September 4 + 5, 2010 (Labor Day Weekend)
SF County Fair Building
Golden Gate Park
directions: HERE

11 am to 6pm

Below is the MAP: Yellow=ME Blue=Cartoonist Conspiracy Purple=friends (a few at least, I am sure I forgot many)

click for a larger image on Flickr.com

Some of the featured Exhibitors
Susie Cagle
Doctor Popular
Global Hobo
Happy Freak Show
Kid Beowulf
King-Cat Comics
Brian Kolm/Atomic Bear Press
Karen Luk & Karen Krajenbrink
Amy Martin Comics
Melaina Comics
Milk and Tea Books
No Cash Comics
Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk
Thien Pham
Lark Pien
Joey Alison Sayers
Scagliotti-Swanson
Sketchfervor!
SLAB Comics
Joel Michael Smith & Marty May
Weird Fishes/Jamaica Dyer

Time
September 3 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA

Visit the Cartoon Art Museum for our third annual evening of live readings by some of the best indy-comics creators out there, including SFZF 2010 Special Guest Jesse Reklaw (10,000 Things To Do), John Porcellino (King-Cat Comics), Ed Luce (Wuvable Oaf), Jamaica Dyer (Weird Fishes), Hob (The Witness), Noah Van Sciver (Blammo), Susie Cagle (Nine Gallons), and Jonas Madden-Connor (Ochre Ellipse)! Come enjoy a glass of wine and exp…erience comics in a whole new way!

Friday, September 3rd, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m – Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission St between 3rd and New Montgomery
$5 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
All proceeds benefit SFZF and CAM!

There is an event in Anaheim held by the 1313 clube that I wished I was going too next week called the Marvelous Mechanized Magic Kingdom.  They will have on displays actual Animatronics from Disney themeparks as well as have speakers like actor Neil Patrick Harris, designer of the monorail Bob Gurr, the voice of Wendy and Alice Kathryn Beaumont, costume designer for Pirates and Small World Alice Davis, script and song writer Xavier Atencio (‘grim grinning ghosts’), animator/artist Floyd Norman, Garner Holt
who’s company does all of Disney’s ride animatronics now, ride concept artist Larry Nikolai, Chef Mayhem of DoomBuggies.com, and many more.

Find out more at: http://the1313club.com/Main_Page.html

OK, now onto the art….

First off a painting from 2003: (click for bigger image)

and some of the artwork I did for the fan podcast “Story of the Haunted Mansion” that was created by Patrick Hurd. The work below is only about half of what I contributed.

To watch the final video podcast and find out more about the project, visit http://atomicbearpress.com/2009/05/01/the-story-of-the-haunted-mansion/

(click for bigger image)

I am honnored to be joining the likes of artist Debbie Huey, Lex Fajardo, Mike Gray, Paul Madonna, Lark Pien, Shaenon Garrity, Brian Nerelle, Michael Capozzola, and more!

So come by to buy a book, get a sketch, or just chat. I know it will be lots of fun!

Link: http://www.schulzmuseum.org/

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 ? 1–3pm
Second Saturday Cartoonists Celebrate
60 Years of Peanuts
Every second Saturday the Schulz Museum hosts a new Cartoonist-in-Residence! This month meet, watch, and talk to over ten different cartoonists, including All Over Coffee creator Paul Madonna; graphic novelists Alexis Fajardo and Brian Fies, whose graphic novel won the 2005 Eisner Award; Nickelodeon animator Mike Gray; and more! Cartoonists will speak with visitors, share their work, and draw something for the Schulz Museum’s collection celebrating the 60th anniversary of Peanuts.

When and where is the SF Zine Fest?

Saturday, September 4 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, September 5 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
(Labor Day Weekend)

SF County Fair Building
(formerly Hall of Flowers)
9th Ave. at Lincoln Way (in Golden Gate Park) map
We are very excited to be returning to our new home at the San Francisco County Fair Building! The SF County Fair Building is easily accessible by bicycle (lots of parking right out front) and also by public transit: The N train and the 6, 16BX, 43, 44, and 71 bus lines all drop you off within a couple blocks of the Fest! Parking can be more difficult, the adjacent lot is for loading and unloading ONLY. There are some paid parking lots in the nearby Inner Sunset district.

