Har Har Tharsday (local edition) - Casey Pyke's Puppets

Was well amused by this short puppet video that SOU students Casey Pyke and Alex Britton put together for the ArtH 330 Art, Culture, and Technology class. Check it out! Starring freakishly gifted cartoonist Ezra Butt in the human role!

Ludicrousness

Things have been busy on the school front, so the Comics & Animation Blog I keep for my classes has been a bustlin' -- so has the Digital Media Foundations Wiki I work on with Dennis & Warren. Clap clap. So to show I haven't been a complete failure in doing some of my own work, here are some sketchbook scans from last Thursday's Drink n' Draw. Yay. Then to bed with me. Right. Sure.

UPDATE: Actually, it's 3:30 now, but I just finished the Hateball toy. I'm going to have the first three toys to download over at Arms and Ether by the end of the week.

One Ought To Perservere

Right?

This is the kind of card I'd expect for Father's Day. Much more affecting than "World's Greatest Dad."

Ramblin' Homme

Hmmm, I feel like everything is falling apart, though I suppose it was never solid to begin with.
The weather is breaking. The sun is coming through. The wind is blowing. That's good. That's something we can start with. It's a beginning.

I leave you with some precious wisdom I've passed on to my students lately.

"command-k"
"F9"
"F8"

Looks like I'm the teacher of the year. Keep your eyes peeled for my upcoming bio-pic starring Paul Giamatti in the starring role (with Laura Linney as quietly supportive Julie!). Tears are shed (in empathy! in joy! in loss!), lives are changed, but most of all, spirits are up-fuckin'-lifted.

My New Teacherly Response to All Technical Questions

"There's a thing you can hook up to a thing, but I don't care."
Also here's a rough for a future Arms and Ether strip. Not all that productive of a day, so far. I did get a foot-long sub, a mexican mocha, and a cupcake out of it though, so my middle-aged man physique is happy. UPDATE--and some fish and chips.
So. . . this ridiculous 6 minutes of drawing will make my life bearable when I sit down again to work on this strip. Weird, eh?

Everybody Digs Bill Evans

And I'm everybody. You should be too. Also, here's a nice article on Evans' playing by Chuck Israels (who's playing bass in the video). I enjoyed checking out Israel's site. I was pleased to see he was not only alive but looking damn good having survived the meat grinder of the 50's - 70's music world--unlike Evans. Tears. As a teacher, I enjoyed reading Israel's "Unpopular Perspective On Jazz Education" article. Israels makes a point of asking students who their favorite musician is. He then goes on to say it's far better to have a lousy answer to this question (such as Kenny G) than none at all. The lousy answer will provide a conduit to further development. Amen. I'm shocked at how insensitive teachers can be to this idea. Liking something, anything, shows you have some passion and connection with what you're studying. Behind any decent artist is some goofy lined paper drawing of Howard the Duck he did in 9th grade. So fess up, and start liking stuff.

Okay, time to listen to more Bill Evans and the rest of those brilliant, humbling dudes.

You're Number One

So click the stupid button.This is a demo for the Art 351 Interactive Studio Class. It shows how to create a toggle button using Actionscript 2.0. Here's the original flash file for download and deconstruction. I done commented it out purty good too. Here's a simplified .fla of just the door without the guy inside.

Promise Me Son, Not To Do The Things I Done

Oh, I done @#$%'ed up and ordered a billion bidnit cards with a typo on 'em. (Marvellous is NOT the way you spell marvelous, in case anyone was living under that misconception.) I'm a Gambler, and this time I reckon I lost. And uh, sometimes you've got to fight to be a man. And whatever else Kenny Rogers has said over the years. On the up side, the quality of the printing at vistaprint.com was very high. I was pleased and will order corrected cards from them tonight. In the meantime, I'll just use the above image for my business card. Urgh. I probably forgot to take out all of the "liberal arts suck" and "higher education, my ass," passages in my promotion packet as well. By Yog-Sothoth's bubbles, I'll be back though, bigger and better than before!

As a teacher, I'd have to say this qualifies as a "teachable moment." Here's a more tedious and belabored account over on one of my teaching blogs.

