SLG Publishing continues its successful and informative Creator's Studio series with another day-long event on May 16th. Creator's Studio IV will feature panels on comics and their creation and will end with a live-drawing demonstration by the artist of the Eisner Award-nominated humor series Chumble Spuzz, Ethan Nicolle.

"The revival of the day-long event was a big success," said SLG President and event organizer Dan Vado. "We had one guy come all the way from Oklahoma just for the seminar." Vado added that other long-distance attendees included a couple from Olympia, Washington and another from Long Beach, California. "I think we may have hit on something and the upcoming events can only get better," added Vado.

The tentative panel line-up for the May 16th event includes:

Preparing a Proposal - Taught from the SLG Publishing perspective, Dan Vado will go over what should and should not go into your written project proposal to a comics company. Also covered will be what to put into your portfolio and how to handle yourself when you are planning to show your work to editors at a convention.

Good Design/Bad Design - SLG Art Director Scott Saavedra goes over good and bad design choices and how they apply to comics and graphic novels. In addition to being SLG's Art Director, Scott is the creator of Comic Book Heaven, a book series that looks at comics from the Golden and Silver Age with an eye towards examining the goofier aspects of those books.

Conjuring a Page - Artist in semi-residence Ethan Nicolle sits down at his drawing tabld and demonstrates his drawing and storytelling techniques. This is an interactive demonstration, questions are encouraged. Ethan will show how he breaks down a page and take a page of script and show and explain his thought process for creating a finished piece. Ethan is the Eisner Award nominated creator of Chumble Spuzz and is one of the funniest and most inventive creators to hit SLG Publishing in a long time.

The Creator's Studio seminar is not a how-to-draw class, and a certain amount of proficiency on the part of attendees is assumed. While some attention will be paid to the basics of drawing, for the most part this session will be devoted to storytelling and design. Recommended age for this seminar is 16 or older.

Cost for the event is $15, tickets should be purchased in advance at www.slgcomic.com/workshops or at http://cstudio4.eventbrite.com

The SLG Gallery will be open late the night before the event as the site has become an official venue for Left Coast Live, a downtown San Jose music festival. More information for that event can be found at http://www.leftcoastlive.com.

"Anyone coming a long distance for the event should make a point of stopping by. We will be letting Creator's Studio attendees into the gallery free," said Vado. "We will have loads of live music going on until late that evening and the downtown itself should be pretty jumping."

For more information about SLG Publishing or the Creator's Studio series contact Dan Vado at dvado@slgpubs.com or call 408-971-8929

On March 7, 2009 SLG Publishing will revive the Creator's Studio, its workshop series for aspiring comic book creators. In 2003, SLG Publishing hosted the first Creator’s Studio, a series of panel discussions, instructional workshops and portfolio reviews, in its San Jose, California offices. The day-long events covered subjects from writing for comics to thinking visually to discussions about how certain creators approached the craft.

"We were really proud of the workshops and everyone who attended seemed to get a lot out of them," SLG President Dan Vado said in describing the first workshops. "For us it was a great chance to take this kind of thing out of a convention atmosphere where people are always tired and distracted and into a setting more conducive to learning and discussion."

The first event on March 7th, "Comics Econ 101," will feature local comic book store owner Dan Shahin (of Hijinx Comics in San Jose) and company president Dan Vado discussing the harsh realities of making a living in comics. Also included in the day's events is a panel called "Imagining the Page," in which writers will discuss with an artist the components of a good comics page. The day will conclude with a live drawing demonstration by SLG artist Karl Christian Krumpholz, creator of the comic Byron, as he discusses what his approach to drawing a page and answers questions from the audience. This is an interactive demonstration and questions from the attendees is encouraged.

SLG will be charging a nominal fee for the workshops "The first seminars we ran were free, but the time and expense of putting them on were the reason we stopped doing them," said Vado. "These workshops will be well worth what we will be charging for them and are a bargain compared to other professional seminars of a similar nature."

Date: Saturday March 7th
Location: SLG Publishing
577 S. Market Street San Jose CA 95113
Time: 10 AM - 5 PM
Cost: $15.00

Space is limited and advance registration is recommended. Online registration is available at slgworkshops.eventbrite.com/ and a complete class schedule is available at www.slgcomic.com/workshops. For more information, call SLG Publishing at 408-971-8929 or email Dan Vado at dvado@slgpubs.com.