[photo taken from Brigid Alverson's Robot 6 post]

Firstly: if you’re reading this right around when I post it, please forgive the look of my site. Something broke/auto-updated with Webcomic, the WordPress theme my site is based on. There are a lot of customizations that the great Phillip Duncan has done to the site, and something in the update just sort of broke half of them, so I’m in the midst of redesigning things, hopefully with Phillip’s help if he has the time. So: pardon our progress.

Secondly: I have fallen out of the habit of writing con reports. They always seem to take a whole day, there’s a million links to go and fiddle with, pictures, all that. I’m too busy lately. But I wanted to say something about TCAF 2013–the Toronto Comic Arts Festival–quickly in light of this extraordinarily lengthy report by Tom Spurgeon, probably the commenter-of-record for this sort of thing, and to my mind the most esteemed person doing this kind of work; and this polite-but-zesty reply by Christopher Butcher, who holds a similar position to Tom in his own field, running the most esteemed comics festival in North America.

To paraphrase Tom’s report, or the relevant part at least, TCAF was great-as-usual but there was an outsized number of complaints about the programming, how it was organized, and a reported perception of a preponderance of First Second -related panels. Chris objected more or less to the unattributed reports and pointed out that the problems with the programming were mainly his fault, and stuck up for his Programming Coordinator Gina Gagliano, who works for free and was forced to bob and weave at the last minute. Also this is all a gross simplification on my part, but these are the things I’d like to address.

It bears mentioning that I had the same reaction as Tom to the quality of TCAF this year: it was good, really good, but not better than last year. It was fun, it was edifying, it was lucrative, but there wasn’t the giant year-to-year jump in amazing-ness-itude that there has been in each preceding year. But it also bears mentioning that of course TCAF can’t improve exponentially each year; that at some point there will start to be a ceiling to how many people you can cram in a library, how much work you can squeeze out of a mostly volunteer staff, how many guests you can ferry in from around the world. TCAF 2013 might not have been as mind-blowing as TCAF 2012, but that’s a matter of perspective as well–part of what made last year so incredible was the jump from 2011 and  the level of quality TCAF presented compared to most other comics events.

In the past year many of those other events have made leaps and bounds, I would suggest in part due to the influence and cultural position of TCAF, in quality and visibility. SPX has turned into a heavy-hitter East Coast event that is beginning to really take itself seriously. CAKE in Chicago is doing a similar thing in Chicago, with its own distinct flavor and DNA. The Projects in Portland is a whole new model of comics event, in a city that could probably have a comics show once a month successfully.

My point is that in 2011 TCAF was the gold standard in an industry with mostly silver-level events. In 2013 TCAF is still the gold standard, but it’s more a case of 24 carat gold versus 22 and 16 carat, if you’ll permit me a very dumb metaphor. I would say that traffic was slightly down, but only compared with 2012, and last year it was sunny and warm all weekend, while this year there was hail and it was 20 degrees on Sunday night. I had one of my best ever shows in 2012, but at TCAF I did right around $1500 in sales over the weekend, which–humble brag–is extraordinary for one not-particularly-famous cartoonist with just a half-table at a 2-day show in another country.

I’m not the best person to comment on TCAF, mainly because I love it. I’m a little dazzled by it. I think what Chris Butcher and Miles Baker and Peter Birkemoe do with that show is about as good as it can be, and I am flattered to have been a part of it for so long. TCAF is where I met Annie Koyama, where I hobnobbed with Chester Brown and Seth, where I have built a surprisingly, flatteringly energetic Canadian readership that seems, against all odds, to delight in buying everything I do. So my glasses can be very rose-colored when it comes to TCAF. $1500 is a lot of money for me. $100 is also a lot of money for me.

But I have to say: if TCAF is the best there is at what it does, then I think it’s more valuable than ever to discuss what it does. If TCAF is the gold standard, then that means, through the legality of metaphors, that in some case the rest of the economy it’s a part of is based on that value. I found Tom’s report, and its criticisms, fascinating and valuable. I think too often in comics we tend to go the “GO TEAM COMICS!” route and spare anyone any public criticism, instead relying on off-the-record email exchanges to get our various ires out. I find it depressing and discouraging. Every time I have a little dust-up with someone on Twitter or wherever, I always get a few emails and DM’s to the effect of “that guy’s terrible, what a dick” or “you were right, but I don’t want to say so publicly” or–even worse!–”you were wrong, but I don’t want to get into it online.”

My particular opinions, while ever-so important and meaningful to me, are not particularly important in a larger sense. But I think it is valuable to discuss these things when they come up. I think examining the world around us, especially as artists and people who love art, is almost a basic responsibility. If you’re active in the culture you’re a part of, then there’s value to be had in discussion, in criticism, in the examination of the best and worst of us. Especially for an event as well-organized and culturally important as TCAF is to comics. We’ve slid into this mindset where any criticism of anything is slander, and any criticizer is a “hater”–if there’s a worse, more ego-stroking concept for an artist than “haters gonna hate”, then I don’t know what it is–and so we just keep our mouths shut and cluck knowingly to each other in private. I hate it.

