d_morris

 Hello, you've stumbled onto the journal of Dan Morris.  I'm a cartoonist based in the southeastern United States also looking to getting into teaching comics or sequential art on a college level.  Feel free to add me to your friends list or follow me on your RSS feed.    I mostly write about comics, movies, and art on here and how the three relate to each other.  Sometimes I talk about life which doesn't involve comics which usually does involve comics.  If I don't add you back, don't worry.  I probably haven't seen seen that you've added me.  I recommend adding a comment to let me know you have added me!  Tell me a little about yourself and I'll add you as soon as you have.  Anyways enjoy the writing and I hope not to be boring.  Feel free to comment and get some discussion going.  That's what this journal meant to do.

Move to Massachusetts was successful.  Christa and I with a few bumps have moved into our first home.  Still looking for work.  Also getting ready to hop back on the comics wagon.  Its been too long.  Posting about comics should resume shortly.

Anyways, awhile ago my friend Annah asked me about five things that she associates with me awhile ago so I thought that I should be kind enough to respond.

King City

I'm a huge fan of King City and in particular it's creator Brandon Graham.  I discovered Brandon's work when I worked at Heroes Aren't Hard to Find and the first issue of his series Multiple Warheadz came out.  Anyways, I fell in love with his work after reading that first issue. There's no one really making comics like he does today.  Also when I read his comics for the first time, it came across like a guy who was making comics that was reading the comics I had been reading when I was growing up.  Brandon helped me realize that it was okay to like Dragonball Z and to tell people that I thought certain "important" comics just didn't do it for me.  King City is Brandon's longest work to date and will be released by Image Comics in a huge collection sometime this month.  It's well worth the read.


Old Movies
There was a brief period where I didn't want to do comics, I wanted to make movies and that instilled a love in me for cinema.  I took a film class in high school that exposed me among other things to Akira Kurosawa, Kevin Smith's Clerks, and Chinatown.  I really loved that class.  In my teens, I had a huge appreciation for the film brats generation of the 1970s American directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.  As I've grown as an individual, my love for cinema has continued to grow too (along with my love of comics).  My favorite period right as I'm going through The Criterion Collection's films are Japanese films from the Fifties through 70s.  Directors like Akira Kurosawa, Shohei Immamura, and Kaneto Shindo really made these wonderful, unconventional films that used genre films to make bold statements about Japanese society.  Really though I love older films because there's a real sense of discovery there absent from many modern films.

Chocolate Milk
There's not real story here.  I like chocolate milk a lot.  I tend to drink it whenever I can.  Its probably one reason why I'm fat now.

Dragonforce
Dragonforce?  I don't think I've ever talked about Dragonforce!  My only experience with Dragonforce is seriously the end of Guitar Hero and man, that is one hard song to play.  I talk a lot about metal and have started listening to a lot of it in the last 5-6 months but Dragonforce is a little outside the stuff I usually listen to on my Ipod.

The Color Green
I'm sure when a lot of people think of the color green, they might look at it as a rather sickly color.  For me, it's a rather peaceful color.  Growing up, I got stuck going on a lot of camping trips and getting stuck spending most of my weekends in the woods.  I spent lot of time by myself on those trips and while at the time I did not enjoy them, looking back those were very peaceful times in a rather emotionally turbulent adolescence.  I also grew up around computers in the 80s and computer screens used to be black and green so that's a possible reason I find those colors I find rather comforting.

I'm moving to Boston in April folks.  Also my computer is fried so I have to save and get a new one.  Thought I should let people know I'm not dead and I still come here. Oh and Christa and I have found the place we're getting married at and set a date.  We'll be getting married at a haunted summer camp.  Sadly, I could not convince her it was a good idea that Al Green should officiate the ceremony.

So the big news in comics last month is that Wizard Magazine is ending publication.  I've read plenty of places where people are pretty much going "Ding Dong the witch is dead".  I'm not going to disagree with those sentiments.  The management apparently didn't tell anyone that they were ending the print publication to move to web operations.  I worked for a certain comic book store whose convention they tried on numerous occasions to put out of business.  This all goes without talking about a lot of the frat boy attitudes and negative stereotypes that the magazine had perpetuated.

