2014 - 08/2014 Meeting

Page Created: 08/07/14. Last Updated: 08/11/14.

JIM WHALEY

Jim Whaley is an illustrator and comic book artist living in Westchester County, NY. He has self-published a number of comics over the past decade, including Unfamiliar Reflection and Simon Scout in the Fifth Dimension. His current series is a webcomic called UTC: Urgent Transformation Crisis, an ongoing story about teenage scientists who study genetic mutation and grapple with a number of unexpected changes that alter their bodies and, by extension, their lives. Jim carries a Bachelor of Film, Photography and Visual Arts from Ithaca College and a Master of Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design. He publishes his comics both on the web and through independent print-on-demand services. His website is located at www.catomix.com.

Comics:

.....Evil Jim

..............http://catomix.whaleymation.com/eviljim/index.html

.....Scott Simon in the 5th Dimension

...............http://catomix.whaleymation.com/SS5D/

.....Seven to Seven

...............http://catomix.whaleymation.com/727/index.html

.....Unfamiliar Reflection

...............http://emri.comicgenesis.com/

.....UTC - Urgent Transformation Crisis

...............http://urgentcrisis.comicgenesis.com/

Notes:

Website addresses mentioned in Jim's talk:

Web Strip:

.....XKCD

...............http://xkcd.com/

Web Comic Aggregator Communities:

.....910CMX

...............http://community.910cmx.com/

.....Hiveworks

...............http://www.thehiveworks.com/

.....Keenspot

...............http://www.keenspot.com/

Meeting Summary:

Meeting Date: August 9, 2014.

Meeting Site: Barnes & Noble. Paramus, New Jersey.

Official Attendance: 25.

Meeting Program: Talk by Web Comic Creator / Writer / Artist.

Newsletter Account:

The August 9, 2014 meeting of the Science Fiction Association of Bergen County was held in the event rom of Barnes & Noble in Paramus, New Jersey. Despite lots of hiccups leading up to the event, the meeting itself came off without a hitch.

So, what went wrong? Well, the CRM (events manager) left the store, so we had no signage, store calendar or books ordered for our scheduled speaker. But that became a moot issue as our original speaker had to cancel. We were about to announce a new speaker when she had to bow out. Back to ground zero. Fortunately, web comic writer / artist Jim Whaley was able to step in on extremely short notice. (Thank you, Conor, for introducing us to Jim and greasing the wheels while you were on vacation in Canada.) But, Jim had special AV needs for his presentation. Moshe Yuda had the right equipment, but he had other plans for Saturday night. Fortunately, Tom Schoenborne stepped in with a work-around, Moshe loaned out his equipment (Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Moshe.) . I came equipped with a tiny opaque projector in case something went wrong with either of the first two options. All this meant that our normal meeting publicity was either wrong, late, or missing in its entirety. To make the evening perfect, Barry Weinberger, who normally runs the pre meeting discussion, had other plans for the night. Bravo to Jeni Spiewak for filling in. The account of this meeting continues on the 09/2014 Meeting page on the club website.

Notes:

(This continues the meeting account:)

Jim Whaley has written or written / drawn four comic strips: UNFAMILIAR REFLECTION, EVIL JIM, SIMON SCOTT IN THE FIFTH DIMENSION and his current series, UTC: URGEN TRANSFORMATION CRISIS. All can be found at his website: www.catcomix.com.

Our guest discovered comic books while recovering from a tonsillectomy when he was seven. He was given a STAR TREK comic book as a gift and it blew him away. A few years later he began to create fan-fic comic books, tales of STAR TREK and other characters. They were not very good, but he was learning.

Mr Whaley learned some more at Ithaca College where he received a Bachelor of Film, Photography and Visual Arts and from Savannah College of Art and Design where he received a Master of Animation.

UNFAMILIAR REFLECTION, a work heavily influenced by Japanese anime and manga, was his first serious work of sequential art (educationese for comic book / comic strip) and is about a girl whose identity is altered by a magic device. Our speaker attempted to bring this work (and others) into a cinematic format, but discovered that the translation process took up too much time and energy.

REFLECTION was the last work Jim Whaley did as a traditional, hard copy original It was done on 8-1/2" x 14" paper and folded in half. The interior was produced by a dot matrix cover, with a black-and-white half-tone cover.

(To Be Continued.)