Belated Happy Holidays

For krismas this year we made two things to give to our friends and family. First, Angela made a lino-block image of Platyclaus, which I used to print letterpress cards with. Second, we made a cute little comic  to go with the card. We bound the comics by hand. They were a big hit and we thought that all you Flying Dodo lovers out there would like to see these two projects. Enjoy!

–Abe

 

Jet City Comic Show and Bellingham ComiCon

So we went to both the Jet City Comic Show and Bellingham Comicon since we last posted (forever ago!). Abe started school the Monday after Jet City and we’ve been incredibly busy since then. So, here’s our post-con post with pics and everything. Hope you enjoy it.

Here’s our booth at Jet City. I know you can’t tell, but Angela really does have two pony tails.

Here is Angela with her tea, talking to her mom on the phone before the service cut out. Since it was in Seattle and they could drive there in 15 minutes in the morning, both Abe and Angela got to bring some tea to drink from home. Angela had Irish Breakfast and Abe had Golden Monkey-both their favorite teas. Her Starbucks tea mug keeps the tea too hot, so Angela brought a small tea cup to drink out of. How dainty.

No pictures of Abe because he was behind the camera. Good way to save a camera though – no broken lenses. Even though Jet City was slow, we had a really good time. Emi Town was across from us. Abe and Angela really enjoyed talking comics with all the great people who stopped by our booth to see what we are all about. Some people asked great questions. Abe particularly enjoyed seeing the demographics of the people who are interested in our comics and honing his sales pitch. Angela got annoyed by the sales pitch, but all she could muster up was to say hi.

Next up, Bellingham ComiCon, which was way busier and hence more fun. Our booth looks almost exactly the same, but switched so Abe could get a picture for his school project. This time you get to see Abe and Angela because Anita came over to take pictures. They were even kind enough to let her in for free when she dropped off our lunch and when she came back later to take their pictures because she forgot her camera the first time.Aren’t they adorable? Those are their normal faces.We were boothed next to Wayward Studios. Abe was kind enough to chat with them for a while after a bathroom break (more about the bathroom break later). They were friendly and nice and we all recognized each other from Jet City.

Anyways, they had their first barter experience. This fella, Jesse James McFarland, traded us his Aric the Redd 24-hr comic for Hardly Kind and then he was awesome enough to buyThe Saddest Sasquatch from us. Here he is chatting with us – great conversation, but we might have had our comic goggles on. 

Great fun.

After Bellingham ComiCon, we popped into Anita’s place for dinner and more photos for Abe’s school project. Here is Angela and her mom.They are supposed to be fencing not re-enacting their favorite wand duel from Harry Potter.

Just to let you know, this was Abe’s final experience at the Bellingham ComiCon bathrooms.

While we were watching the hordes of people walk past our booth, Abe and Angela got talking about things we could do to get those hordes to stop at our booth. We noticed that lots of people stopped at the booths with boobs and butts so we decided we should have some boobs and butts too. Out of this conversation was born Fannie, who is a fan repair service tech.

And that’s our belated Post-Con wrap up. Thanks for reading! Hope to see you at a con in the future.

–Flying Dodo

Print madness

First, a reminder. Abe and I will be at the Jet City Comic Show (Seattle, WA) in just under a couple weeks! We will have a ton of stuff and would love you to come by and say hello. We are at booth AA68. It is September 24, Saturday, from 10-6 at the Seattle Exhibition Hall. We have been working hard getting ready.

What a busy weekend. On Saturday, Abe and I went up to Bellingham to print lots of stuff at my mom’s place, Egress Studio Press. But lucky us, we got to spend a couple hours driving around Seattle first looking for paper. Office Depot and Staples only carry paper that is too light-weight. So Paper Zone was the winner, even though it was heavier paper than we really wanted (28 lb. instead of 24lb.).