Of course this is not to say that Tom’s report needs defending, certainly not from me. But I’ve been thinking about it all morning, as a fan of his, and Chris Butcher’s, and Gina Gagliano’s. And unlike the docile, hennish comics industry I just described, I don’t mind at all opening my mouth, regardless of how well-advised that might be.

Speaking of Gina. I was weirdly happy to hear that a lot of people got the news of their panels late. I had sent in my panel request a couple of months earlier–to interview Nao of Brown creator Glyn Dillon–and never heard back, and just assumed that they had plenty of panels and no room, and no time to inform me of same. Then, barely a week before the show, and less than a week before I was getting on a plane, Gina emailed me to confirm it. I’m not proud to say that I assumed we were sort of a Plan C, and that the lateness was due to other more important panels being unworkable or cancelled at the last minute. I was grumpy because I had presumed it wasn’t happening and so hadn’t worked in the meantime to prepare. I bring not just my A-game, but my A+++ game to TCAF, so the week(s) beforehand are filled with folding and stapling and pricing and strategizing and figuring out how I can create just a little more edge than the last time. So there’s not a lot of time for rereading a book and pulling out some really toothy, interesting questions for a creator you want to both engage and promote. This may have been complicated by me drinking quite a lot of alcohol on Saturday night, sleeping possibly very little, and then indubitably not eating anything until about ten minutes before the panel was to start.

And then I botched the panel. I would start a sentence and then two words in realize, horrified, that I had no idea what the end of the sentence would be. Glyn was very kind and very articulate, and a few people commented afterward that they enjoyed it very much, so that is all thanks to him and his really interesting story. I was both embarassed personally and inspired by his passion and work ethic–two things I lack almost entirely lately.

Panels are always a mixed bag for me. I’m very very mercenary at shows–at my best (read: “not hungover”) I’m there early enough to sell books to other exhibitors milling around, so leaving my table for even an hour always has me feeling like I’m just taking money out of my wallet and throwing it into the garbage can. So it’s an extra bummer when I don’t feel like a panel I’m on had some larger value, whether for me or the other panelists or the audience, or just me in terms of people coming by my table afterwards to buy stuff.

As I never tire of mentioning, I used to be one of the primary organizers of HeroesCon in Charlotte, where I worked for 14 years, the last 7 or so mainly on the convention. Organizing panels is enormously time-consuming. You have to either a) come up with a programming slate yourself, hopefully covering a broad, diverse group of bases and providing a lot of value to the imaginary audience you hope will show up for your event, possibly even because of your well-constructed slate of programming; or b) fish through a number of requests by publishers and hustler exhibitors for their own panels, and decide how best to deploy the best of those without losing some thread of continuity or devolving into a schedule filled with publicists and hucksters. It was always depressing to hear from Marvel, who very rarely would actually buy booths at the show, just send some lonely editor and then wrangle whoever was there with Marvel on their resume to hawk whatever new crossover was imminent.

A couple of years before I left Heroes I put the very energetic Andy Mansell in charge of programming and immediately my job got 30% easier. By itself it’s nearly a full-time job–albeit admittedly a seasonal one–and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

I’ve known Gina Gagliano for a few years now, and have a high degree of respect for her professionally. I don’t think she needs me to explain anything she did, so I won’t. I didn’t hear anyone complaining about a First Second bias in the programming, but then again I never asked anyone about the programming–I was too busy getting drunk and dancing and not preparing questions for the next day’s important interview. It’s not hard to imagine there being a bias towards First Second in the programming, because frankly, Gina is the publicity person at First Second and one of the main functions of an event like TCAF, and especially its programming schedule, is promotion. And if you’re weeding through a list of options and have a choice between “well I know this person and have seen their presentation or just know them generally to be professional” and “I don’t know this person or have never heard of this book or this idea could be terrible and make us look bad” it’s easy to choose the former, even if it’s only based out of time. As a white male with over 38 years of experience in the business of being a white male, I can say with confidence that you often pick things based out of proximity. It’s one of the reasons diversity is so important in a culture–people will always naturally select based on known qualities and proximity, so just building a large matrix of proximities is the best defense. Wait I’m getting off the subject.

Here’s my real point, my point to all of this:

Gina Gagliano does not get paid for running the programming at TCAF. I actually had a conversation with her in the bar on Friday night about that, discussing how that economy works. It’s an economy I hate. I hate that Gina Gagliano doesn’t get paid to run that programming. I’m sure she would disagree; I’m only guessing, but I’m a good guesser, and I’d guess she’s happy to donate her time because she believes in TCAF and feels like it’s a way she can add value to the show and benefit it. It’s enormously expensive to put on a show the size or quality of TCAF, especially when there’s no entry fee, thus no profit for the promoters beyond cultural profit and some advertising value. So someone like Gina gives her time, which is of course commendable.

