Featured Projects

How to Make a Calendar, Part 3

Supplies & Demand

Continued from Part 1 / Part 2

What do you need to make 150 calendars made of 14 cards each? Why, 2100 blank cards, of course!

I’m fortunate to have a wonderful paper store right in my neighborhood — Kelly Paper has some of the nicest, most knowledgeable staff around, and I love going in there and browsing their huge aisles full of paper stock. They also have overnight cutting services, so once I found the paper I wanted for this year’s calendar (a forest-green laid correction: linen for the covers and a natural-white linen for the interiors), I just told them how many sheets I wanted at what size, and they had it all nicely packaged and ready for me the following morning.

Also, I did the math wrong and ordered twice as much as I needed! THAT IS OKAY. I can always use nice paper for something. Maybe I will start doing daily sketches. It could be a New Year’s resolution.

BUT I GET AHEAD OF MYSELF

I also need easels! Two years ago, when I got the first batch of easels, I looked at a lot of styles before settling on this one — they’re bronze, hand-made in India and finished in either this dark coppery color, or in antique gold or pewter. They’re super-handsome, and all three colors go equally well with the rich palette of the calendar. I’ve toured the local office of the manufacturer/importer and spoken with the head dude in the U.S., and he explained how a portion of the proceeds from their easels go towards scholarships for kids in New Delhi. I am okay with that!

Perhaps by now you are getting a sense of how particular I am about every facet of this process? It’s why I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the calendar — because every dang piece of it has to pass through my super-fine high-mesh perfectionist-filter before I am satisfied. It makes for a tense existence but wowsers does the stuff come out excellent.

Next, it’s time to stock up on supplies for the ol’ GOCCO printer:

If you’re not familiar with Print GOCCO, it’s a Japanese screenprinting apparatus, popularized in the 1980s, that has since has been embraced by the modern crafting community. It’s easy to use and produces really cool, artisanal work — much more interesting than a computer printer can create, without being as complex or expensive as letterpress. You can read more about the history of GOCCO here!

The GOCCO uses several expendable supplies: ink, screens, and bulbs (used to create the screens). The screens and bulbs look like this:

how bulbous

Each screen is a fine mesh mounted on a cardboard frame. Typically the way it works is:

• You draw or print out your image.
• You make a photocopy of the image (to reduce it to pure black-and-white, and also there’s something special about copier toner that’s reactive with the screen).
• You place the photocopy and a blank screen inside the GOCCO and expose them to heat using the bulbs.
• The heat burns through a coating on the screen at the point of contact with the toner.
• Your screen is now “imaged” and ready for printing. When ink is pressed against the screen, it’s forced through at the burned areas, and makes an inked impression in the shape of your design.

Here’s a video I made a couple years ago showing some of that process.

So! All good, right? Wrong. See, the Japanese factory that manufactures the screens and bulbs has closed down due to the rising cost of materials and falling Japanese demand for the supplies! This has created a frenzy in the GOCCO community, and it’s made screens and bulbs hard to come by and expensive. Since we use 38 different screens for our calendar (plus mess-ups), and each screen requires spending two bulbs, this scarcity nearly sunk the project this year. (Thankfully the inks are still plentiful — for the moment at least.)

But never underestimate the cleverness of crafters! Folks have realized that there is an alternate way to image these screens: by feeding the coated mesh through a thermofax machine, which can “print” onto a screen using heat in the shape of a given design! HOW CLEVER. This handily eliminates the need for bulbs at all.

The screen fed through the printer must be loose and unmounted (on a roll), so it’s also necessary to mount the screen to frames that will fit the GOCCO. A crafter named Amy first tried doing so with cereal box cardboard, until discovering that an enterprising German fellow has started manufacturing reusable plastic frames specifically for this purpose!

Here is the takeaway business lesson: Find a niche of obsessive hobbyists that needs some goofy, super-specific thing that nobody else is bothering to provide, and provide it.

