance. Very exciting: I think I may actually get to meet Moebius . My nerd-heart is all a-twitter. 너를 빨리 보십시요!

Robots and Monsters and the 100th Post *UPDATE!*

This blog is 100 posts old today! Woo Hoo! I'd like to personally thank all of you for stopping by and saying hello, leaving comments, linking, and generally giving me the time of day. I know there's a lot of outstanding places to waste your time on the web: I'm humbled that any of it all is with me. So, thanks.

And what better way to celebrate such a landmark than with a charitable effort, eh? I'm proud to introduce my new project RobotsandMonsters.org . As you may or may not know, I've undertaken running the San Francisco marathon in July to raise money for the SF AIDS Foundation and the Pangea Foundation, which help folks afflicted with AIDS in the Bay Area, as well as in the third world. This project is part of that fund raising efforts.

It's pretty simple: for a simple donation of 25 bucks, you can give me three words or phrases, out of which I'll draw and paint a robot or monster and send it to you. Hopefully, if enough people participate, we'll start getting some great breadth of imagination in the gallery. You can read more about it all here.

In the long run, after the marathon, I'd like to turn RobotsandMonsters.org into a continuing source of revenue for charitable causes, with a whole bunch of artists contributing to a multitude of causes: kind of like a mash up between 700 hobos, Fist-A-Cuffs, and an NPR pledge drive. But cooler. So if you're a artist who wants to participate, or your a cause that might want to partner up, be sure to drop me a line.

Thanks, again, everyone.

**UPDATE!** Thanks for the link love everyone: BoingBoing, Drawn!,The Boston Globe's Brainiac blog, Suicide Bots, Kaiju Big Battel, Scatterboy, Continuity Concern and everyone else. I am eternally grateful. Now I just...have to...do...all these...drawings... *sigh*

Cartographica

I love maps. I love 'em. When the rest of family was busy arguing over who gave gramma too much to drink, I would be content on family vacations to pore over the maps of our destinations. Besides the information provided, they just are cool aesthetically. The infomation is arrayed is a visual pattern they we've all subliminally agreed upon: this dotted line means 'county line', this star means 'capital'. It's a nearly perfect intrepetation of what I'm always harping about, namely, using pictures and words in conjuction. And that certain blue they use for water is always a constant, isn't it? They have a swatch for that thing? "Cartographical azul"?

So I got maps on the brain this Saturday morning, and in that vein, a hermenautic group I'm a part of pointed me to this outstanding blog: pages and pages and pages of weird ass maps. And then, of course, there's my friend Francesca Berrini's reconfigured map art, an example of which is above, which is some of the best damn map art of the planet.

The internet as a force of destruction

Drawn today has an interesting post today on Stephen Beisty, the illustrator most well known for his cross-section series: I picked up the Man-o-War one when I was a 16 during my I-wanna-be-a-pirate-phase (before it was cool!), and have been hooked ever since.

You'll notice that I didn't link to his site above: that's because he doesn't have a site. (Gasps from audience, woman in front row faints). He's not part of a collective, he doesn't put his work on an agents site, and the shock, the horror, he doesn't even have a BLOG. Jaleen from Drawn makes a trenchant point, in that Beisty's work isn't something that translates well to the web, and Beisty is hesitant to put enormous files that show the true scope of his work on a site, for fear that it may be stolen or manipulated, and that is all valid. But I think that the issue reaches deeper than that, and I think this is one of the better examples of the web defining the ground rules rather than the other way around.

To define the web as anything other than an enormous potential canvas is intransigent, but to define it as limitless and completely freeing is also being a willfully blind to it's very clear guidelines. The web, like any other media, has rules that ease of use demands you abide by. You can experiment all you want, but if you're writing a book, and you don't place the paragraphs of a story in order, you can make an interesting art project, but your readers will have a tough time getting what your book is about. And the web is the same way.

