School’s still out – bitches STAY krunk!

School’s out – bitches get krunk!

Scott Kurtz of PVP fame is the mu’fuckin’ man.

I won’t lie folks, this has been a buttfuck of a quarter at school – all the SEQA profs were slammed hard this Spring, but when stuff like this happens it makes all of the extra work put in and the time spent worthwhile.

I just saw that Scott posted the following on his blog:

Power to the Pod
— May 23rd, 2009

I wanted to take a moment to mention a wonderful podcast that I listen to every week, hosted by the students of the sequential arts department at the Savanah College of Art and Design. The podcast is called SEQALAB and it is hosted by Professor Jeremy Mullins and his sequential arts students. It is the audible treat of my week.

I had the honor of being asked to come out to SCAD last year with my buddy Dave Kellett to give a talk to the students about Webcomics and see the campus. It was my favorite trip of 2008 and I am looking forward to returning there soon. Since then I’ve gotten to know some of the students that I only met briefly while on campus, both through the podcast and their journal comics. I must admit that I am living vicariously through them as they are getting to experience something I longed for at their age: teachers who understood that cartooning was real art.

Understand that when I was in high-school, my art teacher hated me drawing comics. She reluctantly allowed me to enter a comic book into the Senior art show and despite the fact that it won the award for best of show, she still never really came around on comics until after I graduated. In college I studied advertising art and our professors threatened to fail us if we used computers, insisting that commercial design would always been drawn by hand. So to walk into SCAD and see these kids studying Sequential Art as a major. To see classrooms full of Wacom Cintiq drawing tablets attached to top of the line macs, I was blown away. I was astonished. And I was bitterly jealous.

Cartooning is my thing, and so SCAD is an institution I can get behind. Their sequential department is something I can champion and I’m happy to do so. I’m pleased to announce that your subscriptions to the PvP fan-club over the last couple of months have raised just around $700 that I’ll be donating to the Mike Wieringo Scholarship fund to benefit a SCAD student.

If you follow our shop-talk at Webcomics.com, if you enjoyed our book How To Make Webcomics, then you owe it to yourself to check out the SEQALAB podcast. And now is a great time to start listening because they just interviewed me and that show should be posted some time next week.

Power to the pod!

Links of interest:
SEQALAB homepage
SCAD homepage
Kevin Burkhalter’s journal comic
Lunarboyland, the work of Jarrett Williams
Pranas T. Naujokaitis’ journal comic
Brett Muller’s The Daily Oddesy

So, not only is the dude pimpin’ our podcast – he’s linkin’ up to my students’ Web pages, AND he’s created a whole commercial section on his page with the proceeds being donated to the ‘Ringo scholarship!

All I can say is. . . wow. I’m man enough to say I got misty.  Scott Kurtz, you are the man dude.  I look forward to kickin’ it with you in San Diego.

Here’s another mini comic that was given to me on the last day of my Web-comics class! Brianna Alexander put together these pages depicting moments from this quarter where apparently I was off my assholio game.

Just like my regular feature here on this site – all the scenes depicted are indeed true.

Can you believe it?

Check this out – students from the Web-comics class that I just finished teaching gave me a set of little mini comics rendered in their own takes on my shitty, magic-marker style!

This first one here is from Michael Ward – or “Chaz Michael Michael” as he was known to all the sexy ladies of Studio IV!

In this first set of pages, Michael depicts me exhibiting typical Web-comic class behavior.

These two show the influence ol’ Sweetwater had on the lad in terms of creative outlook! That’s what’s up Web-comic peoples – DON’T NEVER LET NO HATERS SHOOT YO’ DIGITAL JAM SESSION DOWN!

Uhhhhh, this last set might need some explaining.

When I asked Chaz what his comic was about first day of class and he said, “A pirate, a robin hood, and a space marine.” I promptly replied “What do they do, walk into a bar ?!?”  

The class then erupted in laughter.  

You know. . .those jokes that always start out with three oddly grouped guys walking into a bar. . .priest, a rabbi, and a yogi. . .

Eh, nevermind. You had to be there.

Somehow I let it slip once at a late-night drawing session that I had a personal fantasy of knocking the bottom outta some gal in a shitty, hand-made Galactus helmet.  It appears that the impressionable young Michael synthesized my little slip of the lip, and incorporated it into his “thank you” mini.

Still confused? So am I. Doesn’t matter though. It was a blast havin’ him in class. Enjoy the mini peoples.

Hey folks, sorry I’ve been away for awhile, but I’m now teaching in Lacoste, France!

France is wild folks.

First and foremost these mu’fuckers can COOK! You’d love it. Check out what was offered on the PLANE: First we were served a Middle Eastern-style seven grain salad with sautéed chicken. Then that was followed by sautéed beef with chasseur sauce with baby vegetables and mashed potatoes. We were also offered cheese, coffee-chocolate cake, and our choice of red or white wine, Champagne, Heineken beer, coffee, tea or our choice of soft drinks. 

But all did not go well with Air France – I got delayed 20 hours due to snow in Paris. And after spending two hours on the tarmac, and they ultimately lost my luggage. I’ve got none of my clothes, and I’m missing a lot of materials I was bringing over for my Conceptual Illustration class. It snowed here and I’m freezeing my balls off without a coat!

The traveling was cool though. Most everyone speaks English, and several French women were really nice to me in the airport. Every now and then they’d tap me on the shoulder and ask if I understood what was being said over the P.A. system. I met a Canadian girl that’s going to school in Boston and she did a lot of translating stuff for me with the bagggage stuff – I was lucky!

