I attended last night's meeting of Cartoonists Northwest, of which I am a member and Vice President. We meet the third Friday of every month at the School for Visual Concepts in Seattle, and there's always an interesting speaker from some interesting discipline or another. Last night we had animators Scott and Georgia Ball, both graduates of the Savannah College of Art and Design. They talked about the principles of animation and how they relate to creating comics and in particular their web comic Scooter and Ferret. I've been following S&F for a while now and it's starting to grow on me. Scott is a jaw-droppingly talented artist, so much so that the strip almost turns me off for being so lushly illustrated. I'm sure there's something more than jealousy operating there, but I don't know what.

The attendees at every meeting post some drawings or comic strips at the start of the meeting and at the end we vote for the best. I'm proud to say today's strip was selected "Best of the Northwest," which makes the fourth time an Unshelved strip has won that distinction. Go Dewey!

The meetings are open to the public so drop by some time and join in the fun.

Check out this amazing talk on Digital Rights Management by sci-fi author and Electronic Freedom Foundation spokesman Cory Doctorow. As a creator and publisher of intellectual property it is absolutely fascinating to me, but if you've ever played an MP3 file or bought an iTunes song then it applies to you too.