To not exist on the web is to really be at a deficit in terms of whether people can find you or not. That is clearly still be processed by a great deal of people in the creative fields, and the sea-change is even greater than people realize. The repercussions are being felt throughout the creative world, across a multitude of industries. In the old days - my mom's days - an illustrator would get an agent by getting the gumption to stop by offices of illustration eps, after which, if taken on, the rep would send out postcards and place ads in illustration annuals, to get the work in front of art directors. Now, the reps are broke due to stock illustration, the postcard printers are replaced by Kinko's, no one reads the annuals anymore, and if an art director really does want to hire an illustrator for custom work, where do they go to find that illustrator? The web, of course.

As a burgeoning self-promoting force to be reckoned with, it's not a lie to say the creation of a presence online is a lot of work. Besides the basics of actually creating a site, a creative person who doesn't have the money or is too much of a control-freak to pay someone else to do it needs to immediately become a novice web designer and info architecture acolyte to be a part of the party. Beisty is lucky to be successful and well-known enough to not need this presence online. But Joe Schmuck (or maybe Joe Alterio), that unknown artist who's trying to break in to the worldwide junta of getting paid for art? He's up a creek. Jaleen argues that if you don't exist online, you don't exist, and tragically, that's correct.

So to exist, an artist needs to learn how to build a site. They need to figure out how to get their work posted. They need to get their numbers up. Make sure they come up first on a Google search. That means getting linked to, so they should have a blog to let people know what they're up to. And they really should syndicate that blog to track their readership. Getting featured on BoingBoing or Drawn helps. Better be letting them know you exist. And all this, now taking time away from the actual creating of work.

Is there any grosser word in the world than "usability expert"? Ugh. Just typing it makes me shudder. The "usability expert" is the beginning of the end for creative types. Placing these laurel wreaths of Web 2.0 around our brow is creating a system that rewards the processing and delivery of content, while being completely devoid of any real deliverables. That Beisty is somehow now at a deficit because he spends his time on his gorgeous craft, and less time dicking around with Dreamweaver, is a total disgrace. To think that in 20 years time, we'll all be "usability experts", figuring out the best way to hand off all our great content as quickly and efficiently as possible, is a joke to me. The internet as a self-defining cage is already a reality: already, 95% of blogs are just recycling what someone else already posted. Where's the breaking point? When will the day come when the entire web is just different iterations of the same single idea, processed and homogenized through one million and one linked sites?

The Hijinx Ensue

As a former teenaged, pimply-faced usher at a movie theater, I'm well aware of how important a movie poster is to it's success. I don't have any solid data for this, but there's something about a good poster for a bad movie (even a movie with such promise!) that seems to be worth the investment: once you get people in the door, it doesn't matter that your story sucks and the acting is atrocious. You already have their 10 bucks!

Posters, like other design media, go through trends, and few are more mysterious or distinctive to me than the painterly, heavily-caricatured movie posters of the mid-70s through late 1980's. Fallen out of favor now, the movies they advertised regularly occupied one of two catagories, either the multi- cast-adventure-movie, or the Animal-House-inspired wacky comedy.

A little digging around (on my new favorite site) found that a likely progenator of this style is Drew Struzan. His site is kinda off the hook, because he seems to have had a hand in every famous movie on the planet. And this, folks, is why I love illustration. While the gallery artist makes a name for himself above all, the workhorse illustrator slyly burrows himself into the popular consciousness, a covert operative of style and aesthetic. At a certain point, if an illustrator is good enough, his or her style is almost taken for granted, like it's own school, so ubiquitous as to have imitators who don't even know who they're imitating. And when, like I did just now, one does finally find the creator behind so much of what you see before, it's like the ultimate reveal: you see, finally, the man at the controls, and are so much more awed by it.

The Great White APE -*UPDATED!*

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Love the Expo, as told in Three Parts.


My view for 2 days

APE was a blast, thanks to everyone who came out for it. I sold some shirts, made a lot of contacts, and bought some unbelievably weird/cool stuff. Some highlights:


I. 'Bot Building

I had decided about three weeks ago that I was going to build a robot to feature the new teeshirts I'd be selling, as well as show off some of the images from the comic. I'd made one right choice and one wrong choice in this endeavor: I was correct in enlisting Tim Lillis' help in engineering the structure. I was wrong in thinking that would take, like 2 hours, tops. D'oh.


Tim and the early structure.



Yes, that's a flowerpot for the head.