But as I mentioned earlier, I’m very mercenary, and I believe in value. If I had my druthers, Gina would get paid, even if it were just a few hundred dollars, because payment means recognition of that value. Payment means “I have to do this because my services have been paid for, and I have a responsibility to provide value for that payment.” This is not at all to say that Gina did anything less than 100%–but to my thinking a paid staff will make moves that a volunteer staff will not. They’ll take greater responsibility, maybe even work harder, or at least not be as vulnerable to waiting for the festival director to get over a sickness. There’s less need for tighter control by management, because your paid staff is not waiting to be told what to do, they’re already doing it. It’s their job to be doing it.

I’m not putting that well. It’s a discussion I’ve been having a lot lately. I followed poor Clark Burscough, half of the team that organizes Thought Bubble in the UK, around all weekend hectoring him to stop working for free. If I ran SPX my first act would be to pay Warren Bernard, Kevin Panetta, Michael Thomas, and the rest of the regular staff some sort of salary, because they deserve it. I’d pay all the Gaglianos and Bernards and Woodrow-Butchers and Edie Fakes who run these shows in between their other paying gigs, for two good reasons:

1) Because they and we deserve better than to have to run these culturally valuable events in the wee hours, between paying gigs. I make enough money at TCAF to pay for almost two months of rent (one month after travel expenses, admittedly). That’s how I, and a lot of exhibitors, look at shows: as part of my basic, life-sustaining revenue. Those shows are important, even central, to my ability to pursue a career in cartooning, and to my mind the people who make that possible should be compensated for their time, just as I am and would expect to be.

2) Burnout. Any convention will eventually burn out anyone who works for it. People like Chris Butcher, with his energy and passion and acumen, are rare and should be prized like gems. I burned out working on HeroesCon, not once but twice, and quit. I am no Chris Butcher. But the thing that kept me going, working pretty much year-round on a three-day comics party, was that paycheck, was that sense of the work I was doing having some clear value, both in terms to the person who was paying me, and to myself.

Your mileage may vary, of course, and this is all through the filter of how my brain works, etc. I’m not a particularly charitable person, perhaps. But I feel like a paid staff yields a better outcome, and on those occasions–which, in this kind of work, is nearly every occasion–when you work your staff to the bone, at all hours, under implacable and swift deadlines, a paycheck, even a small one, can be the difference between burning out spectacularly and burning out slowly. Or, in many cases, just the differences between “this work has all of my attention” and “I will get to this when I can because I’m working for free and my paying job must take precedence.” And often, it’s just symbolic. Thought Bubble Clark doesn’t need another paycheck–he’s a lawyer and I believe does just fine for himself–but assigning value to his very high-level work assigns value to not just him but the work itself. For me events like Thought Bubble and TCAF are cultural lodestones with immense status in their communities, and a paid staff elevates the whole enterprise into something professional, as opposed to “we are throwing a party in our spare time, would you like to help? Unfortunately we cannot pay you.”

Etc. etc., please enter here all the truisms and arguments about working for free/exposure/as charity. Every person has every right to work how and for how much they like. But I think Gina Gagliano does a great job, and should be paid for it. Ditto Clark and Warren and Kevin and Edie Fake and Neil Brideau and so forth. I think everyone involved in these conventions should be well-compensated, because there’s a large and increasingly lucrative economy growing around these events. All these people should be prized, because without them and people like them, these events so many of us depend on for income, exposure, and inspiration will fade away like so many MoCCA’s. I’m personally very thankful for their work, and I delight that there’s occasionally robust criticism of that work because I think the best among us should be held to the highest standards.

The comics industry seems to run mainly on low or no pay. It can–and obviously does–lead to great and valuable work; but overall I think of it as an enormously unhealthy business model longterm, both in the macro sense, from publishers to event organizers to criticism, and the micro sense, in terms of the artistic work being done and the space for artists to be paid enough to create. Comics is unique in that this volunteer spirit seems to be present both at the top and bottom of the spectrum, but I think it would be stronger if there were a visible model of payment and value at work. There will always be room for those of us with the passion and energy to donate spare time and skillsets to projects we believe in, whether paid or not. But for the health of the larger industry, I think volunteerism should be the exception, not the rule.

/end sermon

I have been remiss in my blogging, and haven’t mentioned that I was/am part of the inaugural show at brand new Telegraph Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia. Besides me (the obvious star), the show also includes upstarts like Michael Deforge, Niv Bavarsky, KC Green, Zack Soto, and a bunch more. Each of us created an original piece of work based on the them “Monstrous.”

