by Jason Thibault
These are interesting and difficult times. Entire mediums are being reconfigured for the net. This week we see a lot of action on the electronic document and reader (Kindle) front. There’s still a lot of exciting things going on in comics and artists are finding new ways to both express and support themselves.
Arts and comics
Before I get too far into this I’ll urge you to go read Tom Spurgeon’s discussion with Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker sticking mainly to the subject of the impending graphic novel adaptation of Richard Stark’s The Hunter. It was posted a week and a half ago but it took me a while to finish reading it. Highly recommended.
There’s a fantastic retrospective over at Master Post on artist David Mazzucchelli who once worked on Batman Year One and other mainstream comics before moving on to loftier ambitions.
Rob Zombie Explains Delay Of ‘El Superbeasto the animated film adaptation of his comic series originally published by Image Comics.
Joey Manley reminds us that Comics Are Fast and Cheap, and These Are Good Things.
Twitip posts some useful info on Twitter for Cartoonists.
Here’s a trailer for Jason Shawn Alexander’s and James Kuhoric’s Dead Irons.
Kleefeld had two insightful posts that definitely warrant reading, The future of comic distribution and continuing on that line of thinking another one on Haven distribution.
Jim Sizemore talks about his copy of Speedball Text Book: Lettering Poster Design for Pen or Brush with lots of great page shots invluded.
Gadgeteer reviews SureFire’s (Nearly Indestructible) Pens.
Cagle has an insightful essay on The Future of Political Cartoon Syndication where he runs through scenarios that have already been attempted and their resulting outcomes and posits on other solutions.
Design
Freelance switch posted a great article on The Power of Typography in Design. They also have some suggestions on steps to follow What to do when someone steals your work?.
Ministry of Type has an article up on the the dollar redesign project where you can see artists reinvent currency from around the world using a modern design aesthetic.
On Being an artist in the 21st Century
Oregon Live covers the unique collaboration between photographer Didier Lefevre, artists Emmanuel Guibert and colorist Frederic Lemercier in their piece, Into the heart of misery: A graphic novel takes readers into Afghanistan. Lefevre shot thousands of pictures of Afghanistan back in 1986 while accompanying Doctors Without Borders and 23 years later the other two creators added drawings and turned the collection of mainly unpublished photos into a graphic novel.
Here’s a profile on Lorraine Souza Galindez who has developed a keen business sense over the years and has managed to eek out a living from her artwork since 1974. She owns a silk-screening company and has sold over 21,000 signed pen-and-ink lithographs. Inspiration and food for thought.
Juxtapoz posted two great videos this week. The first was on Los Angeles based photographer Estevan Oriol who has spent years documenting the rougher aspects of inner city life. His photos demonstrate a hard won trust between artist and subject. The second vid features Alexandre Farto aka Vhils who takes graffiti in Portugal to a previously unseen level.
All E-Books All the Time
The Washington Post has an article on social publishing site Scribd has added e-commerce to their platform. Publishers are to receive 80% of the revenue from sold documents and e-books. Search Engine Journal adds to the conversation further elaborating on Scribd’s e-book store. And finally Mashable also chime in taking the YouTube for documents becomes iTunes for documents angle. Unfortunately this is limited to the United States only.
Adding to last week’s topic of the new Amazon Kindle they’ve now opened up their platform to bloggers. SEO Book covers this in their post Submit Your Blog to Amazon.com & Become a Kindle Publisher. And Wired mag lets you know Why E-Books Look So Ugly. Further to that TechDirt has One More Reminder That You Don’t Own The Books On Your Kindle.
Social Media
David Bullock outlines the changing face of social media and Jennifer Horowitz at Search Engine Journal discusses the The seven deadly sins of social media.
Finally a trailer has arrived for the highly anticipated the John Hillcoat directed film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, with Viggo.
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