During this time driving around, we had to leave early and so stopped in at Starbucks for breakfast. I got a pumpkin scone and Awake tea because that is always what I get. Abe got coffee, which is a change for him in the last few weeks, and his usual cranberry scone. Their scones are actually good now, by the way. Anyways, the tea was too hot still when we got to Staples, so I wasn’t drinking it and forgot it in the car. When we got back to the car, Nisa had pulled it out of the cup holder and poured the whole thing out on my seat so she could drink it! Fortunately, there is a great drive-thru coffee, Gourmet Latte, place right next to Staples and Office Depot (which are across the street from each other) so I got another tea and the dogs, even idiot Nisa, got dog treats.

After all our driving around and drink buying, we eventually got up to Bellingham and started working away. I was a bit of a task master, but boy was it worth it. First up, my mom took pictures of Abe and me! It was hilarious. They have been put to good use, but I think they will have other uses as well. We had fun and were all laughing our heads off.

Then we ran upstairs to the computer. The first thing we worked on, because it was the last requirement for the Jet City Comic Show: Posters! We have one for The Jerks and one for Flying Dodo Publications. I am so glad she helped us because even though The Jerks poster was complete, we replaced some of the hand-written text with a font and it looks amazing. And she helped us with our Flying Dodo Publications poster and it could not look better. It is covered in a bunch of variations on the flying dodo, like this one, my favorite, called “Big Butt, Skinny Jeans.”

Poster for The Jerks

Poster for Flying Dodo Publications

Now we finally have a saleable copy of Ooh! Shiny. Lovely goldenrod cover (the image does not do it justice). Japanese stab binding. I am still binding it, but as of this posting, 10 of the 100 books are complete. Japanese stab binding is so much fun. The first 100 copies have a hand-written dedication, but any after will have a printed dedication. After printing all theOoh! Shiny papers, Abe ran downstairs with them all and folded them in half.

Cover of "Ooh! Shiny"

Title page of "Ooh! Shiny"

Abe had to fold a lot of paper

We also finished The Fire Breather, which I did all the watercolor paintings for on the Labor Day weekend. Great fun. It is a small book, but full color.  I will post more about this on it’s own, but I am pretty dang pleased with it.

Just look at it all! Pages for "The Fire Breather" and "Ooh! Shiny"

The second to last thing we worked on was Fart Happens, the collection of the first year of The Jerks comics! It looks great! I am really excited for this. It is by far the biggest book we have done: 60 pages. We did not have time to print it, but my mom will bring it down this weekend. Abe did the layout and did a great job. I can’t believe how much he has learned about layout this summer. He is going to do great in his Publishing Arts program this coming year.

Finally, but not really, we made up a couple prints: Secrets (a Gertrude comic), and Two Birds on a Wire. So excited. We should have at least 5 different prints available at the Jet City Comic Show. Two Birds looks Great. They are huge prints on glossy paper.

Then for reals finally, we ran downstairs at 11:00 in the evening to cut up all the Ooh! Shiny and Fire Breather papers (two sets of pages printed per paper). We didn’t even leave until 11:30, so we sadly missed out on ice cream with my mom and Jim.

A couple days later, Monday, I got in the car at 6:30 in the morning to head to work. As soon as I opened the door, it smelled like something died in there. I sent Abe a panicked text, but I was running late, so I got in and drove to work. It smelled just as bad if not worse when I finished work. I forgot: I put milk in my tea and it was still apparently spilled in the back seat. Mostly on a blanket, so this evening, we put it in the wash and doused the tea spots in Febreeze. Dead animal and Febreeze go great together, let me tell you.

Poem Comics

Angela posted a few of her poem comics on her blog. They’re pretty neat so you should go take a look. I particularly like the one about the fish.

–Abe

Reviews of Creature Tech

Angela and I are back with more reviews. This time of Creature Tech by Doug TenNapel. My review is here and Angela’s is here. We both really like Doug TenNapel’s art work. I described it as “fantastical, imaginative and fun” while Angela said “‘Whoa. That is inking.’ I may have drooled a little.” Yeah. Go read our reviews and then go read Creature Tech!

–Abe

Production on Oooh! Shiny

Ooh, Shiny! is my (Angela’s) linocut story about the triumph of crows to gain access to a wondrous torn garbage bag. Let’s follow through this gallery of pictures. (I used the gallery because I am not sure how else to get the pictures in here.)

