I received a copy of LORE & LEGENDS, the history and art of D&D 5th edition by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer, arriving in stores on Oct 2nd.

It’s an incredible tour filled with great anecdotes and illustrations. Surreal to see my books and face in the mix, a tiny piece of Dungeons & Dragons’ illustrious history.

There are a lot of memories wrapped up in the pages of this book. A decade of development with many colleagues who have since become friends.

And, a silly point of pride, I’m the only “Z” listing in the index. 🙂

Win the Battle, Lose the War

After several friends recommended it, I recently watched Jurassic Punk, a documentary about Steve ‘Spaz’ Williams, the Canadian animator who pioneered a ton of 3D animation and special effects technology that changed the face of moviemaking for better and for worse.

The story of Steve’s innovation, rebellion and self destruction is compelling stuff, but also quite sad. The same qualities that caused him to buck the system and develop groundbreaking visual effects also put him at odds with the corporate hierarchies and social relationships that run Hollywood. He proved his technical skills in the battle on a few key creative projects (The Abyss, Terminator 2, and Jurassic Park) but couldn’t win the war when it came to handling people – colleagues, friends, or his family.

When I was at Sheridan for Classical Animation we heard a lot about Spaz – the rockstar party hard computer animator blowing up the way things used to be done who could not be stopped. Almost thirty years later, he absolutely made his mark but it cost him almost everything. The recent scenes of Steve bitter about his place in film history battling severe alcoholism are a far cry from the confident take-no-shit genius of his youth.

As I watched it all play out in the documentary, my opinion toggled back and forth (and I’m sure that was by design). I could see Steve’s impressive ambition and tenacity, but it also seems he would’ve been an unbearable bastard to work with.

Creative industries are about results, but your ability to stay relevant and keep creating in a corporate environment also requires you to be a good communicator and collaborator.

Internet Dead Zone

Going through my ‘Art Tutorials’ bookmarks to find a few gems to post here and I realize many of the hundreds of helpful art links I’ve saved over the years are now defunct – dead URLs or empty images.

The internet giveth and it also taketh away.

It’s a good reminder of why I encourage my students to gather their own digital ‘scrap file’ of tutorials they find that are helpful to them.

I have thousands of art tutorial images saved and organized into folders curated to my needs and taste, the digital equivalent of old school filing cabinets of reference images in an art studio.

Assume stuff online is transitory and back-up ref material, just in case.
You won’t always have access to the things you want to keep.
Future proof it for yourself.

Links Aplenty

You’re reading this newsletter because you want to keep up on what I’m up to but I also want to direct your attention to people I think are creating great work or generating interesting discussion. Here’s a round-up of some good stuff from collaborators, friends, and other folks who have recently caught my attention:

• Jamie McKelvie’s rundown of North American comic art template specs is right on point and worth adding to your reference pool.
• Rachel Stott’s artwork is an absolute knockout. If you’re not following her on your social media of choice, you’re missing out!
• Ed Brubaker’s newsletter is well worth following, and his latest thoughts on the terms “IP” and “content” are deeply in line with my own.
• Matt Rosenberg’s ‘Ideas Don’t Bleed’ podcast has a great series of interviews that cover a cross section of comic creators and other creative people.
• Speaking of interviews, John Siuntres’ Word Balloon podcast is still great and there’s a deep archive of interview material from some of the biggest names in comics.
• Howard Tayler is running a Kickstarter campaign for Schlock Mercenary Vol. 18: Mandatory Failure. Howard’s brilliance and consistency has made him a mainstay of sci-fi and webcomics culture for good reason. The entire archive is well worth checking out.
• Steve Tassie is bringing back Grave Robbers From Outer Space, a fun B-Movie-themed card game that originally launched back in 2001. My friends and I played the hell out of it when it first came out and I’m excited to snag the updated version. Make sure you jump in before the campaign ends.
  

That’ll cover it for this week.
Jim

Cascading deadlines, teaching, and conventions. It’s a whole lot right now. Stacy warned me I shouldn’t “fill every box on the calendar like Tetris” and, surprising no one, she was right.

I got back from Edmonton after midnight on Sunday and I’m feeling pretty tired after a day of email catch-up and administrative everything. The To-Do List will get done bit by bit, just like it always does, but this current pace, as fun as it can be at times, is also not sustainable. I definitely need to calm things down a bit in the months ahead.

How About a Turtle?

Kind little old lady at the Edmonton Expo –

“I don’t read any of these action books, but I do collect things with turtles on them. Will you draw a turtle for me?”

Absolutely.

Steel Souls

Major Spoilers has preview pages up for CONAN THE BARBARIAN #3, in stores Wednesday, September 27th.

I received my print comps late last week and it’s another stunner. The team is absolutely roaring at this point. No other way to put it. In this issue – Our big villain is revealed and souls are stirred. Can’t wait for all of you to see it.

