Loss

Today my family and I just returned from Rome, where I had the honor to have my artwork displayed at the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in association with Rotary International’s End Polio Now campaign. It was a wonderful and meaningful week, and I will write more on the subject tomorrow.

Right now, I need to express the shock I felt on our arrival home, when I learned that a colleague of mine died while I was away. Dwayne McDuffie started working on staff at Marvel not long after I did. While I can’t say that he and I were close friends, I knew him well enough to appreciate his humor, warmth and overall kindness. Dwayne was very well loved and respected by his peers, he was a talented writer and an extremely funny man. Waaaay back in 1990 I had the pleasure of drawing an issue of Power Pack that was written by Dwayne (and inked by the late, great Dan Spiegle). The story featured ghosts living in toilets. In retrospect, I believe this project foretold my successful foray into toilet & vomit illustrations that kept me busy for a few years on J-14 Magazine!


Last summer, Dwayne kindly reached out to me when I was looking for freelance work, hoping to collaborate on a graphic novel concept of his. While it didn’t work out, I really appreciated that he’d considered me. Today, I wonder about this missed opportunity to get to know Dwayne more intimately.

The comics and animation industries have lost another special creative talent this week. He was too young to be taken so soon. My condolences to his family and friends.

One year ago, my own father passed away. Something I have thought a lot about while racing around the many churches in Rome. As a Catholic--and an Italian!--I feel he would have been proud of my latest adventure, and I’m sorry that he isn’t around for me to share it with. I miss him.

Of course it’s not the same, but tomorrow I’ll share my thoughts with all of you who care to read it. Arrivederchi!

For more thoughts on Dwayne, here are some links...
New York Times obit
R.I.P. Dwayne McDuffie, from The Beat
Why We Needed Dwayne McDuffie, from The Beat

Story

While preparing for Rome, where my Rotarian artwork will be displayed at the Palazzo Poli, I’ve been thinking about what a powerful means of communication storytelling is. Graphic storytelling, in particular.

The power of Pictorial imagery is not bound to specific cultures by spoken language or the written word. Indeed, this kind of communicating can be universal; visual representations of shared human experience.


Legends, myths, fables, folk tales, epics, novels, newspapers, biography and history. The most basic level of human discourse is story. We use it to understand the universe. Its symbols and archetypes are hardwired into our collective unconscious.


Story remind us who we are and inspires us to become something greater.


Graphic storytelling has given us insight into the past.


Put into this perspective, the old saw that a “picture is worth a thousand words” is an incredible understatement. Images that have lasted for millennia allow us to communicate with the dead (albeit, it is a one-sided conversation!).


Today, it is understood that images are the easiest way to present information in a way that everyone can understand it.


So, I guess I should not be surprised that my own work for Rotary International has taken on a life of its own. Champions of Rotary’s charitable causes keep finding creative uses for my artwork as a way to educate and reach new supporters worldwide. It’s very exciting.


And if you still doubt the power of a comic book to communicate important messages with history-making results, I guess you have not heard about the comic book that helped inspire the revolutionaries in Egypt!


Considering Egyptians’ long history of graphic storytelling, I, for one, am not surprised at all!


While we’re on the subject, if you happen to be in the New York area on March 1st, you should head down to the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art (MOCCA), where master storyteller Larry Hama will be teaching a class on the Principals of Graphic Storytelling for Comics. Larry is a cool guy who has written a bunch of great stuff for comics, TV and film. It ought to be very interesting, and if I were back east I’d definitely check it out.

I love a good story. Who doesn’t? I'll have more to say on this subject soon...

PRINCIPLES OF GRAPHIC STORYTELLING FOR COMICS
Instructor: LARRY HAMA
Tuesday March 1 7:00-9:00 PM
Admission $40 | $35 for MoCCA Members

facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=150180015038646

Trevi

In preparation for my upcoming gallery show in Rome, this week I had to draw a couple of pieces of promotional art. My contact asked for a view of the Trevi Fountain, lit up with Rotary International's End polio Now logo. This is kind of a sneak peek of the actual projection that will be presented at the event on Rotary Day.

I thought it would be cool to share the process. First, these were my rough sketches I provided...