Yet I will say that if it weren't for Wizard, I wouldn't be the creator I am today.  I learned a lot about the history of the industry from the magazine.  It was more skewed towards Superhero publishing history with occasional nods to underground comics and newspaper books but it got me interested in the history of the medium.  I can also safely say that my interest in alternative comics and books from publishers like Dark Horse and Slave Labor came from reading Wizard.  In the early years, there was a section called Palmer's Picks which featured a spotlight on a  particular alternative and small press book each month.  When it came time to do my high school senior project, my years of reading Palmer's Picks became invaluable writing that classic gem of the early millenium "Comics aren't for Kids and why!" type paper.  It exposed me to Jason Lutes' Jar of Fools, the work of the Hernandez Brothers, and many others. It also helped that I had a great local store in Heroes Aren't Hard to Find but I was fortunate in that respect.  Wizard also had a really well written anime and manga section for a few years written by former Carl Gustav Horn, who has worked for both Viz and Dark Horse's manga departments, as well as other individuals.  I discovered a lot of great manga through this column including one of my all time favorite comics, Katsuhiro Otomo's Domu.  If it wasn't for this section, I would never have watched Evangelion, Giant Robo, and even some shoujo stuff when I was younger.  Like I said, it if wasn't for Wizard I don't think I would have ever discovered this kind of stuff.

Yeah Wizard was a pretty awful magazine and it's been a blight on the comics industry for awhile.  Yet I can safely say that despite it's efforts to do so, I became a pretty well rounded comic book reader because of it.

In more positive news, I'm currently working on something with my friend Laur Uy (psychoe ).  I am not drawing anything for it but I am doing the writing.  However, I'm making suggestions for some of the visuals and storytelling.  Still I trust Laur as a storyteller and I'm leaving the lion's share of those decisions to her.  I'm not going to say much because well I am sure we'll post something soon but know that I'm really excited for it.

As for projects I'm doing solo, things are going slowly.  Like I said last entry, December and January were tough months for me confidence wise.  I put down my pencil and pens just to figure things out.  I haven't entirely sorted things out but I'm a lot more confident than I was then.  I'm doing a lot of writing and trying to come up with shorter pieces to do so I can get my confidence back up.  I have something I'm thinking of right now but I want to write it out so I can get the feel while doing character designs.  I remember a quote by Kim Dietch and I know I'm paraphrasing here where he talks about how if you can write, you can make great comics.  I agree with this sentiment.  There are a lot of empty comics that have slick visuals but I think the best comics are ones that clearly were well thought out at the writing stage. 

Of course this doesn't mean I don't think visuals are unimportant in a comic.  If anything my current attitude has only reinforced my opinion that visuals need to reinforce the story.  It's been really reinforced by watching the movies I've been watching lately.  I'm trying to take some inspiration from them not so much in trying to make my comics more "film like" which I think is a bad idea, but seeing if there are visual ideas and techniques I can try to translate into comics.  Comics is it's own medium and trying to make comics more like a movie or any other medium isn't what cartoonists should be aspiring to towards.

I promise next post, I'll have some sketch book stuff.

Hello world, I'm not dead.  I've been sort of hiding for awhile a little because I've been in a funk but mostly because I've been busy at my job.  I've sort of fallen out of reading comics.  Not because I hate them (though there was a period I wanted nothing to do with them), but right now my interests and focuses lie elsewhere.  I'm sure I'll come back and I've heard of plenty of artists who have detached themselves from comics before coming back.  It's all part of life. 

Lately I've been watching a lot of movies and in fact, I've sort of become addicted to buying DVDs from the Criterion Collection.  The Criterion Collection for those not in the know is basically high editions of a variety of films ranging from art house to cult to foreign movies.  They come with booklets that contain essays, loaded with great extras, and well worth owning.  It's thanks to the Criterion Collection that I've been able to explore world, classic, and cult cinema.  On their fantastic website, they get artists, film makers, musicians, etc. to talk about ten movies from the Collection that they really enjoy.  Since I've been watching them lately, here's a list of 10 films from the Criterion Collection that I enjoy and I hope if you haven't seen them, you check them out too.
( Here's ten movies I'm glad that someone has put out in really awesome editions... )

This is my all time favorite panel in comics.  Seriously if you ever had to explain comics theory to someone on how words and pictures worked together this panel is perfect for that.  In fact, I'm sure I've showed this panel before saying this.  I can't wait to show it to my students.