On the plus side, I think I finally got my URL to "stick." So try typing in "http://www.armsandether.com" and let me know if it works. Strike that, actually. I'm going to set up some straight up URL hosting. You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.

The Sun Rises - Work List Part 1

And the dust is settling after the chaos of getting the first Arms and Ether strip on-line and getting classes rolling again. I'm more or less caught up on sleep, so now to get some kind of a working-groove going. I'd like to do a "hard-launch" for Arms and Ether on February 1. Here's some of what I'll need for such a launch:

1. Strips. At least eight published so it's worth people's time to check it out. I'll also need at least four strips "in the can" in case I take ill or take up serious substance abuse.
2. An email "subscription list" and way to subscribe.
2.5 Some goofy prizes for subscribing to the list.
3. An announcement via email/facebook/etc.
4. More understanding of how Facebook works i/r/t giving clear access to this thing, announcing, etc.
5. Look into My Space for an Arms and Ether page?
6. figure out how to get my URL to stick.
7. figure out how to make a little URL icon thing.
8. Get the web site spiffed up.
8.5 Figure out best way to do the website. . .
9. Finish the damn Miles Inada site.
10. Get the original Arms and Ether comic book up in a better format and integrate it into the new site.
11. Have hard copies of the original Arms and Ether comic available for people to buy. (cheap!)

So that's a big list. Got to do it without becoming a bad human being, ungrateful son, feckless husband, deadbeat dad, useless teacher, a-hole friend, etc. . . Yes we can! And it's not as bad a list as
1. Conquer Russia.
2. Cure self of terminal disease.
3. Re-attach head.
4. etc.

BTW this is one of those practice what I preach kind of posts. I'm having my students use blogs as a way to get their act together, define a creative project, delineate research goals, n' all that.

Vita Contemplativa

I've been helping Debi Blair and Morgan Cottle's 3rd and 5th grade classes put together a video project commemorating the 100th anniversary of Lithia Park. Martha Wilhelm, another volunteer (and recently retired teacher) took this picture while we were listening to playback during an audio recording session. Man, these kids are talented--it's always humbling working with young 'uns. I challenge you not to break down weeping when listening to 8-year-olds read their own haikus.
Also, elementary school teachers = respect in my book. Those are some hard-working, committed citizens, dang-nabbit. Ashland has some serious quality in the public school system.

A Day o' Infamy

Geekin' with the 8-bit Ghost down at school today. It's dark and cold. We're talking 'bout how to teach, learn, live, and by consequence, love. I'm getting some good ideas for teaching the Art 351 Interactive Studio class this winter. Also, some thoughts on how to "roll out" the Arms and Ether comic. Bully for us.
In a fatherly sphere, Sam and I went to throw a baseball around, and he ended up with the mother of all split lips. :( It did give me the opportunity to introduce him to the manly world of the laconic statement, however. Kirk Gibson's comment after getting smashed in the face by a fastball, "It's not something you'd hope for."
L'image above shows recent head studies of "Big Evan" Carroll I did while thinking about comic book character design.

Wacom Cintiq - To Buy of Not to Buy

Real tired-like. So I'll babble on about techno-crap.
I'm thinking about getting a Wacom Cintiq tablet. A Cintiq let's you draw directly on your screen (as opposed to the Wacom Intuos tablet which is more of a fancy pen-style mouse). As you can see from the picture above, I already work wonders with the Intuos. Imagine what I could accomplish with a Cintiq!
Here are the issues:
Le Cintiq is freaking expensive. As in, "Dang, dude, that is really expensive." The 21" Cintiq is $2000. $2000 is a lot of money. As in, "Dang, dude, that is a lot of money." The 12" Cintiq is $1000. This is still spendy, and most people say, "I love the 12," but if I had the money, I'd get the 21."
Hrrghl.
Buying hardware can be a big disappointment. You've probably been there. "Wow, this new Macintosh laptop allows me to open files and run programs. Unfortunately it has not made me more like Ghandi, Einstein, or the Dalai Lama. Hell, I'm not even more like John Lennon or Yoko Ono. Damn their sexy industrial design and black and white advertising campaign."

