Scratch that–who’s got two thumbs and her master’s degree?

Spoiler alert: it’s THIS GUY again! :D

Sorry for the extreme delay in updates, you guys! I was completely wrapped up in my nervousness about meeting with the thesis committee, and after that I was busy celebrating the fact that I TOTALLY PASSED! In fact, every single member of the class of 2011 passed, making this a first in CCS history! I’m pretty proud of us.

We had a fantastic commencement ceremony featuring speeches by Lawrence Lee Derks III (whose blog is brand-spanking-new) and Francoise Mouly of RAW, Little Lit, and The New Yorker fame! You can watch a video of the ceremony, including a somewhat-impromptu dance number, here (courtesy of Bailey‘s dad). While you’re at it, you can also check out our amazing diploma drawn by–who else?–my fantastic advisor, Aaron Renier! I’m gonna do a post gushing about everything next week (and reflecting on my time at CCS), but for now you’ll have to make do with this picture from the graduation reception:

That’s me with my mom, dad, and grandma. My grandpa is, as always, the one behind the camera. I’m wearing the smile of someone whose life suddenly includes sleep, showers, and chocolate-covered pretzels! (My grandparents brought me boxes of Sarris chocolate-covered pretzels all the way from Pittsburgh…and if you’re from the ‘burgh, you know how great those are!) I had a fun time showing them all around WRJ and introducing them to all my friends.

Now that they’ve gone home, I get to kick back, relax, and–oh yeah–get started on work for Drawn Out Storytelling! Pat, Bailey, Paul, and I all headed to NYC earlier this week to meet with some of the storytellers and plan out our illustrations. We’ve got a fantastic lineup for these shows! Kevin Allison (of The State and Risk!) Jeff Simmermon (of The Moth and And I Am Not Lying), Peter Aguero (of The Moth and The BTK Band), and Ophira Eisenberg (also of The Moth and As Is) will all be there on varying nights, plus a bunch of other incredibly talented storytellers, artists, and musicians! Check out the full lineup on our Kickstarter here.

And, speaking of our Kickstarter, guess what? We are 93% funded! :D Thank you guys so, so much for your support–it means everything to us! We’re just $125 away from our goal, and we’re incredibly excited. If you have a spare dollar or two, please think about sending it our way so that we can make this show the best it can be!

I’m about to wrap it up for tonight, so here’s a little drawing I did during one of our many summer thunderstorms this week:

As someone who’s lived in California for the last eight years, summer rain is a new and wonderful phenomenon to me. I love it! I assume that someday the idea of it being 80 degrees and pouring rain will become normal to me again, but right now I’m content to spend a lot of time staring out the window, fanning myself and marveling.

Little doodles and big news!

Hi, guys! Thanks for all your feedback in regards to my crests. I’m still making my final decisions, so I’ll leave the polls open for a few more days in case you’re still interested in voting. I’m planning to screenprint them sometime in the next two days, so I’ll let you know what the results are then!

As you can probably tell, things are getting to be super hectic here. I haven’t had a chance to do much non-thesis work, but I do have a little doodle for you today:

I’m not just busy with thesis stuff, though! I’ve also been working with Nisse Greenberg and Paul Swartz to organize a pretty awesome show called Drawn Out Storytelling. Check it out:

Drawn Out Storytelling is our entry in the Brick Theater‘s Comic Book Theater Festival. It’s a show that combines live, note-free storytelling–the kind you might hear on Risk! or The Moth podcasts–with comic art! Performers like Nisse (and several others that I can’t reveal just yet) will tell their stories on stage, accompanied by either live drawing or a prepared slideshow of illustrations by artists like Pat Barrett, Ben Horak, Bailey Sharp, Paul Swartz, and myself. We’ll also have live musical accompaniment by Mike O’Malley, Jonathan Anderson, and possibly more. We’ve got four shows scheduled:

Saturday, June 18th at 5:30pm

Friday, June 24th at 8:45pm

Sunday, June 26th at 8:00pm

Wednesday, June 29th at 8:00pm

Interested in coming to the show? You can buy tickets here. Want to help us make the show happen? Check out our Kickstarter! You can donate as little as $1, and we’re offering some great prizes in return for donations. (Can you say, ‘custom original art’? AWW YEAH.) Even if you can’t attend or donate, we’d love it if you’d help spread the word. I’m really excited to be a part of this show, and I hope it’ll be a big success!