Find out more at: http://blog.sfzinefest.com/

If you are a fan of Disney theme parks and Disney in general you should give it a listen. They have great discussions of different subjects as well as trip reports, interviews and other goodness.

I was impressed how the young students experimented to achieve different effects and work hard to do the best they could using the limitations of the Lego’s.

The videos of the final work will be on-line in the next week or two.

CONGRATULATIONS to all the students!

His design is made up of some elements that are borrowed from two well knows characters. Do you know who they are?
Be the first to comment correctly and I will send you a free sketch of a character of your choosing.

Click to see a bigger image on Flickr.

To find out more about this fun summer program, visit: www.chabotcollege.edu/comed/kidsoncampus/kidsoncampus2010/

July 6-9 Cartooning: Heroes & Villains

From dashing comic book superheroes to beautiful Amazon queens with giant swords, to an evil half-man-half snake or a threatening villain who wants to destroy the world, what would stories be like without the good guys and the bad guys? Explore how to design your very own heroes and villain characters. You’ll learn how to draw the character’s features, design costumes and props, create a story behind your characters, and end by creating a presentation illustration to show your family and friends.

July 19-23 Cartooning: Monsters & Critters

Whether it’s a graceful unicorn, a slithering dragon or a more modern beast, we have been telling stories of fanciful creatures of all sorts since the beginning of time. This class will feature lessons on drawing classic beasties, the structure and construction of four- legged animals, and designing original creatures as well as a technique for presenting a final drawing.

(click to view bigger on Flickr)

This is my artwork I created to celebrate DC Comics 75th anniversary for the San Diego Comic-Con program book. A friend just texted me that she picked up one (Karen you rock!) and it’s on page 107. I really appreciated her picking me up a book since I can’t make it to the con this year.

I decided to focus on the supporting characters that are part of the DC comics mythology.

Exciting.

photo by Mike Hale

photo by Mike Hale

REMINDER: The second Cam-Jam comic jam of 2010 will be this Sunday July 18, 2010 a the Cartoon Art Museum.

This is an event I am organizing, so of course I will be there and I hope you will be there too.

Find out more at:http://cartoonistconspiracysf.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/cam-jam2010-2-on-sunday-july-18th-2010/

click for a bigger image on Flickr

Well, my students this past week were really doing some amazing things, and they wanted me to let them know of the tools and software that was used in class and I want to share with all of you in webland what they achieved.

First off we did some Pixalation and Stop Motion. Those are both the same thing, the moving of objects filmed one frame at a time. For Stop Motion we were using and older version of iStopmotion (version 1). It’s Macintosh based and very simple to use which is why I like it. I have not really had a chance to work with version 2 yet, but would like to try in the future. www.boinx.com/istopmotion.

The program was used with just a DV camcorder on a tripod pointing down at a table surface and connected to the computer with a firewire cable. We animated clip art from Dover: http://store.doverpublications.com/0486995666.html which I printed out from the files that came with the book. There was also a battle of Fish vs. Birds with the students drawing their own art.

iStopmotion was also used to film some classic style drawn animation pencil tests of a ball bouncing. The students also went off and drew some new stuff on their own which made me really pleased.

Next off we enter the digital realm with a demonstration of Adobe After Effects CS4. http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/ The program is used for special effects, animation and motion graphics. One strength of the computer is that it can manipulate and re-purpose artwork. Below is a video sample of some Dancing Bears done with one drawing that was first scanned in and  had it’s background removed in Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/)and then using the puppet tool in After Effects. Then there is a Mysterious Man walking and Spaceships done with the digital version of cut-out animation.

Many of the same effects can be done in other programs like Adobe Flash, but After Effects handles the bitmaps better and is a lot more powerful even with a bit more of a learning curve. I also love the manipulation of flat layers in 3D space to get a ‘multiplane’ effect.

