2012 in Review: Ive Sorocuk

Ive Sorocuk

What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2012?
 

Being a part of Squishface and having it be five minutes away from my home. Having my first solo exhibition in years, using it as an excuse to tighten up and show some process doodles. I brought out two zines made up of sketchbook drawings that I see no reason not to keep doing. Came out with The Diggables Handbook minicomic which got a nice response.

Who are some of the comics creators that you've discovered and enjoyed for the first time in 2012?
 

I recently read Sanctuary, a manga by by Sho Fumimura and Ryoichi Ikegami from the early 90's about the yakuza and Japanese politics. The cleanness and consistency in the art plus the over dramatic dialogue makes me want to seek out more by them. Checked out all the Brubaker/Philips crime comics I could find this year and they blew me away and made me really want to do my own noir stuff. Jason, Brandon Graham, DMZ, Fables, Darwyn Cooke's Parker are all things I hadn't read until this year.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2012?
 

Breaking Bad has never done me wrong. The Walt vs Gus season stressed my guts out every single episode. Adventure Time has always been good but it's really gone up a few notches in the last two seasons as it goes back on itself and creates a continuity rather than being as stagnant as most cartoons. I've been working my way through the original Twilight Zone and it's like a straight version of everything I love about Silver Age comics. I feel not enough people talk about It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The Muppets made me bawl my eyes out both times I saw it. Beasts of the Southern Wild got me drawing horns on everything.

As part of my BrunswickArts duties I attended as many graduation showsas possible and that was pretty inspiring. There were a few stand out things but mainly just seeing young folk busting their butts as creatively as they can got me pumped and made me question why I'm not drawing all day every day.

The food at Squishface's Exhibitchin' will be hard to top.

Have you implemented any significant changes to your working methods this year?
 

Being at Squishface allows me to throw around ideas and jokes and get feedback on things in progress rather than just doing a page and hoping for the best. The biggest change I've made is starting to worry about whether my finished art actually looks good or not. I used to be all about visual short-cuts and as long as a reader could tell my drawing of a table is
meant to be a table then that was fine, where as now I try and draw the best darn table I can. I've barely implemented that in my monthly Comics Face strips but it was my main focus in my Diggables minicomic.

Also, I dressed as a cowboy at three separate special comic occasions.
I want to do more of this.

What are you looking forward to in 2013?

 

I have a few vague ideas for my next comic and I want to lock one down before next year. Camp Chugnut, another exhibition both group and solo, Squishface 1st Birthday Spectacular, hopefully a con somewhere and a book launch.

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