animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

On the last Sunday of every month at 12pm, join the Sequential Art Collective for group drawing in and around New York City. The meeting will last between 2 to 4 hours (approx). Bring your own drawing pads, pens , pencils, eraser etc. Each month we will be venturing to different locations ranging from zoos to museums, baseball games, parks, etc.

The object is to have fun with fellow artists and like minded individuals — and to take your drawing to the next level by sharing and critiquing your art with your peers. There will be no charge to attend other than whatever fee the locations charge. If we are aware of enough attendees ahead of time, all attempts will be made to book special group admission rates as applicable.

The first meeting will be this  Sunday, May 31st. We will be heading over the Museum of Natural History. The main focus will be the Mammal Room and the Sea Life Room. We will meet outside of the museum in front of the equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt at 12:00PM.

Date: Sunday, May 31, 2009
Time: 12:00pm – 4:00pm
Location: American Museum of Natural History
Street: Central Park West at 79th Street
City/Town: New York, NY

If you have any questions or comments please email Allan at tellmemore@sacart.org

See You There!

-The Sequential Art Collective

Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.

I am in the land of Egypt, the land of pyramids. Of course, I wrote this LAST Thursday when I wasn’t in Egypt but let’s pretend I already know what it’s like to be there.

Man, it is HOT here!

Anyway, as many of you already know, in addition to being a cartoonist, I am also studying Ancient Egyptian art history at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. There are a lot of people at my school that don’t see any connection between my interest in Egyptian art and cartooning – I think many people see me as quite the oddity. More perceptive people or people who have read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics completely understand why I’m interested in both. If you’ve read it, you’ll recall that McCloud lists Egyptian tomb paintings/reliefs as some of the first examples of “sequential art” or “comics.” He also uses Trajan’s column, prehistoric cave paintings, and the Bayeux Tapestry as “early comics” though, so I don’t know if Egyptian art’s narrative qualities necessarily drew me to that field. But if that’s the way people are best able to cope with me having two different interests, that’s fine.

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In Alphabet of the Arcane, Justin Maudslien, aka Sub-Human’s Mr. M., explores weird and little known factoids and shares his skewed observations about the world of comics, cartoons and sequential art.

Surrender all free will for your Supreme Overlord, Mr. M,  has arrived!   Gather round my halflings and let me tell you a tale of hard riffs and clashing swords.  This bi-weekly blog is brought to you by the number 8 and the letter L.  This time L stands for Lord of the Rings and Lead singers of metal bands.  These are a few of my favorite things!

Once I set foot back on the continent from my recent trip I felt overdosed on culture.  I had to reintroduce myself to the American past time of getting fatter by sitting on the couch, and what better way than a movie trilogy marathon?  It came to my attention that most of the characters in Lord of the Rings resemble heavy metal singers.  It might be: the testosterone soaked beards; the manly grimaces; all that hair whipping around; or even the sweaty muscles holding axes, but any way you slice it with a battle axe it is clear there is nothing more metal than a medieval fantasy world like Middle Earth.

I looked a little more closely and found that many metal bands take their name directly from the famed books of yesteryear.  For example the Viking Death Metal band Amon Amarth took their name from the elvish word for Mount Doom.  Another band went so far to call themselves Gandalf, the main wizard of the story.

Gandalf the Band

Gandalf the Wizard

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