The only place I could actually paint the damn thing was in the bathroom, lest my cast chew the hell out of it. We still have red paint on the bathtub.



The final result. I like that in this picture, it looks like the robot is thoughtfully stroking his chin. I'll link to a Flickr set soon with more photos.

II. Dear Apple

In my hubris, I had assumed that the really tough part about this set was going to be the foamcore robot. How wrong I was.

Firstly, Mr. Senator, let me state I am, and have always have been, a member of the Apple Nerd set. Ever since Pop brought home the Apple IIC, I've been hooked. I admit that in the past few years, Apple's willingness to play ball with the copybarons by intergrating DRM into their iTunes files, as well as their Big Brother-like "ministore", has caused some the sheen to be lost off the Apple for me, so to speak. But it was this weekend that really made want to be more self-determinate than Apple would have me be.

I won't bore you with the technical details, but suffice to say, what would seem to be the relatively simple process of mirroring an external montior on an Apple laptop
was prohibitivly costly, aggravating, and unintuitive, mostly because Mac laptops of different models, and even different years, have different visual out-ports. Why? Because god forbid Apple uses the industry standard of a mini-VGA port. Because they're too busy Thinking Differently to actually be part of an industry standard. Heads up, Steve Jobs: if by next year I'm running Gimp on a Linux box built out of plywood, this will be a turning point. You have been warned.


III. Sketchblog - Special APE Edition
I'd love to tell you I was so busy all day long with people clamoring for my attention that I didn't have any time at all to draw, but I'd be lying.







*UPDATE!*

- Wow, I got linked to by Bonnie Grrl , of the famed Grrl.com, who called the robot "super-rad". Color me flattered and totally star struck. And here, I thought she was just a charming chick who was *very* excited about the teeshirts.

-I also got some supremely awesome link love at Suicide Bots. Wow, what a bunch of nice kids. Notice, in that picture, as well, that I'm being elbowed in the throat by my DisplayBot9000. Send help quick!

The Art of Manufacturing Nightmares

I don't usually do this, and leave it to my good friends at Suicide Bots to cover the coming Robot Revolution in our world, but this is too freaky/cool to ignore.



Meet Ava. She can talk physics with you, direct you to where you need to go, and her neck in fused to a piece of wood. Ava is created by Dave Hanson, and will be haunting my dreams for weeks to come.

Episode 4 is up!

Episode 4 of The Basic Virus is finally up, just in time for my booth at the Alternative Press Expo that I'll be sharing with Kaiju Big Battel. Come on by, say 'hi', and pick up one of TBV's rad new teeshirts: American Apparel, in both black and chocolate brown, for the discerning hipster or robo-lover:



***

In other related news, Aida from Iceland has once again requested another look at the creation process for TBV, and I'm happy to oblige. I'll take the first three hand drawn panels of the most recent episode, and give a layer break down, because I think it will be more elucidating than any kind of long-winded explanation.

This is my first step, after typing out what I feel is a pretty close approximation of what the episode will look like in script form, though when I actually make it, it usually is altered slightly because of visual considerations. The red-boxed panels are the panels in question:



Then, I make a nice clean pencil drawings on Bristol board, and when I'm happy with the lines, I ink it with the unbeatable ...reliable, good response, and best of all, cheap as all hell:



I scan the lines as bitmap, and convert to Greyscale in Photoshop, using the Threshold tool to clean up the image. Then, on the layers below, I use the brush tools, as well as found posterized images, to create the BG and atmosphere:



And finally, the combined images with the speech bubbles as the last touch.



As you can imagine, this takes a really really long time, which I don't mind, because I think it ends up looking pretty good, but I really need to streamline my process. There's some webcomic creators that, because of their style, get to post everyday. Because of how I do things, I'll be thrilled if I can get my turnaround time to once every two weeks.

The Storyteller Speaks

I've described my artistic demeanor here in these pages (pages?) previously as a 'narrativist', by which I've mean someone who puts a premium on getting the point across that so troubles the mind those long late nights, whether it's the price of oil or your own personal heartbreak. Leaving the experiements in didactic theory to the art school kids, the term 'narrativist' was never meant to be strictly about telling a literal story or an anecdote: you can be a narrativist and not a storyteller, but maybe not vice versa, if you follow me, though some efforts to the contrary may end up making this little theory of mine look like so much bunk.

