Gorilla in the Midst

The Power Of Stan

by csimonite on August 19, 2013 at 12:01 am

Hi again, Primate Posse! Thanks for sticking with me while I take a semi-break to concentrate on my other art endeavours. Also thanks to all my fellow cartoonists for the encouragement to continue. You guys are the greatest! 🙂

Anyway, guess what? There really is a Stan Dickie (well sort of). And there really is a song called (I Found Jesus) Under a Truck. Please click the link to listen to it. I recorded it myself doing all the vocals (I’m not really a singer, but I do my best with what I got!) and guitars (the drums are just a loop and I would love to put some bass on these songs some day). Stan Dickie is an alter-ego that I created for my Master of Fine Arts thesis. As it says in the comic, Stan is a country/rock “star” who I wanted to use ostensibly as a vehicle to satirize contemporary masculinity and traditional patriarchy (and as you can see a little religious satire crept in there).

The background on this is: early on in my MFA program, I started to write songs to use as soundtracks to simple cut-out animations i was creating. But I started to realize that a character was forming in my mind and I actually stopped animating to work on developing him. I also started to perform in costume as Stan and really felt I was on to something. When I finished the program, I considered creating a comic strip about Stan, but decided to go with my GITM concept which was already fully developed (before I ever went to art and then grad school). But I thought I’d bring Stan in to Gorilla in the Midst at some point. And hell, maybe the songs can draw a few more readers to the site? You can also check out standickie.com.

On another note, for the exhibition I am currently in in Montreal, I was asked to do a performance as Stan at the opening and I also wrote 2 new songs which I’ll add to Stan’s website soon. In the meantime, here is a link to the stop-motion animation we created in Montreal over a 4 month period. At the very end, over the credits, you can see a little bit of what the cut-out animation I was doing in school was like. Here’s the link Espejo Negro.

└ Tags: country music, country/rock, gorilla, great apes, religious satire, satire, webcomic

10 Comments

The Mysterious New Neighbor

by csimonite on August 12, 2013 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Chapter 5: The New Neighbor

Well, Primate Posse™, as I said in my last post, GITM will be going weekly for a little while at least. I’m not happy about it, but I have been very busy with my fledgling contemporary art career. I’ve mentioned the project that I’ve been involved which has involved back and forth trips between Ottawa and Montreal for the last 4 months or so culminating in a 3 and a half week stay (a sort of artist’s residency) in July and the beginning of August. The good news, is that the entire exhibition will be shown in Mexico City sometime next year and the stop-motion animation that we made (not including the rest of the exhibition, which also had individual works by all 6 artists involved) will possibly be shown in as many as 3 different US cities. Unconfirmed, but fingers crossed!

Having said all this, I have to admit that I feel kind of defeated by having to do this right now. I went to art school 7 years ago ostensibly to improve my drawing so I could really work on being a really good cartoonist. But I got distracted by, well, art. To make a long story short, I improved my drawing a lot, but not necessarily my cartooning. My cartoon illustration skills are better than they used to be, but GITM is far too sloppy for my liking. Having said that, maybe I should embrace that and even simplify it further. Maybe that would help me to increase my output.

The other thing is, the strip is now into the realm of full blown satire, which makes me think it might be interesting to try to do a political comic along the lines of what Matt Bors and Tom Tomorrow etc. do. But then again, there’s not really much of a market left for this kind of thing in North America, and I really believe that GITM is good comic, so I’ll likely stick with it and hopefully get back to 3 comics a week ASAP. Right now I have another animation project to complete ASAP, so I’ll keep you all informed! See you next Monday when you’ll learn a little more about the mysterious Stan Dickie… Stay tooned!

└ Tags: gorilla, great apes, religious satire, satire, webcomic

19 Comments

Back To Normal?

by csimonite on August 9, 2013 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Chapter 4: A New Religion?

Well, my Primate Posse™, this strip brings to a close the Great Gargantuan Green Gorilla storyline. Even though it’s ended with the seeming death of this new religion, I think I may need to bring it back at some point, if only to make t-shirts! I mean, who wouldn’t want a Great Gargantuan Green Gorilla t-shirt? Or maybe one of those things people stick on their cars? Not sure How I’ll revive it, but revive it I will.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this storyline. I was a little afraid I would lose some readers over this (even though South Park has done much more blatant religious satire) but it seems I’ve retained most of the ‘posse’, so thanks for sticking around! And if PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins or Jerry Coyne happen to read this storyline, I hope I was overall respectful. Apologies to Dawkins for the jowls, I got a little carried away. 🙂 And also for the scatalogical humour. I couldn’t resist, and at least it was a good degree tamer than South Park!

I’ll be back Monday with a new storyline, but unfortunately, GITM will be going weekly for a while, with new comix on Mondays. 🙁 I’m not thrilled about it, but I’ll explain on Monday. Have a great weekend Primate Posse! 🙂