{"id":15,"date":"2009-07-02T08:10:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T08:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2009\/07\/02\/a-visit-to-the-center-for-cartoon-studies\/"},"modified":"2009-07-02T08:10:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T08:10:00","slug":"a-visit-to-the-center-for-cartoon-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"A Visit to The Center for Cartoon Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"What’s it like to spend every day drawing comics in the company of and under the tutelage of other comics pros? Last November my fiancé Gareth Hinds<\/a> and I got a taste of this life when we spent the better part of a day at the Center for Cartoon Studies<\/a> in White River Junction, Vt. We were there to give a joint lecture (our first!) to CCS students as part of their "Professional Practices" course, at the invitation of CCS Fellow Alec Longstreth<\/a>. What we quickly discovered was that our hour-and-a-half talk could easily have been twice as long, given the amount of material we had to cover. Gareth talked about his experiences with both self-publishing graphic novels and working with a traditional book publisher (Candlewick), the process of how he creates his work, what digital tools he’s currently working with, and more. I talked, as a retailer, about what trends I see in the world of comics and graphic novels (in particular what I see as it pertains to kids), what I look for in a book as a buyer, what seems to be selling, what really irks me, etc. I brought examples of both good and bad graphic novels currently on the market for kids, plus a handful of comic book-inspired picture books to pass around in an informal "show and tell." <\/p>\n

After our lecture we got to chat briefly with James Sturm (affording me the opportunity to gush, again<\/a>, about my love for Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow<\/a><\/em>). When I asked James what he’d been working on recently, he explained that he’d just completed a how-to book for kids about drawing comics that had been a unique challenge for him, one greatly aided by the input of his own children. That book, which you’ve already guessed if you read my blog post from last week<\/a>, is Adventures in Cartooning<\/em>, a book that I’m calling one of my favorite books of the year. (As an aside, I’m also saying that about When You Reach Me<\/a><\/em> by Rebecca Stead. Have you read it yet?? It is SO COMPLETELY WONDERFUL!! But I digress…)<\/p>\n

After our short talk with James, Alec swept Gareth and me off on a tour of CCS and walked us through the gist of the program, which looks like one SUPER COOL "school" if I do say so myself! CCS makes its home in the small town of White River Junction, a short drive from Hanover, N.H., home of Dartmouth College, and an even shorter drive from The Norwich Bookstore<\/a> in Norwich, Vt. (one of my favorite independent bookstores — stop in and say hi to Penny and Liza for me). This is an area I came to know quite well during my days as the Children’s Book Buyer for the Dartmouth Bookstore, which was then an independent but is now (sadly!) a Barnes and Noble. At the time (eight years ago), White River Junction<\/a> was a rather depressed place — a small railroad town with a few unique jewels in its battered little crown, but too few attractions to draw many visitors. The arrival of CCS and a number of other creative collectives, though, have helped to breathe a bit more life into the place, making it now a much bigger draw for artists and independent businesses like the chic and cozy Tuckerbox Café<\/a> (where Alec, Gareth, and I enjoyed a very tasty lunch). The town even received a few recent accolades in Budget Travel Magazine<\/a>, who called it one of the "10 Coolest Small Towns" (population under 10,000) in the country.<\/p>\n

By following the very quaint-sounding directions "At the Polka Dot diner, veer right," it’s easy to enter White River Junction and make your way to the front door of the CCS central hub, housed in a former department store called (seriously) Colody’s Surprise Department Store. ("Surprise! We’re a department<\/em> store! Sorry if you came here seeking groceries.")<\/p>\n

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If Colody’s complete name doesn’t have a kicky comic book feel to it, I don’t know what does. Even the fonts on this old sign (which is hanging up inside CCS) scream comics to me — especially the  "FOR THE ENTIRE" bit.<\/p>\n

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The room below is a lecture room on the first floor of the main CCS building. And that’s me, standing at the front of the room, gesturing about… something.<\/p>\n

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In the hallway outside that lecture room hangs a small, changing gallery of original art by great comics artists.<\/p>\n

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The page below was drawn by Craig Thompson<\/a> of Blankets<\/a><\/em> and Goodbye, Chunky Rice<\/a><\/em> fame. I’m looking forward to the future publication of his book Habibi<\/em>, of which there are periodic sneak peeks on Craig’s blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Here we are now in the basement of CCS where it’s a clear a LOT of work gets done — some of it digital (see the assorted computers and scanners in use below)…<\/p>\n

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and some of it manual, as these various book-binding apparatuses would suggest.<\/p>\n