Happily, in the business of my chosen poison, comics, I happen to be both. So it was with great joy that Molly directed me to this interview with Ira Glass about what he sees as the two main anchors of any good storytelling excercise, namely, The Anecdote and The Point. Considering the great success of This American Life as a now near-franchise, and it's consistent achievement in the face of increasing popularity (a tough hoop to jump through), he's prolly a good guy to listen to.

As a side note, notice he never mentions accuracy or "truth", two overrated concepts that any good storytelling effort should echew like a LA Times subscription. I sometimes get in trouble with Molly after a night of drinking, when she'll turn to me and say: "That story you told was way more interesting than what actually happened!" I think I'm missing the part of brain that sees anything wrong with that. I mean, sure, if I was a scientist or journalist, I could see the issue: but as it stands, I consider stretching the truth part of my research.

Humanspeed...

...Mr. Vonnegut. So it goes.

Kim Dietch Interview

One of my favorite artists from the 60's underground SF scene is Kim Deitch. I'm not sure whether it's that he's just as raunchy as Gilbert Shelton but his drawings recall old school design (echoed later in the subsequent Air Pirates flap), or just that I grew up watching his station IDs he did for Nickelodeon: either way, he is an enduring giant on the scene, and the AIGA site has a great interview with him. Check it out.


As a side note: I may be shooting myself in the foot here, considering that fact that it's my own guild, but has any noticed how crappy the AIGA site looks? I'm no web designer, per se, but...the big black box in the top left corner sticking out like a sore thumb,the strange pallete, even the leading of the menu text...what is up with that? And the parts that aren't ugly are just BORING. You know, there's some folks in the design industry that take their website site, and what it says about them, seriously.

Maybe someone's kid got the redesign job...?

Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau

The dudes over at The Daily Crosshatch tuned me in to this sketchbook making the rounds of comic-cons, between some of the more well known cartoonists: a kind of Exquisite Corpse for the funny papers set. I love it so much, and wish there was more of it. Besides getting to see the likes of Johnny Ryan and Bwana Spoons in a looser form, which informative, it's cool to see that the random neural firings of other artists involve as many tentacles as mine.

In a similar vein, (like the hey-look-we're-all-dorks vein) FIST-A-CUFFS has been doing something cool. This is an idea that the Fine Comix gang in Seattle did a few years ago, but it's still fun. It kinda reminds me of the little pink M.U.S.C.L.E. men, an exercise in childhood surrealism that I didn't really comprehend until later.

Traffic Magazine blurb on yours truly

This is an article about me written by my buddy Steve that I forgot about that, was publsihed last summer. Oh, well. Better later than never. In his inimitable style, the article is actually more well written than the dialogue in my comic. Damn.

Let My Robots Go!
Steve Lohse

Don’t call Joe Alterio a comic-book guy. He’s a storyteller. His medium of choice happens to be comics, or “sequential narrative” as the highbrow will have it, but in another life, he freely admits, he would be a shadow puppeteer. The point is getting the point across. Get it?

Sitting in a Capitol Hill coffeeshop, Joe looks perfectly comfortable behind his warmly glowing laptop, watching the neighborhood traffic- mostly stylishly disheveled twentysomethings- flow glamorously by. “Of course,” he says, correcting himself, “It’s no secret that comic books are the refugee of outcast young males.”

Hailing originally from Boston, MA and currently residing in Seattle, Joe spent eight years living in Los Angeles, earning a film degree from USC and afterwards doing animation for the likes of Nickelodeon and Adam Sandler. Joe turned his long last year in tinseltown in all its frustration and glory into 365, a graphic novella/comic journal wherein he rendered his daily struggles into three-panel diary entries, short, simple, and sweet. There’s a sense of immediacy to the way the story is told - written as it’s actually happening- not to mention a certain existential horror in the way that the writer has no better idea of how his story will end than we do. As 365’s tumultuous year progresses, Joe spends time both with the important, life-changing events and the tedium of daily existence. The simultaneously simple and complex moments build towards an intimate portrait of an artist suffering the post-college careerless/lovesick blues. 365 can be found at select bookstores as well as from www.joealterio.com. Daily strips can be downloaded to your ipod freely from www.clickwheel.net.