Hey folks,
I've been thinking about this and I'm going to open up for commissions.  I need some money so I can pay bills and repair my computer.  Here's what I'm willing to do

• Ladies
• Guys
• Robots
• Fight scenes
• Superheroes
• Fan Art
• Landscapes

If you have an original character you want me to draw, please provide reference for them so I can draw them.  However here's things I'm not willing to do

• Anything sexually explicit
• Furries

Other than that I'm pretty fair game. For now I'm only doing pen and ink, with some grey marker tones. Price is negotiable based on what you're looking for me to do.  I will ship it to anyone in the US.  I'm not shipping outside the US.  If you're curious about what you would be getting please refer to my deviantart account to see some of my work.

http://danmorris.deviantart.com/

If interested please contact me at d.morris82 @ gmail.com

So am I am sure some of you have heard, I'll be teaching a continuing education class at Central Piedmont Community College starting this fall involving comics.  I'll be teaching the first two classes going towards a Visual Narrative certificate.


Art by Richard Thompson

It will be strange being on the other end of that desk.  I know I'm ready for it though and I've been making lessons plans for the class.  Since I've been told that these classes are part of the continuing education classes at CPCC, classes designed for adults who want to learn new skills versus classes that go towards a degree, the classes won't be as strenuous as the ones I took at SCAD. 

However, the head of my department wants these classes to work towards creating a 2 associates degree for comics so I'm basically laying the groundwork for this program.  The first two classes will be what were Intro to Comics and Vis 1 on the same day.  I'm not wild about doing that but it's how the program is set up for now which I don't have a whole lot of control over it.  Next time we do these classes, I will probably talk to my boss to get a Materials and Techniques kind of class set up before the Vis 1 kind of class.  It's going to be a tough road for these students especially if some of them have not drawn comics before but I will do my best to get them through it.

We'll be using two books, one in each class.  I'll be using Jessica Abel and Matt Madden's Drawing Words and Writing Pictures for my intro type class.  I haven't read this book but I will in the coming weeks.  I've been to the website and looked through it (I'll be getting my copy soon) and it seems really geared towards the variety of approaches in comics.  Knowing both Abel and Madden's skills as cartoonists I trust that the book will be fine. 

For my Visual Narrative class, we'll picking apart Jim Rugg's Street Angel.  I've been a big fan of this book ever since I read it and I think it's the perfect book for a young cartoonist to pick apart.  Rugg is a pretty inventive and savvy cartoonist.  I really want students by the end of the class to be able to pick apart comics and think of how to actively engage the medium.  There's alot you can do with the medium and I want students to really understand the potential of it.

I'll also be posting over at blogspot for the class.  I'm going to start interviewing a variety of cartoonists about topics related to the subjects I'll be teaching in class.  I want students to hear from other cartoonists about process and craft.  While I know alot about comics, there are areas where my knowledge and skill sets are limited.  Thankfully, I'm not the only person making comics and I want my students to be able to get inside people's heads.  I'll also post excerpts from my lectures on there so that people who can't take the class can see what will be going on in the class.

I'm really excited to start the class.  They begin in a few weeks but I have a lot of work still left to do.  However, I'm sure it will get done and things will be okay.

Folks just want to let people know that I probably won't be online as much for the next few weeks.  The power cord for my laptop is more or less useless.  For the last few weeks, my cord will power my computer but it won't charge the battery.   I know it's not the battery as I used the power cord from my brother and uncle's laptops and it charged just fine.  At this point, the power just cuts out randomly and keeps restarting my computer everytime it cuts out.  That can't be good for my computer so I've just decided to not use it so I don't mess it up more.

I'm pretty annoyed, not at the computer but more at myself. This is the second cord I've had to get in the last three months for my laptop.  Instead of figuring out which model laptop I had, I got a generic brand replacement cord that had removeable adaptors (so that the plug could work with a variety of laptops) and a really short cord.  I paid way too much for the replacement and that's what I get for being impatient.  After about 3 months of use where I overestimated how far the cord would reach or accidentally pull the adaptor out, the cord is pretty much dead. 

Luckily two things have happened that makes my feel slightly better.  One, I know which model laptop I have and I can get a replacement cord that is much, much cheaper.  Two, I start my new job next week and I'll be able to get a new one as soon as I get paid.  Until then I'm on my folks computer which is pretty old.  It works great for check e-mail but that's about it.  So my time online will be limited. 

This shouldn't affect my submitting things to certain people but I thought I would give people a heads up.