It’s the Sunday after the CCS Cartooning Studio week-long summer workshop. And this time, rather than just watching Robyn do her Program Coordinator thing from the sidelines, I was right in the thick of it. I took the week off work, paid my tuition, and went through the program just like a for-real student.
It was a ton of work—non-stop comics dusk till dawn—from the time I woke up in the morning to the time I went to sleep at night. Five blissful days of comics boot camp. Five days away from work. (Unpaid leave really hurts the ol’ bank account, but you do what you gotta do.)
And at the end of the day (week), what did I get out of it? Well, I got a new book out of it (more on that soon). And I earned two studio credits: fully double the credits I needed to officially graduate from SVA and get my BFA. I feel like a squeedly squeedly waa waa rock star (sound effects ™ and © Adriana Yugovich, a hilarious cartoonist and fellow workshopper)!
The past few Sundays, a gaggle of folks from the CCS cartoonist community—including Alec Longstreth, Jon Chad, Joe Lambert, Gabby Schulz, Morgan Pielli, and Penina Gal—have been carpooling up to Wilder, Vt., to the park and swimming hole to play ultimate frisbee and jump in the frigid water, flailing around until we either warm up or go numb. It’s been our replacement summer activity since we quit playing soccer at Ratcliffe Park. Today, some of the remaining Cartooning Studio workshop folks were planning to come along for the ride. Unfortunately, thunderclouds gathered and threatened to lightning us all if we even thought about jumping in the river.
So instead, we exodused across the street to the just-opened Forrest B’s School of Pool. As far as I know, we were the first official patrons. Pool tables dominated the ample floor space, but alongside them stood: a foosball table, a ping pong table, a table devoted to scrabble, and—to Alec Longstreth’s amazement and delight, a Star Wars: Episode I pinball machine. I may have been away from arcades too long, but it was the most advanced pinball machine I’d ever seen. It had interactive video. And a lot of Jar Jar Binks.
Alec Longstreth is a Star Wars: Episode I pinball wizard.
Fun!
The comic I came up with and thumbnailed during the workshop is called 6:59. It’s about a girl who wakes up one morning to discover she has the power of superhuman speed. And it really messes her head up.
More sketches, thumbnails, and musings about this work in progress to come!