Year: 2011

Tonoharu: Official Selection at Angoulême Comics Festival!

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Cool news! The French version of Tonoharu has been chosen as an official selection for the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe’s largest comics festival!

Tonoharu is one of 58 books chosen as an official selection. As I understand it, a few thousand books were eligible, so it’s a pretty big deal and a real honor.

This puts Tonoharu in the running for some of the most prestigious awards in comics. (And no, “prestigious comics award” is not an oxymoron.) Looking over my competition (which includes comics greats like Dan Clowes, Jim Woodring, Craig Thompson, and Joe Sacco, just to name a few) I think its fair to say I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at the top prize, or even the Angoulême International Comics Festival Essentials prize, which is awarded to five books. But I might have a shot at the best newcomer award or something.

Awards will be announced at the festival in late-January. I’ll keep you posted!

My sincere thanks to my French publisher Le Lezard Noir, (in particular Stéphane Duval and Anne Cavarroc) for producing such a beautiful edition of my book!

Angoulême International Comics Festival Official Selection List (in French)

Tonoharu: Official Selection at Angoulême Comics Festival!

Cool news! The French version of Tonoharu has been chosen as an official selection for the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Europe’s largest comics festival!

Tonoharu is one of 58 books chosen as an official selection. As I understand it, a few thousand books were eligible, so it’s a pretty big deal and a real honor.

This puts Tonoharu in the running for some of the most prestigious prizes in comics. (And no, “prestigious comics award” is not an oxymoron!) Looking over my competition (which includes comics greats like Dan Clowes, Jim Woodring, Craig Thompson, and Joe Sacco, just to name a few) I think its fair to say I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at the top prize, or even the Angoulême International Comics Festival Essentials prize, which are awarded to five books. But I might have a shot at the best newcomer award or something.

Awards will be announced at the festival in late-January. I’ll keep you posted!

My sincere thanks to all the people at Le Lezard Noir, (in particular and translator ) for producing such a beautiful edition of my book!

Angoulême International Comics Festival Official Selection List (in French)

Upcoming Appearances in Central Japan

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I have two appearances coming up this month in Japan, if anyone’s interested:

On Sunday, December 11, 2011, I’ll be in Nagoya taking part in a panel discussion/release party for Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan, an anthology to benefit Japan disaster relief. The Facebook event page with all the details can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/events/285808968131016/

Then on Saturday, December 17, 2011, I’ll be at the Tokushima Museum of Literature & Calligraphy ( 徳島県立文学書道館 ). This is in conjunction with a calligraphy show that runs from 12/16 ~ 12/18. Don’t miss your big chance to see a piece of my sub-par calligraphy! I’m not sure what times I’ll be there to and from, but I’ll update with that later.
There doesn’t seem to be an online event page for the show, but  the website for the museum can be found here (Japanese only):
http://www.bungakushodo.jp/index.html

Hope to see you there!

Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan

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It’s been more than two months since my last update. I don’t know how many regular readers I have, but based on my Google Analytics reports, it’s probably just a couple-few dozen. So to those tens of people,my apologies for not delivering on the weekly updates that are promised on the masthead of this website. What can I say? The full time job has taken a lot out of me, so something had to give. The next couple weeks are super busy so I probably won’t update for a while, but from here on out I’m going to try to update at least once a month (yeesh, talk about a low bar). The end of December should be pretty slow, so I should be able to update more frequently then, for a while at least.

But I digress. What inspired me to get off my butt and update after ten weeks was I wanted to let you all know that Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan, the comics anthology I contributed to, is finally available in paperback. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to relief efforts to the disasters that befell northeast Japan in March of this year. So please consider ordering a copy here:
http://www.biguglyrobot.net/mailorder/

Thanks!!

Kameoka in Brief

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Pictured: A two minute walk from my apartment.

To all the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of people reading this, sorry this entry is so late in coming. Between moving/settling in/getting sick/trying to prepare for lessons, I just never had the energy to do much of anything other than what was strictly demanded of me. Even now after taking the last couple weeks off, I still only really have time to phone in a quick entry. Hopefully once I’ve settled into a routine I’ll be able to devote more time to describing my experience here in this blog, but for now I’ll just write a few paragraphs on borrowed time.

Things have been busy but pleasant (other than getting sick). Classes started a week ago Wednesday. I’m teaching at 11 different schools; two junior highs and a bunch of elementarys. Some of the elementarys are way off in the country; the hour-long commutes though pine-covered mountain valleys will probably be pleasant once I know where I’m going, but I have to admit I’m not looking forward to trying to figure out the routes to each school the first time. I have a few schools within walking/biking distance, but the rest require a complicated series of bus transfers and being picked up by teachers at different times and places. I can’t imagine trying to navigate it without Japanese reading/speaking ability. Again, once I settle in and know where I’m going it’ll be fine, but in the meantime it’ll be a bit stressful.

So far I’ve visited one of the junior highs and one of the elementarys, and have had a bunch of great classes so far. I’m sure eventually I’ll have a few nightmare classes, but so far it’s been great. It’ll probably be a few months before I’m *completely* settled into teaching again, but for the most part I already feel like I’m already back into the groove.

Okay! I’d like to write more, but I’ll have to save it for another time; I’ve got a really busy day tomorrow, so I need to rest up for that. I have two three-day weekends coming up back-to-back, so hopefully I can write more then. Cheers!

Out Sick

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I’ve been fighting off a nasty cold for most of the week, so no blog entry today. Next Friday, hopefully!

***9/2/2011 UPDATE*** Feeling better, but decided to give myself another week off, so I can spend the time preparing for my lessons which will start on Wednesday. Hopefully I’ll have time to put up a new blog entry next week!

***9/9/2011 UPDATE*** Just in case anyone out there is waiting with bated breath for a new entry, I should be able to get to it this weekend. It will not be worth the wait. :-/

“Tonoharu: Part Three” Progress Report

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Progress Bar Key
Script/Story: The Story/Script for the comic
Artwork: The Drawing, Inking, and Computer Work for the comic
Final Edits/Incidentals: Post-Production Edits, Designing the Cover, Preparing for Press, etc.

(More information about Tonoharu can be found here.)

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I haven’t done one yet, so I figured it was high time I put up a progress report for Tonoharu: Part Three.

I’ve been putting it off because I wanted to wait until the artwork was 25% done, because that felt like a worthy enough milestone to document. Or even 20% would’ve been good, since that would have been a nice round number.

But with all the packing and sorting for my move to Japan, I haven’t made any real progress on the book for the past few weeks, and now that I’m in Japan settling into a new life/job here, it’ll probably be a couple weeks before I can get back into work on Part Three. So I thought to heck with it. Rather than wait for a milestone percentage, may as well just update now.

Now that the script is mostly done, I can give you a fairly accurate page count: I’m thinking 115 pages, give or take a couple. This will put the book between Part One and Two lengthwise.

So the million dollar question is: what’s my projection to complete the book? And the unsatisfying answer is: I have no idea. Now that I have a “real” job again, that will take priority, and eat up a big chunk of my day. But on the other hand, I still am committed to working on Tonoharu: Part Three in evenings and weekends, so I hope to continue to make steady progress. I’ll probably have a better idea once I’ve had a chance to settle into my new life here, and can see how much time I’m able to devote to the book during my off hours. Look for that in my next progress report a few months from now.

But if you’re just dying for more frequent updates, I post on my Twitter feed every time I finish a page, so follow me there if you want to follow my progress in excruciating detail:
My Twitter Account

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Next week I plan to blog about my new home in Japan, so stop by next Friday for that!