metafold:.:news

actual new-news first: i’m putting some illustrations & prints up for sale in the vericon art show, so if you’re in the boston/cambridge area, you should check it out.  SWEEEEET.

greetings from sunny florida where we are currently experiencing record-breaking low temperatures.  this is something it has been doing since we (the fam and i) arrived here and (i am assured by weatherpersons) will probably stop doing immediately pursuant to our departure.  i thought, since florida is a land of interesting and exciting differences from those i have lived, i would relate a particularly awesome incident that occurred to me today:

i was in attendance at a juried gallery opening here in vero beach; one whose entries ran the gamut from incredibly (humorously, really) amateurish to very artful and expressive.  at one point, upon introducing me to a local artist, my gran remarked that ‘he just published a graphic novel‘.  this, given that it was self-published, is a bit charitable but (frankly) i’m just going to stop drawing the distinction whenever people mention it because it’s more trouble than help to explain.  this is particularly true when i consider that it’s usually a distinction that’s detrimental to however i’m perceived anyway, so it’s kind of a win-win to leave it alone.  but (as usual) i sidetrack myself.  upon mentioning this, the woman asked me, “oh, a graphic novel.  is that like, all full of sex and stuff?”

i am fully aware that (even in these enlightened times of graphic novel mass-marketability) a time must come in every comic artist/author’s life when s/he must explain that graphic novels are not badly-drawn porn but in fact are books with plots and things.  but still, it was shocking and hilarious to find myself at that moment.  i replied as simply and inoffensively as possible: “no, it’s more like … a really long comic book.” which seemed to satisfy her.  then i meandered over to look at her art piece.  it was, in fact, a vaguely biracial, child-sized (by barbie standards) plastic doll denuded and glued to piece of wood (redundantly painted brown).  it had a black afro and its shoes were also glued to the board, squirreled away in the corner like some strange product of a deranged fetish.  its other clothes were nowhere to be found.  the price was $75, i think.

hey thur folks!

i just got back from an awesome weekend at noncon in frigid but beauteous poughkeepsie, ny! it was pretty sweet. unlike the last con, only about 25-30% of the population was in costumes like this. which was still kinda strange. but i had great company!

for one thing, my brother and his girlfriend becky came up from the big city fer cool peeps to help me hold down the fort. they also showed me pretty much the most insanely awesome piece of child television ever (see below). i also totally lucked out because ayse was there. as always, she was pretty much the most supportive / coolio personage for miles around.

except i also had some awesome artsy neighbors. first they had the artists way hidden away in the boonies, but eventually the moved us (splitting us up in the process). see, when i first arrived i was sitting next to mark holmes and luke mierisch (two extremely cool guys who have a studio called enigmaworks). mark is an amateur boxer / awesome artist and extremely funny and smart guy (characteristics he shares with his partner in crime luke…well, except for the boxing). luke is a self-proclaimed brush/paint/paper snob (and well-qualified to be so). i’ll try and post some of his paper and brush recommendations when i have my notebook around next time.

aaaaanyway, i was also sitting by lucy knisley (pronounced “nicely” or thereabouts) who is incredibly cool in person, so if you run into her, just try to soak it all in. she’s got it all going on ’cause she’s from chicago, published on simon & schuster / :01 first second (at only 23ish) for her awesome book french milk (about her time in paris); she also wears plaid on plaid (ya-yuh!) and attended the cartoon institute. i mean people seriously only come about 11.3% cooler than that and then they have to be wearing no pants and named natalie portman. what? oh. right. she was also there with danielle corsetto, who’s been running girls with slingshots for nigh on five-an-somethin years now! wowzers. anyways, everyone who was an artist at the con was pretty much a ton of fun and were definitely the kinda folks you’d want to knock back a few beers with on a purely ummm metaphysical level or something.

then i lucked out a couple more times. noncon had some neat guests, including ken levine, the creator of bioshock and tamora pierce (!). when i recognized her climbing the stairs to our hidden artists’ alley haunt, tamora (aka tammy) pierce actually bought a book (!!) and kindly gave me some words of wisdom which i will brokenly reproduce for the edification and benefit of others here. i paraphrase (loosely):