The Conan fandom has been coming out in force to my convention appearances since the launch and it’s been incredible to meet them in person and talk about how much these stories and this world means to them. Their excitement reminds me why we’re working so hard.

The solicits and covers for CONAN THE BARBARIAN #6 were also released last week. Jaw dropping cover art from Jae Lee, Pat Zircher, Dan Panosian, and Joey Spiotto.

Doug Braithwaite is drawing our second story arc, a tragic and brutal caper that takes place after the classic Robert E. Howard tale Queen of the Black Coast, and he’s delivering career-defining pages of stirring emotion and gut-wrenching violence. The 4-part story is called Thrice Marked For Death and, if I may be so bold, you are not prepared for what gets unleashed here.

Rob De La Torre has already begun work on pages for our third story arc (title still under wraps for now), so my inbox is an endless parade of the best damn sword & sorcery art I could imagine. It’s humbling to have these two titans drawing stories I’ve written and then have colorists like José Villarrubia, Dean White, and Diego Rodriguez enhance every panel before the legendary Richard Starkings pulls it all together with the best lettering in the business. What a dream.

What Was I Made For?

I finally had a chance to watch Barbie. Stacy saw it in theaters, but with my crazy summer schedule I missed out until the recent digital release.

I was impressed. Every time I thought the film was going to tip into being too much – too corny, too preachy, too self congratulatory – it managed keep things moving instead of getting bogged down. It’s peppy and ridiculous right up until it’s not and the ending was more poignant than I expected.

I can see why Barbie conquered the box office this summer, but it’s also mind-boggling to me that Mattel or WB think they’re going to franchise build from here. If they think they can reproduce that success with sequels or other toy brands in their empire, I think they’ll be sorely disappointed. It feels like a film that should just be, not the beginning of a Mattel-verse of films or whatever.

Or maybe I’m wrong and the Hot Wheels movie will deftly critique car pollution and racing culture while Polly Pocket encourages us to embrace a future of tiny houses off the grid. 😉

Links and Other Things

• Joe Murray, the creator of Rocko’s Modern Life, is giving away digital copies of his book all about developing and producing animated series. A heck of a great resource, absolutely free!
• I played Thunder Road: Vendetta a few weeks ago and really enjoyed the Mad Max-esque chaos it brings to the tabletop.
• Ryan Benjamin talks about drawing core shapes as part of the Marvel – The Art of Storytelling course over on Proko-

Okay, that should cover it this time. Have a great week!
Jim

After back-to-back four-day conventions, Fan Expo Canada in Toronto and Dragon Con in Atlanta, I immediately rocketed into the Fall term at Seneca. It’s my 19th year teaching in Seneca’s Animation program and the consistency of that schedule, semester after semester and year after year, creates a season-centric structure I enjoy. Each Fall there’s a brand-new set of students stepping into the program, bringing their enthusiasm and energy into the wing, reminding us why we do this and why it’s so satisfying.

At least a half-dozen current professors in the Animation program are also alumni, former students I taught many years ago, which feels extra-surreal even while my heart swells with pride that they’re back with us and excited to bring their knowledge and skills into the classroom to teach a new generation of animators, storytellers, and designers how it’s done.

I don’t talk a heck of a lot about my teaching career in interviews or other comic book press because most of that time gets spent promoting current projects or talking about the writing process. I also don’t talk a heck of a lot about my creative projects in the classroom. It’s not because I’m trying to hide it or anything, it’s just that my job at the college is focused on teaching  structural drawing (usually perspective drawing and environmental design) or film development (helping final year students put together their story pitches and film production teams), not promoting my work. The students pay tuition to learn specific skills, not be advertised to. Don’t get me wrong, when I have an anecdote or reference material that’s relevant I’m happy include it, I just try to make sure it’s appropriate to the lesson we’re covering or is after we’ve covered the school-centric lecture first.

The start of the 2023 Fall term feels familiar, but in a way that’s far more reminiscent of 2019 than recent years of pandemic and transition. The halls and classrooms are once again packed with students just like the packed aisles of the comic conventions I’ve been attending all summer. Things aren’t 100% ‘normal’, but they feel closer now than at any other time in the past four years.

At one point on Tuesday there were so many new students chatting with each other, excitedly talking about movies, games, and comics before class that I had to use the authoritative “Okay, gang. Let’s calm down and get class started!” voice I haven’t used in years. The chatter was intense, but also oddly comforting compared to tiny Zoom postage stamp screens with muted mics and half the cameras turned off. I can hold my own in a loud room and it energizes me a heck of a lot more than the eerie silence of remote learning.

