| Why do they need so many shelves then? |
[May. 8th, 2008|09:15 pm] |
I must say I'm really disappointed by the state of Abbotsford's public libraries. I've been meaning to get myself back into the mode of a card-carrying library-user for a whole year now- but I finally checked out my nearest branch (Clearbrook) and was sorely disappointed. The building is nice, sure, and the location is excellent, but I swear the shelves are at most only half full of books! I went searching for a book- any book- that dealt with Han Dynasty China (or more generally, ancient China) and found nothing. In either the adult or kids' sections.
No matter, thought I, this is only the Clearbrook branch. Clearbrook is merely a small neighbourhood within the municipality of Abbotsford. I had previously driven past a bright colourful building with FVRL (Fraser Valley Regional Library) on the outside in story-high letters. "Read! Learn! Play!" it said beneath the bold letters. I found that building again, expecting to find Abbotsford's main branch library. Not so! The whole building is in fact just the administrative headquarters for the regional library system! A "helpful" employee suggested I check out their other Abbotsford locations, the "medium sized" branch in downtown Abbotsford, or the Clearbrook branch, their largest. Stuff that! I'd just been to Clearbrook! I've seen bigger libraries in the middle of the prairies!
The only library system I've seen that I can remember being more disappointed by was the Tower Hamlets "Idea Stores" in the UK. They have to call them "Idea Stores," you see, not because they're trying to be cutting edge with lots of computers and innovative strategies for integrating with the community, but because they hardly have any books inside. Libraries have books inside, "Idea Stores" have... empty space for ideas to float around or something I guess. The architecture looks great in background shots of city councilors shaking hands with wealthy philanthropists, but no one seems much concerned with putting honest-to-goodness books in the hands of East Londoners.
Or Abbotsfordians, apparently. Maybe I'll have better luck if I drive to Langley? I don't want to have to drive all the way to Vancouver just to find a flipping library book. Come on Fraser Valley! With your fancy monster homes and your SUVs and your Starbuckses! You can do better!!! ;__; |
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| This just in: Stuff About Me |
[May. 5th, 2008|07:47 pm] |
A few quick announcements that I should have posted last week, but I'm so busy rushing around these days that I haven't even had time.
I was mentioned on The Comics Reporter summary of Stumptown! You can read the article, or just the bit they wrote about me: "Vancouver's Jonathon Dalton probably had the closest thing to a buzz book, a full-color work in an accordion-style format that other cartoonists kept promoting." See? Told you I was practically the buzz book.
I was also on Inkstuds Radio for the second time last week. This time the show wasn't all about me, though, I was on the air with Jeff Ellis and it was all about our Vancouver-based comics collective, Cloudscape. I haven't even had time to listen to it yet. Hope I sound okay.
Fingers crossed, I hope to return to a more regular blogging (and comicking) schedule soon. |
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| Still a nerd, but once you leave high school it becomes okay. |
[May. 3rd, 2008|11:49 pm] |
It's a meme. Everybody's doing it.
I'm glad Al Gore hadn't invented webcomics yet in 1995. You would not like to see the travesties I would have thrust upon you in those days. Or blogging, for that matter. Nobody wants to hear me whine about my crummy art teacher or being the only grade 12 student who went on the band trip to Disneyland.
No doubt in another 13 years I will hate everything I am writing today. Oh the horror! |
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| Sleeper hit? |
[Apr. 28th, 2008|09:02 pm] |
Oh where to start? How about "best convention ever?" So much has happened in the last two days. I want to tell you everything, but I'll just try and hit the highlights so as not to lose you before my big news. Rest assured, it's worth it.
The crew from Cloudscape (our Vancouver comics collective) drove down to Portland in two cars. In attendance were ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) japanese_cowboy, spikecomix, mothos, and Severine. Many wacky hijinks took place. The convention was great- lots of truly amazing comics, lots of people I knew of or had met on the internet, and so on.
