(This pencil sketch was not used, unfortunately; I think it might have been more interesting than the wide angle shot they chose.)
Mar 4, 2014
school T-shirt designs
Some new commissions:
(This pencil sketch was not used, unfortunately; I think it might have been more interesting than the wide angle shot they chose.)
(This pencil sketch was not used, unfortunately; I think it might have been more interesting than the wide angle shot they chose.)
Mar 1, 2014
Podcast Review: JHK yaks with New Urbanist Andres Duany
http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-247-jhk-yaks-with-new-urbanist-andres-duany/
Interview w architect Andres Duany sharing some insights from decades in the field. Points raised include:
- The whole LEED-certified green building movement has been the greatest "success" of the environmental movement, but at the same time it's a very limiting vision that assumes a well-moneyed client. Actually it sounds like what the cynics among us would imagine it is without even investigating -- there's good money in it, so many of the architects are just "along for the ride" with it (cynically!) whether they think it's very beneficial or not. And/or some of them may be taken in by the hype of it all.
Duany suggests that in addition to the "gold", "silver" LEED levels, there be a "dirt" level, a spec for building green when you're not rolling in dough. The LEED racket though generates lots of good-paying jobs, since it takes an MIT degree to manage a LEED-certified building properly, it sounds like. And of course for everyone setting it up.
-Duany and the New Urbanists "succeeded" in inserting their ideas into the belly of the beast (into the building codes), but in the process became the beast to some extent. He still favors what they were/are trying to do (walkable communities for one), but he sees how, over the 30-something years since he started, the bureaucratic regs have gotten much more stifling. Young architects today could not do what he and his peers did then, he says; his generation could talk mano a mano to officials and persuade them to make allowances. Now, it takes teams of lawyers and millions of dollars to make sensible local decisions possible.
-He mentions that all the great cities, such as Paris, were developed with "form-based code" but did not elaborate... I must look it up someday... ha
-This was funny -- Duany worked on the early experimental walkable community "Seaside" in Florida, and others; He and colleagues were able to use resort communities as "test labs" for new ideas, because clients wanted something better than ordinary, everyday neighborhoods. They were open to more "utopian" ideas. Something amusing about that, the mindset that daily life is naturally a dismal slog, but a resort town can be permitted to dream a little. And yet I would think that viewing things that way, will actually undermine the attempt, because now you have this sort of enforced idyll -- it *must* be joyous here! No unhappiness allowed!
Overall, I liked his open-minded perspective towards "the little people" and trying to avoid stomping all over everyone who can't afford to be high-minded, but at the same time, he seemed to be trying to have his cake and eat it too; in the belly of the beast as he said, and favoring some of its ideals, but skeptical of implementation, and looking for some way to accommodate both worlds. Which I admire, but my sense is that the bureaucratic world will generally just steamroll over "the little people", and take all the pie while patting itself on the back for its high-minded commitment to ideals.
Interview w architect Andres Duany sharing some insights from decades in the field. Points raised include:
- The whole LEED-certified green building movement has been the greatest "success" of the environmental movement, but at the same time it's a very limiting vision that assumes a well-moneyed client. Actually it sounds like what the cynics among us would imagine it is without even investigating -- there's good money in it, so many of the architects are just "along for the ride" with it (cynically!) whether they think it's very beneficial or not. And/or some of them may be taken in by the hype of it all.
Duany suggests that in addition to the "gold", "silver" LEED levels, there be a "dirt" level, a spec for building green when you're not rolling in dough. The LEED racket though generates lots of good-paying jobs, since it takes an MIT degree to manage a LEED-certified building properly, it sounds like. And of course for everyone setting it up.
-Duany and the New Urbanists "succeeded" in inserting their ideas into the belly of the beast (into the building codes), but in the process became the beast to some extent. He still favors what they were/are trying to do (walkable communities for one), but he sees how, over the 30-something years since he started, the bureaucratic regs have gotten much more stifling. Young architects today could not do what he and his peers did then, he says; his generation could talk mano a mano to officials and persuade them to make allowances. Now, it takes teams of lawyers and millions of dollars to make sensible local decisions possible.
-He mentions that all the great cities, such as Paris, were developed with "form-based code" but did not elaborate... I must look it up someday... ha
-This was funny -- Duany worked on the early experimental walkable community "Seaside" in Florida, and others; He and colleagues were able to use resort communities as "test labs" for new ideas, because clients wanted something better than ordinary, everyday neighborhoods. They were open to more "utopian" ideas. Something amusing about that, the mindset that daily life is naturally a dismal slog, but a resort town can be permitted to dream a little. And yet I would think that viewing things that way, will actually undermine the attempt, because now you have this sort of enforced idyll -- it *must* be joyous here! No unhappiness allowed!
Overall, I liked his open-minded perspective towards "the little people" and trying to avoid stomping all over everyone who can't afford to be high-minded, but at the same time, he seemed to be trying to have his cake and eat it too; in the belly of the beast as he said, and favoring some of its ideals, but skeptical of implementation, and looking for some way to accommodate both worlds. Which I admire, but my sense is that the bureaucratic world will generally just steamroll over "the little people", and take all the pie while patting itself on the back for its high-minded commitment to ideals.
Feb 18, 2014
Buying food
I don't know, maybe I've read too many nutrition blogs so I view the world through glasses of clarity, but this is how grocery stores look to me nowadays. Maybe it's *slightly* exaggerated to say most of the stuff is poisonous, but I'd say most of it has ingredients that we'd be better off without. And really this cartoon is even drawn with rose-colored glasses to some degree, since a lot of the time the stuff *claiming* to be healthy is just as bad or worse than the stuff that's making no claims.
Feb 15, 2014
Cartoon art commission -- School mascot
Nae Nae dancin' tiger b&w art for a school's Spring Break T-shirts (you'd almost think I was a jolly person to draw something like this... =)):
Feb 3, 2014
Jan 5, 2014
Slob-oids "Book & Record Set" video
Planet Of The Slob-Oids from King Power Cinema on Vimeo.
This is a faux book & record set, or basically, a comic with audio and video effects. My pal David M. Smith suggested the adaptation.Story and art by me
Film & audio production by David M. Smith
Voices by me, David, Eric Hawley, Brian Collins and Pip May
Dec 22, 2013
In the (Dead) Zone
It's weird, people think of Stephen King as a guilty pleasure.. I almost feel guilty that I never enjoyed him as a guilty pleasure as much as some people do. I want/wanted to be one of those people who read his books as a guilty pleasure, you see. They loomed up on my horizon, as a little kid, as a fascinating teenage thing to be into, those massive well-worn tomes, full of edgy, slightly illicit material. And I did read his short story collections, and a nonfiction book of his about the horror genre. But somehow I never made it to the books that he's known for, especially the early ones. In high school I got _Needful Things_ from the library, and it was okay, maybe, but I never felt like I was in that Stephen King "zone" that I imagined the teenagers of my imagination had been in. I almost read it like a chore, like a book on a school reading list. It was on my guilty pleasure curriculum I guess, and thus not much of a guilty pleasure after all.
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