First Sketch of Baby Aldara

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Carry On My Wayward Oubapo-America Site

I've been meaning to point out here for a while that the website Tom Hart put together with me and Jason Little as an anglophone introduction to the work of Oubapo, Ouvroir de la Bande Dessinée Potentielle or Workshop for Potential Comics, is still out there although its URL has changed a few times over the last year. We stopped adding new material to it a few years ago but it's still got plenty of essays, resources, and constrained comics from all over. You can find it at its new location here.

Here's one of my earliest Oubapian experiments, a reduction of Dan Clowes's Ghost World to one page which I achieved by selecting nine more-or-less equally spaced panels from across the whole graphic novel (click to enlarge).

[art ©Daniel Clowes from Ghost World, published by Fantagraphics]

While you're surfing, you should aslo check out Oulipo's official site. It's updated regularly and has a nifty "constraint of the month" feature which is a great resource for story ideas. Read more...

TONIGHT: SVA Continuing Education open house

Tonight, January 7, I will be showing slides of student work at the School of Visual Arts's Continuing Education Illustration/Cartooning Information Session. The event begins at 6:30pm and runs until approximately 8:30pm and will be held in the amphitheater, room 311 of the main building, 209 23rd Street, between 3rd and 2nd Ave. in Manhattan.

I will be teaching a new comics class called Comics Storytelling. It will basically be a workshop class covering concepts of storytelling, technical skills like laying out a page and inking, and Oulipo-inspired creative games and challenges. The class will meet on Tuesday evenings for 12 weeks starting January 21. Click the link above for more details. (If you have the print catalogue, please note that the correct day is Tuesday, NOT Wednesday.)

Tom Hart and Keith Mayerson are going to be there, maybe Jason Little as well.

[Follow-up note: thanks to those of you who came, according to my roster the class is certain to run this semester and there is still room for a few more students.] Read more...