animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

In Die By the Pen, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics,  fiction and radio dramas.

This week should bring my musings to a close on the subject of empathy. I’m sure I’ll return to it at a later date as my conviction remains that it is our brightest blade as writers and as human beings. An elderly bong smoker in the Haight once said to me that she believed the greatest enemy to the modern world was the lack of imagination folks have nowadays. The use of our imaginations enables us as writers to go into perspectives we can’t accept and gives us a basis for attempting to understand the motives of those we disagree with. It is the basis for empathy.

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The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco is having an exhibition called “Monsters of Webcomics” from August 8- December 6, 2009. This exhibit interests me not only as a creator whose work is going to be featured in the Virtual Gallery (woo!) but also as a scholar, especially since I’m the one who curated the first webcomics exhibit, “Infinite Canvas: The Art of Webcomics,” at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York City in 2007.

Here’s a picture from MoCCA’s gallery opening:

Left to Right: Bill Roundy, Scott McCloud, Matt Murray, Jennifer Babcock: We’re standing in front of a 40 foot long print out of one of Scott McCloud’s “infinite canvas” comics

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In Die By the Pen, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

In my last entry I started to divulge a few ideas I have in regards to furthering of your empathy. I believe fully that the trait of empathy is crucial to the act of writing. The work of authoring stories in whatever format we prefer (or are paid to write in) can hone the skills needed to be empathetic towards others and our characters but there are other tricks to entering the bodies and minds of others that will only make us all the stronger.

We can never really know each other. It is one of the curses of being human that we must live in a type of isolation, guessing and hoping that we have a strong enough sense of the workings of the other humans in our lives. We fly blind and lonely star ships tethered by fragile conduits to our families and friends. It is a theme I explore over and over again in my own work. It is worthy. Empathy is our attempt to bridge the gaps between us as creator and characters as subjects through which we express all the facets of our will.

So without further ado, here is empathy part 2!

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