Brian Kolm is a Artist and Instructor working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work can be seen at http://www.atomicbearpress.com.
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(NOTE: We have two jams this week with a Sunday Comic Jam (CAM JAM #2) on August 16th.)
The Jam runs from 6:30 on August 15th and all artist are invited to
attend. So bring your favorite drawing tools and come on down and draw a spell.
Description: The San Francisco cell of the International Cartoonist
Conspiracy meets twice a month from on the second and last Thursday of
the month from 6:30-10PM
location: Church St. Cafe. 260 Church Street San Francisco, CA 94114
Getting there: There is public transportation on MUNI (and BART) to get to the Jam. Visit 511.org to find out more.
This is a Jam Comic from back in May 2009. I think this is one of the first comics where we noticed that when we work as smaller groups we produced stronger work.
The challenge for this jam was to do no dialog with the theme of starting a band. Each comic was created in small groups of two to the three people who drew on index cards. In many ways the process resembled doing a storyboard for an animated film. Each team also worked differently then the others with some diving up the story by character and others by scene.
Ready to read the comic? Click here to download the PDF and then leave comments on what you thing> CCSF: Making the Band
Well, it’s been a while since your artist pals in San Francisco uploaded some comics for you to read, but today we are going to change that.
This is the ‘Wrestling’ zine we created a few months ago. Artist teamed up and each was responsible for one of the characters and their actions. The process is very much like in 2D drawn animation where each artist/team handles one character only.
The Cartoon Art Museum bookstore and the Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco present:
CAM JAM #2: Once Upon a Time
Sunday August 16, 2009
Where: Cartoon Art Museum – San Francisco CA
When: 11am to 5pm
The Cartoonist Conspiracy San Francisco art group and the Cartoon Art Museum Bookstore are proud to present the second Comic Book Art Jam at the Cartoon Art Museum (CAM JAM). The event invites artist of all levels into the Museum’s lobby to create sequential art (i.e. Comics!) and to push their creativity.
Our Goal: To draw complete short comic book stories between 11am and 4pm, then to get them printed at the copy store nearby so artist can take them home. NOTE: The price per-book cost will not be determined until we know what the final page count is.
Space: There is room for at least 18 artists, but no one will be turned away and every effort will be made to find space.
Optional Theme: Once Upon a Time.
In honor of one of the museums newest exhibit ‘Once Upon a Dream – the Art of Sleeping Beauty’ the theme will be Fairy Tales. Of course who knows if the Three Bears had superpowers or if Hansel and Gretel were secret agents?
Cost: The event is FREE and will be held in the Museums Lobby. All artists who participate in the Jam will get free admission to get into the Museum as well.
Goodie Bag: The CAM bookstore will also offer goodie bags for a $2.00 donation that will include: a bottle of water, sweet treats, ‘mood’ pencil, 15% off coupon, raffle ticket and other surprises.
SCHEDUAL:
11 am – Museum Opens. Bring your comics, portfolio and favorite drawing tools on down and come ready to create.
Warm-up art challenge: To get ready to draw we will have a warm-up art challenge. Inspired by the by the evil fairy Maleficent who is seen in the current exhibit ‘Once Upon a Dream: the art of Sleeping Beauty’ our challenge will be to draw OUR interpretations of the great Disney animated villains. The artwork will be posted in the bookstore afterward and everyone (including the museum guests) can vote on their favorite and the winner will be picked at 4pm. Also, with the artists permission the art will be displayed both in the store as well as used for a Halloween window display.
11:45 am – Let’s get started!
We will regroup into teams of 2-3 artists to create a variety of different art jam collaboration through out the day with a goal to finish our comics by the end of the day.
Lunch Break: Artist can take a break whenever they want with a bag check available at the front desk. The CCSF and Cartoon Art Museum are not responsible for the loss of items.
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3:30 pm – The home stretch to finish our stories by 4 pm.
4 pm – PENCILS UP! Time to stop.
– Members of the CCSF will take the artwork and run it over to a local copy shop to produce some books which (hopefully) will be ready by 5pm at the latest. (See 5pm.)
– We will count up the votes for the Warm-up Art challenge and Contest and pick a winner. You do not have to be present to win.
– Network, Chat and Clean up.
5pm – Mini comics of the days work will be available to the artist at the cost of printing. (We might require the help to assemble the books.)
– After jam drinks and snack at a nearby establishment.
Legal stuff…
*By participating in the Comic Jam you give permission for the CCSF to post your work on-line and to print a one time run of books to be sold to the participating artist at-cost. Extra copies will be sold to the general public as fundraising for the Cartoon Art Museum and CCSF.
RSVP:
If you think you will be joining us, why not drop us an email so we can get an idea of the number of people attending. Email organizer Brian Kolm at theatomicbear@gmail.com with your RSVP and/or questions too.