Critical response to his work has been uniformly positive, though Joe is hardly one to rest on his laurels. Upon arriving in Seattle, he began his ‘Robot Revolution’ Poster Series- not-quite-ironic posters wherein sentient robot revolutionaries (the Robo-equality party) urge their fellow robot-laborers to rise up against the injustice of servitude. The posters, reminiscent of labor-movement era propaganda, are rendered in bold colors and confrontational imagery, and are both hilarious and strangely touching. The posters have been shown and sold in Seattle as well as other parts of the country, though Joe isn’t content to keep the robots stuck to the wall. “The printed page is a dinosaur waiting to die,” he says. “Everything lies in the internet.” Joe sees the internet as a way to completely flip the way information is presented to the reader, for instance allowing interactive comics where the reader is dropped in the center of everything and allowed to explore.

Perhaps taking his own advice, Joe has recently launched his most ambitious offering yet: a serial web-comic based around the sprawling, dystopian world of the robot revolution posters. The storyline imagines an alternate present wherein robot laborers have begun striking against the capitalist society that enslaves them. Call it socio-political commentary or just call it entertainment, Joe’s robot revolution begins in March and can be found for free at www.robotrev.com. Viva la revolution!

"Waters Red" wins award

"Waters Red", the video I did for Argo, just one won runner up at The Greatest Story Never Told's multimedia contest. Word! Watch it again for the first time.

Sterescopic Photography

Above is a frame from a page I found with stereoscopic images looped into an animated GIF, and it's just phenomenal. Remember how incredible 'Bullet Time' was the first time you saw it? And then NFL tried to do it, to hideous, awful horrible effect? This is better than all of that. Like, times a million. In my humble opinion.

The best part about the relatively recent obsession with stereoscopic technology is A.) how old and low tech it is, and B.) the level of fanaticism of the current crop of lenticulators. While the current level of stereoscopy is involved in some serious next level stuff, the quaint turn-of-the-century old-timey charm of vintage stereoscopic images is undeniable. I think it's because these images are clearly produced strictly for enjoyment, and the manufacture of a 3D realm out of a 2D medium is also what happens turns my gears. I guess it's because everything that I'm interested in, on some level, exactly that: the manufacturing of reality artificially. It's the God Complex writ large.

So, why is this stuff so much cooler than the high tech stuff? Because it's mostly all DIY, and DIY stereoscopic tech is sometimes, very very DIY. Additionally, these stereoscopic images, on Chinese Jet Pilot and else where are, for the most part, still very prosaic images: people living their normal lives, without exploding cars and flying bullets. The benefit is that, for just a fraction of a second, you get to be there with these people, in their private moments, sharing their space, as only they experienced it, a frozen moment of nostalgia for anyone to share. And that's deep, baby.

Sketchblog 3/23/07

Above is a birthday card/invite I did from my friend Matt's 30th birthday party, and I like how it turned out. It was unintentional initially, but I like how the tonal quality of the color echo the old super structure of the bridge and the car, making it kind of industrial and nostalgic at the same time.

And hey, if you're in SF, and you wanna stop by the party, email me to get the info, the more the merrier.

MOMA (heart)'s Comix

Above is Arturo Herrera's's entry into NYC's new MOMA exhibiton, Comic Abstraction, a show in which 13 artists took on the genre of comics, and it's interplay with the wider art world. There's some pretty ridiculous ones in the show, but there's also some really really outstanding stuff, like Herrera's, too.

(Flash player required)

Onward and Upward

Two rather self-aggrandizing points to note, and then back to the good stuff (I know, I know, after yesterday's post, it's a little too much to bear: sorry, I'll get back to bitching soon.)

* I'm now officially represented by Richard Salzman Int'l, my first agent since beginning to self rep myself 5 years ago, and it feels really great. Richard is a super nice guy and is very experienced in the field, so here's hoping that great things come of it.

