Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Rocky Mt Comics conference and Rabbits at GLC

This week, I'll be hitting the road for Denver to present at the Rocky Mountain Conference for Comics and Graphic Novels - attached to the Denver Comic Con. I'm giving a talk on my dissertation work entitled "Comics as a Tool for Inquiry: A Dissertation in Comic Book Form Reimagines Scholarship", which builds on previous presentations including this one from HASTAC last December. Scott McCloud is keynoting, RC Harvey, James Bucky Carter, Maureen Bakis and more will be there presenting. Should be fun.

At the same time, my comic "Possibilities," originally created for Game Show Detroit and reprinted for Game Show NYC last year, is back in print again as part of the annual Games for Learning Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Thanks to organizer Arnold Martin for the invitation. To go along with that, i thought i'd share the "rabbit" page from "possibilities" along with the text key to it that explains all the rabbits - and the number of rabbits... More pages from Possibilities can be seen here and the entire piece is reprinted in the new collection of all my works of the last several years here. More dissertation pages when I get back. - Nick

A quick note - I never set out to do a page of rabbits, but when a student was wearing a Trix rabbit shirt and I'd been thinking about the busy-ness of adults in terms of no time for play - things set in motion. Suddenly I was seeing rabbits everywhere...

The Key to the Rabbit Page: 

Panel 1: Trix the Cereal Rabbit. P2: The White Rabbit, “Alice in Wonderland.” P3: Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter Tales. P4: ? P5: Thumper, Bambi. P6: Jessica Rabbit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? P7: Jackelope. P8: Uncle Wiggily. P9: Pat the Bunny. P10: Playboy Bunny. P11: Lucky rabbit’s foot. P12: Miffy, by Dick Bruna. P13: B’rer Rabbit. P14: Chocolate Rabbit – yumm! P15: Energizer Bunny. P16: Rabbit in hat. P17: Easter Bunny. P18: Hand Shadow Rabbit. P19: Velveteen Rabbit – Real. P20: Velveteen Rabbit – Alive. P21 (Left to Right): 1) Rabbit, “Watership Down,” 2) Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh, 3) Peter Cottontail, 4) Captain Carrot, 5,6,7) Flopsy, Mopsy, & Cotton Tail – Beatrix Potter Tales, 8) Bongo, “Life in Hell,” 9) March Hare, Alice…, 10) Yusagi Yojimbo, 11) Frank, Donnie Darko, 12) Jimmy “Bunny Rabbit” Smith – Eminem, “8 Mile,” 13) Bugs Bunny.
NOTE – The rabbits per row number 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, with 13 rabbits in the final panel. This is the famous Fibonacci Sequence – originally conceived to estimate the growth of … rabbit populations!

2 comments:

Ms. Anne said...

Play is such an important part of life and I really loved the rabbit images you drew in this piece. This reminds me of Nachmanovitch's book, "Free Play, the Power of Improvisation in Life and the Arts." I've been reading it over vacation and have felt more and more inspired to play, create, and collaborate. Thanks for this great post and ingenious artwork!

nsousanis said...

Hi Anne, thanks for the kind words and reference! Free Play sounds great - i'll have to check this out thanks!