1. “take advice and criticism with a grain of salt because you should
2. go with your gut” (which is, incidentally, also good life advice)
3. “base characters on real humans an allow them to depart form their real life counterparts. also, don’t tell people when you base characters on them for several reasons including (a) they character will do (shameful) things they would not, (b) the character will do things they would, in fact, do but are ashamed that they would do” (and/or (c) you may get sued for copyright or something if you base them on a character that is someone else’s intellectual property).
4. “write in the way and order which comes naturally to you.
5. do not read creepy stories after it gets dark.” jes sayin’.

she also gave some talks and panels along with other folks. excitements! i sold perhaps ten or so books to other folks and probably made more than i spent on gas, hotels, food, etc. good when that happens. now, the aforementioned japanese children’s show!

click the image to enlarge!

semeurge flyer!

holy crap. it’s hard to believe, i know, but the graphic novel is finally finished. witness if you will, good sir, the transformation of the website! it’s very exciting. there is an entirely new nav ribbon (oh crap! ribbon? i used an autodesk term…ugh). but anyways, you can preview the graphic novel, get info on how to help, buy a copy, read about self-publishing and other ways to make yourself poor, and even get info on local cons and appearances. i attended genericon at RPI last weekend and will upload some photos of the con and the newly-arrived book soon! i wouldn’t say that it was a con i exactly fit in at–it was very anime and cosplay heavy–but i sold some prints and books an’ like that there. i also made some new friends (still under construction, methinks) and was visited by some old and/or awesome ones. very excitements.

i’m pretty happy with the final product; and i hope you all will be too. the final title is semeurge and it weighs in at a hefty 150 pages-ish. the paper and print quality are both excellent. hats off to kristin matthews at brenner printing down san antone-way. cost a very pretty penny, but worth every bit.

unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you are and what you like to do) i have finished the making-cool-pictures stage of the project. now it is time for the traipse-around-to-retailers-and-plead-with-them / contact-and-implore-distributors-to-consign-some-copies / write-letters-to-all-those-folks-on-flickr-whose-photos-i-made-use-of-through-CC / sell-books-to-people-i-know-in-the-real-world / go-to-cons-and-events / call-all-the-retailers-in-the-tristate-area-to-convince-them-to-buy-a-copy-or-two-apiece / make-posters-and-arrange-for-publicity-and-events-and-excitements / find-archis-and-allow-them-to-get-me-drunk(?)-at-a-release-party / contact-reviewers-to-have-them-write-about-the-book … phase.

i made a poster to get people excited about the project at work–hopefully some folks will want to buy a copy here (!). it’s at the top. it’s in one of my usual styles of graphical design: whimsical overstatement.

i posted this neato album of digital collages i did recently on le facebook also, but i thought i would share it here as well.  it’s a collection of cc-licensed photographs that i nabbed from various folks at flickr (see below).  click through to see full-size images.  sweet!  it’s like typography + music.  the ultimate fusion.  take that, physics!

credit @ flickr: mrmatt, pacdog, intangiblearts, liv g, donteatmeatnow!forreals, kunstee, christian reed, esper.art.br, killabodhi, lynt, CRLS, tammylo, mrdoubtfire, kevin klocker, armadilo60, pennington, xflickrx, nicolaitan, neatephotos.

not all of these were used. everything but the photo was… me if it matters. licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial sharealike license (attribute to ethan feuer – http://metafold.net)

i forgot to include this cool oldschool hand-drawn atavision logo i made for ben on his birthday.  boom!  the ones with less lines are progress photos!

atavism is an amazing word.  which is why i’m so glad that my oh-so-clever brother chose to use it for his film company’s name.  i honestly think that it’s one of the most enjoyable-sounding and clever combos to be made up in a long time.  ben’s films are also awesome, and you should ask to be put on the list of peeps who he badgers to come see them and vote for them on vimeo and stuff.  aaaanyways, a while back, ben asked (aka akxsed) me to draw him up a logo.  i had a lot of fun with it; though i never got around to animating it yet (as a true filmic logo should be).  he encouraged me to look at the classics.  my logo is  below; and further down is a small gallery of other famous (and a couple not-so-famous) logos i looked to for inspiration.

aaaaand the coolio gallery:

below are a few things i wish someone had told me about my ipod touch.  i mean, like, you know, if apple had condescended to make something so distinctly unattractive as a manual with actual information in it.  but that is not designy.  so here i bring you my hard-earned knowledges!

