Dirk I. Tiede | Comics & Illustration
Comics & Illustration
The North Shore Children’s Museum is now open!
These are the murals I painted in the lobby of the new permanent location. I designed the characters to represent the main rooms/themes—the Maker (STEM), the Yogi (Health & Wellness), the Explorer (Discovery), the Storyteller (Comics & Books), and the Gardner (Food & Farm).
More info here: https://www.nschildrensmuseum.org
The PS Kickstarter campaign may be over, but my work has only just begun! Today, I launched a pre-order shop so people who missed the campaign can get copies, too. It will remain open until I start shipping orders next April.
This week I’m also wrapping up edits on the PS Vol. 1 & 2 collections, and they’ll be off to my proofreader this week. Both should be ready to go off to the printer after New Year’s.
The Art of Paradigm Shift is coming along, and I’ve started in a design for a new painting to use as its cover. It should be off to the printer shortly after Vols. 1 & 2.
I’ve now done 84 of the 269 ink sketches I’ve promised as a stretch goal for campaign backers. If you want to follow along, I’m posting them on Instagram.
I’m absolutely delighted to announce the the campaign raised an incredible $18,543 from 360 backers. I would have never believed it before I launched the campaign 4 weeks ago.
Next I’ll be putting the finishing touches on the books so I can send them off to the proofreaders. And, I’m going to be painting the cover to the new PS art book—which will also be the source for the new poster.
A few readers have expressed disappointment that the campaign didn’t reach the big “shoot the moon” stretch goal of $25K and have assumed this means the end of the road for PS. I am here to tell you that is not the case. This tremendous outpouring of support has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a demand to see more of Kate & Mike’s story, and I’d like to tell it. Once I get these books off to the printer and the holidays are over, I can start thinking about a script for the new storyline. I can’t tell you right now when you can expect to see it, but there will definitely be a PS Volume 3 at some point in the future.
But first—I have three books to get to the printer!
Quick update on the PS Kickstarter. We passed the halfway mark this week, and it’s up to $14K and there’s still a couple of weeks to go!
Last week opened up the second stretch goal: a new Paradigm Shift art book that will collect all the full color prints, character studies, and werewolf designs I’ve posted over the years. Also, it will feature a version of the How to Draw Comics mini guide I printed last spring as a bonus.
If you haven’t backed the campaign yet, now’s a great time. If you order a book, you’ll not only get a copy of the new art book, but an original ink sketch like this:
Wow! I’m totally floored! The campaign launched on midnight on Tuesday and was funded by noon on Wednesday. And as of this morning, it’s well on the way to reaching the first stretch goal. I was pretty sure that the campaign would succeed, but had no idea that it would happen so fast!
I’m honored and grateful to everyone who has come out to back this comic. Thank you so much your support!
(If you haven’t had a chance to back the campaign, yet, no worries! Now we’re on to stretch goals…)
I’m excited to announce the Kickstarter for the new Paradigm Shift 20th Anniversary graphic novel collection is now live!
Kate McAllister may be one of the best detectives in Chicago, but her life is about to turn upside down.
Modern police thriller collides with classic werewolf tale in this action-packed graphic novel series. Kate and her partner are kicked off a juicy gun-running case to investigate a series of bizarre animal maulings. But as she begins to develop strange symptoms and powerful, frightening abilities, Kate realizes she may know this beast better than she could possibly imagine.
Now, her nightmares have invaded her waking life, and there’s more than just her job on the line — her humanity and the lives of everyone around her are at stake!
The story was inspired by old role-playing games, classic anime & manga, buddy cop movies, the X-Files, horror novels, and techno-thrillers to create the series. I began Paradigm Shift online in 1999 before there was word for “webcomics,” and I want to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a new gorgeous, two volume set.
Check out the Kickstarter at:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dirkitiede/paradigm-shift-a-werewolf-detective-story
The Kickstarter for the new 20th Anniversary Collection will go live next week on Tuesday, October 29th
Here are the details on the new collections:
The set will run $50 and include shipping within the US. And they will be signed and drawn in, of course! There will also be a $10 ebook option for those of you on a budget, and an a la carte option for $25 if you only want to get one of the books.
A lot of people have expressed interest in original art, so the bigger rewards will be about that. More details on that soon.
Check out this second book trailer, too.
BTW, I composed and performed the music for both of these videos.
So mark your calendars! The Paradigm Shift Kickstarter is coming!
Tuesday, October 29th!
Last weekend, I ran a character creation comics workshop at PILCON, a little comic convention run by the Peabody Institute Library that I contribute to every year. For the occasion, I decided to finally compile a bunch of the material I use in my workshops into a little mini guide.
This “How to Draw Comics” book is the result. It covers the whole process I use to create my comics, with special emphasis given to drawing characters and the thumbnailing process—which is the real heart of making comics.
This week I dropped off 4 copies of at Paper Asylum, my cool local comic shop. There’s currently only a handful of paper copies, so due to interest over the Paradigm Shift Facebook page, I’m making it available as a digital download today.