You can see mine above, entitled “The Hunters.” And hey guess what–you can even BUY it, while it lasts, for just $28. It’s part of a limited run of 95 prints, 18″ x 24″ on thick juicy paper, 5 color screenprint. I’ve never done a screenprint before, so some things didn’t turn out like I expected them to, in terms of trapping and dot screens and so forth. So you’ll be purchasing a real organic piece of artwork right there–that’s how art works, baby! And in the process, you’ll be supporting a brand new super great gallery and shop, which is worth it all by itself. While you’re at it, you should buy the Deforge one too, hot damn that thing.

Also new is that jam up there, “IN THE WOODS” a limited giclee that should start shipping any day now, and which you can buy right now RIGHT NOW. I’m super proud of how this turned out–the proofs looked amazing. Many thanks to my girlfriend Kate, who had a lot to do with the overall color scheme, especially the excruciating endgame where I usually just cry myself to sleep after trying forty billion different color combinations. Great to have a smart pair of eyes to help with that.

Two prints! Get up on it, print lovers.. if you dare…

Original now up for sale on Ebay. So, each day of January, I’ve been doing a drawing in the morning, before work and with coffee. I do this anyway most days, but this month I decided to practice watercolors and fiddle with “informal subdivision,” an exercise from Andrew Loomis’ book Creative Illustration. So I took an 11″ x 14″ piece of bristol, ruled out some division lines, then each day would hang a new little drawing somewhere in the web of lines. The drawings are all from photos, from sites including The Sartorialist, Humans of New York, the Library of Congress Flickr page, and others.

I’ve put the original up on Ebay for sale here. The auction will end Tuesday morning around 1pm or so. You can see all the pieces below in the slideshow, or look at them on Flickr.

…

EDIT EDIT: I’ve added 7 additional prizes at the bottom of this post. That’s in addition to the big one-of-everything main giveaway.

EDIT: It turns out you can’t run a raffle in North Carolina. Who knew?? Probably most people, and I should have researched that beforehand, during the first blush of “oh I know a way to drum up some money for TCAF tickets!” So I’m going to treat this as a funding drive. At the end of the drive, which I’m going to move up to Monday, January 28 at 9pm, I’ll do a number of random giveaways, based on the total proceeds. I can’t call it a “raffle,” but I will work out a way to honor the original intent and amount of any donations already received, as well as any going forward. If you have any problems at all with this, just email me and I’ll cheerfully refund your donation in full. And thanks for your patience with my blurry language as I try to ferret out a path through this publicly. 

Original post below:

So here’s a thing I’m going to do, one week from today, to cobble together some money to buy my flight to Toronto and this summer’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I’m going to raffle off a set of more-or-less everything I have for sale, including stuff that’s long gone (where I still have copies). $1 a throw, no catch, just Paypal me $1 or more here, and I’ll stick your name in a little Excel sheet. If you send $10, I’ll stick your name in 10 times. On Friday February 1 I’ll have someone pick a random number, and the winner will get all this stuff shipped to them totally free, anywhere in the world.

Here’s what I have so far. I might add some other stuff if it pops up, but this seems like quite a lot already:

1) Diary Comics #1 (long out of print) | $6
2) Diary Comics #2 (out of print) | $10
3) Diary Comics #3 | $10
4) Diary Comics #4 | $10
5) Dharbin 1-2 Collected Edition | $5

6) Enquirer Dharbin, 8-page newspaper (long out of print) | $1
7) Superior Showcase #3, my first published work. Terrible story by me, great stories by Laura Park, Jim Rugg & Brian Maruca | $3
8) Papercutter #11, includes 1-page story by me | $4
9) Nutted! (long out of print) | $3
10) Booth #4, literary journal of Butler College, includes a cover and about 12-15 pages of comics by me, colored for this edition. Not widely available | $8
11) The Blue Cross, part of the Great Shorts series. Story by G.K. Chesterton, with illustrations by me | $4
12) Kuš #12, 178pg influential Latvian anthology. Includes 4-page story “Future Medicine” |  $13

13) Miles By Bicycle 11″ x 14″ print (cream) | $25
14) Miles By Bicycle 11″ x 14″ print (blue) | $25
15) President’s Day 3″ x 7″ print (long out of print) | $10
16) The Fates, So Cruel, So Kind 3″ x 4″ print | $6
17) 26 Cartoonists 11″ x 14″ print | $5
18) Growing Up 11″ x 14″ print | $25
19) Tyrannosaurus Bats 11″ x 14″ print | $25
20) The Greatest Explorer 11″ x 14″ print | $25
21) Small Drawings, 48 page booklet | $5

22) Greatest Explorer 8″ x 10″ print | $15
23) Miles By Bicycle 8″ x 10″ print | $15
24) The Greatest Explorer 8″ x 10″ print | $10
25) Tyrannosaurus Bats 8″ x 10″ print | $15
26) Growing Up 8″ x 10″ print | $15
27) The Sweet Smell of Success 8″ x 10″ print | $15
28) The Treehouse of Your Dreams 8″ x 10″ print (out of print) | $10
29) Don’t Let You Get You 8″ x 10″ print | $10
30) A Letter To Hitmonchan set of 2 8″ x 10″ prints | $20
31) Little Dreams, Big Bookcase 8″ x 8″ print | $10
32) Deep In The Heart of the Forest 8″ x 8″ print | $10
33) King Mountain 8″ x 10″ print | $10

Whew! I’m going to add either more items, or smaller iterations, at each multiple of $150 received. So I might throw in weird stuff, like original art, or a painting, or whatever. When/if I do, I’ll do the drawings in sequence, and allow the winner(s) to choose which package they’d like, with subsequent winners selecting from the remaining packages. But to be clear, everything listed here is ONE prize.

