Just a heads up that I’ll be giving a talk as part of Design Week Portland this Thursday evening at Figure Plant, a local design and fabrication studio. Design•Build•Business•You explores the unexpected benefits of collaboration, curiosity, and niche passions in a series of brief presentations. I’ll be joined by artist and wilderness guide Hannes Wingate and creative strategy specialist Christine Taylor to share insights about our creative practices and how you can find greater clarity and purpose in your own work.
Last month I had the good fortune to return to The Animation Workshop in Denmark to teach a week-long course in their Graphic Storytelling department. You might remember the talk I gave two years ago, The View from Aloft, where I distilled my foundational philosophy about social media, online communities, and gratitude economies. This presentation follows up on that framework by talking specifically about crowdfunding and Kickstarter. Thanks to the school’s exceptional video rental equipment there’s now a very nice recording up on YouTube:
I get a lot of questions from folks looking to learn more about this weird practice. It can be the most soul-crushing, time-consuming, heart-tormenting process, but also an incredible jolt of energy, affirmation, and community involvement. Between the generous souls who support me monthly on Patreon and the people who launch individual projects of mine via Kickstarter there’s no doubt that my career would look very different without crowdfunding.
Everything that’s made my campaigns work feels like it’s come from watching my friends get smarter and better every time they launch a project, so it’s great to have this recording to pay it forward to more people. I hope some of you find it useful if you ever launch your own projects (and I hope you do).
Hi friends, I am very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at Creative Mornings this Friday (October 6th) at 8:30am at the Armory Theater here in Portland.
Creative Mornings is a free monthly lecture series where speakers appear on stages all over the world to deliver thoughts on a communal theme—all before 10am on a Friday. This month’s prompt is PIONEER, and I’ve crafted a talk all about belonging, childhood passions, and curiosity that I am super stoked to reveal.
I’m also hand-drawing all my slides, which has led to working on things like this all week:
WHAT IS THIS PERSON DOING WITH THAT FIRE EXTINGUISHER AND ALSO THAT BABY? Come to The Armory on Friday to find out.
Seats are free, and the CM Team provide donuts and coffee to get you pepped up in the early hours. All you need to do is reserve a spot through this website. I look forward to seeing you there!
I have new video up from my time at The Animation Workshop in Denmark, where I was teaching a class on webcomics and social media earlier this month. (This is the first time I’ve had video footage of my public speaking—thanks, Sam!—which is really exciting.) If you’re a person who makes things on the Internet, or a person who wants to make things on the Internet, or a cartoonist, or a budding creator—this probably has some utility for you.
Things I cover:
How I ended up doing what I’m doing now (full-time adventure-cartoonist-ing, most days)
How social media has enabled me to succeed in crowdfunding, freelancing, and basically everything else
What sailing has in common with being an artist (it’s more than you think)
Communities and gratitude economies and how they shape our work
My unified very vague theory of How the Internet Makes Us Better People
What you can gain by giving your work away for free
I had so much fun teaching at TAW, and I hope this talk distills some of the stuff we were exploring and discussing over the course of my two weeks there. If you enjoyed it and want to see/enable more, feel free to check out my Patreon page! I post a ton of behind-the-scenes, nitty gritty, creative-in-the-trenches stuff there every single week, and I’d love to have you on board.
A quick post today to let you all know I’ve got two new audio interviews up for your listening pleasure!
I had a great time guesting on KBOO’s Words and Pictures show a couple weeks ago, where I talked to host S. W. Conser about my recent projects, including my upcoming show at Portland’s Sequential Art Gallery (more on that tomorrow!). You can give that a listen right here.
I also had the immense pleasure of talking with fellow boat-savvy cartoonist Chris Schweizer as part of his new conversational podcast. We delve into all sorts of stuff including (but not limited to) boats, comics, theater, higher education, and French comics. Chris is not only a stellar cartoonist and history buff (have you read Crogan’s Vengeance? YOU SHOULD. IT HAS GOT BOATS IN), but also an eloquent, fascinating guy. This was a blast! You can expect more of these recordings from him in the future, so keep an eye out.
I’ll be back tomorrow with more details about next week’s show at the Sequential Art Gallery. Hooray!
Hi gang! First off: big thanks to all of you who came out last month to say hello at Emerald City Comicon. It was incredibly cool to see so many familiar faces and get comics into returning hands. I promise I’ll keep cranking ’em out so you’ll have more to enjoy in 2015.
Now: I have a whole bundle of audiovisual treats for you today, taken from various panels and speaking gigs I’ve done in the past few weeks.
First up is It’s Not Too Dangerous to Go Alone, a great panel run by Kenna Conklin of Geek Portland on having the guts to make your creative career happen. I got to speak alongside Erika Moen, Dylan Meconis, and Angela Webber, which was a treat in and of itself, but I also feel like we hit some great points about motivation and starting from scratch.
Second is Erika’s Freelance Like a Rockstar panel, with Steve Lieber, Dylan Meconis, and Amy Falcone. (I nabbed this recording on my phone, so the quality is a little less spectacular, but you can still hear everyone!) We discuss all the juicy freelancer topics like finding jobs, self promotion, pricing strategies, and *gulp* contracts. Valuable fun for the whole freelance family.
Finally, I got to participate in a panel on Setting Realistic Goals as part of the MakingComics.com Massive Open Online Course last week. I really enjoyed getting to digitally discuss project management, scheduling, and work/life balance with Jared Cullum, Jen Vaughn, Damon Gentry, Eric Shanower, Christina Blanch, and Patrick Yurik. Plus this one has video so you can see all our weird facial expressions while we talk.
Phew. That’s all from me for now — I hope these discussions are useful to you all!