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Now we’ve left the main CCS building and walked a short distance up a side street to a different building. Of course, you wouldn’t know we went outside and walked a short distance, because I was too interested in our conversation with Alec to have remembered to have taken any photos during that part of the tour. (Oops.) This building is home to "The Inkubator." This is studio space where students (and maybe recent alumni…? clearly I should have written this post last November!) can ruminate and sketch and research and sketch and ruminate and sketch and so on.<\/p>\n

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The place was empty when we were there so it had this sort of "holy" feeling to it — quiet and filled with the glow of softly filtered light. (Insert sound of angels singing here. Singing about comics, that is.)
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I like the "no frills" look of this space, below. To me it says: we come here to draw comics. PERIOD. Distractions be damned!<\/p>\n

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Evidence of a work in progress…<\/p>\n

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Ideas percolating…<\/p>\n

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Evidence of research. (Comic book clutter has such great visual appeal, I think.)<\/p>\n

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From the Inkubator we walked over to an old fire station that’s now home to the Main Street Museum (which has been called, according to the CCS website, "Vermont’s strangest museum") and The Schulz Library<\/a>, which houses an extensive collection of comic books, graphic novels, and books about cartooning, plus zines and mini-comics too.<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately the Schulz Library was closed the day we were there, so we didn’t get to explore the shelves, but I did at least manage to press my lens up to the glass and take an interior shot for you.<\/p>\n

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And that pretty much concludes the photos of our tour, apart from this one very important shot of our tour guide, below. That’s Alec on the left and Gareth on the right.<\/p>\n

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I say this shot is "important" because (while it may not be clear at first glance) I think it says something about the dedication that cartoonists, long overlooked as "artists," often have to their less-appreciated-than-it-ought-to-be craft. See that beard Alec is sporting? Starting with a clean head and face slate<\/a> in August ’08, Alec vowed not to cut his hair or beard again until he was completely finished with his in-progress graphic novel Basewood<\/em>. The race now going on between his beard and his book is, sadly, a bit one-sided, because the beard (and the hair on his head) is allowed to grow all day, every day, while Alec has to spend many of his<\/em> days doing work that currently earns him a living, and as such the book progresses only in those "off hours" when he finds time for penciling and inking. The good news, though, is that Basewood<\/em> is indeed moving forward, perhaps in part because the length of Alec’s hair is driving him slightly crazy. Whatever the case, I applaud Alec’s very hairy commitment to the cause, knowing all too well that’s it hard to carve out time for your creative pursuits when your "paying the rent pursuits" have a tendency to interfere.<\/p>\n

You can chart the remarkable progress of Alec’s hair\/beard growth on his "Basewood Beard" Flickr set<\/a> and chart the progress of Basewood<\/em> (about 60% completed!) on his blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On a personal note, it was really gratifying for Gareth and me to give a presentation together at a place that attracts as many esteemed lecturers as does CCS, and to be able to publicly display the overlap between our insights into the worlds of books and comics. We came to the book business from two very different places (him from the worlds of illustration, comics and self-publishing; me from the worlds of education and retail), but in our daily at-home conversations we see how neatly these two things complement one another. It was a treat to get to show some other folks that fact too, and immensely gratifying to be praised by CCS students after our jam-packed-with-information session. Each of us has given plenty of lectures and presentations on our own, but it’s nice to know now that, yes, we’re actually pretty good at doing this together.<\/p>\n

SO, for this great opportunity, those warm fuzzy feelings, and a terrific tour of CCS, we owe a super belated "thank you" to Alec for having us visit his class and for saying on his blog that our lecture was "awesome<\/a>," and to James Sturm who suggested Alec contact us in the first place. For the record, we think that CCS is AWESOME too! Who wouldn’t love a school that coaches you on a daily basis in the nuanced art of drawing comics, then awards you an illustrated certificate<\/a>, drawn by someone like Jim Rugg<\/a>, when you graduate??<\/p>\n

To read more about CCS and<\/em> have a good laugh, download the PDF<\/a> of their "How To Booklet," which is a fantastically fun bit of literature created by Kevin Huizenga<\/a>, whose book Curses<\/a><\/em> is on my list of favorite graphic novels for grown-ups. To see more photos of CCS, search for the keywords "Center for Cartoon Studies" on Flickr<\/a>. To learn why the art of comics really is an ART, read Adventures in Cartooning<\/em> by James Sturm, Alexis Frederick-Frost, and Andrew Arnold, then move on (or "graduate") to Understanding Comics<\/a><\/em> and Making Comics<\/a><\/em>, both by Scott McCloud. OR just go read Shaun Tan’s The Arrival<\/a><\/em>. If that book doesn’t demonstrate the extent to which sequential is "ART," I don’t know what does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s it like to spend every day drawing comics in the company of and under the tutelage of other comics pros? Last November my fiancé Gareth Hinds and I got a taste of this life when we spent the better part of a day at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt. We were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}