CCS Awareness Week

Hey all, just wanted to make a quick shout out to the fact that this past week was CCS Awareness Week.

For those of you who maybe just recently stumbled onto this blog and aren't, perhaps, in the know, the Center for Cartoon Studies is a school focused entirely on the study and production of comics, and it's where I did my graduate studies for the past two years. I was, of course, making comics before going to CCS, and had I not gone there, there's still a chance that I might have continued to make them today. CCS is the place that got me militant about making comics though, the place that put my face to the wall and said, "Look! This is what comics are! This is what they're about, and this is what they demand of you!" And faced with said metaphorical wall, a young(ish) Josh, full of hopes and dreams, was forced to either embrace it or turn away. And so he embraced it. He embraced it, and he ingrained his ink-stained fingers into the coarse brick of it as hard as he could.

CCS also taught me about not being alone in this insane pursuit of this oddly specific artistic medium. There are others, just as dedicated, all pretty much universally amazing in their own unique ways, many of whom I can't now imagine not having in my life to some degree. CCS also gave me the tools to sustain all this, and to approach this art form with a far greater competency than what I'd possessed before. Essentially I'm trying to say that CCS was a pretty great place for me. And I've since graduated, and have started to move on towards that next big question mark on the horizon. And lord knows how that's gonna go. But I also know that I wouldn't be able to approach that horizon without nearly the same confidence I have now had it not been for CCS. So you know. Be aware.