Forgot to mention:

My parents can be bizarrely cute sometimes. They actually mailed me a Congratulations card about getting the book published. I was totally floored by it. The little note inside was really nice:

Cute and mushy! I actually got a bit choked up by it, seriously.

PS: I think Mom wanted to use the word author instead of comic book making nerd. 🙂

Tying in to my earlier post about the Makeshift book launch party, here’s a promo image I illustrated to help promote the event:

It was fun taking the things I’ve been learning about Photoshop and revisiting Iris, especially since there’s very few pictures of her in full color. The journey from starting the story back in 2001 to seeing the book on store shelves is almost over.

If you want to see a step-by-step of how the piece progressed with a few tips, you can check it out here.

Info on the Makeshift Launch Party is up! I would be ecstatic if you (yes you) and many, many others could make it out for the party. Come to buy a book, or hear me blather or share a drink. Friends, family, students, strangers, Karaoke Kings… everyone is welcome.

If you’re an artist of any stripe, come down for the book launch and then stay for the Industry Night to do some schmoozing and hanging out.

———————————————-
MAKESHIFT MIRACLE / RAGMOP LAUNCH PARTY
Featuring Jim Zubkavich and Rob Walton

When: Thursday, November 30th, 7:00 PM
Where: The Victory Café, 595 Markham Street (Just down the street from The Beguiling)
Admission: FREE

We’re giving you LOTS of advance-notice on this one (Christmas-party season is just around the corner), but we’re doing a combined launch for two new books from Toronto authors and we want you there!

After many many years, Rob Walton’s cartoon/comedy/conspiracy series RAGMOP comes to its startling conclusion, in graphic novel form! Whether you’re a RAGMOP reader from a long time ago who’s been patiently waiting for the series end, or someone who wonders what a Hanna Barbara version of The Invisibles would be like (trust me: awesome), THE COMPLETE RAGMOP graphic novel is for you. “…sly, snide, perceptive, exciting, gut-bustingly funny, and utterly indescribable… RAGMOP is a work of frenetic brilliance.” – Slings & Arrows Comic Guide.

Also launching THE SAME DAY is the collection of Jim Zubkavich’s MAKESHIFT MIRACLE, a graphic novel originally serialized online and now available in an incredibly inexpensive print edition. MAKESHIFT combines fantasy and adventure into a pretty remarkable coming-of-age story for all ages. “A melancholy, enchantingly drawn meditation on imagination and yearning.” – Scott McCloud, author of MAKING COMICS

The creators of both graphic novels will be doing short presentations from their books, followed by signings. This also ties in to the final Industry Night of the year, which will be held at more-or-less the same time so it should be a whole lot of fun.

Amazing conversation yesterday with Ray and Stacy about nostalgia. We did talk about our past and our experiences, but most of it was about nostalgia itself – the act of remembering the past with your current knowledge and wisdom tacked along with it. How we view those experiences and what we see in hindsight from them. Although I’m almost always the blabbermouth in conversations, I knew this was a damn engrossing talk because I didn’t feel my typical kneejerk desire to overwhelm things with my own words. Good talk and solid inspiration = good friends, simple as that.

This weekend I’ve been apartment productive and geeky at the same time. Beyond cleaning and laundry stuff I also rearranged my living room so there’s more space to move in front of the TV in preparation for the arrival of the Nintendo Wii next weekend. That should be quite fun indeed. If all goes as planned I’ll be getting the system, a swack of extra controllers and games and then having a few people over to jump around and have fun. Like the DS, the Wii seems built around social video gaming, which is right up my alley lately.

Otherwise, I updated my deviantart page and am working away as usual.

Yesterday was crazy busy, but good. Today was an epic war against technology that left we ultra-pissed off by mid-afternoon… if I feel like ranting I may post about it, right now I’m too irritated to even voice it.

Anyways, in the spirit of alleviating my annoyances from today, here’s my best sketches from the Royal Winter Fair yesterday

Enjoy:

More sketches behind the cut.

Being coordinator of the Animation program at Seneca means that I get all sorts of strange e-mails on my Seneca account. My Spam filter gets crammed with dozens of messages a day from advertising Junk Mail, porn sites and everything else because I have a public e-mail address.

But this one I just got made me laugh out loud because it’s not Junk Mail. It’s serious and to the point:

hello
are you looking for nude model?

thx

Crazy couple of days leading to a weird calm this morning.

Wednesday I scrambled to take care of a pile of college administrative stuff and then worked deep into the night on fixing up artwork.

Thursday I taught at the college, then drove to Oakville for my painting class, then worked on Udon projects until 4am.

Friday I woke up at 10am, worked on Udon stuff until 3pm, then I went to the dentist to see whether I needed a root canal or just a big ass filling on one of my molars. I lucked out with a filling and went to a business dinner last night with the freezing still fading on my jaw and tongue. Finishing up more work stuff at around midnight, I finally crashed.

Saturday seems positively relaxing in comparison right now. 🙂

Finishing my cold-ridden irritating day at the college, one more rant.

Please note before I begin this rant that most of my students are great. It’s the obnoxious 10% that frustrates me.

When you have a 2 week project (actually 3 weeks for a 2 week project when you factor in the Reading Week we just had), you should plan those two weeks out. Showing me your animation for the first time the day before the project is due doesn’t bode well. When I give you the critique you asked for and you have tons of things to fix before tomorrow, don’t act like I ran over your puppy. You did this to yourself, schedule-wise.

I know which students are actually working hard. It’s very easy to tell. Being at the college doesn’t mean you’re actually working at the college. Just because you hang out all day in the Animation wing doesn’t mean you worked hard. This holds true for pretty much every program. When I walked by the Seneca Library in the middle of the afternoon I saw:

9 computers being used to play Counter Strike.
5 computers being used to play Halo.
5 computers being used to check e-mail.
4 computers being used to play Starcraft: Broodwar.
4 computers being used to watch YouTube videos.
2 computers being used to play Nintendo emulators.
1 computer being used for some kind of Photoshop assignment.
1 computer being used for some kind of research.
The rest were not being used.

I’m not a cruel instructor or a slave-driver. I wasn’t a model student in college either, but I didn’t bitch when things got jam packed because I knew that I’d wasted my days away on other things.

Okay, rant is done. I’ll feel better soon and things will improve. Good portfolios and strong assignments will brighten my brain.