* I've been shortlisted for The Greatest Story Never Told prize for multimedia animation for my Waters Red music video for Argo. You can go here, and help me win by casting your vote for my stuff. Go! Do it now! I'll wait. (The site is a little hincky, and very Flash-heavy: be warned.)


(The above image was done in effort to round out my portfolio for editorial stuff: I think that it would look great in the pages of a magazine, don't you?)

AIDS is SO last century.

Just quick note to let you everyone know that this summer, I'll be running the 2007 San Francisco Marathon in support of the fight against AIDS, here at home and in the developing world. Molly, who I'll be doing this with, and I, have committed to raising 3600 dollars by April 27th to this effort. While you maybe don't know anyone personally with this terrible disease, you know someone that does. And I'll be damned if I let some stupid virus push the human race around.

If you're feeling generous, you can donate to our cause here. Anything at all helps, thanks so much for you help. More artsy-fartsy stuff soon.

Brilliant

Brilliance from Aardman Studios. Make sure you watch 'em all.

Remixology 101

There’s an apologetic reflex I think, the happens in the mind of all but the most arrogant artists when they take up their weapon of choice again after seeing something wonderful and inspiring created by someone else. After the initial thrill of imbibing that heady elixir of admiration, self-consciousness, jealousy, and inspiration that always leaves me a bit woozy, there’s a very natural fear that comes back up like a bad tequila burp. It’s the fear that you have now been ruined forever, that your mind has been permanently scarred by someone else’s superior vision, and your life will be nothing more than common retreads of other’s themes for the rest of your life. Those of normal psyches quickly banish this thought and charge ahead, confident in their own abilities. Those that don’t, blog about it.

There was an outstanding Harper’s article a few weeks ago by the untouchable Jonathan Lethem about the innate quality of appropriation in art: I read Joey “Yeah, I seen that shit” Campbell as closely as the next film student, but I have to admit, it paradoxically made my heart both lighter and heavier to find out that one of my most favorite books, Lolita, had been possibly plagarized. The article, among other examples, asserts that, consciously or not, Nabakov essentially strip-mined a story he most very likely read 20 years before. However, instead of waving the flag of crime in his face, Lethem asserts what many have deduced, and then rolled with, long ago: there ain’t nuthin’ new underneath the sun.

I don’t mull this over for unreasonable means: I’m not usually in the habit of just repeating what an article said and passing it off as my own (though, considering the topic, might be just what the doctor ordered). Last week, I was suddenly reminded of the anime film Metropolis , a cartoon released in 2002 by Tezuka that was essentially a remake of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

The path of sly reference, unwitting allusion, accidental cop, and outright stealing is sticky one. Before seeing the film, I had loved the Fritz Lang film since I first saw it at 16. With the addition of M, Lang was one of the twin giants that informed my narrative aspirations (along with Hitch, or course). Plus, it had totally awesome robots and cool models of a futuristic city.

I have kept the film so near and dear to me, that, in the back of mind, I always harbored a secret to desire to remake it, but my way: a production design project in school resulted in The Wizard of Oz, re-imagined as a Langian shiny future dystopia of Art Deco buildings, an evil newspaper magnate moll as the Wicked Witch of Western Publishing, and a robotic Prometheus as the Tinman, It was as strange and brooding day then, when, shocked at my discovery of the Tezuka release, I made the even-more shocking discovery that, after renting the film and watching it, I HAD in fact seen it, in 2002 when it came out. My robot poster series, which the comic is based on, came out in 2004. Infer what you will.

I don’t really know what to make of all of this. (The fact that the Tezuka movie, much to my disappointment, is a sub par affair is besides the point). A few points in my defense is that my conceit takes a wholly different tact than either version of the film, and I’m exploring (or plan to explore) a lot of issues that aren’t raised in the movies. However, I am writing a comic about an uprising of robots. I did name my city Cosmopolis as an intentional nod to Lang. And I do stay up late worrying as to whether people will take one look at my comic and see me as an also-ran.

On an even greater intellectual level, though, the whole thing has left me befuddled. The brain is apparently a very strange thing. Did I mean to skip over the 2002 version in my allusions? How much did the 2002 version influence me, considering that I seemingly removed the movie from my mind for a while, always going back to the Lang version? To that end, would my intended allusions to Lang (which I desire), be even stronger had not I seen the 2002 version? Are readers, especially those not familiar with Lang, put off by my apparent band-wagoneering? And in the ultimate question, in the art world, who is to say the art world is nothing but appropriation?

