Yesterday I said I had only four pics from Savannah for you. Thankfully, though, some folks brought cameras to the really big lecture… so I thought I’d share their pics with you.
It was a very classy setup, with Scott and I off to the side in comfy leather chairs, and our big-screen presentation at center stage.
…as you can see from the second pic, our presentation included nothing but 100% serious slides. 100% serious.
(Got more pics? Send ’em along! Ol’ Captain Forgets-to-Use-His-Camera would love to see ’em!)
The faculty, staff and students could not have been kinder; the facilities could not have been cooler; and the in-class mini-lectures and Tuesday-night big-ol’ lecture could not have been more fun.
Special thanks have to go out to Jeremy Mullins, Department Chair David Allan Duncan, Emily Stockdale, Ray Goto, Dove McHargue, Dean John Paul Lowe, and Julie Collins. These professors invited us into their classrooms for one-on-ones, critiques, mini-lectures, sharing of best practices, and lots of Q&A. If the students enjoyed it, they didn’t enjoy it half as much as Scott and I did.
It is rare, impossibly rare, to have a program devoted solely to Comics and Sequential Art. Perhaps even more impossibly rare to have that program be any good. So, for us, the chance to go to SCAD and see their 400-student-strong Sequential Art department not only humming along, but offering classes *Scott and I* wished we could take — well, that was awesome. It’s an amazing program they have there. I have every intention of getting back there and teaching some day. Ray, I’m holding you to your offer.
I was so wrapped up in the excitement of my visit, that I didn’t take a whole lot of pics while I was there. But I did want to show you four:
First up, the immaculately restored three-story Victorian mansion SCAD put us up in: The university’s guest house, Magnolia Hall. Here’s a shot of Scott and I on the front-facing porch. Look at that place!
SCAD put millions into its restoration, and it shows. We had the 13-room mansion to ourselves — and the place was magnificent. My bedroom had 20-foot tall ceilings, a king bed with 10-foot-tall-posts, floor-to-crown-moulding windows, and every conceivable Victorian and modern nicety you could imagine. Magnolia Hall embodies SCAD’s place in Savannah: The school is slowly buying up classic-but-run-down building around town, and restoring them to former greatness. They’re at around 60 buildings, so far.
The second shot I wanted to share with you was of this amazing cake that Sheldonista Amber B. made for our visit. She took the shot of the lecture’s poster, and turned it into an even more beautiful cake. The watercolored-trees, the characters rendered in chocolate…it was all too perfect, and was heart-breaking to cut into and taste. Thank you, Amber!
The fourth pic I wanted to share was a gift from Samantha de G., a SCAD Sequential Art student who gave me an incredible scultpure of Flaco reclining on a rock. Samantha, I stared at it on the plane all the way home with a smile on my face. Thank you!
SCAD, thank you again for the wonderful welcome. It was the highlight of my year.
Tonight I returned home from my week-long trip to Georgia (…more on that later), only to realize that Wednesday’s strip had not yet gone live. A bit of a buzz-kill after a near-flawless visit to the Savannah College of Art and Design…but one that’s easily remedied.
And so, compadres, I’d direct your attention back to Wednesday’s strip for our continuing little sojourn into the world of weddings.
Sunday’s strip is a little personal homage to George Herriman’s early-20th-Century strip, “Krazy Kat”.
A surreal and wonderful strip to check out, if you’ve never seen it before. Lots of linguistic twists of “Americana” mixed in with Spanish and flavors of the southwest…all set in odd, dream-like versions of the high desert.
And the simple yet endlessly mutable relationships between Krazy, Ignatz, and Offisah Pup were wonderful. Weird, but wonderful.
Putting Flaco and Arthur into that style was great fun to draw. …I hope you enjoyed it.
Sheldonistas, I need your help! Specifically, your knowledge of local bookstores! Here’s why…
This week, I hired an awesome guy to start bringing Sheldon books to stores around the country. But we’re doing it in a very cool new way. We’re going to bypass Borders, Barnes & Noble, Wal*Mart, Amazon…and just focus on local book stores and comic book shops.
Why avoid the mega-chains? Because the fundamental way they do business is broken…and even they kinda know it. Borders essentially declared bankruptcy this week, and Amazon and Wal*Mart constantly chase each other to see who can offer “Harry Potter” books at a bigger money-losing price of 70-or-80%-off. And in the meantime, all the little guys up and down the line can’t survive.
But! Since Sheldon doesn’t traditionally rely on bookstores anyway, we can afford to try something new. Something different. Something better.
