#Alec Longstreth

[isleofelsi]

The second book collection of my award-winning, Eisner-nominated webcomic Isle of Elsi is now available for online ordering!

You can also download a $0+ PDF ebook from my Ko-Fi shop:

[vigoburrito]

I will be at Cartoon Crossroads (10/8/22-10/9/22) this weekend! I will be exhibiting at the expo on the weekend with copies of Growing Up Gerudo (Child Arc Part 1 and the zine), original comic The Divine Intervention, and autobiography zine The Art of Existence at my booth! I will also be teaching with cartoonist Alec Longstreth (Isle of Elsi) a webcomic workshop on Sunday! 

I look forward to seeing any of you guys there! 

-A. “Junior” Vigorito

[liweichiang]

First Archive:

The first archive source that I chose is a black and white comic called “Location, Location, Location” by Alec Longstreth from the Dodd Center at the University of Connecticut. This comic is mainly talking about a cartoonist’s emotional changes on creating his own comics because of the location changing. His true love is drawing his own comics, but when his education and career is becoming successful in New York, he found out his time on drawing is being deprived by his work, which creates anxiety during his favorite drawing time. So he got a chance to move to another city and get rid of his busy calendar, sit down and enjoy his drawing time. This refers to what I focus on on the project guiding question, why sadness happens more frequently in teenagers and adults. Because of the environment that people were living in and the social responsibility that they had as part of the society, most of the people at this age rate needed to give up what they truly liked and created anxiety for themselves. 

[pquessev]

Alec Longstreth, Exposition Indies Americans, Quai des bulles, 2019.

[ccsbeginninganimation-blog]

Animation for Cartoonists!

Hello! I am a cartoonist who is teaching an animation workshop this summer at @cartoonstudies July 9-13

Because of my background, I will be paying special attention throughout the workshop to the various ways that the comics and animation mediums overlap!

I have found that there are many animation techniques that can be applied to your cartooning process to make it more efficient (and vice versa!).  

We will be looking at the work of cartoonists who worked in animation, and animators who drew comics!

Folks like Jeff Smith, who started an animation studio with two of his friends after college, creating 2D and stop motion animation, before launching his beloved comic book series Bone.

Or my comics hero, Carl Barks, who worked as an inbetweener and storyboard artist at Disney from ’35-’42 before beginning a 25-year career as one of the most popular and prolific American cartoonists.

We’ll also look at the work of Hayao Miyazaki who moved back and forth between anime and manga, serializing his Nausicaä story to build enough interest for it to eventually be turned into an animated feature.

There are only five weeks left to register for the class! It is open to students 16+ and there are need-based scholarships available.  CCS alumni can take the course for 50% off (email me for the code, or check the CCS message board).

It's gonna be so much fun! Come hang out with me for a week in Vermont this summer and draw and learn and draw and learn and draw and draw and draw!

[sparehed]

A lifetime of cuttings

Ephemerist : A lifetime of cuttings

It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of Bill Blackbeard for the preservation of American newspaper comics. From a very early age until his death in 2011, Blackbeard devoted his life to curating full runs of daily and Sunday comics, amassing huge amounts of old newspapers from libraries and publishers to cut out the comics, and painstakingly arranging them in chronological…

[graphicpolicy]

Review: Basewood

Basewood is a story which allows you to feel a range of emotions #comics

Carlos Bulosan, was one of those writers I heard about in my household many time over, as his boos spoke to my mother generation and every generation of Filipino after that. His book, America Is in The Heart, is his probably his mostly widely known and read book and for good reason. It spoke of growing up but also of the American spirit of adventure and how this need for discovery has shaped all…

[comicsalternative]

Webcomics: Reviews of Isle of Elsi, Late Bloomer, and Carriers

Webcomics: Reviews of Isle of Elsi, Late Bloomer, and Carriers

[podcast src=”https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/5336859/height/90/width/550/theme/custom/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/” height=”90″ width=”550″]

Time Codes:

00:00:28 – Introduction

00:03:03 – Eisner Award nominees announced

00:10:04 – Isle of Elsi

00:47:30 – Late Bloomer

01:09:44 – Carr…

[centerforcartoonstudies]

Milwaukee Portfolio Day • Sunday, March 12th 6-8pm

Roast Coffee Co. • 2132 E. Locust St. • Milwaukee, WI 53211

Join cartoonist Alec Longstreth (Phase 7, Basewood) for comics talk over coffee at The Center for Cartoon Studies’ Milwaukee Portfolio Day! Bring your portfolio or sketchbook for a review, enjoy some complimentary java from Roast Coffee Co, and learn all about the MFA and Certificate programs at CCS, while drinking some coffee! Did we mention there will be coffee, and that it’s free?