This is the same way they do the Motion Comics, which was one of my inspirations for this class. Artwork being re-purposed for animation.

AFX character animation tests from Brian Kolm on Vimeo.

Last we needed to come up with a simple idea for a short piece of animation in which the students would draw the art which would be brought into the computer and manipulated creating a whole story. After the class agreed to some story elements, everyone sat down to work on some drawings of what characters would look like. The drawings were placed up on the board and assistant artist Chris Conroy and I combined ideas into final designs.

The final result was always planned to be more of a motion comic, but with the art being created specifically for animating. To speed things up I roughed out a simple storyboard and the students worked on making the art which was scanned after class and prepared to be structured into an animation. A big thank to Graham Wong for his help on Friday working in After Effects to animate the drawings and having some of the students assist him.

The voice of the Nanny Ninja is Heather Plunkett and the lip assignments were done in JLipSync, and older java script based program. It’s a bummer since it only uses 8bit mono .WAV files which are very outdated by today’s standards, but it did still get the job done.

The student really did an amazing  job of creating some fantastic art that helped tell our story. GOOD WORK GUYS!

Sadly time and technical difficulties have prevented the finished video to appear yet, but it will be finished up in the early part of July with the missing art and missing music, but a close to finished version is presented here as a Work in Progress.

Note: I also found a few drawings did not get scanned in the last rush to finish on Friday and so they will have to be replaced with something else. No art was left out except for that reason. A final version will be on-line in the next week or two with a few missing drawings, music and sound effects — but will look close to the video below.

STAY TOONED FOR THE FINAL VIDEO!

This week was drawings Mystical Mythical Magical Beasts and it was a big challenge since we were drawing more realistic style animals.

A big shout out has to go to my support: Chris Conroy, Benjy Wachter and Nomi Kane as well as the director of the museums educational program and the staff.

I decided that the best way to show off the work of the students is a video slide show. The 11 kids did so much work and this was the best way to show it off.

I also got to create an animated intro for the slide show too, which was done with Chris Conroy. I did the 3D model, animation and compositing and Chris did a series of pencil drawings that I used as texture maps and 2D ‘cut-outs.’ The 3D work was done in Blender 3D, using the export plug-in to bring it into After Effects where the other elements were added. I am really pleased at how it came out.

The music is by Kevin MacLeod who licenses’ it for free through the Creative Commons. by http://incompetech.com/

The examples on the slide-show feature drawing exercises and challenges as well as the students final drawing of creature they invented themselves.

as a bonus here is a better version of the intro animation I produced for the slide show.

Mystical Mythical Magical Beasties opening animation from Brian Kolm on Vimeo.

An animatic is a pre-visualization of what a finished movie would look like by cutting together the storyboard drawings in sync with some audio on video/film.

The class was split into two teams to create two versions of art to match the soundtrack. Each team was headed by one of my high-school interns Benjy (team B) and Rena (team A). To create the final product we listened to a 1 min clip that was purposely vague as to the setting or exact situation. I had prepped for the class by having some colleges record a simple script as well as going and breaking down the audio tracks to get an idea of how much time things took.

The voices for all the animatics are Adam Abrams and Christine Moody. Here is the sound track breakdown that I created in after effects along with my own version of a storyboard to match it.

CAM Cartoon Boot Camp (week 1, 2010) Storyboard to Animatic audio with sample animatic. from Brian Kolm on Vimeo.

Thanks to the help of Benjy, Rena, Graham, and Nomi Kane we were able to scan the storyboards which I then placed in after effects. Two movies (one for each team) were rendered and additional audio was added by way of Apple’s Garage Band.

The music was from Kevin MacLeod, who offers the use of it royalty-free though the Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a system for creative folks to set how they would like others to use their work. This means that there are folks out their who allow others to use their work for their own projects in different ways.