Two years ago, I had to complete a “Faculty Portfolio” that organized my thoughts and approach to teaching so the college would have access to it for future instructors. Here’s a small excerpt from that portfolio write-up:

Teamwork and community fulfill important roles in the animation industry. Very few animated productions are created by individuals working in complete isolation. Almost every production is the result of a robust team coming together to build films through a production pipeline – concept and story development, visual development, character and environmental design, storyboarding, rough animation, final animation, editing, compositing, and postproduction.

I strongly believe that even though students will choose one or two of these areas to focus their skills and portfolio when they graduate, they need to understand the holistic whole of how a production works, not only to make an informed choice about their future career path but also to better support people in other departments.

In a similar respect, I work to create a strong sense of community with students to remind them that their peers in the classroom will similarly become their peers out in the industry and that having a productive and positive environment in both areas will be needed for success.

Individual achievement is important, of course, but just as important is a shared learning environment.

A respectful, encouraging, and engaging classroom is the ideal I strive for.

Creative Development

Most assignments in the Animation program are focused on deliverables – concreate drawing or animation output that demonstrates application of theory covered in the lectures. Discussion is valuable, but skill building through demonstration is how students internalize the learning process, taking these lessons from theoretical practices to instinctive approaches that become a regular part of their creative toolkit.

That said, teaching students any specific drawing method can easily lead to them not wanting to deviate from what they’re shown for fear of doing it ‘wrong’. Templates and demonstrations can feel like strict limits that funnel students toward an extremely homogenized output that has a veneer of learning but doesn’t encourage them to apply those theories outside of the confines of the assignment.

With that in mind, I try to give wider ranging ‘themes’ for assignments and show copious examples of student work that deviates from my demonstration, so students understand that they need to bring their own creativity into the mix.

Professional Examples

As mentioned previously, I’ve kept up with my freelance work while teaching at Seneca, which provides two types of professional examples in my classroom environment:

Quality: Students see exactly what is required on high profile projects working with intellectual properties they recognize and admire. The theory we cover in the classroom is directly linked to the deliverables I show in my own professional work.

Organization: The frenetic pace of the entertainment industry is reflected in my own work and travel schedule. When students see that I maintain a series of cascading project deadlines and industry events alongside teaching and grading expectations in the classroom, it gives them a greater appreciation for the organization and communication required to keep up that pace. I try to be as open and honest as I can about the highs and lows of it all – the pride I have in my work and respect I have for my collaborators along with the stresses that come from ongoing projects with a variety of clients.

Storytelling and Setbacks

Character and storytelling are fundamental to what we teach in Seneca’s Animation program, but also central to how we learn from each other and contextualize information. Reinforcing the theories covered in my lectures with stories – a quick joke, an aside, or an industry anecdote – has a huge effect on the way students engage with and remember the material covered. It makes the entire teaching process more personable, engaging, and meaningful.

This same concept works for both success and failure. When I’m honest with my students about struggles I had in school or if I discuss common pitfalls I have experienced in the industry, it humanizes the learning process and reminds them that it’s okay to make mistakes. What’s most important is the ability to keep going and keep trying rather than give up on a problem that in the moment seems insurmountable.

Professionalism and best practices must show a full range of experiences and include setbacks as well as successes. Yes, meeting deadlines and delivering on all fronts is what we should strive for, but even out in the industry there are times when schedules slip and situations spin out of everyone’s control. Normalizing those problems, stressing the importance of keeping communication going throughout, and showcasing that success can be found on the other side gives students more confidence to overcome issues that come up during their creative development.

As much as most of the above may seem obvious, in practice in the actual classroom it can be quite different. I’ve met quite a few people who are extremely skilled in terms of drawing ability and have extensive production experience but were unable to communicate most of that effectively to a class or mentor and encourage their students. Raw skill and experience are crucial components in teaching, but far from the complete package.

Links and Other Things

Since we’re on a roll this time talking about teaching art and animation, here are some rock-solid resources for drawing and art you can add to your reference pool-

• I just discovered that Francis Manapul has a YouTube channel jam-packed with great material. He covers art techniques and career advice in a really appealing and effective way.
• I’ve mentioned them before, but the Etherington Brothers have one of the most eclectic and useful art blogs on the internet. Their pool of drawing advice is vast and they’re always updating with new lessons.
• The Proko team has some of the highest quality and most consistently professional art training advice you can find online. I worked with them on their recent Marvel Storytelling courses, but beyond that you can also find hundreds of other great free or paid resources on their site.
• Another site I’ve mentioned previously is Love Life Drawing – their videos are brimming with classic art training tips that will change the way you visualize the human form.
• Speaking of Life Drawing, my figure drawing instructor Werner Zimmermann is on Instagram right HERE.
• VZA has a slew of great close-up videos where you can watch professional artists draw. Analyzing how artists make marks on the page can bolster your understanding of tool control and technique.

Okay, that should cover things this week. I hope September looks bright where you are!
Jim