How to Draw Comics Mini Guide – $3.00
(Once you complete your purchase in PayPal, click on the “Return to Merchant” button to go to the download page. If you run into any problems, please email me at dirk@dynamanga.net.)It was fun to put this little book together, so I may use it as a reason to return to the “How to Draw Comics” blog series. I could easily see making more of these little things in the short term.
This month I completed my latest graphic novel, Paradigm Shift #4. The final issue came out at M.I.C.E. just over a week ago and the last couple of scenes will post on the website in Novemeber and December respectively. And I just made the entire collection available to purchase online last week.
I feel this book features some of my best work to date.
It’s exciting to see the whole story in print at long last. This book was a long time in development, since it first started out in webcomic form and then “sat in the drawer” for a couple of years after I stopped running it as a webcomic. I resurrected it in order to complete it as a graphic novel and collected it into minicomic form to bring to local comic shows. However, I am running it on the old Paradigm Shift webcomic site for the sake of completing the series in public and bringing some closure to the project. (It also means you can read the whole series for free right now—lucky you!)
I’ll be collecting the book for release in graphic novel form next year. Keep an eye out here for more on that soon.
(Or sign up for my mailing list.)
Just a bit more excitement from PS Vol. 4
In addition to writing & drawing comics and working as an illustrator, I also use my expertise as a veteran webcartoonist and experiences in advertising to teach a new program designed to introduce middle schoolers to basic ethics, critical thinking, and media literacy called Cyber Civics at a the Waldorf School at Moraine Farm here on Boston’s North Shore.
This month, I’m running Cyber Civics: A Crash Course in Digital Citizenship, a one-week intensive version of the course. We’ll be tackling all the messy online issues everyone is talking about right now—cyberbullying, privacy, fake news, social media manipulation, sexting and digital addiction—using fun, creative activities, art projects and discussions about the real things kids are seeing at school, on the internet, and in their homes.
Each day has a different theme:
• Day One is all about online identity and how we express ourselves online. We’ll talk about we use avatars and selfies to represent ourselves, and how those representations don’t always line up with who we are. We’ll play an avatar creation game, and create self-portraits. We’ll also talk about the digital trail we leave with every post and examine how others use those trails to learn about us with a “digital background” activity as we figure out what is okay to share and what is not together.
• Day Two digs into ethics and what it means to be a good citizen. The kids will imagine creating their own apps/online communities and explore what it would be like to be a CEO in charge of their own social media site in a “Shark Tank”. There they’ll figure out what the community rules will be and how they’ll protect the people in their community. We’ll also play a game where the students judge different scenarios and determine for themselves if an event was helpful or harmful, intentional or unintentional. My students this past year loved this game because it gave them a chance to discuss some of the things they were already starting to run into online. It also deals with the behavior with adults online, not just students. The day caps off with a discussion of cyberbullying and online drama and drawing comics about how to protect yourself from both.
• Day Three goes into striking a balance with our devices and using them safely. The kids will be challenged to go without using our phones for the duration of the class. The first half of the day examines how we spend our time during the day, both on screens and off. We’ll look at how not all “screen time” is created equal, because using devices for creativity like making art, music, programming, or even starting a business is far different from simply watching YouTube all day. The second half will deal with the basics of online safety—protecting your identity and information, creating good passwords, and figuring out how to deal with people you don’t know (yet) that you meet online.
• Day Four is all about fake news! We start out with how to find good information on the internet, with the basics of how sites like Google and Wikipedia work. We’ll also create a “human internet” game before talking about “C.R.A.P. Detection”, a method that uses Currency (how recent?), Reliability (can I trust it?), Authority (who wrote it?), and Purpose (are they trying to scare me or sell me something?) to evaluate information that we find online. We’ll look at misleading websites and try to evaluate news articles to figure out if they’re fake or real. We’ll also talk about urban legends and how rumors get spread (online and off.) My students during the school year LOVED this unit.
• Day Five we explore media by creating a parody ad for our “Shark Tank” app/site. First we’ll discuss how advertising works and how it uses stereotypes to sell to us and look at how advertisers use our data to track and target us online and manipulate images (both photos and video) to persuade us. Then we’ll design an ad, do a photoshoot, and use Photoshop to create a final piece to be printed up and shared online.
Personally, I like to think of Cyber Civics as the “Defense Against the Dark Arts” class for the internet. It’s about giving students a chance to think through some of the stickier parts of the online world ahead of time so if and when they encounter something nasty, they will already have a set of tools to work with it. Most of the class involves group activities, projects and discussion with some device usage for certain segments. We’ll also take daily walks outside. Enroll your child today and help give them a fighting chance against the real trolls of the world.
Cyber Civics: A Crash Course in Digital Citizenship runs from August 20-24 from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm and is $300 for the week. The program is for rising 6th Graders through rising 9th Graders. To register or for more information, email me at dtiede@waldorfmoraine.org.
