This month’s album art is courtesy of DungeonWarden. Bring your favorite beverage and see you this evening at 10PM EST on Talkshoe.com.

Here are some of the topics of interest we’ll be talking about in our 8th episode:

• Our Favorite Tools / Tips / Tricks (aka What’s in YOUR arsenal?)
• Starting a strip ( should one start with random gags and progress towards story arcs? i.e. what’s the best approach? )
• The Artist / Writer Balance (does excelling in one detract from the other?)
• Marketing

The Minneapolis Cartoonist Conspiracy meets at 6:30 until 10:00 the first Thursday of every month at Diamond’s Coffee Shoppe in Northeast.

Generally, we draw collaborative “jam” comics, socialize and drink caffeinated beverages. Afterwords, we often have uncaffeinated beverages somewhere else.

The meetings are open to anyone who wants to draw with us, and the results are posted here sooner or later (and sometimes even printed).

Diamond’s Coffee Shoppe
1618 Central Avenue Northeast
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Bus info here.

Please spend some money at Diamond’s while you’re there, even if it is just a cuppa coffee… they are excellent hosts, and we wanna stay welcome there.

Big Time Attic hosts our monthly jam meetings at Diamond’s… they will be supplying us with a big old plate of pastries or something. Thanks fellas!

For more infor on the Conspiracy go to http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com

Since I didn’t have to work yesterday, I was able to stop by on the Art and Story Alive! We talk about idea generation, office design, and more. You’ll also find out which other person on the podcast is a vegetarian. You can listen to it at http://www.cvcomics.com/artandstory/?p=172.

About a week or so ago, I entered a comic for Art and Story’s Big Contest.  Art and Story is a weekly podcast in which two comics creators discuss their craft and try to wrap their brains around the larger issues of their chosen artform.  They are published creators.  They also self-publish, and they make webcomics.  One is Mark Rudolf, and the other is Jerzy Drozd.

I didn’t win anything in the contest (winners were chosen at random), but you can see my submission on the Big Contest Page.

You can see the Jam I participated in on Thursday at http://www.cartoonistconspiracy.com/conspire/?p=702
.

And you can listen to the Sequential Artist’s pub (recordered on Friday night) at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/20378. I pretty much have one question for our special guest, Steve Hamaker. I asked him about image file backups because working in IT has made me paranoid about system failures and data loss.

More info here.

I do! I do! Don’t miss out on the most colossal comic book convention in the Midwest! More details here.

I got a look at the guest list, and its HUGE! Is there anyone who ISN’T going to be there?

A while back I made a guest strip for the Guest Strip Project (a comic made entirely of guest strips, raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation). Well, that strip has finally been posted and you can view it here.

Man, I had a lot of fun on this episode. I got to discuss my feelings about blogging, nitpickers, and how drawing autobio comics is in fact world building. Now I just have a bunch of things stuck in my head that I wish I would have said at the time. Go listen to it here.