Book Review--Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued

Mastering Comics: Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued
First Second
Jessica Abel & Matt Madden
May 2012

Matt and Jessica have extensive experience creating and teaching comics and in their first book, Drawing With Words and Pictures, they shared a portable classroom.  Now they come back to us with further lessons in this companion book.  The book covers more advanced topics in creating a good comic, such as story composition; coloring and formatting pictures; and even more importantly it has a section on how to self-publish and getting published, surely to be helpful to young writers/artists just starting out.  Just like the first book, this one is divided into easy to read sections so the book can be used as a textbook or for an individual course study, which is extremely helpful and makes the book very versatile.

This text is heavily illustrated with examples to help guide readers on seeing the lesson in action.  Jessica and Matt use examples, not just from their own works, but examples from other professionally published artists so that readers have an extensive bibliography of images to look at (and look for.)  They also supplement the text with “further reading” sections, which allow a reader/student to continue their learning and more importantly to get an additional point of view from other working artists.  I also really like how they've broken down homework assignments in the book.  Not only do they put assignments at the back of each chapter to help readers learn the concepts that they've been reading about, but they also put some right after they've talked about a particular aspect, such as scriptwriting.  They walk the reader through how to start the process step by step and offer examples of things to do along the way.

My favorite section in this book might just be “The Horror of the Blank Page,” which lists ways to overcome the fear of a blank page and getting some ideas on where to go next.  It’s helpful to know that even the authors, experienced artists that they are, still struggle sometimes with overcoming that scary empty white page.  And I think that's something else that is helpful, that Jessica and Matt share some of their own personal experiences in this book, which for me helps make reading the book easier knowing that yes, they've encountered some of these same issues that have plagued me.  An important addition to this book Matt and Jessica talk about webcomics, even encouraging the students to give them a try to gain experience with not only how they work, but to help artists/writers improve upon their skill set.

This this is a great book for providing practical lessons that will be useful to readers whether they are doing a self study or in a class.  Even more so it’s a great book for fans of comics/graphic novels to see what type of work goes into creating the these items that they enjoy.  I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.

Review copy provided by Gina at FirstSecond

Book Review--Marathon

Marathon
First Second
Boaz Yakin & Joe Infurnari
June 2012

Athens faces its greatest battle...the Persian army has come to defeat them and accompanying them is their ex-tyrant of a king, Hippias.  The Athenians are hopelessly outnumbered and their city may fall without help.  They need assistance from the Spartans, who live 153 miles away.  And their army can only hold back the Persians for so long.  They send their greatest runner, Eucles, to ask them to come to their aid.  Eucles must run 153 miles in three days...and back again to Athens.  And thus begins the greatest race ever known...and an event that continues to inspire mankind to greatness today.

What really attracted me to this book was the artwork.  That striking image on the front cover, of a man running as fast as he can, sweat pouring down his brown, and the world seemingly on fire behind him, but he's on a mission and he won't let anything stop him.  That evocative art style remains throughout the book, easily capturing the expressions of fear, triumph, and hope on the characters faces.  It's easy to get swept up in it as you move from page to page to follow the story and getting lost in all of the details.  It's easy to see that Joe spent a great deal of time creating the art and capturing the detail that makes it seem like the characters are ready to leap off the page with their battle.  And his art style reminds me a lot of Rembrandt's pen and ink drawings, that lose sketchy feel, but powerful.  I wish more books had this style...but I guess then it wouldn't be unique. 





While I like the overall content and story told, the execution at the beginning of the book is a bit confusing and jumbled.  In the first 15 or so pages we alternate between present, three days ago, and fifteen years ago seeing Eucles at different points of his journey and the transitions aren't always smooth.  Sometimes the panels of alternating timelines are right next to each other and it isn't always clear who we're looking at.  And I think it's that switching between three different timelines that bothers me.  Me personally, I would have preferred a small prologue that set up about Eucles past or to have left it out entirely.  Without that then the switching between present and two-three days in the past would have been easier to follow.  Once you get past those first 15 pages though, the story settles into a more recognizable format and presents a gripping tale of one man and what he's willing to do to help save his city and his people.  I really enjoyed the heart of this tale and it made me interested to learn more about Eucles and his life.  I think it would have been great if a bibliography could have been included in the back of the book.

Even though the first 15 pages are a bit jumbled, overall this is a solid book that I have no problem recommending to readers, especially teen readers who are interested in sports. I give the book 4 out of 5 stars.

ARC provided by Gina at FirstSecond

The Google Drive is finally here

I haven't had much of a chance to start playing with this yet (they have to prepare my drive before I can play with it actually...whatever that means), but wanted to go ahead and post about it...

After being talked about forever and ever and ever...well at least for the last two years, Google has finally launched the Google Drive.  You can read their actual launch post here, but here are the highlights as relayed via their post:

• automatic 5GB of storage for free
• You can upgrade for more storage at fairly reasonable prices (about $30 a year for 25GB and so on)
• It integrates easily with other Google Products, such as Google Docs 
• You can upload anything--PDF, Images, Spreadsheets--and have folks offer comments on it without it having to be in Google Format
• Access from anywhere including mobile devices via apps (they say they're still working on the iOS app but it's coming)
• Search for anything--this is a cool feature you can even search for text within a scanned image via Optical Character Recognition.  And they're using image recognition software so it will recognize say photos of the Andes mountains when you search for it.
• They are also working with third party developers so that you can collaborate on say...webpage design with files stored in Drive via Chrome apps.

