This has nothing to do with comics, but these haunting photos of abandoned Yugoslavian monuments have to be seen to be believed. Link via Paul Kedrosky and Tim O’Reilly.

Meanwhile, word comes from Dennis Vogel of his initiative to create a standardized set of Comics Metadata Specifications. Take a look at what Dennis has so far and see what you think.

[Update (via Carol Tilly): Apparently this effort has a predecessor.]

Let’s all contemplate our mortality, shall we?

Welcome to Pine Point is a “creative non-fiction interactive documentary” by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons for the National Film Board of Canada.

Despite the rough, hand-animated photo-collages and humble lettering, Welcome to Pine Point achieves sophisticated and haunting effects as it chronicles a small Canadian town that was literally wiped off the map, and the lives of those who once called it home. I especially liked the use of music.

I highly recommend setting aside some free time, hitting full screen and diving in.

It’s not comics, but shares some of our visual vocabulary, and it should be of interest to anyone studying visual communication, storytelling, and the power of shared memories.

Some Friday Odds and Ends…

Came across this oilspot by the mailboxes Wednesday. Thanks, humanity, nature, and entropy. Good job there.

Here’s a great cause: Tom Hart (one of my all-time favorite people in the comics universe) is creating a new comics workshop in Gainesville, FL. Here’s your chance to help get it off to a great start!

Here’s a cool sidescroller with some nice art. (link via John Patten)

And finally: Heads up, Stanford University! Looks like I’ll be heading your way on Thursday November 18. More details shortly.

Have a great weekend.

Well it turns out that if you want to make a photocomic, being a great photographer doesn’t hurt. Who knew?

Seth Kushner’s Culture Pop (not to be confused with CulturePulp by Mike Russell) features photocomics of real life characters. Click on the chapter numbers to surf from person to person. It’s pretty cool.

This being Friday, a few odds and ends:

A couple of cool not-comics books in the mailbox this week. I’ve just started diving into Kevin Kelly’s new book What Technology Wants but it’s a fascinating read already. And Andrew Farago’s first book is out, a handsome new Loony Tunes Treasury, with all sorts of fun sproingy extras in it.

Finally, Mike Leung offers a little proof-of-concept experiment mixing words and pictures:

“An adaptation of Swift’s Modest Proposal that gives the reader control of the story progress via common-sense scrolling, can be as light as you can make your image files. and needs no commercial tools to publish other than what it takes to post digitize artwork online.”

Have a great weekend!

What do you think?

(Real or not, it’s pretty funny, if you haven’t seen it already)

Mentioned this on Twitter and had a few forerunners pointed out to me including:

80,000 Words by Mark Rosewater (2006) (via Michael Slone)

An untitled photo series by Miranda July (via Lane Kneedler)

And Andrew McDonald’s excellent A Pictorial Guide to Avoiding Camera Loss (via Rachelle M)

Close-ups of the four color printing process, courtesy of Half-Man Half-Static.

[via Tom Gauld]

Back from Italy with a few photos, lots of great memories, and a 17 year-old daughter whose birthday lasted for 36 hours courtesy of a really long plane ride.

Thanks to my Italian publisher Vittorio Pavesio for a great visit, as well as the lovely Gina, and all the great folks at the Pavesio Comics booth. Shout-outs also to Fulvio, Maurizio, Gianfranco, Barbara, Ryo, Massimo, all our fellow guests, and the great teachers and students at Rome’s International School of Comics, including director Dino Caterini and our Rome translator Matteo.

I first heard about Picmoticon.com from a tweet by Sara Ryan but clearly we were made for each other. Check out some of the great “accidental faces” out there and maybe submit one of your own.

Have a good weekend. We’re off to Italy next week!

No big news today, so here’s a random slice from a random recent photo I took. Look familiar?

I’d say about 1 in 40 of you should recognize the above image right away. As for the rest, um… I guess I just think it looks cool.

I get the Graphic NYC treatment!: interviewed by Christopher Irving and photographed by Seth Kushner during my reference-taking mission in January.

Seth and Christopher were great hosts and also shared their impressions of Brooklyn with me. It was a pleasure speaking with and providing a subject for both of these talented thinkers.