I’m always flattered when someone cites my work as an inspiration for theirs, so I guess I shouldn’t think on any of this too much. It sure makes it easier to pass the time at work, though.

Sesame St. Animation

At the urging of a friend, I hunted down a few of the old school 1970's Sesame St. animations. They're just fantastic, both sublime and outrageous. (check out some of those other cartoons in that thread, too: yow!)It makes me weep the vapid state the visual palate kids have to choose from these days. John K., in his own insane way, is always complaining about the dull, pinked-based color junta that has taken over kid's entertainment these days, and he's right. Compared to these beauties, they look tired, sugary, and like they're talking down to our youth, which, of course, is what they have been doing for years.

Form Is Content

I've been thinking a lot lately about semiotics, more specifically in my chosen field of practice, that is, the effort to tell a story with pictures. Without getting too Scott McCloud on you, I find some interesting cultural revelations that come out of the nearly nascent connections that make between form, inferred meaning, and underlying content. Much to the programmers delight, this is one instance where form really is function. Which is why I guess I like it so much.

Comics is a language of symbols, perhaps more so than any other visual art form. While traditional painting may have it's expressionist cues, kabuki may have it's grotesque masks, and while William Safire continues to mercilessly pound all the fun out of language every week, comics is like no other. At once overty symbolic and simplistic,



...and at the same time wonderfully, mysteriously open to interpretation, as intriguing as any subtle performance of the silver screen, comics has less to rely than other forms, and thus has more symbols at it's behest. Taking for granted the fact that I believe that comics actually solidified the "Z" as a shorthand for sleep in our culture ( Doozex, thanks Mort Walker), the joke here by Schulz is twofold: the 'surface' joke of Schroeder hammering Snoopy's sleep to bits, but also the underlying joke that you can get away with something like that comics it's the visual gag of seeing something obviously ridiculous used to portary an emotion that's tough to write. Another example:



It's funny because Linus is over the moon, and it's also funny because not only is Linus is floating, but that we actually KNOW what that means, and we can chuckle in an expert way. Symbology of this level makes us all insiders, and thus makes such art even more personal.

Comics is filled with such inside jokes: the lightbulbs, the speed lines, and clouds of smoke that inform our collective knowledge. As usual, McCloud has some brilliant points about the cultural disconnect when one culture doesn't understand another's symbology, and I won't rehash that.

I will say, however, that this is all the tip of the iceberg. I'm constantly surprised that comics, and for a time, silent films, are the only art form to consistently use such intimate semiotics to make a connection with the audience. Is it the lack of multiple panels ( "canvases") that make other artists less willing to use valuable real estate on something as prosaic as symbols? Shunning of common language for the desire to create something wholly unique? Or just that such symbology is often called "comic" symbology, and still viewed a bit huffily? There are a few artists that have delved into this realm, to great affect, I think. I can't wait for some more to come out of the woodwork.

Seoul Int'l Cartoon and Animation Festival

I woke up today to find this sitting in my inbox:

Dear Mr. Joe Alterio,

This is Hong Lee, Curator of Digital, Round Two: Comics in the Second Coming of Digital Era, a sub-event of 11th Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival.

I have found your wonderful iPod comic titled The Basic Virus through clickwheel.net, and we thought we *must* show it in our exhibition. Digital, Round Two is an endeavor to explore new comic language in a developing stage, especially on portable and interactive devices such as iPod, Playstation Portable, and Nintendo DS.

We think your Basic Virus as an exemplary work that demonstrates some highly new operability for comic narrative. For example, your horizontal or vertical panning sequence operated by click wheel may shed light on new tangible dimension in unfolding a comic narrative. In the same manner, we have also found sequence of fading out and panels rotated 90-degrees as the strong account for your creative and successful use of iPod.

Damn.

So I'm totally gonna do it, and see if I can fly out there to attend. Dude, I'm HUGE in Korea.

