Interview with The Evergreen Alumni Blog

The Evergreen State College alumni Blog, The Evergreen Mind, interviewed Ron Austin about our Bezango, WA project.  During the interview Ron talks about Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, Charles Burns, Megan Kelso, Chelsea Baker, Steve Willis, and other Evergreen & Northwest affiliated cartoonists.

Also included in their blog post is a Youtube video of an entire animation and comic panel discussion that took place at the college spring 2012.  It features Matt Groening, Craig Bartlett, Drew Christie, Tommy Thompson, Megan Kelso, Ruth Hayes, and Steve Willis. I've reposted a link to the Youtube video below.

Excerpt of Ron's interview from the Evergreen alumni blog:

Editor’s note: We caught wind that Ron Austin ’91 was making a documentary about Northwest artists, “Bezango, WA.” Recently we got hold of him and gathered a few of his reflections on cartoons and Evergreen. 

Dante Garcia (DG): How did cartooning become such a big part of your life?

Ron Austin (RA): My parents never bought a television. I grew up in Seattle during the 1970s and 80s listening to The CBS Radio Mystery Theater, hosted by E.G. Marshall, and reading comics. That was my main source of entertainment. Archie comics and super hero comics were a huge influence, and so were the daily strips in the Seattle P.I. and The Times.  I also read MAD Magazine and National Lampoon a lot. The artists behind those cartoons were like rock stars to me. I just assumed this is how everyone felt about comic artists.

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Final Kickstarter Days!

The Final Days of the Bezango, WA. Kickstarter campaign are upon us. The event has gone very well and we met our initial goal. Thanks so much to everyone who has donated and/or shared the link and got the word out!  There are still two days left to become part of the Bezango project. Join us in making a great film!  Check out the rewards by artists such as Peter Bagge, Robert Gregory, David Lasky, Steve Willis, Jim Woodring, Pat Moriarity, John Lustig, Scott Ball, Dan McConnell, and Robert Kelton.

Click on the picture below to see a larger image.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1230569287/bezango-wa?ref=live

New Kickstarter Video

Thanks so much to the generous contributions from comic fans, friends, and family the Kickstart campaign is going well. With 13 days left we are almost 75% complete with the Kickstarter goal. This is good by most any Kickstarter standard.

We recently updated the home page video at Kickstarter. It goes into much more detail about the film, and showcases excerpts of interviews with Brian Basset (creator of Red and Rover), Roberta Gregory (creator of Bitchy Bitch), Ellen Forney (author of Marbles), and Shary Flenniken (former cartoonist and editor of National Lampoon Magazine). The first video was fun, but the new one has important information about our budget and samples from the film. You can view the new video, and more information about our film, at the Bezango Kickstarter site.  I've also posted both the new KS video and the first one below. We hope this helps put us over the set financial goal. Thank you for sharing the link and/or your financial contributions to the film (both are much appreciated!).

New video posted at Kickstarter, November 18th, 2012.



Original video at Kickstarter site posted October 22nd, 2012.

Chelsea Baker Cartoon

A cartoon by Chelsea Baker about our film Bezango, WA. Chelsea interviewed Ron last week and then a drew full page cartoon for Olympia Power & Light, a newspaper serving the Olympia, Wa community.     BTW-even though Ron is the main one featured in the interview above, both he and Louise have been working as a team on the project for over two years.  If the KickStarter campaign is successful we can have it completed by early 2013.

Chelsea is featured in the film as one of the local artists. For over three years she has created a cartoon every day called: Daily Comics.

Welcome

The Pacific Northwest has a  rich history of cartoonists, including traditional, Newave, and underground artists.  Bezango is a film and web archive project  that is documenting some of these local prominent cartoonists.

Bezango is produced and created by Ron Austin and Louise Amandes (aka AustinAmandes).  http://austinamandes.com/ AustinAmandes is currently doing business as Bird Wire Productions. The name "Bezango" is used with permission by cartoonist Steve Willis, creator of Morty the Dog. http://www.mortythedog.com/