Because I wasn’t about to buy a thermofax machine, I contracted Amy to print my designs onto screens for me, and mount a small set of them onto the reusable frames. She did a great job! Here’s what they look like:

This was a much easier process than burning through hundreds of dollars’ worth of screens and bulbs at home! And I feel better about the lack of waste that the process generates, too. It does mean that everything I sent her to print had to be perfect, and it does mean that there is some messy, inky cleaning involved in re-using the frames, but those have proved to be very manageable concessions.

As described in Part 2, each card requires three separate screens — one each for the calendar grid, month title, and image/verse. I vectorized each illustration using Cocoapotrace so I could send Amy a PDF with 100% vector images — never having used the thermofax process before, I wanted to make sure we’d get the cleanest possible prints. I’m happy to report that they all turned out great!

This amassing of supplies — just the mechanics of choosing and ordering the paper, ordering the ink, having the screens made, etc. — takes a week or so, but once it’s all done, all that’s left to do is PRINT.

And that’s what we’re going to do — in tomorrow’s post!



Tomorrow: Part 4: Print That Baby

OBLIGATORY PLUG: Buy the calendar here!

How to Make a Calendar, Part 2

Writing (and more design)

Continued from Part 1

After composing each image, I like to print out each one to see how it looks on paper, then carry the papers around in my pockets for a while, scribbling on them whenever I come up with a scrap of verse. Taking walks is good for this — the rhythm of walking helps me think in poetic meter, but it’s also nice to be in front of a computer with rhymezone.com and OSX’s OED Thesaurus widget open.

It’s tough but fun coming up with explanations for all the weird images — some flow right out and others are a real challenge. Again, sometimes I’ll just start writing and see where it goes; other times I’ll get an idea for the gag or explanation for the image, and then have to work backwards to fill in all the details within the structure of rhyme and meter. When I think I’ve got something that makes sense, I’ll run it by a few other folks to make sure it tracks and makes sense — thanks are due to my wife Nikki and to Kris for late-night help at key points in this process!

The next step is to lay out each card for printing. I know there are neat calendar-generating plugins for InDesign and Excel templates you can download, but I didn’t use any of those because my life is made stronger by challenges. Kind Twitter volunteer @dharmakate helped lay out the grids and updated the dates for 2010!

Each year’s calendar has some sort of overall design theme — nothing specific, just an aesthetic that’s represented in the choice of fonts, layout of elements, etc. For example, here are some elements from the 2008 calendar:

…Which, because I like to make things new and better and not at all because I am obsessed with reinventing the wheel every single time I do anything (not at all, do you hear me), I changed the format to a slightly more modern look for 2009:

And now, for 2010, I decided to go more modern still — after years of immersion in the ephemeral art of the late 19th Century, I’m now starting to become fascinated by mass media from the 1910s, and I think this year’s design reflects that:

The use of flourishes and ornaments also allows some nice touches such as the crossbar of the ‘A’ in ‘August’.

Each month’s title, as well as the entirety of the title cards, will be printed in gold ink, and they can’t really be done justice by a graphic — they look really sharp. (The other printing is done in black ink — this year on natural-white linen cardstock.)

The calendar grids are all laid out in Illustrator. I use the amazing program Cocoapotrace to create vector versions of the final collaged images for each month, then place them on each card with their verses. The cards are each 8.5″ x 5.5″ (half of a standard US sheet of paper), but the GOCCO printer can only print on half that size — so the cards have to be laid out so that each element takes up no more than half the space. Each calendar grid, and each image/verse section, will be printed separately using its own screen. (Since the monthly titles will be gold, they’ll need their own screen as well. More on this later). But at this stage, for compositional purposes, I lay it all out as a unit, so I know how each final card will look — then I print these out to act as reference for the printing process.

Here’s the final card design for the image in the previous post. Tomorrow we’ll prepare to start printing!

Tomorrow: Part 3: The Gathering Storm

OBLIGATORY STORE REMINDER: Today (Tuesday the 15th) is the LAST DAY for guaranteed domestic shipping at my TopatoCo store. I’m still shipping calendars through Sunday in my own store, but they’re gonna arrive when they’re gonna arrive.