Some hardware purchases are good, however. I've liked my 22" Acer flat panel monitor, though a big part of its appeal is that it was only 230 bucks. No Apple Cinema displays for me. My Intuos tablet has been the most trustworthy piece of computer hardware I've owned--I've used mine for about 6 years now. It's outlived numerous computers, scanners and cameras, plus I use it every day. So, I think I'll stop annoying myself (and more importantly, you, dear reader) and just get the damn Cintiq.

Web URL

For DMF folk--here's how you enter a hot url:
The Miles Site

Phonemes

For the animation class--here are some cruddy phonemes (with a beautiful model)

Platon

Here's the url for the contemporary photographer, Platon. We've been looking at his work in our Digital Media Foundations class. He also has a photo essay entitled Service in this week's New Yorker. Click here to check it out online.

Comic Class--Roughing in the Story

Here is a .png of the template I used to rough out Arms and Ether.
Download and enjoy. The other images are side by side scans of my roughs next to my finished artwork.

I wanted to illustrate two points for my comic/picture book class.
1. Don't let artwork hang up your writing and your ideas. Get the flow going. REFINE artwork LATER.
2. ROUGH your pages in quickly so that you are able to establish the flow and feel of your story. Make edits in the rough stage before you've dropped a day's work on drawing a page the story would be better off without.

No Excuses

Because I'm a man. A man with a Pikachu on his bag.
Use Thunder Attack!
Pi-ka!
Pika-CHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!

I really have very little idea what the hell happened over the last week. Last week of classes, so lots of teaching and teaching-related nonsense. Exhaustion. Definitely some exhaustion. Patches of despair. I think exhaustion was the main thing. Also, on Friday we bought a nu-2-u car, (2003 Toyota Corolla. I'm sensible, damnit), so I inherit "The White Man"--our 3-door '92 Buick Park Avenue. Look out world. I'm comin' for you.

More Higher Ed Dire-ness

Eastern Oregon University, La Grande, OR

Twas a beautiful day in the Rogue Valley. Clear air, spectacular shadows and color. Ah, The Shire.
Hmmm, trying to put together a coherent thought regarding this article in today's NYT about big lenders dropping student loans to "community colleges, for-profit universities and other less competitive institutions." Among the schools being dropped by a major lender is one of SOU's sister schools, Eastern Oregon University. Uh oh. That can't be good.

I'm too tired to think clearly, though. More later.

Too F**ing Much Perspective

OMFG, as people say. I came across this article by in the Atlantic Monthly written by an anonymous adjunct professor who teaches introductory writing courses at a community college. Read it and weep, I suppose. On a good day, I'd say about 65% of the students at my college are capable of doing actual college-level work-- on a bad day, I'd say it's closer to 10%. More on this later, as teaching is starting to gnaw at my soul a little bit.

(He'p me, Yahweh! He'p me! )

Anyhow, here's an excerpt from the Atlantic article.

Class time passes in a flash—for me, anyway, if not always for my students. I love trying to convey to a class my passion for literature, or the immense satisfaction a writer can feel when he or she nails a point. When I am at my best, and the students are in an attentive mood—generally, early in the semester—the room crackles with positive energy. Even the cops-to-be feel driven to succeed in the class, to read and love the great books, to explore potent themes, to write well.

The bursting of our collective bubble comes quickly. A few weeks into the semester, the students must start actually writing papers, and I must start grading them. Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught.

Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.

Quantity, not Quality

That's me, today. Showed Satyricon to my USEM students. "Kids, don't steal Hermaphrodites."

Three process drawings of skull guy. This is driving me nuts, putting these up because a) they need a $%@% of a lot more work and b) they still suck. That being said, I'm putting them up because a) Daily drawing b) they remind me that you can't half-ass this stuff. It takes time, focus, and concentration. Since those three things are in precious short supply, I'm hoping the humiliation of putting up half-assed stuff will drive me to increase time, focus and concentration. That sounds bleak.

Oh, and I look and feel HAGGARD today, but not to worry, I dressed "dumpily" to help offset that impression.