An Award, A Party & The Best Damn Comics Festival I've Ever Seen

Girl On The Road Garners Artist Trust GAP Funding

I am excited to report that my application to the Artist Trust Grants for Artist program has been met with success!  I am honored to be one of the 61 artists to receive funding in the 2016 grant cycle, including fellow cartoonist Sarah Rosenblatt plus cut paper artist and animator, Lauren Lida. 

I wrote about the process of creating this application back in May, including how I felt my work had been rushed but also sensed that the universe had sent me a positive sign after I finished my submission.  I'm so happy that I was not wrong.  Big thanks to Artist Trust for supporting me.  The funding they provide will be just enough to push the sample chapter of my graphic memoir into being.

October 22nd - Rock Is Not Dead!

It's here at last!  The Seattle project release party for Rock Is Not Dead will be happening this weekend on Saturday, October 22nd from 6 PM to 8 PM at the Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery. 

If you can make it, please come by.  Mark Campos created an excellent animation out of the comic we created for the printed anthology.  Come view comics in action plus a musical performance by Seattle Jazz Hall-of-Famer and punk rocker (yes, she does it all!) Amy Denio, who recorded a track for the project CD.

More on the anthology itself can be found on the 11th Dimension Press Website here. More on the event is on the Facebook event page.  And if you just want to purchase a copy, it's available at my Etsy store here.

An AWESOME New Festival:
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus

Sergio Aragones and Stan Sakai at the
Cartoon Crossroads Columbus opening reception.

 Cartoon Crossroads Columbus celebrated it's second year this year as one of the world's coolest comics festivals.  They are not a big-ticket super hero comic-con.  Instead they are celebrating comics as art, and putting the innovators of comics as art in the center of their programming.  They are not a standard tabling event.  The festival has a tabling component, yes, but its schedule is built around fairly intimate panels, workshops and lectures by the industries' leading creative professionals.

This may sound dry to you, but it's a blast, and a big part of that is because you get to meet and talk to people you would never normally get to hang out with at the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus receptions and parties.  

Me and Keith Knight talking
about the garbage public schools
he deals with in North Carolina.

Last year I spent almost half an hour talking with Jaime Hernandez, who was my main reason for attending, but then also got to talk with Art Spiegelman in the hallway of the Wexner Center for the Arts and Bill Griffith during his book signing. 

This year I informally talked about micron pens with Sergio Aragones and Stan Sakai at the opening reception, discuss racism and home schooling with Keith Knight and traded art and stories regarding our shared affinity for trilliums with Seth.  I picked up tips on script development from Raina Telgemeier and friended Carol Tyler and laughed until I cried at the antics of Lalo Alcaraz during a panel about political cartoons.

This is just brushing the surface of awesome experiences I've had at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus.  Mark Campos, who traveled with me this year, posted a small photo album here and wrote a blow-by-blow of our experience this year on his personal blog here.    But check out their website for yourself, and plan on attending next October!

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

 

New Arrivals

It's October already!  If you are a cartoonist living in or around Seattle, this means it's only a few more weeks until the Short Run Comix & Arts Festival, which happens this year on November 5th.  It catalyzes a lot of cartoonists and zinesters to create new work.  My goal was to have the sample chapter of my graphic novel, Girl On The Road, done by this year's event (WAY more about this next week!  I have astounding good news.) but I also have some long-term projects that happily just happen to be wrapping up right now.

Rock Is Not Dead - Available Now!

Me giving my super model, Cait Willis,
her contributor's copy of Rock Is Not Dead.

A large box of books and CDs arrived at my house last week, containing the finished Rock Is Not Dead project.  It is exciting to hold these in my hands.  When I heard about the anthology almost two years ago, I excitedly built a comic around the Throwing Muses song "Not Too Soon" with fellow cartoonist Mark Campos, and got Seattle's punk-jazz Seattle Music Hall-of-Famer Amy Denio to cover the song for the soundtrack.

Now that it's here, I'm happy to report we are doing a Seattle Rock Is Not Dead release party on Saturday, October 22nd at Fantagraphics.  All of the artists involved will be on hand to hang out and sign books, as well as the fabulous artist who was the model for my main character, Cait Willis.

The event has already received a sweet write-up in Seattle's "City Arts" Magazine.

You can find more details about the anthology and the event on the Facebook event page here.  https://www.facebook.com/events/387618274695843/

You can also order your copy of the book and CD at my Etsy shop, www.etsy.com/shop/NoelFranklinArt

I do a lot of drawing in my
leopard print pajamas.

Can't Say

I've been writing occasionally about working with anthologies.  I love anthologies.  They are like a comprehensive community in book form.  I've been lucky to be included in some really great ones, over my first three years of making comics, and now have a stack of stories created for anthologies and publications that I can compile into a new minicomic.

So, that's what I did.  Here it is.  It's entitled "Can't Say," based on an illustration I created for the Norway-based Outre Press.  It's a zine-style minicomic that includes 6 stories and 2 illustrations that I created for publications from Seattle's alternative weekly newspapers to international anthologies and online journals.

Can't Say is also available at my Etsy shop, and will be at my table at Short Run.

Coyote and Butterfly Woman

Sample page from
Coyote and Butterfly Woman.

I have been working for a year to realize Anne Bean's brilliant story, Coyote and Butterfly Woman,

I spent just over 9 months on creating Coyote and Butterly Woman, though it is only a 12-page story, and drew from over 300 source image files.

And it is finally at the printers!  The narrative is a modern feminist take on a tradition Nez Perce story.  I've never worked harder on a comic.   The writing itself is hard-hitting and dark, with some nuanced humor, and I wanted to do my very best to honor both the origins of the story and Anne's take on it through how I illustrated each panel.

These are arriving on my doorstep this Wednesday, and you can order these at my Etsy shop, as well.  For a mere $5, you can have the best comic I've created to date.

Next Week - Girl On The Road Gets Real

Check back in with me next week.  I have great news on my progress towards making the Girl On The Road graphic novel a reality. 

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.