How to Make a Calendar

This will be a daily series this week, as my wife and I finish up production on the 2010 Wondermark Calendar! But first:

A BRIEF NOTE ABOUT BOOKS

TopatoCo was showing some of my books as “out of stock” as recently as yesterday, but I’ve received word that their coffers have been replenished — so, you know, have at. I should also note that they now have the only remaining copies of my very first collection, The Annotated Wondermark — less than forty remain before the print run (the fifth printing, if you can believe it!) is totally sold out, and we won’t be reprinting them until next year sometime.

Or, if you’d like to combine a book order with a calendar order, I do have copies of the two Dark-Horse-published Wondermark books in my in-house store. Look, I know. It is all very confusing! But, so is life.

ADDITIONALLY

I am leaving town for the holidays on the evening of December 20! That means that NOON PACIFIC TIME on the 20th is the order deadline for pre-Christmas shipping for anything purchased from my in-house store (including calendars). TopatoCo will continue shipping probably until the crack of Christmas Day or until their fingers fall off, whichever happens last. (Though some shirt sizes are already gone, as are some card designs. You got to get on this stuff!)

Okay that’s done. Thank you for indulging me this brief digression!

NOW THEN

HOW TO MAKE A CALENDAR, Part 1: Design

The Wondermark Calendar, for those who’ve not seen it before, is a hand-made item that consists of fourteen cards resting in a brass easel. Besides two covers, there are twelve calendar cards, each featuring an image and a brief piece of verse. Here’s one from a few years ago:

Each card is screenprinted by hand using a GOCCO screenprinter (more on that later this week). We only print a small run of the calendars, and they’ve sold out each year. Each calendar is individually signed and numbered, and optionally includes the easel — or you can get just a “refill” if you’ve already got an easel from a previous year.

The last two years, I simply found images (in my collection of old books) that I thought might work well in the calendar, then used them pretty much unmodified, writing verses to fit. This year, however, I thought I’d do it a little different — I thought I’d make collages from separate images, similar to how I make the comic, to create unique scenes and make the whole thing a bit more interesting.

Now that I’ve done this a few times, I’ve realized that simpler images translate much better in screenprinting than do more elaborate engravings — so this year I kept my eyes open for smallish drawings with cleaner linework. Also, for the sake of consistency, I decided to pull the majority of the images from a single source: 1880s Punch magazine, which I have several giant bound volumes of (click for a closer look):

Those folks on the right-hand page look like good candidates, as do the figures on this page:

I ended up scanning around 60 different images and playing around with them in various configurations, combining and re-combining them in different ways, trying to see what scenarios and stories they suggested.

The way I work is different from many artists, and certainly many cartoonists. While I do often compose the comic’s images to match a previously-written script, I also have great fun at times simply building scenes like a puzzle, not knowing what’s going on until the very end of the process — and sometimes, in the case of the comics, occasionally not knowing what’s going on until I’ve actually written most of the dialogue! I like seeing where it goes and the directions that it takes by itself, and it’s almost more like sculpting with clay, adding pieces and taking them away, than drawing or painting.

Eventually I decided that these characters could work well together:

And with the addition of some objects from my go-to “prop warehouse”, the 1902 Sears-Roebuck catalog…

…An interesting and evocative scene began to develop:

shhliikkk

And here are a few more scenes that I composed (you’ll recognize some of the other characters from those earlier scans as well):

I assembled each scene before knowing what would be going on in any of them. It makes the constructive process fun, because there’s no restrictions! Anything is fair game, and the goofier, the better.

The process continues tomorrow! In the meantime, you can get your very own copy of the calendar here (remember, I’ll be doing pre-Christmas shipping this week only, as I only have about seven days before I leave town). I’ll see you right back here tomorrow for the next installment of this series!

Tomorrow: Part 2: Writing & Designing Each Month

Thanksgiving Project results P.2: Bloggers

So many good submissions for the blogger portion of the Thanksgiving Project! It was very tough to choose just ten, but thanks to specious criteria and pure caprice, here they are (in no particular order), along with my many thanks for all the kind words! Each blogger will receive an Artist Edition of Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death. LOOK FOR THEM SOON FOLKS

(Click through to read each post in its entirety)

1. Amelie Cherlin / Bajira!

This is impressive.