We will be finishing up some of the Jams from the event at the Cartoon Art Museum as well as exploring some new ideas.
Description: The San Francisco cell of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy meets twice a month from on the second and last Thursday of the month from 6:30-10PM
location: Church St. Cafe. 260 Church Street San Francisco, CA 94114
Getting there: I have started a thread on the Google group that we can post ideas on getting to the Jam on MUNI, BART and driving/parking. There is not driving/parking info yet since I do not do that, so if you have some knowledge please go and add it.
—- Comic Jam ideas at the Google Group: We have started to add pages at the Google group on how to do different types of Comic Jams and there is also a thread to list different ones we have done in the past or might do in the future.
—- Zine making. I have a couple of our Jam’s in Zine form just about ready to go. I will need some help to print out the master pages to copy if anyone has any resources that they want to donate. The pages would be all ready laid out and just need to be printed actual size and properly centered on the page.
History: We first did it at the Cartoonist Conspiracy meet on Thursday May 28, 2009 with added printed template layouts on May 31, 2009 at the Cartoon Art Museum Jam.
Idea:This Jam was following up from the Index Card Comic Jam in which we had groups of two or three people join forces to create a story in a non-linear way by drawing each panel on a separate Sticky Notes and then deciding what order to put them in and sticking them to the template that is available on our download section. These type of jams’ strength lie in having less people and more control of the order of the panels helps make a more solid finished story. This might be a good way to develop a story you will re-draw with more elaborate panel boarders or just just what you make.
How does it work: Two or Three people get together and decide on a basic idea for a story. The original time we used the theme “Starting a Band”. Since the creators have no idea going in what will happen they might want to start by drawing a close up of a character or a establishing shot of the setting in pencil. The group works together to shape a story with sometimes having each artist focused on drawing one specific character (like in animated films). After the story is done or close to it another artist (or one of the creators) can go over with pen to solidify the drawings into consistent style.
Materials:
– Light colored Sticky Note
– (optional) Printed comic templates to ‘paste’ down your panels to give them boarders. You can just stick the Sticky Note panels on a sheet of paper and draw the boarders on top.
-Â Regular or Blue pencil. Note the blue pencil on the yellow Sticky Notes with out inking made it very impossible to get a good scan.
– Inking tools.
– Two artist at least.
– A clean table to work on or someplace to stick the notes while your rearrange them.
– (optional) Way to get a random idea. We had printed slips of ideas generated from the website http://seventhsanctum.com/
Sample
– The artist sit down with there idea/theme.
– Decided if each artist will handle only a single character on each time it appears or that all the artist draws everything. It’s your choice.
– The group starts. We recommend having artist start with a close up or establishing shot to show the characters and setting.
– Have a sheet of paper or a clean surface to set down each Sticky Note Panel and you can rearrange them as you go to make a story.
– You might want to wait on adding dialog till after you have an order to place the Sticky Note Panels.
– Once you know what order you can stick the panels to the custom template of sheet of boarders or on a blank sheet of paper. If you work on blank paper, decided if you want to draw the boarders down too.
– Scan and/or copy the art to your website, zine, etc.
History: First done at the Cartoon Art Museum Comic Jam on May 31, 2009
Idea: The idea of this jam is to work fast. Some of us artist have a habit of getting stuck on our comics projects and spending too much time. The jam produced interesting results and has some different variations. I could see this being a way to develop an idea with out getting stuck. You sort of just try to draw in ‘real time’.
How does it work: The idea of the jam is that each artist only takes a minuet or two to draw each panel We recommend that artist draw with pen since it forces us to not get too careful and work faster. We worked in a format based on Darwin Cookes’ “New Frontier” which features 3 CinemaScope panels per page. The wider panels requite some more details and storytelling sometimes, but also make the project go faster. We made copies of the template and then tapped them up on an easel.
We did the first jam in pencil with four artist, but that seemed to make it harder to follow, but it might be worth a try. See the variations below.
Materials:
– Printed comic templates. You can use any format you like or none at all, but we are not experience with it that way.
– Art materials, we recommended pens. Sharpies work well.
– Two artist at least
– Someone or Something to keep time. Watch, iPhone, Clock Watcher, etc.
– Easel or wall to put up the pages on. I think it’s better to stand and get lots of energy flowing.
– Way to get a random idea. We had printed slips of ideas generated from the website http://seventhsanctum.com/
Sample:
– Tape up 2, 4 or more of printed templates on the easel or the wall. Make sure you won’t damage the wall with your pens of choice.
– Pick one to a couple of random ideas, or just pick them from the audience or non-participating artist.
– Pick who goes first.
– The first artist draws for two minutes (one minutes is harder) the first panel.
– The second artist continues in the second panel.
– The first artist draws the third panel etc.
– Continue to the last panel on the last page. Can you have the story end on the last page?
