I will be speaking at Yale University, at an event called the Master's Tea, at 4:30 pm in the Jonathan Edwards building on February 24th, 2010. If you're a student or faculty member at the school, please drop by and say hello! Tuesday's talk at Disney Animation Studios was fun. Thanks to Dawn Rivera-Ernster for setting that up. I wish I left more time for the Q and A session, so I'll be cutting my future presentations shorter in favor of discussions with the audience. That's my favorite part.
Final Flight
The next couple of years will mark the end of the Flight series. We will be wrapping it all up with Flight Volume Eight. We had a pretty good run, but it is now time for us to focus on producing full graphic novels. When I started the project, many of us on the book were kids coming out of college with little experience as professional working artists. Years later, the majority of the artists on the project have gone on to create graphic novels of their own, or are now working at major animation, film, and game studios. The original book was created to serve a need. That need was to get our core group published, to have our work be seen, and to get enough practice under our belts to be able to do books of our own. After 7 years, I feel the original needs were met, and the artists are more than ready to go the distance on their own.
I will, however, continue to produce Flight Explorer, which will be retitled Explorer. Its purpose, to introduce kids to comics and reading through bite-sized stories, remains unfulfilled, and a book like this is truly essential, especially now that there are so few places kids can find new comics. With the demise of Disney Adventures and now Nickelodeon Magazine, parents and kids are going to have a difficult time finding premium comics content that is entirely age-appropriate. We hope we can fill that need.
Flight Volume Seven, however, is shaping up very nicely. I think we're going to go out on a couple of high notes with Volumes Seven and Eight. I'm really excited to share the new books with everyone.