What is this thing? I don’t even know! It is totally impressive though and I dig anyone who goes to any level of effort for something silly like this — to say nothing of the fact that Amelie has somehow seamlessly cracked my entire genetic code. Thanks, Amelie!

2. Jonathan Johns / Intercepted Messages

…From the penthouse suite at the top of the headquarters of TopatoCo, David oversees all daily operations of a team of thousands of highly trained operatives whose sole mission in life is to ensure that the ‘humors’ infecting David are expunged, and spread virally to all of us.

As it was told to me, David woke from a Slushee-induced sugar coma, trapped in the basement of the Los Angeles Central Library where he was surrounded by books depicting 19th century woodcuts and engravings. While in his stupor, the characters in the images began to speak to him, and challenge his manhood, calling him a pansy-artist and both taunting and provoking him.

I also like this bit:

He has had an impressive life up to this point

Man, that terrifies me for some reason.

Thanks, Jonathan!

3. Robin McKinley, Days in the Life*

***Yes. I have the t shirt. If I’d been thinking ahead I’d be wearing it so I could make my annoyingly alert and healthy husband take a photo. If it weren’t for the sleet and the howling gale and so on and the fact that even crouched over the electric fire chafing hellhounds all over my body I’m still cold. Maybe next year Malki can come out with wondermark Shetland pullovers.

Reading Robin’s blog is like reading a Mark Z. Danielewski novel. I respect anyone who can’t muster the conformist attitude to write in a straight line. Also she sent me a ton of traffic so that’s worth an extra 16 points. Thanks, Robin!

4. Cathy Hamaker / A Cautionary Tale

…I have a signed comic on my wall, and a copy of Beards of our Forefathers in my bathroom. (Yes, the bathroom. Shut up. Don’t judge me.)

The bathroom is the best place for books of comics. AUTOMATIC WIN

Thanks, Cathy! P.S. I get them from squid books

5. Bailey Shoemaker Richards / The Reading Corner

…One of my favorite things about Wondermark is that despite its overt weirdness, it’s still relevant. It’s still showing me, as a reader, something to laugh at and simultaneously making me realize that I’m laughing at myself (and the people around me). I am frequently laughing out loud in public places about the latest Wondermark strip, even when I’m not reading it. Then I definitely resemble the people at whom Malki ! pokes fun.

I will definitely take these kind words, though I also will fully own “overt weirdness.” Thanks, Bailey!

6. Shannon Saar / Wighthouse

…A righteous example of the past triumphing, overtaking, and yet melding with an ever-burgeoning future. An age-old tale that obliterates the tired shroud of the mundane. A graphic marvel carved from the monolith of time itself. A paragon of mirthfulness defined as much by what it doesn’t say as by what it must. A willful communiqué to a jaded, humdrum society. A cross-hatched fairy tale that huffs the æther of absurdity in great whoops and gasps. A sophisticated comment on raucous mores that cannot be ignored. A scrumptious brainchild of one peerless, punctuated individual.

I like that, reading the full post, I got the distinct feeling that Shannon took a long, deep breath, paused a moment, then rattled off that paragraph at full speed. That is the best way to rattle things off. Thanks, Shannon!

7. Lisa / two loose teeth

…It’s meticulously crafted with vintage engravings in Photoshop, too. I know that because I recently watched part of a Let’s Make a Wondermark live stream. It was somehow funny, voyeuristic, fascinating, and slightly boring, all rolled into one.

I will also own “slightly boring.” In addition, Lisa previously blogged about my 2007 video, Me Vs. Comic-Con: Who’s Better?, so I’m glad she’s stuck around for the rollicking years since. Thanks, Lisa!

8. Carapace / Cara Geeks

…And if you like snarking on said Victoriana, Malki’s your guy. There are also strips where people ride Piranhamoose, so good news all around, there. And if you like excessive verbosity and a highly affected writing style, well, he’ll keep you occupied while I’m dealing with students and craft fairs.

