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You are dedicated to your craft. You have spent countless hours honing your skills. You have a boundless curiosity for the underlying theories and structure of communicating ideas. You are the artist who finds the connections between your medium and other communications media. You are the artist who relishes in a setback; after all, it's a new opportunity to learn and grow. Inspiration is more than a haphazard mode of thought requiring constant nurturing: it is your natural state of mind.

Lean Into Art is where you go when you're ready to push yourself as an artist in new ways. As a place to learn communication arts online it combines an art-journaling approach, the best of live and time-shifted classes, and a recognition system that encourages students to finish projects, give feedback, even participate in teaching.

It's a big art challenge - that's why we put the enticing warning in the name. You have to lean into it.

Saturday
Jan282012

Thunder Punch Daily 145 - Thumbs of Terror

Today I share some of my experiences in thumbnailing the new Front story I hope to start updating on Sugary Serials in February. I borrow some wisdom from J.M. DeMatteis to help make my points more lucid, but the big idea is that there's no escape from the terror of thumbnailing a story. Links mentioned in this episode:

Music for this show is by Eliott Drozd.

Voiceover by Tara Platt

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Thunder Punch Daily 145

Thursday
Jan262012

LIA Cast 21 - Emotional Throughlines

 

Throughline

 

Chances are you're familiar with the term "throughline" in regards to drawing, but this week on the show Jerzy and Rob explore how they can map that idea onto writing characters. Using examples from popular stories, and some of their own experiences, the Lean Into Art guys attempt to create a general map of what a character's emotional throughline might be.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking

Upcoming Workshops for February 2012

 

 

LIA Cast 21 - Emotional Throughlines

Friday
Jan202012

LIA Cast 20 - Working with CSS

So you've got a webcomic site set up, whether it's a Wordpress installation, a Tumblr blog, or you've hosted it on Posterous. But the notion of customizing it on your own creates a little bit of stress and uncertainty. Understandable, since most of us are artists, not programmer nerds!

Fortunately Rob Stenzinger likes to walk the imagined line between these two camps. This week he takes the time to take us through some basic ideas on how CSS works and demonstrates how to use these techniques by changing some elements on the Lean Into Art site and his own Tumblog. A great refresher course for those of us who are familiar with CSS, and a great intro piece for those of you who have never gotten under the hood to customize your website.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking

Upcoming Workshops for February 2012

 

 

LIA Cast 20 - Working with CSS

Thursday
Jan192012

Polytechnicast - Service of a Game

Polytechnicast_-_service_of_a_game_-_guitar_fretter

In this episode of the Polytechnicast, I delve into some behind the scenes planning and development I do to support Guitar Fretter.

Recently I received an email from an Android user who is rather good at the game. On her Android device once she gets past level 12 or so the game has problems. I share details on how I’ll tackle that issue, ponder the complexities of the Android market, future updates for Guitar Fretter and behind the scenes thoughts on Guitar Fretter’s game design.

Links Mentioned and Links That Came to Mind While Writing These Show Notes

Follow Rob on Twitter or his blog at Interactive-Storyteller.com

Polytechnicast_-_Service_of_a_Game.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Friday
Jan132012

LIA Cast 19 - Skill Set Overlap

 

Lia19_art

 

This time Rob and Jerzy find their way to a topic through talking about Rob's recent experience presenting at the Ann Arbor District Library's Comic Artists Forum. The subject this week is ostensibly building local communities around your chosen field of art, but an underlying idea of how these skills apply to developing and maintaining a presence online eventually surfaces.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Social Networking

Check out the Lean Into Art Workshop page for a complete listing of over 40 hours of instructional material!

 

LIA Cast 19 - Skill Set Overlap