The Deaf Cartoonist's Dream

Working with zines and boothing at Insert Name

(The following italicized excerpt text is from the Emanata zine. Click here to download for free.)

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Here's to the cartoonist's dream
Foolish as it may seem
Here's to the hands that ache
Here's to the mess we make
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Last week was a big scramble to get zines ready for the Insert Name Zine Fest. I had a couple zine ideas already prepared but became enamored with making a popup zine. My thought was, "The shapes are simple, it shouldn't take too long to make..." and the simple project turned into three days straight of work. I'm really proud of the results even though making it was chaotic.

Gelli plate printing -- had to do it twice because my plate isn't big enough. Here’s a process pic:

The components -- trimmed and ironed brown bag paper at top left, gelli plate print at top right, inkjet print at bottom right, and popup/zine components at bottom right (missing paper bag handle and drawn details).

How the Paper Bag Princess popup zine all came together.

I had planned out things so that there would be time to make a one-day zine on the day before the event. It was an idea a few months in making after seeing the movie La La Land. The "Audition" song made me think about being a cartoonist so I wrote a parody of it.

Here's how the artwork came together:

Inkspots on rice paper, folded and smooshed together. The original ink color was sepia but looked too much like a crime scene, whoops!

Inkspots combined and made spiffy in Photoshop. The text was put on top to make this:

I managed to finish the zine and get a good number of them folded and ready for the next day... but ended up staying past 1 a.m. to help one of my kids finish their zine. >.<;;;

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A bit of time and you'll see
All the lines you made
Who knew where it'd lead us
And those stories need us
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This is what I had ready for Insert Name -- even The Way Above got a nice bellyband.

And here is my table at the event. My son's zine is the $2 one at center-left.

They even had a bouncer there!

Very effective ;)

I passed around my Survival ASL zine before the event started so that vendors had them ready for use. It turned out to be a good way to work through my social anxiety as I met people and became familiar with the lay of the land.

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I trace a line back to my age
Her, the pencil, and the page
Smiling through it
I said I'd do it again.
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Afterwards I got sick because we had skipped lunch and forgot to drink a lot of water. (Lesson learned.) It wasn't COVID, fortunately, because everyone was required to mask up at the event. I really appreciated that aspect because there were immunocompromised people there who otherwise would have missed out.

This week so far has been a week of rest and recovery. I've been catching up with projects that were on hold and writing up some ideas. My zine hyperfixation also continues as I’ve gone through the stack of goodies from last Saturday and then started looking up more zine ideas. Made a few models out of scrap paper.

As for the coming few weeks -- It's been a while since drawing something so I'm itching to draw cats. My brain might swerve and do something different if I say exactly what it is, so no further hints. ;)

Looking forward to sharing with you all when it’s ready!

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Cat tax of Angel utterly exhausted from her studio assisticat job

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The italicized text is from Emanata zine. Download Emanata zine here - a parody of the "Audition" song from La La Land. (Type "0" for a free download)