Stumptown is a really great convention. I've decided to continue my embargo on name-dropping because I don't want to sound stuck-up or like a drooling fan-boy or leave people off of my list. Suffice it to say I met artists I admired, found out in some cases that the feelings are reciprocal, and walked away with stronger friendships, new people to keep in touch with, and lots of awesome books. I said once before that conventions are if nothing else a great way to get a sense of how you truly fit into the industry. I fit a lot better now than I did two Stumptowns ago (the only other time I've gone). I'm still a minor player, but ain't nothing wrong with that. I'm a player.
But now for the big news. For this I'll have to name drop, but I think he'd be okay with this so here goes.
Scott McCloud was two or three tables down from me at the convention. After waiting for a while I chose my moment and went over to show him a copy of Lords of Death and Life. I'd met him once before at a book signing in Vancouver last year so though he didn't recognize me on sight he did know who I was. I hoped that, since my book was somewhat inspired by Understanding Comics, he might think it was kind of neat. More than that, he thought it was brilliant. He flipped though it, lavishing compliments on it, making comparisons to the web version of the comic which he has obviously read, and then turned to the growing queue at his table, stretched out the accordion fold and said, "Look, everybody! If you're going to do a comic based on Pre-Columbian picture books, this is how you do it!" He then proceeded to spend the next day and a half showing off my book to everybody who came to his table and pointing out where my table was.
Needless to say, I sold out of the fifteen copies I'd managed to cobble together before the convention. I sold my second last copy to a girl with Mayan ancestry and my demonstration copy to a friend of hers. People talk about how indy conventions often have a "sleeper hit" that by the end of the convention everyone is talking about. I... I think I may have been that sleeper hit.
Oh there's more I could tell you. There was the little girl (about four years old?) who thought the life-sized cardboard cut-out of Connie Sakura I had at my table was the coolest thing ever and kept trying to have conversations with her ("why is she so bored???" said she) There was the wallet my friends and I managed to return to its rightful owner after she left it on a streetcar seat, there were the suprising number of people who thought they'd probably heard about Fablewood... I can't even tell you the best thing that happened at the convention (What? Better than Scott McCloud's shout-out?!?) but chickens that aren't hatched, you know. Stay tuned!
P.S. If you're reading this and you already know my secret better-than-shout-out news, Shhhhhhh!! ;-) |
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| So close and yet so very far. |
[Apr. 22nd, 2008|10:01 pm] |
Twelve dollars worth of ink? Half an hour to 45 minutes assembly time? Two dollars worth of tape??? It's becoming increasingly clear that my ideal method for printing Lords of Death and Life is just not on. This thing just isn't going to happen, especially with less than three days left before I head out to Portland.
I will have a couple of copies with me you can flip through if you're coming to the convention but that's it. Sorry. That, and plenty of copies of A Mad Tea-Party. When I get back home after I'll have to really pound the pavement in search of a cheaper printing method. The lovely accordion fold might need to be sacrificed. Heck, I'll print the thing with Ka-Blam if it comes to that.
It's such a shame too. It looks so nice in print! I mean I'm not trying to sound smug. Most of these pages I have only just printed out on paper for the first time. Ohhh the colours! They came out better than I'd hoped! I so wanted to take this thing with me to Stumptown.
I don't know how I can afford now to do a print run of LODAL though. I blew my budget and then some making the dozen copies I have sitting in pieces on my kitchen table. Crap. |
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| I've gone post crazy! |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|09:32 am] |
THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. jdalton
2. jonathondalton
3. jdalton (I'm so boring)
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. I still have all my own teeth
2. People hardly ever notice that my ears are crooked
3. I no longer mispronounce the letter R.
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. I weigh 10kg more than I did before I bought a car
2. I have too much hair
3. I don't have enough hair
THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. Irish
2. German by way of Russia
3. Polish
THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. Calling people up on the phone
2. Crossing international boundaries
3. High school
THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1. Coffee and/or chocolate
2. My internets
3. CBC News
THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. Glasses
2. Black courderoy pants
3. Purple-ish shirt
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR MUSICAL ARTISTS:
1. Radiohead
2. Nitin Sawhney
3. Feist
THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP:
1. A relationship
2. That lasts longer
3. Than a week
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order):
1. I survived a 7.3 earthquake
2. I once ate cow brains
3. I have voted in a country in which I was not a citizen.
THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE PREFERRED SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. Similar interests to mine
2. niceness (nice girls are nice)
3. Faces are very important. No girls without faces, please.
THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. Drawing comics, duh.
