Sunday, June 20, 2021

"Activity Log"

 
This one definitely needed to be horizontal format, as it's manipulating space + time across the span of the gutters. Also reducing the number of sound effects is paced out with shift in background tone so as to visually trigger sequential passage via closure.

Turns out the term is far more ubiquitous than just the Facebook realm, in fact I'd say it's just a modified sticky-note, a post Post-It if you will. I briefly had my Ipad telling me how much time I wasted on line until I switched it off, not so much on account of Big Brother but who needs another reminder that I'm wasting my life.

Update: Speaking of wasting my life, this was one of the handful of panels already prepped in the production pipeline that was colorized on account of my most recent efforts in "pushing of the envelope outside my creative comfort zone" self-improvement kick. Really all it adds is simple aesthetic appreciation, as in most folks naturally respond better to bright, one could even say "cartoony" colors.  Add it to the lengthy list of things about popular culture I've resisted for reasons no reason. At this rate of capitulation next I'll succumb to the inexorable pressure and start making my funny pictures move and speak. Just kidding - picking out colors is hard enough already, what with over eight-hundred-odd swatches on my latest palette. This as opposed to black or white and a hundred shades of gray in between.

I've also begun another self-promotion campaign in conjunction with the "Work-In-Progress Wednesdays" series of process posts across other social media platforms. Usually in advance of a panel I'll spotlight a doodle or pencil stage as a sort of teaser - and include mention of the advantages in being a subscriber (besides supporting one of the pillars of democracy and accompanying peripheral freelance talent, you also get the big picture, as in the actual caption). These new excerpted sections might make for some spiffy stickers too...

Update #2: So when this piece ran in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (Sunday, May 16th), it not only spanned the width of the entire page, in glorious, resplendent full-color no less, it was for the first time located right above the Arctic Circle. Which, as the creator of North America's farthest-north cartoon, I should point out is technically located right below the actual Arctic Circle. The Arctic Circle cartoon on the other hand is created by New Zealand cartoonist Alex Hallatt, one of the very few women creators currently in syndication, and with an environmentalist angle to boot. (*Note: I address the sad situation about the industry's baked-in bigotry and institutionalized sexism here and here). Upon viewing the spread I flashed back to when my feature shared the same page as Matt Groening's "Life In Hell" (when the Anchorage Press carried my panel for many years), and also rubbed shoulders with Keith Knight in the editorial pages of The Ester Republic. Not that any of the respective professionals have ever even remotely heard of some Alaskan cartoonist toiling away in relative obscurity, but hey, that constitutes my virtual "brushes with greatness."

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