i was interviewed recently by Mike Dawson for his TCJ Talkies podcast over at the Comics Journal. we mostly talked about my experiences going to the Center for Cartoon Studies (the uber-talented Joe Lambert, Lucy Knisley & Melissa Mendes are also interviewed about the same subject), so if that sounds like the sort of thing you’d like to listen to head over to the TCJ Talkies page right now!

WHERE: Silent Barn @ 915 Wyckoff Avenue (L to Halsey, M to Myrtle-Wyckoff)

WHEN: 5 PM – 7 PM (and probably an hour or two later)

HOW MUCH: FREE before 7 PM. $10 after that…

VIEW THE FACEBOOK INVITE.

“Please join us at the Silent Barn for Minicomic Madness, a celebration of self-published comics. Cartoonists Robyn Chapman, Max Mose, Nomi Kane and Caitlin McGurk will lead a workshop that will demystify the self-publishing process. A number of DIY production and design methods will be discussed. Participants will get to create a minicomic on the spot!

Robyn will also curate an exhibition of minicomics by artists from The Center for Cartoon Studies, available to read all day and all night. A selection of minicomics will be available for sale, from the authors.”

You probably already figured it out, but I will be one of the authors selling minicomics! Stop by for the workshop & stick around to drink beer, buy comics & listen to bands. Come on, what else are you gonna do on a cold Saturday night in February? Stay in? Don’t make me laugh!

I HAVE MADE A COMIC FOR A BEARD ANTHOLOGY.

the anthology is called “Fúzy” & features a lot of the dudes that were in my first year Center for Cartoon studies classes – Mark Thisse, Jeff Mumm, Aaron Cockle, Jon Pekin, Sango Imai-Hall, Evan Lichty & Al Wesolowsky, to be exact. all of the comics are about / feature beards. i’m not sure when it will be out, but i should hopefully have some to sell at this year’s MoCCA (oh yeah, i’ve decided to do MoCCA again this year…).

so there’s some new blog content for you! enjoy it – who knows when i’ll post next??

holy crap!!! here’s an awesome drawing of charles & brownie (and santa) by one of my favorite cartoonists, alex robinson!!! if you don’t know alex’s work, get the hell to a comic store & pick up box office poison, tricked, too cool to be forgotten and a kidnapped santa claus. really, do it now – they’re all great books & you should own all of them. alex was my thesis adviser for my second year at the center for cartoon studies (he helped me tweak the work i was doing for life is good #2 & the trial of sweetie snake) & i had the honor of being production assistant on his most recent book, a kidnapped santa claus. thanks a million, alex!

previous “fan art friday“: jeff mumm (of the hilarious “featuring talking guinea pigs” webcomic)

I’m going to be honest from the start of this review, despite the fact that I almost never lie. I still don’t know what this strip is really about.

I’ve got the premise that it’s an abstract world where one “normal” person is friends with a slacker, and their adventures in the city.

What makes this comic interesting, so far, is that the main character would appear to be a bottle of sorts, with supporting characters being an alligator and cat. It’s interesting that the author is focusing on humanizing animals and other objects to show human traits and their natural oddities.

Returning to my train of thought, the only problem I have with this comic is the drawing. The rest of the comic is enjoyable. It has some decent humor, some good dialogue, and it even has an overall good vibe. But the quality of the artwork throws off the scent of awesomeness for this strip.

To begin, my main complaint with the drawing is the text. Mr. Seck, if you’re reading this, I strongly advise trying to make the text larger, so that we don’t have to zoom in to read it. It’s a simple change that would make your comic much better. On top of that, there is a much clustered feel to the comic, art wise, caused by the attention to only some details. This isn’t like the previous strip, where this was a contradiction. Rather, in this case the partial-detailing is in a way that supports the look of the strip. However, if there were a way to shift the balance toward detailed or minimalistic just a bit more, the quality of the strip would improve greatly. For only having some flaws with art and text, I give “Secktacular” 7 out of 10.

7 out of 10 for the first half of my first full-length comic / final project for my first year at the Center for Cartoon Studies ain’t bad! Thanks, Reviewer Guy! I shall never give up trying to improve!