Here is what we ended up creating in the 10 hours of class we had this week…

Final Team A animatic

Final Team B animatic

June 7 – 11: Character Creation and Design
Ages 10-15, 12pm to 2pm
- CARTOON ART MUSEUM, San Francisco (link to registration)

Students learn the steps to developing their own character for their own projects. This class will cover figure construction, costume, personality, back-story, and creating a model sheet as well as a final illustration.

June 14 – 18: From Storyboard to Animatics
Ages 10-15, 12pm to 2pm
- CARTOON ART MUSEUM, San Francisco (link to registration)

In this class students learn to draw storyboards just like the ones used in movies and television shows. Once the storyboards are created students will develop them into an animated piece. The class will explore drawing, camera moves and lighting, timing and communication, and applying simple animation and camera moves to give a simulation of what a final film would look like.

June 21 – 25: Fantasy Creatures and Mythical Beasts
Ages 10-15, 12pm to 2pm
- CARTOON ART MUSEUM, San Francisco (link to registration)

Gryphons, unicorns, and dragons, oh my! Students learn to draw mythical beasties from around the world and even make up their own. Some of the highlights will be: drawing creatures on all fours, drawing simplified fur and scales, and setting the scene and mood.

June 28 – July 2: Animation and Motion Comics
Ages 10-15, 12pm to 2pm
- CARTOON ART MUSEUM, San Francisco (link to registration)

Thanks to modern technology we have seen a new art form, the motion comics. This class will allow students to learn how to take their own comics and artwork and animate them in both traditional and digital methods. The final video will be available for the world to see on the internet.

July 6-9: Cartooning: Heroes & Villains
Kids on Camp – Chabot College, Hayward CA
Note: Only one class in a full day of fun. (link to registration)

From dashing comic book superheroes to beautiful Amazon queens with giant swords, to an evil half-man-half snake or a threatening villain who wants to destroy the world, what would stories be like without the good guys and the bad guys? Explore how to design your very own heroes and villain characters. You’ll learn how to draw the character’s features, design costumes and props, create a story behind your characters, and end by creating a presentation illustration to show your family and friends.
Materials fee: $10

July 19-23: Cartooning: Monsters & Critters
Kids on Camp – Chabot College, Hayward CA
Note: Only one class in a full day of fun. (link to registration)

Whether it’s a graceful unicorn, a slithering dragon or a more modern beast, we have been telling stories of fanciful creatures of all sorts since the beginning of time. This class will feature lessons on drawing classic beasties, the structure and construction of four- legged animals, and designing original creatures as well as a technique for presenting a final drawing.
Materials fee: $10

August 2–6: Schulz Museum, Santa Rosa CA
(link to registration)

August 4: Making Mini Comics
WEDNESDAY – 1–4pm

August 2–6: LEGO Animation
MONDAY–FRIDAY – 9am–12:30pm

Use computers and LEGOs to create your own short films. Build sets and characters with LEGOs. Add lights, cameras, computers, and action to create and edit a movie.

The classes are aimed at students ages 10-14 who are looking for something that goes beyond the basics. The classes move fast and they are designed for kids who are all ready working on their craft to start with (i.e. intermediate)

The classes are going to be lots of fun and really exciting I think.

June 7 – 11: Character Creation and Design

Learn the engineering of character design: Construction, Costume, Store, and more! This class will focus on learning the structure so that you can draw what you imagine.

June 14 – 18: From Storyboard to Animatics

Students learn to draw storyboards that will be ‘filmed’ into a animatic with sound and posted on the web. Here is the one we did last year…

June 21 – 25: Fantasy Creatures and Mythical Beasts

Gryphons, unicorns, and dragons, oh my! Students learn to draw mythical beasties from around the world and even make up their own. Some of the highlights will be: drawing creatures on all fours, drawing simplified fur and scales, and setting the scene and mood.

June 28 – July 2: Animation and Motion Comics

Thanks to modern technology we have seen a new art form, the motion comics. This class will allow students to learn how to take their own comics and artwork and animate them in both traditional and digital methods. The final video will be available for the world to see on the internet.