Man, I am learning all about myself today. Shall I own “excessive verbosity and a highly affected writing style”? I would hardly be the pauper’s pedant that I claim were I to refuse this steaming, dribbling chalice. Thanks, Carapace!

9. Johnny Despair, Esq. / Not For You Studios

…his aesthetic sense is poised to pounce upon the exposed jugular vein of the steampunk/anachro-fashion movement like a beautiful, misunderstood vampire eager to drink it dry and not even give a shit and not even be beautiful but a disfigured old monster with horrible claws and barely human anatomy because that is how my vampires roll and jesus FUCK can I stop seeing Twilight ads in my fucking convalescence pretty pretty fucking please I know bitching about Twilight is now about as cool as bitching about Fox News but honestly I am sick and I do not need this shit all up in my eyes

An aesthete, a wordsmith and a Tweet Me Harder fan to boot! YES PLEASE. I particularly like this bit:

True story about Tweet Me Harder: I once listened to it so harder, that I was unintentionally talking like a weird Kris Straub/David Malki ! slash-fic lovebaby for days. It took three hours of listening to the Sex Pistols to cure it.

You’re welcome. Thanks, Johnny!

10. Adalee Velasquez / Velasquez Artistry

I'm with W.M.

Again, I have a soft spot for folks who make cool stuff like this, plus:

Always silly, sometimes juvenile (yes, he does some poop-jokes…), and occasionally brilliant

If I pass on owning “occasionally brilliant” I think I may never get another chance.

Thanks, Adalee, and thanks again to everyone who wrote!

Thanksgiving Project results P.1: Libraries

get lost in them stacks

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in the Thanksgiving Project! I was thrilled to receive submissions from bloggers and libraries around this spinning globe of ours. Without further ado, here are my selections for libraries; each institution below will be receiving a free copy of my latest comic collection, Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death!

Bellmore Memorial Library, Bellmore, NY

Justin wrote:

The Bellmore Library has a lot of Kid/Teen programs that everyone loves. It has Mrs. G, also known as the nicest woman of all time. Really, she helps run most if not all of the programs, bakes food for them, buys books and supplies from her own pocket for the library, and will help you with any problem you have. They have an entire wall, albeit a small wall because it’s a small library, packed to bursting with all kinds of comics, manga, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Bone, and maybe ten to fifteen “How to Draw Comics/Manga” books. They really do have a ton of things for anyone interested in the subject. They have a lot more then that, hell, my first D&D book was borrowed from them, but I would love if this really great library, run by a really nice woman, that really likes comics, could get a really nice book by a really great cartoonist.

Bloomfield-Eastern Greene County Public Library, Bloomfield, IN

John wrote:

I am the librarian at a small, rural public library in southwest Indiana.  As one of the few institutions in our town of 2,000 that strive to bring culture into this dim corner of our nation, your book has the potential to do much good here.  Our library attracts the worthy few in our community who are not wholly content to subsist on an intellectual diet of high school basketball and dancing celebrities.  Our Young Adult population, for whom we maintain a separate room and collection, would be especially well-served by your book, which is, in my opinion, exactly the kind of original humor that creates an appreciation for the printed page and its potential.  Please help me pry their minds loose from the iron grip of Maple Story.

Farmers Branch Manske Library, Farmers Branch, TX

Alicia wrote:

The Manske Library is, like so many other libraries, feeling the pinch of a reduced budget. We had 5 staff members laid off last September and 3 positions frozen since then. Our materials budget has been cut 12%. Wondermark books such as Clever Tricks are not going to make our list of books we can buy unless we get it donated from a patron or publisher. The children need new books! Think of the children! (or adults like me who cling tenaciously to the last remnants of youth) Plus, I can’t afford to share your work with all my librarian friends, who NEED to be introduced to the wonder that is Wondermark.

James E. Walker Library, MTSU, Murfreesboro, TN

Jacob wrote:

Tennessee is going through a financial crisis right now, and Middle Tennessee State University is facing SEVERE budget cuts. MTSU also has one of the largest libraries in the state. We have a woefully small comics section in our library and, as a big fan of yours (and comics in general) I think it would be a privilege to have one of your books in our library.

