Connecting with Comics and Dodging Dodgeball
APE was really great. It was my first comic convention and I met a ton of people who were creative in different ways than one might see in the design community - refreshing. Probably the coolest thing, next to seeing Matt Groening again, was checking out the booths and finding someone over a sketchbook behind each one. Each had differing styles: abstract, cartoon, manga, superhero, photo-tracing, etc. Thanks again to Brandon and Nicole for their generosity in letting us clowns sit with them. Too bad I didn’t get the graphic novel done in time because I had so much on my plate.
I always seem to put a lot on my plate - some would say too much. Jamie, who has a lot on his own plate, asked why I was doing the graphic novel. He said he could understand all my other ventures: Off Panel, OK/Cancel, and the encore presentations of the IA Summit presentation but couldn’t see how the graphic novel fit.
Which is precisely why I’m doing it - it doesn’t fit. Doing a project like Soul Jump is really all about connecting with a different community and doing something for the sake of it and it feels great whenever I get even a little done on it.
I turned off dodgeball recently. It’s a tool that tells you on your phone where your friends are and you use it to let your friends know where you are. It’s great ofr nights when you want to be out and all your friends are roaming all the time. I still remember in university when as a group, the destination might change at the last minute but because not everyone had cell phones, one or two stragglers sometimes end up at the original destination and go, “where is everybody?” The problem is that I have no will power. If I know my friends are out and not too far away, I’m more inclined to join them even if I hadn’t planned on going out. Turning off dodgeball was liberating. Now I am back to controlling when I go out and when I’m dealing with all that stuff on my plate.
Like starting on the first two pages of Soul Jump.
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