ZEJIAN SHEN

i did some character designzzzz

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:52:00 -0400

i did some character designzzzz

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:04:23 -0400

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Mon, 20 May 2013 21:44:30 -0400

Summer is here

Tue, 14 May 2013 02:32:23 -0400

Summer is here

collectivestench: smolderblunder: HellO Collective Stench and...

Sat, 11 May 2013 07:59:51 -0400

collectivestench:

smolderblunder:

HellO Collective Stench and I will be haunting the “Wowwee Zonk Showcase Room” at the TCAF event. I augmented this helpful map to help you find the safer path to sweet sweet treasures. If you venture into any other sect of the dungeon, may the gods have mercy on your poor fragile eggshell soul. DON’T STRAY FROM THE PATH.

Dungeon explorers be wary.

Tom you nerd.

But seriously, see all you nerds there.

so sorry, but look at him.

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:11:28 -0400

so sorry, but look at him.

Sorry

Wed, 08 May 2013 07:41:58 -0400

Sorry

collectivestench: Leah Wishnia, Heather Benjamin, Zejian Shen...

Tue, 07 May 2013 21:01:27 -0400

collectivestench:

Leah Wishnia, Heather Benjamin, Zejian Shen and Sophia Foster-Dimino representing Collective Stench for TOUGH LOVE group show at Double Punch in SF this Friday at 7.

The show also includes work by Alabaster, Bunnie Reiss, Chelsea Brown, Hannah K Lee, JooHee Yoon, Katie Patch, Lisa Hanawalt, Morgan Blair, Rachel Kantor, Sam Ballardini, Shannon May and Wesley Allsbrook.

Sf people go check out this show!

I deleted candy crush from my phone. I can talk to people again.

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:28:45 -0400

I deleted candy crush from my phone. I can talk to people again.

Photo

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:25:52 -0400

“A Beijing After School Special”, 2013

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:27:15 -0400

“A Beijing After School Special”, 2013

Collaboration with George Chang: invitations for @xiaopower2 and...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 04:01:01 -0400

Collaboration with George Chang: invitations for @xiaopower2 and Leo Tam’s wedding.

What’re your party plans tonight?

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:43:54 -0400

What’re your party plans tonight?

Party Plans 2 second edition, offset printed. 40 pages of sweaty...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:39:43 -0400

Party Plans 2 second edition, offset printed. 40 pages of sweaty drama, with a color center fold. $8 available at TCAF.

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Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:23:26 -0400

Photo

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:16:34 -0400

Photo

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:33:13 -0400

deantrippe: bogleech: nefaeria: Europe’s Wild Men in the...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:50:00 -0400

deantrippe:

bogleech:

nefaeria:

Europe’s Wild Men in the National Geographic.

Longbox Coffin: Happiness (the anthology)

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:36:49 -0400

Longbox Coffin: Happiness (the anthology):

thespithouse:

arecomicsevengood:

Happiness (the anthology)

I picked up the latest issue, number 3, of this thing that seems much discussed, at least in certain circles of more Tumblr-y parts of the comics internet. It’s got lots of contributors. I don’t think anyone would consider it a standard-bearer or anything, but it’s broad in its contributors, encompassing people whose work I’m familiar with and some I’m not. There is a part of me that went into it thinking, alright, these are the new cartoonists, let’s see what they’re up to: and then was sort of shocked by how, mid-nineties alt-comics also-rans it felt. Like the house anthology Top Shelf used to put out, or pretty much anything that would have Scott Mills in it. Or a Meathaus anthology. Like, those Meathaus anthologies have great people in them: I’ve got one I picked up used with Brandon Graham, Tom Herpich, Farel Dalrymple, etc. Happiness 3 has work by such talents as Mike Taylor, Conor Stechschulte, and Max Clotfelter, presented in a context where they don’t really get to make an impression except to people who know that those are people to watch. There’s also a lot of just bad, unappealing drawing in here. To name the worst offenders: KJ Martinet, Anthony Meloro, Garrett Young, and Ian McDuffie.

The variety of different drawing styles, normally a plus, starts to seem weird and unappealing, due to this thing where, while the book has a color section in the middle of abstract works, all the comics are in black and white, and everyone sort of has a different approach to shading: The book is really well-printed, and people who do subtle stuff with pencil or ink or wash generally have it look good, (Sara Drake’s piece in particular shows a lot of grain in its greys) but then like everyone who is shading their work on a computer, with greytones or zipatone looks really muddy and ugly. (exceptions: Joe Kessler, Sophia Foster-Dimino.) The stuff that’s flat black and white tends to look pretty bad too. I don’t know if people just didn’t know how good the printing would be, or they’re used to working full-color digitally, or whatever.

The thing that I think most surprised me was how straightforward most of the work was. I guess it’s not all “realism” but enough of it is- and all the pieces are pretty short that that sort of blurs into being the overall gestalt. Because of how short everything is, none of the “realism” pieces really go anywhere, towards actually building a character or whatever. There’s also a piece here with black characters that does this thing where the dialogue tries to convey dialect and enunciating with misspelling, and, yeah, the whole thing comes off as racist and patronizing.

That’s surprising, because the book also contains a letter from its editor, Leah Wishnia, where she comes off really sensitive about offensive material, specifically because of the way it marginalizes oppressed populations, but it seems like she meant more of the Johnny Ryan style attempts at transgression via drawing swastikas thing than the other ways people can make work that reeks of privilege. I do applaud her decision to avoid the one kind of stupid and offensive material though.

The book is also, like that “Garo Tribute Issue” of Secret Prison, hampered by weirdly arbitrary editorial and design choices. In Secret Prison, it was the whole “do comics that read from right-to-left” thing. Here, it’s the comic being a “flipbook,” not in the animation sense but in the Marvel Comics Presents sense, of equally distributed pages, reading towards the middle. The middle here are “abstract” works, presented sort of like paintings, but with the title of the piece and the person who made it printed on the work itself, and then you can sort of keep reading into a point where you’re looking at these pieces upside-down. Just a weird choice.

I think the book does have a lot of good people contributing to it, but as a survey of a world I am not fully aware of it just mostly displays the people I didn’t know about before as being not particularly deserving of my attention. It makes me worry and feel bad about the people whose work I do like, that people might be being exposed to it for the first time and not see anything worth investigating further.

- Brian Nicholson

Here’s a really Negative review of Happiness #3 from a very outspoken Brian Nicholson. It’s way too nasty in certain areas (I can’t support bashing other hard-working cartoonists like that), and semi-constructive in others, which I responded to here. Thanks, kinda …

leah there’s no reason to even respond to this tumblr rant. it’s hardly a review if it’s just some ugly guy complaining about grainy images that his sensitive privileged weird eye balls can’t handle. so rude.

On getting out of bed. Also, I got some halftones.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:37:59 -0400

On getting out of bed. Also, I got some halftones.