Just click this link to donate at least $1. And thanks in advance for sharing this, if you have the time or inclination. I appreciate it! And good luck!

EDIT: Adding additional giveaways. As mentioned above, I’ll pick a winner and then allow them to pick from all available groups of items, then pick another winner and repeat the process with remaining items, and so forth until I’ve been bled totally dry of prizes. We’ll call the “big” giveaway “#1.”

#2: ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW DRAWING

Created for the 2012 “Crazy 4 Cult” show at Gallery1988. Ink on Strathmore 500 bristol board, 14″ x 17″ inches.

#3: “FUTURE MEDICINE” COMPLETE STORY ORIGINAL ART

4-page story from Kuŝ #12, “Future Medicine”. Art on 2 pieces of 8.5″ x 11″ Strathmore 500 bristol board. If you haven’t already gotten Kuŝ #12, then you’re cheating yourself. It was co-edited by Annie Koyama, and contains a who’s who of North American talent, but the real stars of the book are the Europeans. Most of my favorite stories in it are by people who I’ve never heard of, and that’s saying something considering that most of the people I have heard of in there are some of my very favorite cartoonists. Buy it here.

#4: 4 BIG PRINTS. 

One each of the above 4 prints, all 11″ x 14.” Includes a Robocop print, Growing Up, The Greatest Explorer, and Miles By Bicycle “cream version.

5) 4 SMALL PRINTS

1 each of the following 8″ x 10″ prints: Growing Up, Miles By Bicycle, The Greatest Explorer, and Don’t Let You Get You.

6) ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE BLUE CROSS + NEW DRAWING + BOOK

This is 3 original pen and ink illustrations for Scout Books “Good Ink” edition of G.K. Chesterton’s short story The Blue Cross. Laid out on a piece of 8.5″ x 11″ Strathmore 500 bristol. I’ll include a copy of the book, and I’ll draw a character from the story of my choice in that fourth blank box for you. You’re welcome!

7) 5 BOOKS

Includes the wayyyy out of print Diary Comics #1, the just out of print #2, the not at all out of print 3 and 4, and the out of print Dharbin 1-2 Collected Edition. I’ll sketch in all of them for you.

8) LAST OF ALL, A WATERCOLOR PORTRAIT

This is something that I think I’m going to sell for $100 a throw once I get caught up on commissions, so this will be a good test run. You can pick any person in the world, either by a) sending me the name of a celebrity, or b) I’ll draw you or a person you know. If it’s the celebrity option, just give me their name. If it’s the person-you-know option, you send me ONE photograph of the person’s face. ONE! I’ll do a head-and-shoulders ink and watercolor portrait on a 8″ x 10″ piece of bristol. The actual drawing will be pretty small, because that’s how I like to work. My goal will be to make an interesting drawing that looks good, so you don’t get any guarantees on likeness. In fact, you get no guarantees at all! Also I won’t draw anything nasty or gross or overtly sexual. Keep it classy, class!

Okay! 9pm tonight!

So last night, I finally watched Indie Game: The Movie, a movie a lot of people I know were very excited about. It was the focus of not one but two successful Kickstarter campaigns, has a soundtrack by the brilliant Jim Guthrie, and was talked about by a lot of the people I know, both in and out of the gaming industry, for months and months before it was ever released. So I brought maybe high expectations to it.

Overall it was a pretty movie, very slick and stylishly shot, lots of slow tracking shots and saturated colors and animated lines and arrows here and there. The Jim Guthrie score was predictably great (you can stream and buy it here), but I already knew that because I bought it months ago–I would stand in the snow naked to buy a new Jim Guthrie album. But the more I think about Indie Game: The Movie, the more cold it’s leaving me.

The very biggest, most obvious problem to me was the lack of well-adjusted artists making art and experiencing success and failure, which seems like–and to be honest, speaking as someone who does not work in gaming–more like the indie games world that I know and see online. Where was Craig Adams, the intelligent, thoughtful, outspoken creator of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery? Or Kris Piotrowski and Nathan Vella of Capy Games, who made the game with him? Where was Adam Saltsman of Canabalt and Hundreds fame? Or Venus Patrol‘s Brandon Boyer, who’s also the director of the Independent Games Festival, and to me the interstitial matrix that binds a lot of the indie games community together? Brandon appears early and delivers two intelligent sentences and then isn’t seen again. Adam appears in this clip Brandon sent me, but wasn’t in the actual movie.