1. scrub rate control:  extremely handy.  if you’re trying to jump around in a song by scrubbing the bar that indicates where you are in the song but are frustrated by how jumpy the controls are, worry no more!  by pressing and holding on the bar (until the ’scrub ball’ appears) then sliding your finger down on the screen–don’t let go!–and then across, you can control the rate of the scrub.  in the middle of the screen, you will scrub slower than if you are directly over the scrub bar.
2. scroll to top: tap the status bar (with the battery life and time) in order to scroll to the top of a long page in safari or a very wordy note.  no more minutes of dragging your fingers across the screen!
3. double tap for caps lock: double-tapping the “shift” (up arrow) key on the keyboard will give you a capslock!
4. magic ellipsis: press and hold “.” on the keyboard and … voila! you get a “…”
5. double-tap home: this can do a variety of things depending on how you configure it.  most importantly, however, it allows you to go instantly to music controls (even if your ipod is asleep!)  no more laboriously locking and unlocking your ipod!
6. drag shift for uppercase: if you press the “shift” (up arrow) but don’t let go (instead dragging until you are over the letter you want to capitalize and then releasing), you get capitals in … a little less effort!
7. press and hold for alternate characters: just like it says.  you need an umlaut? press and hold on your “u”!  also works for punctuation (< > ! = etc)
8. screenshot: press “sleep” and “home” buttons together to take a screenshot!
9. pinch to zoom: and … whatever the opposite of “pinching motion” is in order to zoom out.  spreading?  i don’t know.  try it out.
10. double tap screen to zoom to fit: yup.  works for, say, a column of text.
11. add words to dictionary: google any given word (in safari’s google search bar) and it will be entered into your dictionary.  (i haven’t actually tried this one out, so let me know if it doesn’t work…)
12. actually shut down: if you just press the “sleep” button … your ipod sleeps.  if you press and hold, it gives you the option to shut down.  neat!  saves batteries, i guess.
13. force quit: finally.  you can force quit an app by pressing and holding the “home” button for 6+ seconds.
14. move apps around: press and hold (then drag) apps around on the home screen to rearrange the furniture.

neato!  aren’t these things helpful?  it would have been great if … ahem … apple had made them clear.  neener neener.

hey all.  i gots to go to bed in the soontime, but before i turn in, here’s a brand new smoke graffix revision for you all.  it is produced in the rumor mill that (a) i am becoming obsessed with ratatat‘s “germany to germany” and also that i am producing a music video from old movie bits because it is fun to do.  stay tuned!

smoke graffix 2.0

read enough and you will, it seems, be rewarded with the assurance that nothing is original–or at least that everything is an homage. some
of you may remember a charming book from a few years ago about an autistic would-be detective: the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. I was quite nonplussed to find that such a wonderfully unique-sounding title is, in fact, a quote… of sir arthur conan doyle’s the memoirs of sherlock holmes. live and learn, I suppose.

i’m gonna say the words in the wrong order again (yes, punch and judy, i am an elliott smith junkie).  by this i mean that i’m going to show you what i’ve been working on lately in the graphic design sector (out of order!  see what i did there?!).  since i just mailed in my xeric grant proposal, semeurge (yes, it’s been retitled again), i have a bit more free time.  because i’m exciting like that, i’ve been experimenting with the poor man’s silkscreen (aka stencilled spraypaint).  this is kind of a fun problem because you have to keep your eye on two things at once: (1) what you can cut into a continuous shape (stencil) and (2) how you can layer those stencils to achieve certain effects.  it’s made a bit more interesting by the difficulty of aligning layers–something i’m sure real printmakers are all too familiar with.  if the registration is off, effects of something coming out from being something else can be made significantly less convincing (or at least more quaint).  anyways, here’s the second design i’ve done, based off of a photograph by aaron van dike via flickr:

(click on image to enlarge)

also, i’m journeying into new york city to see the debut of my brother’s 8-12 film.  somehow i convinced several of the awesome people in my life to show up there, so i may just pee myself out of pure glee.  also, i made cream cheese craisin blintzes.  there ought to be a lot of photos from this weekend, so keep an eye out.