2. Pretending I know stuff about history
3. Traveling (when I have money).
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1. I still haven't shaved this morning
2. Go work on my books that need printing
3. Buy some new music
THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING/YOU'VE CONSIDERED:
1. Fashion designer
2. Nanny
3. Rock star
Oh wait, you were serious? Those are jobs I have considered in passing, here's some I've actually looked into:
1. Children's book illustrator
2. Librarian
3. Translator
THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. Yunnan
2. Nunavut
3. Madagascar
THREE KIDS NAMES YOU LIKE: boy/girl
Only three?
Boys: Alexander, Sean, Miguel
Girls: Yixuan, Hope, Grace
THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1. Publish a series of graphic novels
2. Convince someone to have kids with me
3. Pay off my debts
THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A GIRL:
1. I like to draw clothes and pretty patterns
2. I take care of small children for a living
3. I love to hear gossip
THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A BOY:
1. I hate asking for directions, even when I'm horribly lost
2. I am not a good cook
3. I like comic books |
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| Xicalango revisited |
[Apr. 19th, 2008|12:08 am] |
I posted recently that I had the wrong location for Xicalango in Lords of Death and Life. Well, it turns out the truth is more complex than that!
When I was first doing the research for this comic a year and a half ago I swear there was next to nothing available by googling "Xicalango." Now there's some good material- though my name comes up repeatedly on the search. ;-D It seems there's quite a bit of archaeological disagreement on where exactly this city was located. Everyone's sure it was there- all the Aztec and Mayan sources make reference to it, Cortez's translator was born there, and there are descriptions of its Mexica quarter, legal status with regards to the Empire, importance for trade, wealth of caocao production, lighthouse, slave trade (Cortez's translator), religious pilgrimages, and the ethnic group that lived there. Everyone knows it was on the peninsula at the westernmost edge of the Terminos Lagoon. But it seems that so far that's all we know.
There is a website that claims to have Xicalango's location, based on the discovery of some temple mounds and (possible) fortifications in the region. But the whole area is covered with artifacts and the rainy swampy terrain makes archeology very difficult. Another source suggests the city has been inundated by the lagoon- a reasonable assumption, as the entire peninsula seems to be sinking and Xicalango would have had to be on or near the coast five hundred years ago. Yet another site just says that no one has found it yet.
So. The upshot of all this is that due to academic squabbles and the unfinished work of Mesoamerican archeology, I'm well in the clear for making the city look like anything I want it too. If I want to give Xicalango an impractical improbable seven-story lighthouse I can! Jonathon one, historical nit-pickiness zero! Ha! |
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| A poorly thought-out plan, but a plan at least. |
[Apr. 14th, 2008|09:55 pm] |
I assume you've heard about the global food crisis? Prices for staple foods are rising sharply all over the world and this spells bad news for the world's poor. Already one government (Haiti) has collapsed due to food shortages. This is not good. I don't know if there's ever been a global famine before. They've always ever been local or regional phenomena.
( I do go on... ) |
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| I don't even have time to blog properly! |
[Apr. 13th, 2008|09:21 pm] |
I am still so very very busy. And tired. But I did just finish my revisions on Lords of Death and Life. I just made a few minor changes. You probably won't even notice. But there were things that were bugging me that I wanted to fix. Next I have to do the cover, the filler pages at front and back, lay the whole thing out, print the whole thing out, print a bunch more copies of A Mad Tea-Party #1, and get a few other little things ready before Stumptown on the 26th. All while teaching full time.
