"Migrate Home"

This was my farewell piece as the comics editor at The District student newspaper in Savannah: a full page spread for my final issue, and being that this particular one was in full-color, I got the whole last/back page. It also doubled as a farewell to Georgia as I migrated back home to the Hinterland. And so it's equally fitting to put up this piece as a way to say so-long again to the South while heading back North (as of this posting), but this time to Maine, and who knows, ultimately back home to Alaska.

In many ways this was my grand-slam final for demonstrating everything that I had learned while at SCAD in the Sequential Art department. There are some subtle storytelling tricks used to advance the narrative and improve reader flow between the panels such as: some brushwork to vary the line-weight (never having picked up a brush before starting my studies at SCAD); deliberate arrangement of "pointer" elements (horizontal elements that lead the eye down the page); purposeful placement of caption boxes (also helping to guide the eye down & across the page); the composition of each panel and also the overall page design inc. the directions of figures therein (ex: I keep facing left until the end panel) along with use of white space and color (ex: the gradation used in the sky as a background). I also drew from the residual memory of all my favorite places that I'd done many a reference sketch of for other pieces, like Bonaventure Cemetery and the Barrier Island environments, along with signature species of flora and fauna in the form of my newfound friends and adopted/extended family.

This posting concludes the backlog of my old MFA material under the "SCAD" topic heading (though there's a few stray essays still in draft about miscellaneous tangents), and wraps up another Big Adventure. Looking back through the blog archives, a year ago I was safely ensconced in a snug little cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of Alaska, teaching & 'tooning - then transplanted to an island off the coast of Maine, then down South to Savannah. At this point I won't be holding my breath as to what the future has in store, but safe to say I'm really looking forward to staying put for at least a while, and catch up on some larger, longer projects along with producing the usual nonsense.