The bottom one is pretty much what they asked for, a typical view of the fountain. I wanted to try something a bit more graphic, so I also sent the top version, unsure if it would fly with the client. Yes, you can't read the End Polio Now logo, and the view of the fountain is fragmented, but I really liked it. It's more challenging for the viewer, I think.

Anyway, We decided to do BOTH! Below is my full-sized layout. I usually work like this; on cheap tracing paper, using pencil & marker, I work out the broad strokes and nail down how the image(s) will be composed on the page...


After that, I usually lightbox my layout onto bristol board, and create a nice, clean pencil drawing to ink. Here's where I tighten things up and try to get the perspective & details down. Unfortunately, I don't have a scan of the pencils to show you. So here are my finished inks...



At this point, I scan the inked artwork--and usually do some clean-up in Photoshop before coloring. Finally, here is the finished color work. I'm fairly pleased with the results. What do you think?.



There you have it. I am very curious to see what they do with them. I will let you know!

Rome!

As promised here and on Facebook, today I will reveal some exciting news! (Drumroll, please...)

Next month my artwork will be on display at the National Institute for Graphic Arts at the Palazzo Poli in Rome!

In recent months, the stories I drew for the Rotarian magazine have been taking on a life of their own. First there was that enthusiastic bloke in the UK, then yesterday's Folio Award announcement, and now this. Evidently, people respond favorably to the use of graphic storytelling! Who knew?

Of course that's a joke. As a comic book artist, I've always known that comics (or "graphic novels," if you prefer) can be a powerful medium for communicating ideas. My editor at the Rotarian, Deborah Lawrence, knew thew this too, and campaigned for a long time before she was able to go ahead and produce our series of stories. The first, if you're playing catch-up, was Amazing Stories of Polio, a history of the disease and the battle to eradicate it. This ties in with Rotary's End Polio Now effort. Next, we told the story of Rotary's founder, Paul Harris, in the illustrated biography, The Remarkable Mr. Harris.


February 23rd is Rotary Day, when members of Rotary Clubs around the world celebrate the international organization's birthday. As shown in The Remarkable Mr. Harris, the historic first club meeting took place in Chicago on that date in 1905. Today, it is a day of celebration, used to expand awareness of Rotary and its charitable works. It's a big deal...




You can see from this photo from Rotary Day 2009 that the Roman Rotarians take the job pretty seriously!


This year, they have their sights set on the Trevi Fountain, which will be lit up in a similar way. The Building behind the famous fountain is the Palazzo Poli, where the original art from both of my stories will be on display. The organizer, Alberto Cecchini, has arranged for me to be present at the event, which will also be attended by Rome's mayor and many public dignitaries. Needless to say, I am thrilled.


This week, I'm working up some promotional art for the event. Here are a couple of rough sketches...


I'll post the finished work, when it's completed. Now I'd better get back to work. And I'd better brush up on my Italian. And you know what else? I think I ought to join the Rotary Club!

Folio Award Winner!

This just in: Folio Magazine's 2010 Eddie and Ozzie Awards were presented today in New York, where The Remarkable Mr. Harris won a Silver Award in the Association/Non‐Profit, Circulation 6 or more times a year, Single Article category!

The Remarkable Mr. Harris is a graphic biography of Rotary International's founder, Paul Harris, which appeared in the December 2009 issue of the Rotarian, drawn by Yours Truly. This is some of my best work. I'm very proud of it, and I'm thrilled to hear that a "comic book" story has had such an impact (more on this later...).

Congratulations to my editor, Deborah Lawrence and the writer of The Remarkable Mr. Harris, Diana Schoberg!

I have some other, excellent, Rotary story-related news, that I will share with you tomorrow!

Something to Do in L.A. Tonight!

Come on by and say hello!

AD 2010
Thursday, January 6th, 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
1010 Westwood Blvd. 4th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90024
facebook page

Gallery Show!

Happy holidays, everyone! It's been busy lately, juggling freelance work, school and the usual end-of-year holiday rigmarole. 2010 has decidedly not been one of my favorite years, I'm sorry to say, but I have high hopes for 2011.

I'm pleased to report that the Design Department at UCLA Extension has decided to show off the work from the Advertising Design class that I just completed. We're putting together a gallery show featuring the work of nine artists (including me), from our three major projects: campaigns for The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Coda Automotive, and a series of personal initiatives.