Yes, yes, my posts have been infrequent for the past week & a half or so, but with good reason: Nobody’s gonna look at any new updates I make to this site because very few people are sitting in an office, bored out of their minds & looking for some droll anthropomorphic beer bottle / alligator-based serialized humor comics to waste their time. Sad (not sad), but true. My office is even shut down for the week to save money, which means I get to work from home AND draw a couple pages for issue 3! But, for the most part, people have better things to do during the last 2 weeks of December than wait for updates on the lives of my characters. If I am incorrect in this assumption contact me via email & I’ll send you a drawing or something…

Anyway, the posting of pages will resume on its regular Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule this coming Monday (01/04/10)…

GEEK MONTHLY: I, along with comic super-pals Sam Carbaugh & Jeff Mumm, was interviewed for an article about the Center For Cartoon Studies that appears in this month’s Geek Monthly. Go seek it out if you feel so inclined – it’s the one with Twilight on the cover (yeah, I know… not so “geeky” as “teenaged girly”, but that shit sells magazines I guess).

So, anyway, here’s the basics:

- Updates to resume on Monday, January 4th.

- I am featured in an article in Geek Monthly.

as part of my week of AWESOME FILLER counting down to the premiere of life is good #2 on monday 11/9, i thought i’d post about a project i was (marginally) involved with:

i was production assistant on alex robinson’s new book, “a kidnapped santa claus“. alex made “box office poison” – one of my absolute favorite graphic novels – & was my thesis advisor at the center for cartoon studies last year (he helped me develop “life is good #2” & “the trial of sweetie snake“). after minimal harrassment, i was able to get him to let me do the scanning & layout for his newest books “guts” (that’s fancy comic-speak for the insides of a comic book what that you read with your eyes) last spring. it’s a fun book that you should buy lots of copies of for everyone you love & respect (but not before you buy lots of copies of my books for everyone you love & respect).

and if you look hard enough, you might just find a little shout-out to brownie & charles on page 40… that alone is worth the price of the book – you know, if you like my comics enough to be excited to see the characters drawn by somebody else…

- steve.

(snazzy-looking cover painted by sara lindo – buy issue #1 with the snazzy-looking cover here)

so the posting of “steve seck’s life is good” issue one has come to an end. thanks for reading, those of you who did!

i made ”steve seck’s life is good #1″ in the spring of 2008 for my first year’s final project at the center for cartoon studies. looking back as i’ve been posting it page by page, i feel a complex mixture of pride & embarrassment – i like what i made on the whole, but there are definitely some drawing, inking & staging issues i was yet to get a handle on. while posting these, it was not uncommon for a panel to cause me to do a comically exaggerated double-take & think / say to myself “i seriously thought THAT was a good enough drawing to go in the book??”.

i guess everyone doing something creative has moments like that looking back on their work, though. hopefully the writing shines through some of the more crudely-rendered illustrations to make it an enjoyable enough reading experience for you guys.

anyway: on to the next learning experience! i’ll start posting issue #2 on monday, november 9th! in the interim, please enjoy some DAILY FILLER!

i had a great time at SPX this weekend! sara & i made some new friends & talked to a lot of really nice people (especially the couple students from the new class at the center for cartoon studies who stopped by our booth to say hello – i’m astonished at how friendly they all are!) i came home with a much lighter load than i arrived with – i sold out of copies of “the trial of sweetie snake”, got rid of half of my 2nd print run of “life is good” #1 & have about 5 copies of “life is good” #2 left. hooray for confidence-boosting sales & trades!

i ran out of free promo buttons, so if any of you are here because of those, a hearty “hello” to you! hello!

if you bought something, an EVEN HEARTIER hello! HELLO!

here’s page #13 from the first issue…

here comes page #11, which introduces the other main character, charles the alligator. this was originally the first page i drew for “steve seck’s life is good” for an assignment we had at CCS last year. i had completed the script & needed to illustrate a 4 to 5 page conversation, so i just went for this one. enjoy!