We’re going to bypass the big guys altogether, and just deal directly with real people who own their own local stores. The store owners will get waaaay-better-than-usual rates and freight, you’ll get Sheldon books locally, and no one will need to go bankrupt in the process. 🙂
HERE’S HOW YOU CAN HELP:
Share with us your favorite local stores or comic book shops that you think would welcome having “Sheldon” on their shelves. Your local eye is key, here: You’re our eyes ‘n ears! You’ll know way better than we would if “Sheldon” fits in your local store. Plus, it’ll just take a second to fill out THIS E-MAIL LINK….and send it to us. Easy-peasy!
As a thank you, everyone who e-mails in will get free Sheldon desktop wallpapers next week, when I’m back from the Savannah talk! *Thank you!*
[EDITED TO ADD:]
In case you’re on Gmail, Yahoo, or webmail, and the link doesn’t work for you, here are the details we ask for. Feel free to just e-mail these to “[email protected]”:
Friday is the deadline to get your punchline in for our first-annual caption contest! So far, we have about 1,000 entries in 370 posts…but you still have time to get yours in!
It’s coming up fast, so I wanted to put a reminder out there for all Southern Sheldonistas within driving distance: Savannah College of Art & Design has invited my buddy Scott Kurtz and I down for a public talk Tuesday, Oct. 14th at 8PM.
The day before, we’ll be visiting various SCAD art classes to give spot lectures, critiques, and some hands-on instruction on the creation of sequential art and comics.
– WHO: Open to the public. No tickets or advance reservations: First-come, first-in. (Although, the theater seats 1,100…and I doubt we’ll fill that puppy).
– WHAT ELSE: Scott and I will be signin’, sellin’ and sketchin’ in books afterward, and giving out the “Limited Edition 2008 SCAD High-Fives” (Scott’s bringing 62, I’m packing 63).
– WHAT ELSE, WHAT ELSE: I’m also told that a special Sheldonista will be bringing a super-duper-awesome-cake that may or may not have Sheldon and PvP characters on it.
Come on out if you’re within drivin’ distance — I almost never get to go to the South, so I hope a lot of Southern Sheldonistas will come out and say “hi”!
I just noticed, online, that the famed Soviet cartoonist and propagandist Boris Efimov died at, are you ready for this, 108.
This may be of interest to few people but me, but since I did my second Masters degree on WWII cartoon propaganda, it’s kind of a landmark: Efimov was sort of the last of the last WWII cartoonists still kickin’ around. It’s interesting to note because we live in an age where newspapers are painfully diminished in scope and impact: They’ll largely be gone in five years or so (especially now that General Motors, P&G and others are cutting back on their advertising due to the worsening recession). And cartooning, which for so long rode those circulation numbers to mass-market appeal, is a much-diminished artform in terms of cultural impact. The most popular among us, online, can boast only a 2 or 3 million readers a day.
But! Back in the day, specifically, back in the days of WWII, cartoonists were king. My chosen graduate focus, Phillip Zec, worked for London’s Daily Mirror (13 Million subscribers in 1939, 22 Million in 1948 — with a secondary readership far, far larger than those numbers communicate). He and guys like Efimov, Low, Mauldin — they spoke to tens and tens of millions of people a day. And in the way a cartoonist/propagandist can only do in an all-out, existential war…they swayed the moods and opinions of huge swathes of the populace.
So, Efimov’s passing is sort of a landmark for me. He literally is the final passing of an age for cartooning.
After 300+ entries, and well over 2,300 votes in the forums, I’ve picked our winnin’ Sheldon tagline:
“The best things in life are Squee!”
Congrats to Sheldonistas AyersRock2000 for their winning submission: They’ll be getting their choice of any Original Art they want from the Sheldon archives.
Also, I should mention our two fantastic runner-ups:
– “When life hands you billions, make a talking duck.” (Which is the best summary of the strip I’ve heard in a long while.), and…
– “100% Awesome-Sauce”. (Which is a great summary of the mood of the strip.)
The runners-up will both receive invisible-but-highly-potent-high-fives-sent-over-the-internet.
Thanks to everyone for participatin’. It was so much fun to read all the suggested taglines, and I hope you had fun with it! Thanks!
Also: I should mention, in regards to Monday’s Caption Contest, that I’m aware the Sheldon Forum signup system is a bit — ahem — clunky, and I apologize if it’s given you any grief. I’ve gone in and manually “confirmed” all the new signups from the last few days…so new users should be good to go. But if you’re finding you still can’t log in, drop me an e-mail and we’ll fix what needs fixin’! “Technology: Makin’ Life Super Easy For As Long As Anyone Can Remember.”