The show begins on January 6th, and is open to the public. For more info about our opening party, see below, and check out our facebook event page.

AD 2010 Gallery Show
Thursday, January 6, 2011 · 7:00pm - 9:00pm
010 Westwood Blvd. 4th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90024

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=180365738656756

Have a safe & happy new year!

Advanced Typography Assignment: Part 3

Well, my Advanced Typography class at UCLA Extension is almost at an end. I just got back from my second-to-last class, where I handed in my revised "Echo Park" magazine spreads, as well as a first-draft of a new assignment. I figure I'm overdue for sharing this stuff on the ol' blog...

First, we have the Echo Park designs. I first posted about this back in October. Basically, we all chose neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area and created expressive type-treatments that incorporated characteristics of the neighborhood, as well as infusing our own personal opinions. Next, we took our finished designs and put them into a magazine spread, further exploring creative uses of type while handling the text and other page matter.

I chose the historic Echo Park neighborhood, and you saw my first attempts with the magazine spreads (I'll post them again here, below). I tried three very different approaches. The feedback from the instructor was to push them all much further; rely less on images and shapes, focus on the typography and not to be afraid of challenging the "readability." The latter was very difficult for me (and some of the others in the class, too), as readability seems pretty important for a magazine spread!

However, the point of these exercises is that an artist can always dial back, and make a design more conservative. But it is liberating for designers to push themselves past their comfort zone and explore ideas that would never even occur to them, sticking to safe design choices. Clearly, school is the place to work on this, since there will never be as much freedom on a paying job, and I'm making the most of it.

Here's design one, before...


...and after...



Design two was supposed to look like a slick architecture magazine, like Dwell. Here's the first go...


..and here it is after a couple of revised versions...



The last version is a huge newspaper section. Before...


...and, after...



This was fun and extremely challenging. To be honest, I'm not convinced that they are truly resolved. I could go on tweaking individual type elements on these pages forever, and I don't know if they'd ever look "finished." That said, this is just a school project, and regardless of what I may think of the finished product, I learned a hell of a lot while working on them.

Today, I handed in the first-draft of my last project for this class. The assignment is to choose a musical group, and a charitable organization, and design an invitation to a fund-raising event where the band will be appearing. The idea is to bring the individual characters & styles of both into a design appropriate for the event. I chose the group Metric, and the Alzheimers Association for my charity. Here's what I have come up with, so far...





I presented these in class today, along with my "mood board" that shows what I'm using as inspiration; work by David Carson, Neville Brody and a bunch or other stuff. My designs went over pretty well, I'm happy to report. In previous assignments I believe that I relied too strongly on images and illustrative elements. Not really a shocker, since I'm an illustrator. As this is a typography class, I've been working hard to get away from my own comfort zone and solve design problems using only type and letter forms. I think I finally achieved that here.

I did receive some good suggestions for my revisions, due next week. I'll be sure to post my progress again here. Of course, I'd be happy to hear any feedback from you, as well, if you have any to share.

Folio Magazine Award Finalist

Excellent news today! I just learned that the Paul Harris biography that I illustrated for The Rotarian magazine is a finalist for Folio Magazine's 2010 Eddie and Ozzie Awards!


The annual Folio awards recognize the very best in editorial and design in the magazine industry. Isn't it cool for a comics-related project to be included in the running? They announce the winners on January 13, 2011, so wish us luck!


(written for Rotary International by Diana Schoberg and masterminded by our editor, Deborah Lawrence)

New Website

Hey everyone. Been very busy this week with work & school, but I wanted to mention that I've just built a new "hub" website that has my all my pertinent info, and links to this blog, art galleries, et cetera. Please check it out and bookmark it:

www.stevebuccellato.com

It includes a feed to this blog, so please be aware that THIS page will still be where I actively (or occasionally) post stuff.

Now, I gotta get back to work. I will try to post again next week. Have a great weekend, and thank you to all of our Veterans, for your service!

Advanced Typography Assignment: Part 2

Just got home from my class with a lot of food for thought (and, happily, a lot of yummy food waiting for me, because I was starving!)

In general, my "Echo Park" designs went over pretty well with the other students. But, as I expected, my type treatments were far too conservative for my teacher. He really wants us to push the limits of our creativity—and the piece's readability.