The movie follows, more or less, three stories: Jonathan Blow’s past-tense development of Braid, briefly; Edmund Mcmillen and Tommy Refenes of Super Meat Boy; and Phil Fish of Fez. Of those three the sanest seems to be Blow: but while the movie begins and ends with his idea of “let me take my deepest flaws and vulnerabilities, and put them in the game,” his part of the movie seems to move quickly from the creative and commercial success of Braid to him having a problem with how he was portrayed online afterward, or with how people appreciated his game. This might be perfectly appropriate–he might be coconuts, or just very precious about his art, or even simply a little neurotic. But I was surprised the movie began with the interesting story of how he created his game and then its subsequent success, then turned the focus to his personal quirks, then pretty much left it there and moved to three more even quirkier people for the remainder of the movie.

And there’s nothing wrong with being quirky. In fact, of the Super Meat Boy and Fez teams, Edmund McMillen seems the most well-adjusted, the most stable, the most excited to be making a piece of art and experiencing success. But the bulk of the movie seems to be about creative people becoming childish and petulant for very little reason, enslaving themselves to “The Game” even as they complain bitterly about how it’s ruining their lives, and generally fetishizing their inability to live outside of their own heads.

Which again, might be entirely true. But I know a lot of people in gaming, and by and large they’re actual adults, who believe passionately in what they do, but also can interact with the people around them without dissolving at the first hint of criticism. Who use words like “we” as much or more than “I.”

I guess there was just a lot.. missing about the movie to me. For a documentary, it had a lot of holes. When there was a question to be asked, it seemed to skip it, or ask the easy question. If there was a metaphor, it was an easy one–for instance, Tommy digging in the sand at the end of the movie, while his game is becoming an instant success. It never seemed to question the strangeness of how entitled Phil Fish seemed, it just presented it and left it there. But without the balancing effect of someone who was maybe less overtly, wildly quirky, it seemed like a commercial for entitlement as opposed to a frank examination of a problematic subject.

And to be clear, Phil Fish was the person I was most interested in. I *just* finished Fez, and it really was a brilliant game. Easily brilliant enough to say “well you can be a little crazy if you’re making art at that level.” But Fez was also an impossibly over-complicated game; a game that was elegant and perfect in its simplicity and elegance, but then with a limitless profusion of codes and tricks layered on top. Though the game had not been released at the time the movie was finished, that to me was a huge, constant missing note: that Phil Fish had gotten in his own way at probably every turn. Which happens. But all we’re left with in Indie Game: The Movie is someone who spent 3-5 years on a single project, along with an absent former partner (more later) and a mostly absent programmer, and his big payoff is having one of the Penny Arcade guys say “Sick!”

Art!

THINGS THAT WERE MISSING:

–As mentioned, people working in indie games who are somewhat well-adjusted, or at least able to conceive of themselves as human beings who are not the center of the universe.

–Also, women.

–In fact, any people who weren’t white or male or North American. Granted, this might just be representative of the shape of the games industry, but it’s still worth mentioning. The older I get, the more I notice how white everything is, and I’m as white as it gets. You can’t get whiter than I am without a lot of recessive genes.

–Games that weren’t released through XBox Live Arcade–the three focal games of the movie are Braid (briefly), then especially Super Meat Boy and Fez, both initially released through XBLA.

–The unnamed, pixellated “original partner” of Fez creator Phil Fish. As the movie progressed, each time his pixellated image was shown I was increasingly surprised he didn’t appear in some way to present his side of things. Especially after 10 minutes of Phil Fish threatening to murder him in cold blood. The biggest surprise of the entire movie was the line in the credits that said he had not been asked to participate in the documentary. What! Especially considering that Fish’s “new partner” Ken Schachter is not only one of the executive producers of the film, but the top billed producer.

I didn’t watch this movie expecting a cutting-edge expose on the gaming industry, but I also didn’t expect to see someone presented as a blurry non-entity, vilified, threatened, and then never asked to defend or explain himself. And then see one of the–admittedly, not particularly well-portrayed–focuses of the movie’s new partner listed as an executive producer.

And for me, this was a terrible note to end on, retroactively calling most of the movie into question. Was it just a commercial for self-centered entitlement by creative people? Is that the great advantage of indie gaming? It’s hard not to draw that conclusion when part of the Fez production team is an executive producer. In a movie about creative individuals making great art in a medium that’s only recently starting to be viewed as art, it’s hard not to see that relationship of Schachter to Fish to [silent ex-partner] to the film’s directors as a hagiography. A beautifully shot, tastefully made hagiography, but

nonetheless.

