ROB OSBORNE | a very important blog

Comics Looking Presidential

The presumptive nominees for president are going to get the comic book treatment this October, just before the big election. IDW is publishing biographies of the two candidates. John McCain and Barak Obama will have their stories told in graphic form.

Nifty webpage.

Reminds me of the comic books I read as a grade-schooler. I found these small, hard bound books that told the stories of our founding fathers. These were graphic novels that shared the history of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the like. I loved them.

Migrating Back To Camp

The start of NFL training camp nears, and Reebok has a new advertisement that shows Chad Johnson and Peyton Manning and others migrating to training camp. Most teams open their camp on Friday, July 25.

I’ve become smitten with the song that plays during the Reebok ad. It’s from Vashti Bunyan. Train Song hails from the mid-sixties. What’s old is new.

It’s so many miles and so long since I’ve met you
Don’t even know what I’ll find when I get to you
But suddenly now, I know where I belong
It’s many hundred miles but it won’t be long

Teaching Cartooning

Yesterday was my first day of teaching Cartooning at the AMOA Art School. The Austin Museum of Art has a gorgeous little campus at the Laguna Gloria location. (There’s also a downtown AMOA on Congress Avenue, just down the street from the state capitol.) We’re in the Solarium. A room with windows wrapping around three sides.

The morning class is for ages 12-14, and after lunch I teach a class of 9-11 year olds. The course is everyday this week, and our objective is to make a comicstrip by the end of the week.

The kids exceeded my expectations. The students were brimming with enthusiasm, hard work and creativity.

Yesterday we dove in and talked about creating characters. We worked on making a cast that invited conflict or humor. As the kids developed their characters, they came up with a wide array of personalities and story directions. I was thrilled to see the divergent creative ideas that each of them produced.

Needless to say, I used Lord Alfred Zango, Jr. as an example. The crazy hair, the visor, the bathrobe and bunny slippers. I took them through the process of developing the laziest supervillain.

By the end of each class, the students had created 1-3 pages of finished character reference. They inked a final drawing of their characters after working on rough designs. They gave their characters names and wrote down the major traits for their new cartoon persona.

It was fun. Inspiring. And not all that hard. I mean, I just had to guide them. It was the students who had the energy and creativity to make these new cartoon characters. They invented penguins and superheroes and girl detectives. There were characters shaped like Mandarin letters and an evil mouse that loved shoes.

The class syllabus didn’t have us making cartoons until tomorrow. But the kids exceeded my expectations, so instead, today we’re going to start making comicstrips by the end of class. I mean, why would I hold them back? The kiddos are ready.

Remodel At RobOsborne.net

Paul Grist, Jack Staff, Ian Churchill & Mike Wieringo

I’m  a fan of Paul Grist’s work. I highly recommend you check out Jack Staff, and Kane is also terrific. The writer-artist Grist is formidable. And underrated.

So I was fascinated to discover that Jack Staff #21, arriving in October 2008 (alongside The Nearly Infamous Zango #4, ahem), would have a cover NOT drawn by Grist. Instead, Ian Churchill has provided the cover art.

Apparently, Churchill will also be teaming up with Grist on a back up story in that issue.

In my zeal to learn more, I discovered this image by Mike Wieringo.

As it turns out, Wieringo was also an admirer of Grist’s work. God bless you, Ringo.

Phoenix Comicon 2009

Going APE In November