So be it!

For this week's homework, we're taking the three designs to the next level. In the spirit of the class, I'm going to throw caution to the wind and totally deconstruct them. It ain't gonna be pretty! I'll post my progress later in the week...

Advanced Typography Assignment

So, here's the latest from my Advanced Typography class. We've been working on designing a logo for a Los Angeles neighborhood, using whatever combinations of fonts & letterforms best express the area's individual character. The instructor has been really pushing us to experiment and move beyond typical, conservative designs. I suppose it's easier to reign yourself in than it is to push yourself to the limits. There have been some really interesting results from everyone in class.

For my neighborhood, I chose Echo Park, which is an historic area close to Downtown LA, near Dodger Stadium. After fooling around with many different concepts, this week we were tasked with taking our logos and incorporating them into a magazine spread of some kind. I tried three different versions, going for very different looks & feels...

This one would be in an edgy local paper like the LA Weekly or Village Voice

This one is more of a slick, glossy magazine deal. Like Dwell or similar.

This one is a big, ol' newspaper section.

These were fun. I wonder if they're too conservative for my teacher. Guess I'll find out tomorrow night & let you know what revisions I'll be doing for round two!

More Pizza

For some strange reason, in the past year I've been approached by three separate and completely unrelated people, to work on Pizza-related logos. Since I've never worked on anything pizza-related before, I find this to be a bizarre coincidence. In a previous post, I showed off drawings for a TV show logo, today I present another fun design. Behold, The Pizza Daddy...


On this one, I only drew the pizza chef character. The typography is by John Roshell at Comicraft/Active Images. Pizza Daddy is a new restaurant that will be opening soon in Brooklyn, NY.

The third pizza job didn't advance past the sketches stage. It was for a restaurant in my neighborhood called The Good Pizza. A nice joint with very good food, run by some awesome guys (here's a shout-out to Nando and Carlos). They make an excellent spaghetti sauce, BTW (now serving breakfast!).

While we're on the subject, I just want to mention two places in LA to find the most delicious pizza. As a New Yorker, born & bred, I know what I'm talking about. First, if you want an upscale gastronomic EVENT, you must try Mozza on Highland. It is the pizzarific love-child of celebrity chefs Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich. UNBELIEVABLE FOOD. This placed opened in 2007 and it's still nearly impossible to get a reservation! (Just show up early and get on the waiting list; it's fun to sit at the bar and watch them make pizza) Try the Marinated Baby Peppers with Tuna for an appetizer. Trust me.

For more of a "regular" slice that will make you think you're back east, go to Tomato Pie in Silver Lake . By my reckoning, it's the BEST slice in Los Angeles (there's one on Melrose, too, but I haven't been there). These guys are from Trenton, so I may sound like a traitor to my fellow New Yorkers. Not for nothing, but I gotta say, Trenton is much closer to New York than CPK. Try it out. It's so good you will WEEP.

Advertising Design Class

Regular readers of this blog know that I've recently been taking courses at UCLA Extension, working toward my certificate in Advanced Print & Graphic Communication.

(Regulars will also notice that I've just redesigned the look of my blog. This current iteration is just an experiment; I'm just playing around with the design. This one probably wont last very long, so don't get used to it! I would appreciate some feedback, though, if anyone cares to comment)

Anyway, one of my current UCLA courses is Advertising Design, and I thought I'd share some of my schoolwork with you.

This class has been a lot of fun. We just finished a campaign for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), as our first project. Basically, the assignment was to design a marketing strategy to attract a new, younger demographic to the museum, using a new "Street Art" exhibition as a draw.

The first couple of weeks was all research. We interviewed people from the group(s) we wanted to attract, learning their feelings about museums, art generally, and contemporary art in particular. We gathered information about their lifestyles, interests and desires.

Using the collected data, we decided on five archetypes for our demographic groups, and then created detailed "personas" to whom we would target our campaigns. After a (short) bit of in-class brainstorming, we students were given a mere week to develop a comprehensive campaign that we had to present (with a visual slideshow) at our next meeting. It was a huge amount of work, considering that this isn't our full-time job!

I LOVED IT.