"Escalation" by Ward Kimball

Wow. I was slogging through a post about symbolic representation today when BB keyed me in on this. Readers of this blog will recognize my love of all things, Ward Kimball Disney animator and conceptual madman, and his family has just released this short animation about the 1968 escalation of the Vietnam War. In light of recent events, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Clip/Stamp/Fold

One of the nice things about The Global Worldwide Internet Web of Interests is that you check out art in cities where you maybe can't afford the rent. In that vein, I invite you into the digital gallery of Clip/Stamp/Fold, a new show at the Storefront for Art gallery in NYC. It's a show of architectual proto-zines from the sixties and seventies, and while the content is interesting I'm sure, taken all together, it's a also just a great survey of design trends from the era. Now, I don't know much about architetcure, but Holy Smokes: if this is the design architects come up with, what did the designer's 'zines look like?

(The site is a little hinckey, but looks great: bear with it.)

Edisyn album artwork

(click to enlarge)

I just got hired to do Edisyn 's new album artwork, which is totally rad. Supercool music by supercool kids. I did a poster for them a little while back (above), after a night of bad enchiladas. Beware, the squid cometh! And, for the record, I was drawing squids before it was cool to draw squids.And look! Cyan!

Game Over

I don't usually comment on current affairs- I leave that to more capable hosts - but something, or maybe everything, has gotten to me about this Boston-ATHF-bombscare-thing. I promise this will be brief, and I'll get back to comics soon.

Firstly, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am from Boston, or near enough, and I admit that the thought of The Greatest City On Earth being vaporized off the map gave me more than a few palpitations. And so it was with baited breath that I read of the anxious, world-shaking reports about Boston Being Bombed!...Well, there's Bombs In Boston!...Well, OK, there's Things That Look Like Bombs In Boston!...Alright, Fine, there's Things That Actually Don't Really Look Bombs, But They're Definitely There To Cause Terror In Boston!...and finally, OK, You Got Us, There's Some Guerilla Marketing In Boston!

There's several odious elements about this whole messy affair, the most obvious of which is the disgusting salivating the mainstream media did in their breathless reports about the Next Big Scare. Nowadays, with his approval ratings lower than Urkel's, it's popular to slam The Decider in the media, and cluck our tongues at the silly yes-man puppeteering most of the media did after 9/11. Don't get me wrong, I still mourn what happened that day, but I think we can all agree the media dropped the ball after that calamity, and they Just Haven't Felt Good About Themselves Since, which is why we have a furrow-browed Anderson Cooper meekly questioning the war now. But this little incident has shown we're still stuck in the same garbage: cautious rationality doesn't play well with the 18-24 demo.

This blog is about media and art, and I can't actually think of better scenario to let play out when talking about both. Art is about, and please excuse my lack of formal training here, puncturing the mask of daily existence. And media, in the end, is just the commodification of that trend: it's a realization that, somewhere the line, you could actually sell that insight to the family next door. Everything from street craft fairs to Disney TV is based on this secnario.

As any good lawyer will tell you, the meaning changes with intent. Did Interference Inc. mean to cause that response?

Let's take both sides, to see how it plays out in each scenario as "art". I'll break with some my more mainstream compatriots, and say that, if they did mean to provoke an emergency response, that's not just media, that's art, and actually a pretty interesting statement. And this is coming from a guy that HATES "happenings". Was it wrong? Yup. Was it irresponsible? Oh, yeah. Should they be punished? Probably. BUT: did it make us look introspectively at ourselves and our collective actions? I'd say that's a big 'Yes'.

But here's where it gets tricky, and where I actually think the truth lies: that it really was just a marketing scheme gone awry. If it is just a instance of hysteria, I think that makes the statement even greater. Now, we live in a country where anything with wires can be left out on the street, and can be the focus of a nationwide Freak Out. And it wasn't even ON PURPOSE. Like the monster under the bed, we wanted to see it, so it was there. Woe be the next man that leaves his broken blender in the trash.

I love art and guerilla media. I also love my country. I want us to be safe for a 1000 years. But when we run around willy-nilly, accusing people, shutting down cities, and putting on our most sober faces to discredit some lite-brites on a freeway overpass...

...folks, The Terrorists have won.