2014 UAF Visual Art Academy: Cartooning!

Here's a treat: uploaded some samples on a brand-new Pinterest board from the aspiring talents that took the cartooning classes I taught at UAF's Visual Art Academy (blog post on previous year here). The age spread ranged from jr-high to high-school, and echoing the gender ratio of my college-level Cartoon & Comic Art courses, an encouraging majority of the attendees were women. Another ratio of note were the several skilled individuals out of each class that were disciplined, focused and a pure delight to watch produce some pieces that were impressive in craftsmanship. And as usual it was rewarding to see the evolution of so many pieces in a variety of styles begin to manifest themselves. Overall it was a sense of accomplishment to sit back afterwards and appreciate a truly overwhelming volume of work: sometimes the "boot camp" approach to total immersion is inspirational in itself.

(Excerpted panels)

Special thanks go out to Tara for all her awesome assistance, and Todd and Michelle along with all the fabulous staff who pulled off a great experience for all these up & coming creators. Most of all I'm completely blown away by the passion + output of the ones who showed up ever morning and every day and put pencils and pens to paper... and mainly put their minds to work and wound up cranking out some super-cool material. 

(Excerpted panels)

Over the course of two intense weeks we did materials + techniques, character development, single-panel gags, strips, a collaborative page (one student first wrote up a script, which a second student then penciled, and lastly a third, different student then inked + some touches with a light wash), minicomics, and we finished with a couple days focused on producing their own final page(s) for publication in a class comic book (hat-tip as always to Date-Line Digital Printing). Oh and one heckofa grand opening exhibition where everybody's pieces were displayed in the department (more to come in a bonus follow-up post about that). Add a bunch of in-class exercises and spot-lectures to the mix and it was quite the intense experience: very inspirational, and I hope that more than a few of these folks keep on cartooning, writing, drawing, doodling.