1. The printing press. My mom let me use her printing press, which was an absolute life-saver. I did 8 copies of 14 separate pages. I could only get 3 to 4 pages completed in one day so I had to go up for 4 weekends just for printing.

2. Inking setup. I roll the ink on the glass. To the right of that is the papers I am using to print on.

3. The eight pages of the last run.

4. The fresh linocut for the next page. I cut it a month or two before.

5. Rolling out the ink. This can take a while. You don’t want to get too much ink on the linocut. But you also don’t want to get to little. The trick is, as my mom showed me, that you roll it out until it looks like velvet. Once I figured out how to do this better, I could do an extra run of prints each day.

6. Rolling out the ink on the linocut. Those dense areas of solid black are hard to get enough ink on without getting too much ink on the smaller areas like the panel border.

7. The fully inked linocut. Waiting. Though I shouldn’t let it wait to long.

8. The linocut set in the template on the press. I cut (well, my mom did) a template that was the average sized paper (they are all different sizes because they are hand-ripped and the original papers were different sizes). Then that template gets taped to the press board. When the linocut is inked, I put the linocut in the template. The linocut and template are backwards to the paper. So instead of having the extra border on the left for the book, it is on the right.

9. This is a test copy, which you can tell because I don’t have a white cotton glove on my left hand. For the test, I just used newsprint. For the real ones, I used the white glove because my hands were covered in ink and the paper needs to stay clean clean clean. (also, my shirt says “Yarrrrn.” I love it).

10. Rolling the press. I roll it through and then back again. Simple.

11. Finished test print.

12. Covering up the real prints from the last batch with newsprint in preparation to put the next print batch on top. The news print is to keep it all clean.

Much thanks to my mom because she showed me or told me how to do the whole process and let me use her studio for so many weekends where Abe and I ate up all her time. She helped us print many more copies of our comics in preparation for the comic conventions.

When Ooh, Shiny! is ready we will have some videos to post. And before that we should have some photos of the book binding to post. With that one, we will also try to include some great photos of my mom’s beautiful studio I got to use.

Herbert, the newest Flying Dodo comic

Herbert, our newest comic, is now available on etsy in both print and digital editions.

Here are a few pictures I took while Angela was working on the first few pages of Herbert.

 –Abe

Reviews of Blankets

As promised, here is a second set of comic reviews by us.

We posted reviews of Blankets by Craig Thompson on our respective blogs. Angela’s is hereand mine is here.

–Abe

Reviews of Koko Be Good

Angela posted a bunch of character and scene sketches from the comic that we are currently working on over at her blog. They look great!

I’m very excited about this comic. I feel like it’s one of the strongest stories I’ve written. It should be done in the next few weeks.

–Abe

Jet City Comic Show 2011

Good news everyone! We’re going to be at the Jet City Comic Show in Seattle this year! It’s a one day show, on Saturday, September 14, and is at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. The show runs from 10 am to 6 pm. Be sure to drop in and see us! We’re really excited to meet everyone! Tickets are 8 dollars. We don’t have a location assignment yet but when we do we’ll let you know.

–Abe

Our next comic

Angela posted a bunch of character and scene sketches from the comic that we are currently working on over at her blog. They look great!

I’m very excited about this comic. I feel like it’s one of the strongest stories I’ve written. It should be done in the next few weeks.

–Abe

Bellingham ComiCon 2011

Great news. We will be attending the Bellingham ComicCon on October 22 this year! It is a one-day convention, Saturday, from 10am to 5pm at the Ferndale Events Center. We don’t know what booth we will be in, but when we know we will surely let you know. You should plan to come out and see us! It is a pretty low entry price if last year was any indication.

We will bring with us lots of stickers (free), maybe candy (also free), prints, and of course all our books. We hope to have at least three prints available, but if you have any prints in particular you would like see, feel free to let us know. Just send and email to us atflyingdodopublications@gmail.com. There may even be a surprise item for The Jerks, but we’ll see how it turns out. Ah, what a teaser.

-Angela