Here is a sample of some of our jams by way of Flickr.
• This is my Mike Hales and Roberto who alternated panel by panel…
photo by Rick Lucy
• Variation: (below) Each artist drew their panels at the same time, but only on two pages per person. The theme was “Glam Rock Beach Party”…by Brian Kolm and Mike Hales.
photo by Rick Lucy
• Variation: Lots of people.
More then two people draw. One person per panel.
• Variation: Faster or slower. Use less time per panel or more time.
• Variation (not tried yet): Layered.
One person draws on the panel with a light pencil for one/two minutes. Then another artist goes over with ink for one/two minute. Then another artist adds the word balloons. Another adds the background. It really can be any variation mixed with the ideas above.
and You can have it so one artist starts with the first step and goes panel by panel at one/two minutes of time each and then the second person does not start till the first person moves to the next page.
— by Brian Kolm
P.S. please let us know if try this type of Jam and how your experience was.
Well, today 26 people came to the Cartoon Art Museum to create comics and art. Members of the Cartoonist Conspiricy San Francisco joined with the Cartoon Art Museum Bookstore for a Comic Jam.
Starting at 11 am artist begin to arrive at the Museum and were given a special custom lanyard while we finished setting up in the Museum’s lobby.
First off, artist were invited to help design the Bookstore’s online persona ‘Sparky Joe.’ Sparky Joe is a mash up of Olive Oyl, Wendy the good little witch, wolf girl from Lil’ Abner, and Disney’s version of Tinkerbell.
At noon we started the comic jams. One table did a series of illustrations that had an adventuring girl over the course of a day. The other table had two groups who worked on comics on Sticky Notes. The Sticky Notes allowed for us to create a collaborative story that can be rearranged and adjusted creating a more solid tale. The jams will be on-line in the next few weeks.
Later in the day we tried something new, Speed Comic Jams. We took pre-printed pages with three cinema scope panels and posted four of them on a tablet on a stand. The first time had each artist taking turns filling in the panels one by one with only one minutes per panel. We drew in pencil with a random theme with the words: Cinderella and Detective Tale. That produced loose rough drawings. The next version had two artist drawing two pages at the same time with two minutes per panel. The theme was Glam Rock Beach party. This time we drew with Sharpie pens which made the artist work simpler and cleaner. We did the challenges a few more times, finially returing to panel by panel at two minutes a time.
Around 4pm we had a few more artist finish some “Sparky Joe” drawings and then at 5pm we all voted along with shoppers in the Bookstore. Manager Heather had a hard time picking from all the designs so this made it easier. In the end there was a three way tie, so we had another round of voting with the winner being artist Audry Soffa (of the web comic the Bunny System) who’s art will be uploaded soon to Facebook.
If you want to be a friend of the Cartroon Art Museum Bookstore, just search Facebook for Sparky Joe or you can follow on Twitter as well.
It seemed that everyone had a really good time and we were really productive. We hope to have some comics on-line soon and look forward to returning to the museum sometime soon.
Come to the Cartoon Art Museum Book store and help create a
Collaborative Jam Comic on Sunday May 31, 2009.
Join the creative folks of the Cartoonist Conspiracy of San Francisco
(CCSF) in a fun all-ages Comic Jam hosted by the Cartoon Art Museum
Bookstore. Artist of any age or skill level can join the CCSF in
making a collaborative comic where anything can happen. It’s FREE so
come join us from 11 am to 5 pm outside the Bookstore. Also featuring
book signings from many of the CCSF comic creators who work can be
purchased in the Bookstore.
So come on down and join the Comic Jam with the Cartoonist Conspiracy
San Francisco.
Details of featured artists will available soon.
You can follow the Bookstore on Facebook by looking for Sparky Joe or on Twitter by following CAMBookstore
Hey all, passing on info on an upcoming Anthology produced by Bay Area artist Erin Milligan.
I have only posted the basic info. To find out the full information, contact Erin at erinmmilligan AT gmail DOT com. Check out Erin’s comic at: http://www.timothy-green.com/
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These are just the general guidelines.
Possible Title: Pendulum (If anyone has any other ideas for the title, I would love to hear them!)
Theme: Supernatural, mythological
Audience: Pre-Teen to Teen. (No nudity, graphic violence or sex. Keep the language PG.*)
Submission format: Black and white. Please submit all files as 300 dpi TIFF files.
Size: 6.85″w X 10.25″h
Length: 4 to 12 pages per story.
Deadline: August 1st, 2009.
Reimbursement: You will be able to buy it off me for a set price**; any profits you make off of the book are yours to keep. You may sell the book at conventions, at shops, and/or online.
Rights: You may not submit the same story to other publishers until nine months after the anthology has been printed. Also, you may not post more than half of your story online until that nine month period has passed.
…
Thank you!
Erin Milligan
http://www.timothy-green.com/
