Category Archives: comix

ZDay

Today is ZDay, a day of “awareness and activism” about the issues addressed in the delicious agitprop conspiracy doc Zeitgeist: The Movie.

I don’t have the patience to be a true conspiracy theorist, but I do believe the following: that the government is not to be trusted; that the elite are sketchy, secretive and often psychotic bastards; and that humanity has much to gain by ditching theistic religions, nationalism, and corporatism. But above all, I enjoy a good story. And for that reason alone I recommend taking two hours to watch Zeitgeist, preferably with a couple friends and your preferred paranoia-inducing substance.

[via alex o.]

conspiracy theorists

long time no blog

some of the things I’ve done instead:

  • Designed a PDF of Sharing Creative Works, the Creative Commons comic I worked on with Alex Roberts and Jon Phillips. Did this with Scribus, an open source desktop publishing app that seems to have finally reached maturity (usable interface, doesn’t crash every couple of hours).
  • Wrote the copy for Simple Licensing, a Creative Commons infodoc designed by Alex, with contributions from Jon and Tim.
  • Redesigned the Lampoon website.
  • Sold out
  • Bunch of arty stuff. More on this later…

Lots of stuff in the blog queue, gonna get on that.

Sharing Creative Works

Last week Creative Commons published Sharing Creative Works, the comic I’ve been working on for the past month or so.

Sharing Creative Works Banner

Originally intended as documentation for our OLPC collaboration, we settled for trying to come up with something American kids (and adults) would understand, as we realized we were pretty unqualified to educate children in the developing world. So in true collaborative form, the comic is on the wiki (admittedly, a poor presentation format) and all the SVG artwork is online, in the hopes that people who have a stronger knowledge of the different cultures the laptops are going to will give us feedback or make improvements.

Sharing Creative Works Storyboard

I wrote the bulk of the script (with lots of help from Jon, Alex, and Asheesh). This is the product of 4ish years of trying to explain CC to friends, family, and whoever else would listen. I’m really curious about how successful it is. Its definitely the approach I’ve found work best in conversation, but this is a comic. Of course I’ve been working on it for too long to have any sense if it works or not (but Valleywag twice blogged us).

As far as the artwork goes, I storyboarded it and then passed it on to our awesome graphic designer, Alex Roberts. He did most of the panels in Inkscape until he got bored of it, and threw it back to me. The art is kinda tricky because of how abstract the ideas are, leading to an over reliance on arrows and such. I had fun with the facial expressions towards the end though.

Sharing Creative Works 17

This is my first real project using vector graphics and its made me a lot more savvy with Inkscape, which is great. I definitely miss ink & bristol, and hopefully will have something new in that medium up here soon. On the other hand, SVG makes it so easy to revise and mess around, like with this final panel that didn’t make the cut:

Sharing Creative Works cut panel

October Update: California, Lampoon, Creative Commons…

Its been a while since my last post, but not for lack of things to say. Instead, my bandwidth for online activity has been consumed by two other endeavors. First, I gave the Harvard Lampoon website a complete redesign using Drupal. Its still very much a work in progress, and considering my attention span, it may stay as such for a while. But check it out, as we plan to update the content quite frequently (including comics illustrated by yours truly).

However, despite what my recent contributions to the Lampoon may seem, I am not back in Cambridge. My love affair with California is still going strong and I’ve decided to stay in Berkeley for the semester. Peace out, Puritans. Hello, beautiful hippie people.

And what have I been doing out here? Besides making lots of friends, art, and sourdough, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been hired as a Business Development Assistant for Creative Commons, the awesome organization I interned with over the summer. I blog for them a couple times a week, so that’s definitely been eating into the energy I have for this site. More to come on what else I’ve been working on there, but for now I should mention that we just launched our Annual Fall Fundraising Campaign, and along with it, a slick site redesign. Those of you already familiar with the great work CC is doing, consider making a donation!

Support CC - 2007

For the uninitiated, this video is a pretty good introduction to what Creative Commons is all about:

cute way to learn to code

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby

Why’s (Poignant?) Guide uses cartoon foxes and pure silliness to teach (hipsters and pre-teen girls?) how to program in Ruby— the sleek, simple, and much hyped about scripting language from Japan. Perhaps not the best choice if you’re used to O’Reilly, but for those more familiar with Achewood and Cat and Girl, the Poignant Guide could be a fun way to pick up some skillz.