Aragones!

So one of the coolest things about UGA is the Jack Davis lecture, which has brought Ralph Steadman, Mike Luckovich, Peter deSeve, and Gary Baseman (among others) to campus to lecture. This year's guest was Sergio Aragones, who gave an entertaining but not hugely informative talk about his life and how he became a cartoonist (always wanted to be one, worked hard, got lucky, yadda yadda) and what some of those years at Mad were like (lots of trips to foreign countries--Sergio organized the one to Mexico), complete with stories about Bill Gaines. And all of that would have been great without the drawing, but the moment he got the overhead projector going and started taking ideas from the audience it turned super-awesome. I managed to get a little video, although it could be larger or better quality. You can see how assured his line is, and you should marvel, as well, at his construction of each drawing for an audience, waiting to draw the crucial part of the gag until the end so as to get the biggest laugh.



He also took Q&A, and that, to me, was about as inspiring as the demonstration. He said he draws every day and described his creative process: collecting ideas on a subject until he feels he has enough, then gathering his drawing materials, putting on a movie in the background that he's seen before, and drawing until he's in physical pain. He also took a question on the demise of paper comics, about which he doesn't seem particularly concerned. For an old guy, he's pretty with it when it comes to technology or at least open to being with it, and he seemed confident that comics would thrive in some form. He also expressed that although we may romanticize paper and ink, the generations to come won't, and this doesn't mean anything, really, when you come down to it. I thought it was a pretty refreshing point of view, and if I hadn't been starving and had somewhere to be, I would've hung out in the long line of people waiting to shake his hand and get something signed.