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day two

day one

This is the first completed image of the graphic journal. There are about 60 more of these to follow. This one is 5" x 22". The thesis will be in landscape format, with each of these images occupying a full 2-page spread. The images will be a combination of illustration and photo collage, from the photos I took over two months in Buenos Aires.

Department of Eagles - No One Does It Like You

Music video directed by Patrick Daughters and Marcel Dzama.

Skateistan!

Skateistan!

An Afghan skateboarding school/club in Kabul.

Interview with the founders on McSweeney's: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/skateboard/2Flip2.html

Skateistan's web site: http://skateistan.org/

Some ideas...

While continuing to work on refining/finding my drawing style, I have been thinking about the narrative of the stories themselves. I find myself heading toward one over-arching story, told over several short episodes, and probably concerning some kind of event being held at the football club. The event might be a week long soccer tournament, an invitational perhaps, with a few other clubs in the city. The stories can follow a few characters (from the new club) as they play/watch and interact with members of the other clubs. A common thread will link each character, and therefore each story. The common thread will have to come back to the club itself, its role in the community and its physical presence. I am starting to kind of see it as a Jr. Jays comic. The comics were handed out to children by police officers in schools in the 90s. They always had some kind of message in them, like the one pictured above, warning kids not to smoke.
Meanwhile, I have also started to re-think the format of the graphic stories. I still very much like the Featherproof mini-books idea, but I have also been thinking of adding some supplements to that. Trading cards, like the baseball or hockey cards you trade and collect as a kid, as supplementary, maybe promotional items for the short stories. Or a map, like one of those cheesy tourist maps with little axonometric images of key buildings, except this map would be of my club, kind of as a guide to the short stories. Maybe the map can even double as a board game, in combination with the trading cards as added incentive to collect the cards.... Just a few ideas while I continue to work on drawing.

Vertical Gymnasium

Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner are two key members in the Caracas Urban Think Tank. They work primarily through field research in the informal settlements of Caracas. The Vertical Gymnasium is a project that was developed for the Municipality of Chacao in Caracas. In the film, Caracas: The Informal City, Leopoldo Lopez, the mayor of the Municipality of Chacao says: "Why do I make the link between sports facilities and security? Because the main population that is being affected by crime, is this population (pointing to children playing soccer in the Vertical Gymansium).... This building is a way of bringing the city together, of bringing the barrio, connected with the city, through sports facilities."

See the Vertical Gymnasium project on the Urban Think Tank web site.

The Vertical Gymnasium will be one of the case study projects in my thesis. My thesis however, adds an extra layer to the sports facility and makes it a proper club. The idea of the club organization is to become a powerful communal tool, where club members (presumably composed mostly of residents of the informal neighbourhood) are provided with a form of representation in the arena of urban life. In addition, the club's installment in the existing network of clubs around the city provides its members with a new frame for networking, opening up new roads of communication between different sectors of the city that would have otherwise been difficult to realize.

(image: snapshot of the Vertical Gymnasium as shown in the film 'Caracas: The Informal City')