Space is limited! Register now!

[cecilieqmt]

Guest Teachers Galore

So here’s a thing I didn’t do all of last semester, which I really should have: named our guest teachers and sung their praises. Because The Animation Workshop, my school, really knows how to find the good ones!

Here’s my third semester teachers and what they taught (with links to their own websites and my appropriate tags):

Lauren Weinstein - Comics Without Fear Alec Longstreth - Color Alexis Deacon - Illustration Dave McCaig - Color Mårdøn Smet - Style Exercises (Tove Jansson and Brecht Evens) Sara Ryan - Dialogue and Captions Kyle Baker - Acting in Comics Martin Rauff - Worldbuilding (specifically the making of Magic Mishaps) Farel Dalrymple - Visualizing Your World Dan Mazur - Comics History Needless to say, it has been an incredibly giving semester and I am so lucky and grateful to be where I am. Here’s to the fourth! - Q

[spiralkingcomics]

Alec Longstreth's book "Basewood" is one of the things that inspired me to make comics. Today I got a tree from that book tattooed on my forearm, to remind me to never stop trying, no matter how hard something is.

[isleofelsi]

The Isle of Elsi Book Two Kickstarter is 83% funded with about two weeks left in the campaign! I need about 40 more book backers to meet the funding goal. Please help me spread the word - THANKS!

[comiccrusaders]

WEBCOMIC WEDNESDAY REVIEW: Isle of Elsi

WEBCOMIC WEDNESDAY REVIEW: Isle of Elsi

It’s hotter than hell outside, but inside there’s air-conditioning and great webcomics. Hello, everyone! I’m Aaron, and I’m back again to bring you your next favorite digital read (hopefully)!  Please, if you have any feedback, leave it here in the comments or contact me on Twitter (@Sully_Writes). And as always, if you have or know of a webcomic that you’d like to see reviewed, reach out and let…

[tramblr]

I am trying the Center for Cartoon Studies One-Week Cartooning Workout.

[redgoldsparks]

February Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

This is a fun, fast-paced, sci-fi action, misfit-space-crew-being-molded-into-a-Team story that gets compared to Firefly in one of the back cover quotes. The cast includes a war veteran turned antique treasure hunter, a young hotshot race car driver, a butch battle-scarred bad-ass lesbian, a data wizard, a hippie chef, a hot doctor, a dead-eye markswoman and the Captain. I enjoyed the characters and their dynamics (as well as the side-plot queer romance) but wasn't as engaged with the constant chase scenes. This book feels like it was written with a film adaptation in mind, and I don't love what that does to the pacing. But it is cool to read a story in which magic and magic users are so well integrated into a spaceship/space battle setting.

The Deep and Dark Blue by Niki Smith

I've been a fan of Niki Smith for years and have been eagerly following the updates on this book ever since it was announced. It does not disappoint! Grayson and Hawke are twins, grandchildren of the Lord of House Sunderlay. They are forced to flee a bloody political coup and go into hiding in plain sight. They disguise themselves as twin sisters and enter as initiates into the Communion of Blue, a holy sisterhood of dyers, weavers, magic spinners, healers and guardians who live and train in a monastery in the city center. Hawke chaffs under the disguise of Hanna, wanting to return to their home and fight for his place as Sunderlay's Heir. But Grayson thrives as Grayce, finally able to live the studious, peaceful, female life she's always wanted. When it is announced that Lord Sunderlay's murderer is going to take his place on the council, the twins must bring the truth to light and choose the paths their lives will take.

Princess Jellyfish vol 8 by Akiko Higashimura

This is the second to last volume of the series, so I'm not going to try and summarize the plot at this point. I'll just say this series remains delightful and I recommend it!