And I still need to do my taxes this month. Crap. |
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| Sequential Maida |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|10:37 pm] |
I admit it, I regularly google myself. It's a bad habit, I'm sure. As people say more and more about me online I might start to find more things said that I don't like. But then again, how else would I have found the following? I didn't know I was mentioned on Sequential Tart! And quite favourably, too! Here's the excerpt:
Among all the hubbub, I passed by a table where an artist was sitting quietly, doodling in his notebook; on the table in front of him was a small booklet entitled Maida Kilwa and showing a young girl wearing the hijab, standing with her mother. Intrigued, I picked it up and flipped through, instantly enchanted by the rounded, textured artwork as well as the presence of people of colour in the book.
It turned out that Jonathon Dalton (the creator of Maida Kilwa) lives locally in the Fraser Valley but has spent extensive time across Canada, in Taiwan, and in England. This lends a deliciously cosmopolitan feel to his stories, which explore the current-day diasporic nature of identity using characters of different colour, ethnicity, and nationality with an unusual twist: the time-frame is set slightly in the future, and these issues are explored through a lens of sci-fi dislocation rather than a strict focus on "character x is black, and therefore character x has black issues".
The Maida Kilwa book I picked up was just a wee character study, so I picked up his series A Mad Tea-Party as well. I haven't yet had time to read them, but I have no doubt that I'll enjoy them and will be bringing you all a more in-depth interview with Jonathon Dalton as soon as I can!
And the source. She must have written this months ago. How did I miss it? |
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| Fablewood online |
[Apr. 8th, 2008|09:28 pm] |
Hey, I just wanted to post a quick note that Fablewood, the fantasy anthology I have a story in, is now available for purchase online. Good news for anyone who still wanted a copy but doesn't have a comic book store at a convenient distance. |
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| Lords of Death and Life, 1492-2008. |
[Apr. 5th, 2008|06:20 pm] |
Seven years ago I came up with an idea for a webcomic that would showcase everything I loved about Mesoamerican art and culture. After two false starts, a pile of used up markers, and plenty of blood, sweat, and tears, Lords of Death and Life is now complete.
Well, nearly. I want to go back now and fix up a bunch of panels that are bothering me. And I have to figure out how to print the bloody thing in time for Stumptown. But it's online right now and you can read it, beginning to end.
Whatever else I've said about this comic let it be known that I'm glad it's now out of my head and down on paper for everybody to read. I trust the last seven years have not been a waste of time. I learned an awful lot about comics and an awful lot about the Maya and ended up with a passable finished book.
Heh. As a final irony, though, I was on Google Earth the other day and I discovered that the site where Xicalango once stood is now marked on the map with a little sticky note. The note wasn't there when I started the comic and it turns out I guessed the wrong spot on the Laguna de Terminos! The real site is about ten kilometres further down the coast, with a sandy beach instead of the swampy lagoon I put at the edge of my fictional city. On Google Earth you can even see a square patch where the ruins are- I assume this is the central temple complex- and it's much smaller than the one I drew. I still have yet to find a single book or online source that describes Xicalango apart from it having a lighthouse, being a trade port with a high Mexica population, having lots of caocao plantations, and being the birthplace of Cortez's translator during his invasion of Mexico. I've never seen a single map or picture of the ruins. And I looked pretty hard.
Well, I did my best. Historical fiction is tough. Now I feel like writing some sci-fi. *rubs hands together in anticipation* |
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| Making books |
[Apr. 2nd, 2008|04:57 pm] |
So I'm thinking about how best to print Lords of Death and Life. And I'm concerned that getting it printed by someone else might be too expensive. Would anyone be willing to pay $25 for a nice-looking 50+ page colour copy of LODAL? Because based on a couple of quotes for other people's books I've heard recently, it could well cost $20 a copy for me to get them printed. That's way too much, isn't it?
