http://www.enchantedimages.com/index.htm

You’ll also see a shameless plug for a book I publish titled “The Landon School of Illustrating and Cartooning” — a reprint of the cartoon correspondence course founded in the early 1900s which was studied by quite a few early comic strip artists: Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge — he only studied the first few lessons), Sid Couchey (Richie Rich), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon), Jack Cole (Plastic Man), Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy, Buzz Sawyer), Gil Fox (DC comics), Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse), Viince Hamlin (Alley Oop), Bill Holman (creator: Smokey Stover), Jud Hurd (Cartoonist PROfiles), Bill Mauldin (Willie and Joe), and Chic Young (Blondie). Styles have moved on, but still, fascinating stuff for those of us who have followe strips for a long time.

http://www.enchantedimages.com/index.htm

You’ll also see a shameless plug for a book I publish titled “The Landon School of Illustrating and Cartooning” — a reprint of the cartoon correspondence course founded in the early 1900s which was studied by quite a few early comic strip artists: Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge — he only studied the first few lessons), Sid Couchey (Richie Rich), Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon), Jack Cole (Plastic Man), Roy Crane (Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy, Buzz Sawyer), Gil Fox (DC comics), Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse), Viince Hamlin (Alley Oop), Bill Holman (creator: Smokey Stover), Jud Hurd (Cartoonist PROfiles), Bill Mauldin (Willie and Joe), and Chic Young (Blondie). Styles have moved on, but still, fascinating stuff for those of us who have followe strips for a long time.

http://www.amazon.com/books-used-books-textbooks/b/?ie=UTF8&node=2128878011

It would be great to get everybody on one Cartooning discussion board where we could all post/share our work, and learn and grow. I joined “ToonTalk” last week. It has some finalists from this contest, and good message threads in general: http://toontalk.ning.com/forum

If anybody knows of any other good forums, please post them.

Thanks,
db

Agreed!

I look forward to seeing your entry.

Thanks,
db

Dan – to your point, syndication, judging, scrutinizing etc, is incredibly fickle and at best, subjective…there are plenty of strips that are currently syndicated that went through the same rigorous process as CSS…in fact, moreso, and many of those strips are languishing in only a few select papers…

On that note, money simply isn’t a motivator for many of us, myself included (altho money would ceratinly be nice…lol) – like you and many others here, it’s about creating something special we can be proud of…always stick to your vision, y’know?

Thanks very much. I made it to the 250. (Contests are a fickle thing. It all comes down to the a couple Editor’s subjective opinions. Everybody should let this experience inspire them to continue on, and improve and grow.)

Pat, I’d like to see your entry. You can e-mail me from my website link (which you can get to by clicking on my name here to the left of this post!)

Best,
db