There's also a great write up by ReadWriteWeb (who have used it) on what it offers and looks like.

Obviously GDrive enters an already somewhat crowded marked with ADrive, Dropbox, Amazon Storage, Microsoft's new project (which I missed) etc. But...it seems like it has some benefits, as well as some downsides.

Obviously there are folks that are going to be concerned about the privacy factor.  This new drive will just give Google one more place to find out even more about you.  What will they do with the information?  Well they swear they won't do anything like sell it and I haven't had problems with it (and half of my life lives in Google) but this is something that you'll want to think about yourself.  Does having lots of your life and files in one place with one company work for you? Do you want to give Google just one more piece of your life?  It is a big question...

For me...I'm willing to give it a try because of some of the positive factors, such as the enhanced collaboration abilities which will be great for working with colleagues on documents, videos, photos, whatever the case may be.  And just to see how it works.  Am I going to keep everything on the GDrive?  Probably not...I do like having aspects of my life in a few different places.  And not all of my life needs to live in Google Domains. 

Once I actually get in and play with it I'll post again.

CIL 2012 presentation

My apologies folks I honestly meant to get this up two weeks ago and I didn't....but here it is now.

For posterity's sake:
In March 2012 I gave a presentation at Computers in Libraries titled "Getting to Yes After the Conference" (the CIL program called it "Getting to yes after CIL" but that wasn't my call.) In this presentation I shared tips and tricks that I've learned over the last 5 plus years of getting support for projects after the conference and buy in from administration.  For the first time ever I've also typed up my notes (hopefully they'll make some sort of sense to someone other than me.)

If you have questions, comments, suggestions, etc. feel free to leave a comment

Cil 2012--Getting to yes

View more presentations from Andrew Shuping.

Slide notes:

Slide 1:  I am me.

Slide 2:  Why am I talking to you guys about this?  Because selling ideas after a conference can be difficult.  You know it, I know it, well all know it.  So what do you do?  How do you get your admin to buy into what you're selling?  Well I'm going to share some tips and tricks I've learned over the past few years that can help you out.  First thing that you should do before you get back:  takes note and names.  yes take names.  if you hear a presentation or an idea that you like get their info so that you can ask them questions later.


(look below for two bonus content slides)

Slide 3: 

This is the most important thing that I can think of:  know who your audience is: who do you need to sell to, what do they like, brief convo, live demo, written report?

 

have a friend on the management team, someone that supports what you're selling 
Slide 4: 

users matter.  cool things are great, but if it isn't what your users are going to do or use and you already know it (example you work in a library that only serves the amish, don't push text messaging.) 

know why you're suggesting that the library invest time and energy in it. make sure it's meeting a need.  make sure you discuss what it will take to get it going...because
Slide 5:  

remember the investment:  even if it's free, it is isn't free.  it's like free kittens..and a bunny.  there's still time and money involved in it (mostly in the form of staff)  if you've got a small library and your systems department consists of one guy carrying everything but the kitchen sink, don't try to sell something that will require a lot of time and energy on their part to get going/maintain.

Slide 6: 

sell it to your colleagues. let them get excited about it. the more backing you have the better it's likely to go.

share with them what you learned, share slides, tweets, whatever works best, but let them be advocates for you as well.  if they're interested and support you it helps.

this can also include non co-workers, find someone to brainstorm with, how to approach the problem to get at a solution. people on campus, people online wherever.

in other words don't go it alone

Slide 7: 

find someone that can help you sell it.  your yin to your yang.  spock to your kirk

Slide 8: 

free is your friend.  if you can do it for free try it.  its a great way to sell a new service to admin.  down the road you can always say look it's working here's why we should move to this pay for service.  only go for pay for first if it's the only option or clearly the best option for what you're trying to do.

 

Slide 9: 

explore what's out there.  what's new, perhaps it simplifies the process, offers more, makes it easier to do, it improves efficiency 

 

Slide 10:

be willing and prepared to fail.  things aren't going to work.  it's a fact of life.  live from it. and learn from it.

don't be afraid to fail.  not everything is going to make it through the first time, come back a second and third time. if it's a good idea stick with it. listen to why folks are saying they aren't interested in it

Slide 11: 

give back to the community.  you've tried something. it worked. it didn't work.  let others know, even if its just a blog post.

Slide 12:  last unwritten rule and this depends on your pow, do first ask questions later--only for certain things though. don't redesign the webpage without telling people. 

Slide 13:
Slide 14:


And as an added bonus, two extra slides! (since it was pointed out that I neglected to include something from "Lord of the Rings"  These slides would be right at the beginning of the presentation.

Sometimes it seems like when we get back from conferences and try to talk to administration about what we want to do it's like talking to the Ents from "Lord of the Rings"

"Harummm....you want to do what with what?  Hmmm....we'll have to gather the ents to discuss it.  Don't worry we'll have things a decision for you in the next two to three years"

Or it's worse and it's like trying to wage war with these guys?  Not pretty is it?