Here’s the first and glorious page of my western themed anthology piece.
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The results are in!
Dum da da dum.
This week I conducted a poll for the students in my class at the Center for Cartoon studies. It’s horribly skewed, but at the very least interesting. Now, try not to freak out, ’cause I’m going to get all meta on your ass. First, I asked them what kind of content they preferred to look at on an artist’s blog. The conclusion:
The number one choice for things people like to consume on a blog: images from a sketchbook and documentation of the artistic process.
Second, my class likes to see images of a work in progress and updates about events, appearances, and where the blogger is published.
And as an anemic third, they like to see webcomics in addition to technical tips and tricks about making a comic.
But, when I asked the students why they read blogs, a lot of them said as one student so profoundly put it, “Sorry - I don’t really read blogs. Other people’s thoughts bore me.”
And I also asked the students if they have a blog (which most of them do), why? Almost half of the students said that they don’t really know, the other half said they do it because it’s necessary to have a web presence to be a professional (ick!)
So, I am totally not going to tailor my blog to some biased poll I gave in class, but I hate to do things without a good reason. What is a blog really? Is it just an elaborate advertisement disguised as a diary? Is it a creative outlet? And, unless you’re a call girl or a journalist, is it just an elaborate waste of space?
I dunno, but I’m going to do a little experimenting to figure this one out. I’ll fetch my rubber gloves and safety goggles. This could get rather messy. But in the meantime, here’s a list of blogs favored by my classmates, some of them are really awesome!
Drawn.ca — was the most cited favorite blog, and I can see why
FFFFOUND.com — I totally love this!
Cake Wrecks — Seriously?
Steve Bissette — the amazing Steve Bissette
In my sketchbook I drew this little drawing that show how I go to sleep. And I am One Hundred Percent Serious. I can’t sleep until I feel the rocking of my boat, and hear the waves.
Today I heard a lecture by the infamous Rick Veitch about dream comics. And now I’m thinking that television and the internet have stolen my dreams. The modern world is not so good for the nether-regions of the psyche. Apparently all the screen time activates a part of the brain that isn’t amenable to dreaming. So our secret lives are slowly being sucked away. Gone is my imaginary career as a professional bowler. Gone are my days of rescuing maidens from pirates. Gone is my stint in a French convent, where I convert the ladies to my own particular religion, as well as fomenting a revolution.
I agree with Rick (and Jung) that reaching into the unconscious (of the self and collective) is super important to art-making. So loosing dreams is bad, evil bad. And what, you might ask, am I going to do about it? I’m going to become a computer and steal YOUR DREAMS.