Princess Jellyfish vol 9 by Akiko Higashimura

And so this series reaches it's satisfying end! What a ride! I just skimmed back over my manga goodreads shelf and by my count I've started around 170 different manga series. This is only the 25th series I have ever read to the end, and I think it might be the longest I've ever finished. It took Akiko Higashimura around 9 years to draw the approximately 3,000 pages that make up this story. Even knowing that she worked with a large team of assistants, I am deeply impressed. One thing I noticed is that it looks like she switched to inking digitally for this final volume. I'm not sure many readers who aren't cartoonists themselves would notice, but the quality of the line art does change a bit. The size of the lettering also increases quite a bit from the previous book to this one, but again, I only noticed this because I really pouring over it. I don't begrudge Higashimura switching to a (hopefully) faster art style at the end of this amazing run. I am inspired by the humor and genuine heart of this story, it makes me want to write something equally sweet for all-age readers.

Isle of Elsi vol 1: The Dragon's Librarian by Alec Longstreth

Rex Jargon Junior (R.J. Jr. for short) lives in the small village of Egalliv where his love of puns and word play is sadly under appreciated. He clashes with the less academic kids, and struggles to find a job when his single mother can't pay the rent on their little cottage alone. Eventually he finds a place he fits in at the local bookstore, but just as things are starting to look up Egalliv is attacked by a fire-breathing dragon. R.J.'s father went missing after trying to tame the same beast ten years earlier, so naturally R.J. feels pulled to handle the dragon crisis this time around. His journey into the dangerous forest has more strange twists and turns than even his wild imagination could have predicted. I've been reading this webcomic a page a week since the beginning, and I finally got the beautiful, hardback, self-published first volume in the mail! What a gorgeous book this is! It's full color with end paper maps and a notes section explaining the inception and inspirations for the story. It's a perfect comic to gift to a budding reader; if you know a kid just slightly too young to read The Hobbit, hand them this book first.

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

This book has four successive opening scenes, which leave unclear how much time has passed between them, or even who the main character is. After this cluttered beginning, the book settles into itself, and develops into a well-paced action story set primarily in the Convent of Sweet Mercy, which trains girls from all backgrounds in reading, writing, armed and unarmed combat, poisons, lesser and greater magics and other useful skills. Nona has a rough journey to the Convent: she grew up dirt poor and was sold to a child-taker at age 9 and taken to the capital city. She lived briefly in the training yards of a fighting/gambling ring before almost murdering a man. The Abbess of Sweet Mercy plucks Nona out of prison to carry her off to a training that will only increase her deadliness. In the process, Nona and the Abbess make a dangerous enemy out of the politically powerful father of Nona's victim. His reach is long, and he isn't afraid to attack Nona's friends or the very foundation of the Convent in trying to get his revenge. This story is set in a world almost completely covered in ice. Only a thin ring around the planet's equator is kept warm enough to live in by a huge mirror satellite installed in the sky by the first humans to colonize the world. These people's understanding of technology has been almost completely lost as humans scrabble a dark-ages level bare subsistence from the weak soil. But prophesies swirl of a Chosen One who will finally be able to unlock the secret to controlling the largest piece of tech left from the ancient days. Nona is not that chosen one. But she might be the one destined to protect that person from all the evils of this bloody and dangerous world.... if she can survive her education. The writing is a bit rough, but the story is very compelling. I'm definitely going to continue with this series!

Koreangry issues 1-5 by Eunsoo Jeong

I am a huge fan of Eunsoo Jeong's instagram comic series Koreangry and I jumped at the chance to support the kickstarter for this volume which collects almost 200 pages of comics and bonus materials. Jeong crafts her angry alter-ego and her miniature world with painstaking detail. Each comic strip is composed of photos of the angry doll posed in colorful, rich settings. Topics covered include sexism and racism in the workplace, the struggles of living in the US as an immigrant, politics, sex toys, dating, masturbation, art, food and rage. They are funny, insightful, and mindbogglingly well made. You can read most of this work online for free, but I highly recommend finding Koreangry at a zine fest if you can and buying the work in print!

