roseandisabel.com

I've registered the above address in the hopes of more and bigger things to come. I had actually done this a YEAR AGO (!) after the link on Boing Boing and Cory's admonishment that I had no home page or landing place with information about the books.

For the time being, the blog should link to the website and vice versa, so if you encounter any problems getting to the site through a link or otherwise, please let me know.

I hope to get some sort of site up before Comic-Con in July...
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Return

Hello! I'm back from a great adventure in France. I'm suffering more than expected from jet lag as well as a cold I acquired on the last evening of the trip, so it may be a few days before I get a proper report up. What I can say right now is that it was an incredible experience. Bill and I met so many great folks who were incredibly generous in showing us around and making us feel comfortable. I will post plenty about them as well as details of the festival in Angoulême and a lot more. Stay tuned!

-T

For now here is a photo of some of the stuff I got.

Merge

No, I'm not going to start reporting Survivor upates -- my two blogs (R&I and Current Flavor) are merging into one. I've wanted to do this for a while now but was afraid of creating a cacophany of jumbled themes and ideas. With the labels feature in the new beta blogger, I think I'll be able to make some sense of things. The classic template that I'm using doesn't allow labels to be placed as a list in the sidebar (??), but if you click the label at the bottom of a post it will take you to all the posts with that label. Current Flavor posts will be moved over, labeled, and placed in their appropriate place chronologically. Unfortunately the entries will lose all the great comments folks have posted since there is no way to migrate comments. I'll be posting a link to the comments at the bottom of each post.

Indie Spinner Rack best of 2006

I'm very excited because Indie Spinner Rack has included Rose and Isabel in their Best of 2006 podcast! Many thanks to Charlito, Mr. Phil and The Franque at ISR for the honor. You can hear part one of the Best of 2006 (including the R&I mention) here and part two is here. Be sure to check out the rest of their podcasts by clicking the banner below!

ComicSpace

I just found out about this place from Scott Morse. Click the image above to check it out and to sign up.

My page is here.

2007

Happy New Year everyone!

Well, 2007 is already shaping up to be a busy year creatively...very soon I'll be diving into a story for Afterworks 3, then barreling full steam ahead on the Cora book and starting on a new project here at the job. After a 6 week hiatus from work, I'm energized and can't wait to get rolling. I hope you are all rested and the creative juices are flowing!

Here's a little something held over from last year. -T

Random Bits

I you live in the bay area, don't forget that tonight is the Super7 Grand Re-Opening and E-Ville Press signing!

Also, tomorrow (Sat 9/9) KQED will feature a review of Rose and Isabel in the Lit section of their website. Paula Rogers has written an in depth review of the complete story. Thanks Paula!

UPDATE: The Rose and Isabel KQED review can be found here.

E3 is downsizing...and thoughts on SDCC

I thought this article from the SF guardian was particularly interesting as it relates to my thoughts about this year's Con.

Quote:

"E3 is not a place where product is sold anymore. The industry is recognized as a big part of mainstream culture, so the need for a big glittering event to validate the industry is not what it used to be," he said. "What is needed ... is to focus on the fact that E3 is much more about media-related opportunities. The question is what is the most efficient way to create those opportunities."

I realize that E3 and the Con are two entirely diffrerent beasts, but "media related opportunities" seems in my mind what the Con is slowly moving towards, and away from what started it all...comics. I've been reading a lot of post-Con wrap-ups and was not surprised to read how many of us were unable to meet up with fellow artits due to being pushed to the four corners of the floor or just not having the time or energy to navigate the crowds. Folks had to wait hours in the blisting heat only to be turned away. Manuevering through "the media gauntlet" was a particularly trying experience. The Con has simply gotten too big. Media Con and Swag Con were two alternate tiles that came to mind as I tried to make my way through the enormous corporate displays choked with throngs of folks clamoring for their free stuff.

A bunch of friends and I met Sunday night after the Con had ended to decompress, drink beer and catch up, and where last year the discussion was mainly of comics, movies and that kind of stuff, this year was mostly talk of dissatisfaction with the overall "feel" of the Con. I of course enjoyed talking to everyone that stopepd by to buy the books or just to talk, show their work, or talk about story, but something just didn't sit right this year.

Is it time for a change?

SDCC 06

Thanks to everyone who came by the booth this year; it was a pleasure to meet and talk with you all. I regret not seeing more folks around the dealer's floor but as you know, the nearly impenetrable crowds make it hard to get from one end of the con to the other. Attempts to navigate through the hordes of people in the "media center gauntlet" were at times herculean tests of endurance and willpower.

Some of my acquisitions included a Mignola page from 3rd Wish, art books by Henk Kuijpers (awesome stuff reminiscent of Yves Chaland and Daniel Torres), prints by Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham, and lots of cool sketchbooks from fellow artists and animators.

E-Ville press has already secured space for next year, so it's time once again to start producing new material; I'm hoping to expand the Rose and Isabel world a bit beyond books, so I'm thinking about creating some prints for the next show. The new western book I've been posting about recently will be titled CORA, and will be the first part of a sequel to Rose and Isabel, taking place 18 years after the end of R&I2. E-Ville is also getting ready to get the ball rolling on Afterworks 3.

Special thanks go to Ronnie Del Carmen and Jamie Baker for plugging the books as part of their shopping lists they posted last week. Thanks guys!


From left to right, Jim Mahfood, Jeff Pidgeon, myself, and Susan Wright (Scott Morse was just to the left of Jim, painting away).

Comics and Wine

This is from a while back...a trip I made to Italy earlier this year. During a late afternoon in Bologna, we stumbled upon a cool little bar while looking for a snack and drink to tide us over until dinner. We walked in and lo and behold, there were shelves of comics to read while snacking on prosciutto and drinking wine. i picked up a book of Torpedo, which had some really great work by Mr. Bernet as well as an artist I had not heard of, Alfonso Font. Our bartender was exceedingly cool as well. Ah, serendipity.