The whole process was fascinating. My presentation included 10 slides (later expanded to 14), that outlined the goals and challenges of the campaign, the results of my research, and then several slides detailing my marketing ideas, which included some changes to MOCA's programming and in-museum experience. Fortunately, we didn't need to address any particular budget for our campaigns, so we could propose anything we wanted.

Here a few highlights from my slideshow...








I really enjoyed putting together the presentation. Less fun for me was actually getting up in front of the class and presenting it; let's just say I'm not the greatest public speaker! One thing that helped was that I'd written a script to go along with the slideshow, that allowed me to go greater into depth about my ideas, letting the slides simply act as interesting visuals and bullet-points.

In "real life," my experience in the world of advertising is limited, but I must say that I find the whole process to be thrilling. I'm looking forward to the next project in school, and keeping an eye out for any "real world" opportunities that may present themselves.

DC Super Heroes Pop-Up Book!

Hey, check this out! Almost a year ago I worked on this unusual project; an elaborate pop-up book featuring all the major DC Comics characters. The book is by Matt Reinhart, who is the author of several extremely cool books that have redefined the modern pop-up book. If you've seen his Star Wars book, you know what I mean. It's amazing what Matt and his studio do with folded paper. Take a peek...



I colored all the images in the book. No small feat, if I may say so. It involved coloring many versions of the same drawing, all chopped up into pieces that had to fit back together after printing and cutting. The whole process must be a printer's nightmare!

Anyway, I worked on this thing last winter, but just learned that is hit the book stores today. I haven't seen the finished product yet, and I can't wait to see how it turned out. If it's anything like the one test spread that I saw, the book will be awesome. And a wonderful holiday gift for the Super Hero enthusiast in your family!

Look for it--and If you happen to see the book; let me know what you think!

I think it's about time for me to redesign this blog...

...What do you think?

More Class!

Wow, I can't believe it's been nearly a month since my last post. I guess things have been busy around here since the new school year started for my son, and for me.

This semester I'm taking two courses toward the completion of my Certificate in Advanced Print & Graphic Communication: Advanced Typography and Advertising Design. So far, I am happy to report that both classes are exceptional.

My last class (Publication Design ) was kind of a mixed bag. Since I work in publishing, much of the material was familiar. In addition, this particular course was taught online, and lacked the creative interaction and collaborative energy that has been so stimulating for me since I started taking these courses. I've heard many complaints from other students about the online classes at UCLA Extension. They really need to work on making the experience more interactive. By coincidence, I am currently building an online class for the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. They appear to have a much better grasp on how to replicate the classroom environment online. In some ways, my UCLA class was a valuable lesson on what not to do in that regard!

That said, the best part of Publication Design was working on the homework assignments. I enjoyed stretching my creative legs, working on the kinds of projects that don't normally cross my desk as freelance assignments. I'm really getting into the whole graphic design "thing," and would like to do more of it on the future.

In my last post, I showed off a book cover design I was working on. Since then, I received some feedback from my instructor, and I tweaked it a bit. She admonished me for stretching the type on the logo (rightly so!), and felt the gun was an unnecessary element. Below is my new version. I'm not entirely sold on it, but admit that it is easier to look at than my first attempt...



My two new courses have been very interesting, and I'm happy to be back in the physical classroom, interacting with other humans! I may have said it before, but I think I've been freelance too long! Both classes are very conceptual, and we're digging deeply into the creative processes of typography and the world of advertising. For the past two weeks in Advanced Typography, we have been playing with letter forms to give different meanings to old adages. This was a lot of fun, actually. For the first week, we had to physically cut & paste pieces of type onto paper (like making a ransom note), experimenting with shapes, sizes and space. Later, we scanned the letters and continued the process digitally, creating many versions with different meanings. Here are a couple of mine that I like...







Fun stuff. The instructor is great. He gets so excited about type that he is exactly the guy you want to teach you this class. He's really trying to push us all out of our comfort zones, encouraging us to go "out there" with our designs. I'm already learning a lot.

Tonight I have my advertising class--also great fun. We've been doing research as we build a whole campaign for an art museum. Very interesting work, I'll have to tell you all more about it later. In fact, I need to buckle down and finish my homework assignment right now, so it's time to sign off. Excuse me while I get my Donald Draper on!