This Sunday, January 20th, is the Charlotte Minicon, a one-day show first launched in 1977 by my alma mater Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find. I’ll be tabling along with pros from both the indie worlds (like pals Rob Ullman, J. Chris Campbell, and Rich Barrett) and superhero worlds (like Jason Latour, Lee Weeks, and Brian Stelfreeze). Plus there’ll be tons of exhibitors selling books, comics, toys, t-shirts, probably a ton of stuff I’m not even thinking about.

This year Heroes owner Shelton Drum is expanding the space (and cost) of putting on this free event by moving into the large Grady Cole Center. I love that Shelton puts these on basically just to do it, so I hope you’ll think about attending if you’re anywhere near the Charlotte area. In order to encourage you, I’m going to give away 50 prints that day, the two pictured above, absolutely free, one per family. All you have to do to get one is go to this link and follow the instructions to “Like” the Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find page and register for the event via Eventbrite. Then email me at dustyATdharbinDOTcom–just include your name and MINICON somewhere in the subject line or body. I’ll add you to my list, and then give the prints away to the first 50 people (one per person, per family) on the list who come to my table (Table 118) at the minicon! Totally free, no catch, just be sure and Like the Heroes page and/or register via Eventbrite and email me.

BUT I will certainly not turn your money away if you want to buy other stuff! Believe me I’ll have tons of it there, and if I run out I’ll give you a good deal on Rob Ullman. The show opens to the public at 11am this Sunday, runs until 5, and is family-friendly and FREE so bring it!

I always have a lot of New Year’s resolutions–for instance, “less masturbating, both literally and figuratively” is usually in there somewhere. “Don’t be such a dick” also is usually present in some form or other. I like the idea of self-improvement; I think it’s maybe the only saving grace for being as self-centered as I am. But let’s just file all the less-masturbation/less dick sort of resolutions under the broad heading of “being alive” and focus on a single resolution for 2013:

2013 RESOLUTION: WORK NO LESS THAN 8 HOURS AND NO MORE THAN 10 HOURS PER DAY, THEN STOP WORKING.

If there’s a thing that I’m bad at, especially over the last few years as I’ve worked at home 95% of the time, it’s having anything like a schedule. And beyond just a vague idea of a schedule, as in “have this done by then,” it’s more importantly the idea of having a work day as such, which is to say, taking place mostly during the day. Usually my day is a horrible shepherd’s pie of waking up late, laying in bed for an embarassing amount of time, getting whatever least-important work is available done first, then getting distracted and suddenly it’s 5 o’clock and I’m panicked and then the next thing you know it’s 1.30am and I’m going to bed saying tomorrow I’ll get up at 6.30 and really attack the day! Lather, rinse, repeat, for the last 2+ years.

It’s less that I’m lazy, and more that I’ve become inefficient. It’s easy, when you work alone at home, to let things pile up and then just do them at night. Without a structured work day, and the attendant idea of “must get this done before 6pm or else,” it’s very easy to “just get it done before 1.30am.” Which means you don’t have any kind of non-work time in your life for anything, be it relaxing, eating dinner, seeing your girlfriend, interacting socially with other human beings, and/or just not feeling like there is a slow heavy weight crushing you from the top down every minute of the day.

It’s not healthy!

So! Let’s have a work day. Manage distraction: meaning, no distraction. No leaving social network windows open–that’s like if Hansel and Gretel left the witch bread crumbs so she could find them. No long breaks, no errands during the day, unless they’re directly work-related. No folding laundry, no washing dishes, no doing things you wouldn’t do at work. Work your 8 hour day, and if you have a lot of work, work for 10 hours. 9 hours is just right. But working over 10 hours either means you’ve been screwing around, or it means you’re going to be unhappy–and probably both–and that is to be avoided. Don’t be unhappy. Once in a while you might have to violate that 10 hour limit, because that’s how work works. The less you do that, the less unhappy you will be hopefully. One way to avoid doing that is to plan your days out and work efficiently enough to make 10+ hour days a rarity.

By the way, “you” in these examples = “me.” Yeah I know. Unhealthy.

I don’t necessarily want to broadcast my address all over the world, but if you go to my Amazon “printing supplies” wishlist, I put these at the top. Because the most important part of printing comics is having warm feet. I don’t care about color, whatever’s cheapest, but EXTRA LARGE is the correct size. What? Is that not classy? Begging online for free warm socks?? Listen, I never promised you a rose garden, I NEVER promised you one..

SECOND THING: my sale is still going on! It’s very easy to explain: go to my BigCartel store, spend $50 or more and enter discount code “DHARBMAS” at checkout to get 35% off your whole order. Unfortunately I’ve had to mark the one hour drawings as sold out for now, because I’m too backed up on them right now to be giving deals. But it would apply to this swank Miles print above, not to mention everything else. Get on it! If you get orders in by Monday morning, I’ll do my best to have EVERYTHING shipped out by Monday, which means if you live in the continental US chances are pretty good you’ll get your package before Christmas. Remember that the 11×14 prints ship Priority, so they’re even faster. Feel free to email me (it’s up in the corner of my site on the right) with any questions!