The alternative of course is to print them myself with my laser printer. This is why I have a laser printer. It would be significantly cheaper to do this. The finished books might cost around $10. The problem with doing it myself is that I'm then faced with the choice of either abandoning my idea to print it as an accordian book (with zig-zagging pages the way an actual Mesoamerican book would be made) and just doing a regular book with a stapled spine, or coming up with some way to assemble pages in an accordian fashion. The best idea I have for that involves book tape (cloth-bound archival tape, the kind they use to make the spines of some books). But I don't yet have a practical way to approach the problem. I do plan on experimenting a bit.
So internet friends, what are your opinions? And P.S., do you know where I might find book tape I can buy? |
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| I can haez arrt? |
[Mar. 30th, 2008|07:29 pm] |
How is it that I have failed to mention that the Cloudscape anthology is now available to buy online? Go to this site, check it out, and then buy one if you like. Marvel at the quality of artists in our rainy little town (P.S. I coloured the cover).
There's no update for LODAL today. The last page is nearly done, though. I think I'll post it as soon as it is rather than make you wait a whole 'nother week for it. I don't want to send you home empty-handed though! Here's some art I've had hanging around that I haven't got around to posting yet.
( Psst- look under here! )
I really need to build myself a new portfolio so I have somewhere to put all this stuff. |
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| Is this spoiler-free enough for a public post? I hope so. |
[Mar. 27th, 2008|03:36 pm] |
Oh, blah. Despite not having any work today it's clear I'm not going to get any drawing done (I'm heading into Vancouver in a half hour anyways). Plus I went outside and got snowed on? What the heck?
But that's okay. I stayed up (too) late last night and worked through my writers' block on Maida! Want to know my secret? Adding new characters! No, I'm serious! It worked for Lords of Death and Life. The current version of LODAL is a revision of a previous unfinished comic. Most of what I added were new characters- Mol's neighbours at the beginning, and the snotty Mixtec woman. They solved a lot of problems for me.
Well it's working for Maida too. Look at it this way. My problem (without going into details) revolved around how to demonstrate aspects of Maida's character before certain events take place, to put said events into context. But how to do this? Well, by having Maida interact with characters whose quite different personality traits throw Maida's own into contrast. Thanks to a helpful suggestion from a LiveJournaler, I also made a point of figuring out what exactly Maida wants in the first part of the book, because she does indeed have to want something. Otherwise the story feels like it's going nowhere. What does she want? Wait and see.
I must also... erm... attribute some inspiration to having watched Maid in Manhattan on the weekend. Please stop laughing. It's not like it's the most original screenplay ever written. I consider its content fair game. I trust you'll never notice the reference in my book apart from somebody working as a maid. Plenty of people work as maids, yo. No, Maida isn't a maid. Nor does she have a maid. The new characters aren't maids either. Stop speculating already.
The bad news (for me) is, the book is shaping up to be longer than I'd expected. I was aiming for 150-200 pages, but my best estimate right now is more like 400. That's a lot of drawing. That's like four years if I can do 100 pages a year, and I don't know that I can in fact do 100 pages a year. Crap. But so far I've packed so much plot into each chapter that I don't know if there'll be anything I can bear to cut. We will see. A painful editing stage may have to take place. I'm not looking forward to it.
I now have the story plotted through to the start of chapter three, and (finally) a rough plan for the rest of act one. I wrote until I got stuck again, but this time the roadblock is a lot smaller and should be easier to work around. |
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| I'm so boring, all I ever blog about is comics. |
[Mar. 24th, 2008|07:30 pm] |
According to my stats my traffic this month is set to be the highest it's ever been (not including the one month spambots invaded my forum and I had to go in and manually remove each one before giving up and just killing my forum). This despite my crummy update schedule, despite the mediochre writing of my current project, and despite not really having the funds to do any serious advertising. The recent linkage from Sage Comics is a big part of that, but traffic was headed up in any case. Recent linkage from Wasted Talent, Crowfeathers, and Shi Long Pang have helped too.
