DIY comics artist Jody Culkin: Making and Drawing Comics in a Makers World

SxSW 2013 Jody Culkin & Fumetti comic & NYU open source laser project

Jody Culkin, artist in a variety of media, speaking at South by Southwest Interactive 2013 in Austin Texas

Lasersaurs, science geek comics, comic book how-to’s on lasers, creative uses of IPhone cameras, hacking, soldering, coloring books on electronics, rapid development of instructional manuals using photo-comics—Jody Culkin brought many (pardon the art pun) graphic examples in a slide show presentation on DIY comics to a South by Southwest Interactive Conference audience.

Jody Culkin, a teacher in the Multimedia Program at CUNY’s Manhattan Community College, is an artist in a variety of media, including comics, photography, mixed media, installations and much more. She’s shown her sculptures, photographs and new media pieces at museums and galleries throughout this country and internationally.

Culkin suggested the use of comics, with their straightforward images and text, to assist with the development of an idea from a prototype to a finished product. And why not use comics for product—hardware or software— documentation?

Making your own fun

Tools: if you have the money or access via work or school, it’s certainly possible to use professional, expensive tools like Adobe’s Illustrator and InDesign for comics, there are plenty of no- or low-cost tools that can be applied to DIY comics. Comic Life, while not open source, integrates well with photos and is wired in with IPhoto if you use it to organize images.

Gimp, an open-source tool similar to Photoshop, can be used for pixel-based, as opposed to vector-based art and it’s available for Mac, PC, and Linux. Gimp has a lively community of users. Find out more about Gimp at http://www.gimp.org/

And for open-source vector-based art creation, consider Inkscape: http://inkscape.org/en/

Culkin listed sites where science, electronics, DIY toy creation…..

Fritzing.org, or “Electronics Made Easy” website offers an open-source hardware. http://fritzing.org/home/
Howtoons, a website combo of comics, inventions, and toys. http://www.howtoons.com/?page_id=2

Perhaps the best way to experience what the artist brought to the audience would be to review her event slides, which she posted in SlideShare. What a great idea, eh, for a DIY comics outsider artist, to give us an easy way to take in the ideas and images? Bravo, Culkin! http://www.slideshare.net/jodyhc/culkin-diycomicssxswi2013