For the month of November (2012) I did a daily morning drill, drawing at least one hand every day. I got the idea from my friend Ben Towle–what in the world is harder to draw than hands?? I usually draw something every morning anyway to warm up my brain, which takes a LONG time to warm up. Like, until about 8pm.

Anyway, I started out the first half of the month just drawing a hand a day, my own at first, although I quickly got tired of drawing my left hand holding stuff. I drew straight to ink, which was another drill for me, as I’m a fussy over-penciller generally. But I found that drawing in ink was increasing a bad habit of mine, which is basically eyeballing forms and proportions as I go, as in “okay this guy’s ear is like two noses away from his shoulder there”; which leads usually to blobby, malformed figures. So after the first half of the month I switched to building up forms with sketchy lines, and then “inking” the hand itself on top.

The good thing about doing it this way is that my way of drawing–eyeballing things–is definitely a hard row to hoe for hands. Drawing hands is a lot like drawing noses: you’re trying to represent a shape that has less lines than you think. Same with a lot of foreshortened forms–check out the hand holding a telephone on the right side page–that thing looks nuts. Bad foreshortening–you want to put lines everywhere because in your mind there’s something there, and you think you just must point it out. But there really isn’t anything there that’s useful to your drawing. Best to draw the forms themselves, and leave everything out that doesn’t look like hand on your drawing, as opposed to in your head. No one can see in your head.

At any rate, that was a really fun exercise. This month I’m drawing people wearing clothes, but not all together like this. You can track those on my Instagram if you like.

A quick word about the pen I’m using. I’ve heard a lot about the Platinum Carbon pen, and Joe Lambert uses them, which is a pretty loud vote of confidence in my book. So I got one from Jet Pens, and I love and hate it. But more love–there are a lot of good things about it, but the one bad thing is that it weighs basically nothing. So you’re just kind of clutching it, as opposed to it resting confidently in your hand. That part literally sucks. Plus it’s shaped like a bank teller’s favorite drawing instrument. A friend on Twitter recommended a discontinued version in a standard shape, so I got one on Ebay and it’s just as light, weirdly. I need to figure out a weigh to add some weights in the tip of the pen–those rubber bands don’t really do it.

But the good parts of the Carbon pen save the day. Its line is not exactly what I’d prefer for finished drawing, but it’s a strong confident line, built on fountain pen principles so with a little pressure you can add some weight to your line without mushing the point, like say with a Micron. The ink is surprisingly black for a refillable pen, and most surprising of all it stands up to Copic markers without a hint of smear. I’m guessing it can handle watercolors too, although I haven’t tried them yet. And best of all, it’s perfect for sketching–it’s almost better in a way that it doesn’t give me exactly the line I want, because that makes me relax and not make the lines I want, which is a much better habit for sketching. I’m too fussy as it is.

And speaking of Joe Lambert and loud votes of confidence in my book, my sketchbook was handmade by Joe. It’s the third one in a row I’ve bought from him, and I foresee many more in the future. Trust me, I’m a sketchbook nerd, and his are by far the best I’ve used. Well made, paper that can take nibs, watercolor, pencil, whatever, and best of all they’re by Joe Lambert. I get mine plain, but he sells them with printed covers at conventions and those are gorgeous. I don’t know how often he lists them on his site, but heck just ask him.

Guys I’m having a sale, a sale on everything in my store, even including the most popular and most time-consuming thing, my one-hour drawings, an example of a recent one which you can see above. For a limited time if you spend $50 or more, enter code DHARBMAS at checkout and get 35% off your whole order, regardless of what or how much of it you buy.

A few examples of what that means:

One hour drawings go from $50 to $32.50.
Diary Comics #4 goes from $10 to $6.50.
Behold! The Dinosaurs! goes from $30 to $19.50.
“Fourth” -sized drawings go from $20 to $13. Dang that might be too low!

You get the idea. Splash on in there. Also, I found 5 copies each of Dharbin 1-2 Collected Edition and Diary Comics #2, for those of you who’ve been asking me for those. I won’t be reprinting those again (because I hate them), so if you’re a me-completist by all means buy one, but otherwise you’re just fine without them.

A couple of notes:

1) IF you’re buying things to receive by Christmas, especially things like drawings that take me longer to do, be sure and let me know, either in the “notes to seller” field in the Paypal checkout process, or by email (my email’s right up there in the top right corner of this site, right under my little bio).

2) SIMILARLY if you’re buying something as a gift and want me to send it to the recipient directly, no problem at all, just be sure to let me know and send me the correct address.

3) SPEAKING OF drawings taking longer, you should probably order anything drawing-based sooner rather than later. I ship USPS First Class domestically, and First Class International for international orders–domestic orders usually take just a few days to arrive, and any order with an 11×14″ print in it will go Priority. No guarantees on shipping speed past that, especially for international orders.

Okay! Get to spending! I have some rent to pay and *gulp* some Christmas presents to buy at some point.