thoughts for april 2005
Posted 19 years, 8 months ago
I gave a seminar today at the Evangelical Press Association conference in Schaumburg. I think it went well. It was a seminar on magazine redesign, which I know a little about, as I helped launch the magazine Guideposts for Teens, redesigned Guideposts for Kids, Marriage Partnership, and Christian Parenting Today. My co-presenter was Mickey Moore. He also had lots of great ideas for working on a magazine redesign, and I hope to be able to implement them the next time I’m involved with one.
Mostly I talked about redesign in a crunch, which is kind of the only way I’ve ever done one. Companies are always in such a rush. Anyway, the crowd laughed in all the appropriate places, and asked me afterwards to expound on some of my ideas about color palettes.
While I was preparing the presentation, I was a little worried that the information I was presenting was too fundamental—like “Well, duh. We all know what a serif is”, but I guess if you know it, you think everyone else must know it, too.
Anyway, it’s been a long week of late-nighters preparing for this thing. I think it’s time for me to go to bed.
Posted 19 years, 8 months ago
Grant Morrison is writing what I’m sure will turn out to be the most amazing comic book story arc of the year. It’s called The Seven Soldiers of Victory. The charter consists of Shining Knight, the new Guardian, Bulleteer, Zatana, Mister Miracle, Frankenstein (yes, that Frankenstein), and Klarion the Witch Boy. Now Grant Morrison has written some amazing, mind-bending stuff. Between him, Alan Moore, and I’m sure a few others, comics have really entered a whole new level of depth and complexity, and taken an artform that was known for its depictions of punching bank robbers to visual meditations on quantum multidimensional consciousness.
Anyway, the character that intrigues me the most (for whatever reason I’ve yet to determine) is Klarion the Witch Boy. I really don’t know much about him. I think he’s a Jack Kirby character who was created to be the nemesis of another great Kirby character, Etrigan the Demon. Etrigan is sort of the precursor to Hellboy. They were probably both introduced during the early seventies when creepy monster comics were in fashion. Klarion has this fat orange cat named Teekl. Funny thing, when I googled him to get more info, all I kept finding were images of him as an older boy, and he seems to now have horns!
I drew him the way I remember him, which was kind of a “mod” brit sort of character with moppish, fly-away hair (think “The Byrds”). I suppose his hair could resemble horns, but I seem to remember it looking a bit more subtle.
Even for Kirby.
Posted 19 years, 8 months ago
I’ve just added two more images to projects: the weather balloon, and tiny tim.
Posted 19 years, 8 months ago
I’ve just added two new images to projects: the chain-letter svengali, and the lepidopterist.