Not that my stats are very high at all even now. Compared to most of the comics I read they are in fact very low. Even more confusing is that the single page with the highest traffic is the first page of the last chapter of A Mad Tea-Party. I don't understand this as it hasn't updated in over a year and I can't trace any links leading directly to it. My best theory is that it's all Google traffic in search of "a mad tea-party," as I'm actually number four on Google searches for that phrase. I hope all those Lewis Carroll enthusiasts aren't too disappointed by what they find instead of Alice waxing philosophical.
EDIT: Wait, no, my main page is higher on Google than the first page of chapter three. Mystery unsolved!
Oh well. Interpreting website stats is much like reading chicken entrails. A good way to kill ten minutes of your time and maybe get a free chicken dinner out of the bargain, but not a good method for planning your future. |
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| Sage Comics! |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|12:32 pm] |
Today's update means I'm only one page away from finishing Lords of Death and Life!
In other news, you may have noticed a new linky thing in the top corner of my website. That's there as part of my membership in the new Sage Comics collective. It's a pretty talented bunch. You should read some of their comics (so should I- I've only had the time to read a couple so far). Right now the site is just a link exchange and forum, but there's more content on the way. |
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| Accidental writing. |
[Mar. 18th, 2008|09:47 am] |
I've always had great luck writing while traveling. I wrote a large chunk of Lords of Death and Life, for example, while on a plane from Britain to Canada. The other day on the ferry to Victoria I sat down and wrote out the plot for the first chapter and a half of Maida Kilwa. I just started writing and then I couldn't stop! It fell together so easily! At least it did until I got halfway through the second chapter, then everything ground to a very quick halt.
What I've got so far only takes up one sheet of paper, but my writing is rather small and this is the last stage, I think, before I start in with thumbnails. Basically what I've got is an event-by-event listing of the plot. I'm guessing that one line of the text I've got works out to be about one page of comic. So this is the plot for the first thirty pages or so of my book. Not bad for an hour and a half's work!
Now comes the hard part, though. I have bits and pieces in mind for what needs to happen between now and the beginning of the second act, but only a vague notion of how to string them together. I'm worried that the story as it stands isn't interesting enough. I understand the need to only include things in the book that are essential to plot and/or character development. But is it enough to just string together a bunch of isolated events that reveal elements of my characters? Or does there need to be the sense that the story is actually going somewhere? As I've said before, this is a story that's all about characters with very little action. I've never written anything quite like it. I need to read some other books for inspiration. That usually works.
I'm also having trouble keeping a handle on Maida's character. She changes so much over the course of the book. While writing Maida at the beginning I feel Maida from the middle creeping in, or Maida from the end. But no! Maida at the beginning needs to act like herself, not like those other girls! Keeping her life in chronological order is surprisingly difficult.
I'm heading home on the ferry today but I think I'll probably have to spend the time drawing instead of writing. I've still got this other comic that's not quite finished. One thing's for sure though. I need to find ways of recreating the conditions of being trapped in transit that are so conducive to writing, without having to pay for plane or boat tickets all the time. Is this perhaps why so many writers like to write while hanging around in coffee shops? Does Abbotsford have any coffee shops that will do the job? Hurmmm. |
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| Wait, what's this? |
[Mar. 16th, 2008|03:10 pm] |
Oooh. It's an update. I've heard of those.
P.S. Yesterday was awesome. Good news through the email, hanging out with friends, drawing comics, volunteering in the community, shopping, eating sona banana and delicious sashimi... Good times. I gotta go though, I have a ferry to catch. |
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| Best convention ever, song doesn't do it justice |
[Mar. 15th, 2008|10:25 am] |
*I am going to Stuuuumptown,
Ooh, I am going to Stuuuumptown,
Ooh, I am going to Stuuuumptown,
and that's why I'm singing this song.*
X-D
Crap. Now I need to finish LODAL in time to get it printed by the end of next month. Good thing I got that commissioned piece so at least I've got the money to fund it! |
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