Groton Public Library, Groton, NY

John wrote:

Hello!  We’re a small public library with a limited budget.  I’m a new director here and one of my goals is to open up some sections I think would be popular but have not received a lot of attention over the years.  One of those areas is humor.  Our humor collection consists of under 10 books.  1 Foxtrot collection, 1 Far Side book, and 4 Peanuts books.  I’ve picked up some humor for free lately at local charity booksales, but not very much, a couple of headlines from the Onion books.  I would really appreciate more for our humor collection, if you can.

Sophie B. Wright Charter School, New Orleans, LA

Gina wrote:

I am the first-time librarian at this school in New Orleans. It is a great school and the kids LOVE, and I do mean LOVE, to read. My biggest problem is that I have no budget to add new books to the shelves. However, the shelf that is most plundered is my comic bookshelf. (Yes, they have their own shelf. I love comics! And, so do my students.) They rarely have books left on that shelf on Fridays. I think that your book would be a valuable addition to my shelves, and since I am unable to purchase any books this year (due to financial cuts in education) — this would be a special donation to a library that is truly appreciated by its patrons.

East Carolina University Special Collections, Greenville, NC

L.K. wrote:

ECU Special Collections has a reference collection. The addition of a Malki ! item to our collection would:
– show researchers ( esp undergraduates many of whom are approaching primary materials for the 1st time) how primary materials can be adaptively relevant
– be an example to other librarians how special collections are fun too. Historical materials are not just old ledgers and dry spinsters’ diaries. But you knew that.
– put you one up on Jeph Jacques who gets a lot of attention, because his little brother is/was enrolled at ECU. He is cool enough, but giving us a book with make you #1 in our hearts by a mile.

Sidney McMath Library, Little Rock, AR

John wrote:

Not only is my profession dominated by women, but women make up some 3/4 of my patrons as well. One thing guys of all ages check out is “graphic novels” display which is eating away at the high-traffic Reference section like a beautiful cancer. They gravitate over while they wait for their computer reservations and walk out with a half dozen trade paperbacks. I am proud to say that I have built one of the best collections in my system, but comic-strips anthologies are still dominated by Garfields and little more contemporary than a volume of Mutts or Pearls Before Swine. I would love for the first David Malki book in our system to live at my branch, so that people can see that intelligent and hilarious need not be mutually exclusive, and that you don’t need tights and capes to tell a great story.

The Churchill School, Mexico City, Mexico

Sebastian wrote:

I’m the Head Librarian of the Churchill School, a bilingual School in the retrochaoticfuturistic Mexico City… (a blob of urban infection, where postmodern strains of mutant virus mix fight the ancient warriors of  herbomedicine traditions… where the electropolice eyes follow the ways of banned subcultures, hidden in underground bunkers of concrete mayan style…) I guess down here, our overbored secondary students could make good use of these “Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death”… but I leave it to your discretion… and as Emily Bronte wrote: “vain are the thousand creeds /that move men’s hearts, unutterably vain, /worthless as withered weeds…”)

Health Sciences Library, Northeast Georgia Medical Center, Gainesville, GA

Erin wrote:

Everybody thinks of public libraries first, and then maybe about school libraries. That’s where most people stop thinking about libraries at all. I work in a different kind of library, though — one inside a hospital. In addition to helping doctors and nurses find the information they’ll turn in to high-quality care, we provide a peaceful place for patients and families of patients to feel whole again. They can check email, learn about a new diagnosis, or pick up a good book that has nothing to do with being sick. I would love it if your book were one of those.

Thanks again to everyone who wrote — I wish I could award more books, and perhaps I’ll be able to again in the future! I didn’t get anyone buying books specifically for donation, so these ten are what I will be sending out. Library folks, expect to see these coming your way in a couple weeks.

I would also encourage everyone out there — authors, readers, or just people with too many books in their homes — to consider your local library for donations. Even if they can’t put everything on the shelves, they earn revenue from selling donated materials at book sales, and in this time of slashed budgets and job-seeking and increased media literacy, it’s more important than ever that libraries stay open and available.

STILL TO COME: Results from the bloggers!