New Zelanders are funny, they’re super excited to talk to Americans for some reason. We’re big hits with them aparently. The French could care less, and the British are happy to talk to us as well.

Everyone over here followed the election and are very thankful for Obama’s win. I knew the world hated us, but they really followed our politics closely for the last 8 years, and our reputation was more damaged by Bush than I ever suspected.

But the French are really happy about Obama – they even have Obama celebration parties planned for when he’s being sworn in and I’ve been invited to one!

Everyone dresses REALLY hip and sporty over here. Even old people. They look like a million bucks and should be out driving race cars. The dudes are all in good shape – I’m a fatty-patty for sure here!

For those of you who have asked, you’d probably think that the women are a letdown – not NEARLY as many pretty women here as there are back in the states. But man, when you do see a pretty one – HOLY SHIT! Like perfect, incredible smelling dolls. The best have been French girls of Japanese decent – alabaster girls with perfect skin and jet black hair speaking French. So, there you go.

But the food is hands down the best thing. I ate at the French equivalent of Denny’s while I was stuck overnight in Paris and, dude, best meal of my life no shit. AND IT WAS A DUMP!!!

My place here at SCAD is cool, I’ve got a four bedroom villa all to myself with my own bathroom and kitchen. The only thing is that the ceilings are low cuz it’s medieval, shorter people way back when and I’ve hit my head on the rafters twice. 

Lacoste is a small country town and driving in, the rural part of France looked like a bad suburb of L.A. but minus the strip malls – rocky, nasty, with shitty trees. But when I got to Lacoste, whoah man, the valley opened up and it’s something else! I’ll send some pictures as soon as Ray (my coworker) forwards me the ones we took today (I don’t have a camera).

I’ve been away from the SAV for a while now and as cool as Boston and France is, I’m really beginning to appreciate home. Not homesickness, but a healthy understanding of what’s great about the south, and Savannah in particular.

Classes begin today, and I’m very grateful. Thanks for your patience people while I took some time off at the holidays and for travel. Hope y’all like the new header at the top, it’ll stay that way for my duration here in the Old World!

Hey folks, as many of you may have guessed, I was so overcome with the Christmas spirit last week that I wasn’t an a-hole to anyone at all!  I’m sure you missed your Sweetwater comics, but fear not I’ll be back after the New Year!

See you all then!

To Evil!

So, as many of you know, I’m up in Boston, Mass. until the New Year! Here’s a run down of what I’ve been up to.

First off, I’m staying with Erin at her condo in Charlestown. It’s kind of a cool place – it’s right across the water from Downtown Boston. When you walk into the building it’s this weird, white, antiseptic place with these giant screwy sculptures of things like light bulbs, rubber ducks, and hand mirrors. Everyone there is pretty nice though, and there’s an awesome little coffee shop right at then end of the place.

Erin and I took the water taxi over to the New England Aquarium one day – it was cool as shit. The first thing you see when you go in are all these penguins – and let me tell you, I was VERY thankful for the humid environment! They’ve got all kinds of cool fish up in this place and a giant big ol’ tank in the middle. MY two favorite things in the tank were the giant sea turtle who kept checking us out, and this really weird florescent green eel!

Another cool place we’ve gone is the Plough and Stars bar right across the street from Erin’s sister’s apartment. For you Savannah folk it’s like the Cambridge, Mass answer to Pinkie Masters but minus the smoke and plus live brass bands. This place was cool as shit and the band we saw was awesome. They were called the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble and they were just, like jammin’ out. Tonye and Zach would have loved it. They had two sax players, two trombone people, a tuba guy, a trupet soloist, a bass player, and drummer.

Check ‘em out here.

While at the Plough and Stars I decided to try a locally brewed beer called Rapscallion. At first it tasted like a cyder, but then had a real hoppsy finish toward the end. I dunno if I’d call it good, but it was unique, and I’m glad I tried it out. Plus, I liked the devil broad logo.

Erin’s mom says the bar has been there in Cambridge forever and she used to go there when she was in college.

Another place that I’ve hit up with a load of history is the Warren Tavern over in Charlestown where Erin lives. This place opened in 1780 – so it’s the oldest bar I’ve ever been in for sure. It was pretty cool, they had some live music and apparently Erin’s aunt used to sing there back in the day. Most of the people there when we were there were, like, young urban professional types – so, I dunno, I liked the Plough better.

Today we woke up and the power was out and that was because there was some SERIOUS frost last night. I can’t even describe it to you. We went driving around and it was like a frozen, post-tornado scene. Apparently what happens is that this ice rain shit comes down and freezes around the tree branches and then ultimately gets so heavy that the trees start to buckle and ultimately break! There were fallen trees and down powelines all over the roads – but the ice-coated tress still standing looked beautiful.

The best thing about Boston though is the ducks

Hey folks, check this cool shit out! Fellow A-hole Tyler Niccum whipped this up welcoming me back to regular publication! Granted, this drawing is down-right creepy, but its the thought that counts. I think he was inspired by my recent comic about Erin’s little cousin Emma.

Check out Tyler’s AWESOME comics here.

Hey folks, I’m back finally! I have arrived safely in Boston where I’ll be for the duration of the holidays. It took me a bit to get settled, and find internet connection and a scanner to use, but expect some Sweetwater Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I know I know, I failed the 5-day-a-week update schedule – for now. Things are a bit crazy since I’m not in my studio with my equipment and I’m havin’ to mooch stuff when and where I can, the 3-day thang will have to suffice for now.

Sorry troops. But hey, you’ve got comics now and this shit’s still free kiddies!