Snapdragon by Kat Leyh

This comic is stellar! It is- *chef's kiss* -everything I want out of a middle grade book which has both queer and trans characters and also magic and mystery. I've been a fan of Kat Leyh since the Super Pancakes days. This new book is such a wonderful continuation of the themes that drew me to her work in the very beginning! The art is so pleasing, all of the characters hits a sweet spot between realism and cartoon that makes me curl my toes with with pleasure. Snapdragon (Snap for short) is a latchkey kid, an oddball with a love of horror movies and no real friends. Her single mom is very loving but is often away at night classes. When her dog goes missing, Snap thinks to go look in the house of the town's rumored witch's house... a spooky cabin surrounded by brambles and full of bones. But the witch isn't quite what she appears, and when Snap reappears at her door with a box full of orphaned raccoon babies a friendship begins to develop between them. Little do they know that bonds of history, family and enchantment tie them together in ways no one could have predicted.

Click by Kayla Miller

This is a very gentle, sweet story about a fifth grader finding her own way amidst different friend groups. Olive is pretty popular and is friends with almost everyone at school. But she doesn't have one BEST friend, which has never been more apparent as when everyone starts preparing their acts for the talent show. No one asks Olive to be in their group and she feels left out seeing everyone else's closer, deeper connections. Luckily she has a very cool aunt who helps her brainstorm solutions and comes up with an idea that is uniquely, perfectly suited to her own personality!

Sci-fu vol 1 by Yehudi Mercado

Set in the 1980s, this brightly-colored action-packed comic stars Wax, a preteen with ambitions of being the best DJ in the world. He raps and scratches with his best friend about his crush, his job working in his uncle's ice cream truck, his fierce little sister, and life in Brooklyn. One day his music sends an unexpected signal into space and an alien ship captures the whole corner of his block and transports in to Discotopia: a world of rapping robots, kung-fu masters, and hip hop battles to the death. It turns out Wax's song has accidentally entered him into a series of dangerous tests with the fate of his family and his world resting in his hands! I was really impressed by how much plot this book very effectively fit into a tight package. It moves quick but never feels rushed. A nostalgic ode to the author's childhood, delightfully playful, and hopefully the beginning of an ongoing series.

New Kid by Jerry Craft

This Newbery Award winning graphic novel follows Jordan, a kid from Washington Heights, for his entire seventh grade school year. Jordan loves drawing and carries a sketchbook everywhere. He dreams of going to art school, but his mother insists on sending him to a private, academically rigorous school a long subway ride away. He is one of very few kids of color in the whole school, as if being the new kid wasn't awkward enough. Luckily he finds friends in Liam, the rich white student assigned as his first week guide, and Drew, the only other black boy in his homeroom. Jordan survives joining a mandatory sports team, racial micro-aggressions from teachers, Secret Santas, unspoken cafeteria seating rules, salmon pink shorts and more. As he spends more time and begins to find his feet in the private school environment he finds it harder to make time for his neighborhood friends. But he has loving parents, and a grandpa full of wise advice on how to fit the two halves of his world together. This is a nuanced and warmhearted story, and I'm glad to know it will probably be available in every library in the country soon!

Best American Comics 2019 edited by Jillian Tamaki

Jillian Tamaki is one of my favorite comics author/illustrators, and I was delighted to see she was edited a Best American Comics volume! This cover by Sophia Foster-Dimino knocked my socks off. The anthology as a whole mixes short stories with excerpts from longer works. For me, the standouts were: Jillian's introduction; Joe Sacco's "Bitumen or Bust" about tar sands and oil extraction in Northern Canada; Ben Passmore's "Martin Luther King Jr. Was More Radical Than You Think" previously published on The Nib; Sophia Foster-Dimino's "Small Mistakes Make Big Problems" which I had read before in Comics For Choice a collection supporting abortion access; Vera Brosgol's "Be Prepared" from the wonderful YA comic of the same name; and "Hurt or Fuck", a weird beautiful story by Eleanor Davis that investigates the meaning of art, love and human relationships.

[ccsbeginninganimation-blog]

Animated GIF Illustrations!

Illustrators! Are you interested in learning how to make animated GIF versions of your illustrations? I will be covering this and A LOT more in my Animation workshop July 9-13 at @cartoonstudies this summer!

Here you can see an illustration of Molly Weasley knitting sweaters that I animated for @thehpalliance back in 2015.  (The last image doesn’t animate - it’s just the punchline :)