Kenosha Festival Of Cartooning 2014 - Spread The Word!

Mark your calendars! We have our official dates and speaking roster set for the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning 2014! The festival will run:

• Thursday, September 25
• Friday, September 26 
• Saturday September 27

Our special guest speakers are:

• Jeff Keane - Family Circus
• Lincoln Peirce - Big Nate
• Scott Stantis - Prickly City and Editorial Cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune
• Terri Libenson - The Pajama Diaries
• Rick Stromoski - Soup to Nutz
• Todd Clark - Lola
• Denis Kitchen - Kitchen Sink Press and co-author of "Al Capp - A Life To The Contrary"
• Michael Schumacher - Author of "Will Eisner - A Contract With God" and co-author of "Al Capp - A Life To The Contrary"

We have a LOT of exciting things planned this year including two gallery shows and an auction of original art to benefit children's charities in the Kenosha Area.

We will be launching our fundraising drive for the 2014 budget at the beginning of the year and, before we launch the drive, we need to spread the word. Crowd sourcing on platforms like Kickstarter works best when a lot of people donate, even if the donations are small.

So we are setting a goal of 1000 new followers on Twitter (@KenoshaFestival)and 1000 new followers on Facebook (Kenosha Festival of Cartooning - Facebook). If you are already a "Friend of the Festival" one of the best things you can do right now is persuade others to follow the festival on social networking. Clicking on the above links will take you to the appropriate pages.

The Festival is an amazing opportunity for folks to meet cartoonists and all events are FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

Mini-fest 2013 - Photos and Thank You's

What a great Mini-fest we just had with Tom Richmond of MAD Magazine!

Both classes were full, as were the portfolio review sessions. We had a pretty good crowd, raised some money for next year, and had a great time!!

A huge thank you to Tom Richmond whose talent and professionalism are only outclassed by his overall niceness! 

Thank you to Nancy Mathews and the Kenosha Public Museum for again partnering with the festival to bring terrific artists to Kenosha!

Thank you to the Kenosha News for once again sponsoring the festival and providing us with great publicity and news coverage!

Thank you to Chet Griffith of Artworks Kenosha who provided us with space to teach the pro class and the portfolio reviews!

Thank you to Judy and Sharon Rossow and The Copy Center for again printing ALL our PR materials and programs and such this year!

Thank you to John Bloner whose press release expertise helped us spread the word in local media!

Thank you to all our wonderful donors, both here on the site and locally! We couldn't do this without you!

And finally, thank you to everyone who made the trip to Kenosha to attend the Mini-fest. You were a great audience and it is your enthusiasm and interest in cartooning and cartoonists that give us the energy to plan for the festival's next year!!

Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Mini-fest 2013, kicked off Saturday morning with a class at the Kenosha Public Museum. Geared toward ages 13-18, the kids soaked up Tom's expertise and seemed particularly excited to see him draw Daniel Radcliff as Harry Potter. The class was followed by Tom's free presentation of his illustration career spanning over 25 years.

 We did not have the talents of our expert photographer this year but I snapped a few pics of the class and Tom's presentation. Here is a small photo gallery:

At this point I had so many other things to take care of that I was forced to stop taking pictures. If any attendees have photos that they would like to share - please email me at kenoshacartoonfest@gmail.com

Thanks again - see you all next September 25-27!

Festival Poster

Here is the official poster for Kenosha Festival of Cartooning Mini-Fest happening on November 2, 2013 with visiting guest artist Tom Richmond of MAD magazine.  Please email the festival at kenoshacartoonfest@gmail.com if you would like a pdf copy of the poster to print or share with folks you feel would be interested in attending.

November 2013 Mini-fest with Tom Richmond: Events and Fundraising

Plans are shaping up for this November's 1 day Mini-fest (Saturday, November 2) with our fabulous guest speaker Tom Richmond. Tom will be working hard for us this time teaching caricature classes, offering tips to freelancing artists, and talking about his career in caricature and illustration for such illustrious publications as MAD magazine, Cracked magazine, Marvel Comics, Scholastic and about a million others. Visit Tom's website here and check out all the amazing things he's done! (You should visit the site for the opening animation alone.)

This year we will be using the mini-fest not only to showcase Tom's tremendous talent but to offer some professional development opportunities to aspiring illustrators and comic artists and to raise money for Kenosha Festival of Cartooning 2014.

Which is why instead of simply offering a great presentation that is free to the public we've added classes, receptions and portfolio reviews. These extra events will be offered as backer rewards to those of you who use the donate button to support the festival. Space will be limited and first priority will be given to backers. If the spots don't "sell out" by September, we will offer them to non backers for a flat rate slightly higher than the backer rate.

** For an explanation of this year's "Non-Kickstarter Crowd Funding", click here.
** For all information on Backer Rewards and to keep tabs on how much we've raised, click here.

Here are the events we plan to offer for this one day mini-fest:

Caricature class for kids aged 13-18 at the Kenosha Public Museum **Note: this class is run by the museum and will NOT be tied to backer rewards. Once the museum adds the class to their event roster and opens enrollment, we will provide a link to their site. Check back in August.

Presentation on Tom Richmond's Career in Illustration and work for magazines like MAD at the Kenosha Public Museum - Free to the public but seating is limited to 200

Caricature class and freelancing tips for aspiring professionals at Artworks Kenosha - class limited to 17

Portfolio Review with either Tom Richmond (caricature and illustration) or John Hambrock (comic strips and panels) - reviews will last 15 minutes and are limited to 6 per artist.

Artist Hangout and behind the scenes tour of John Hambrock's studio - limited to backers only and offered as an alternative to the afternoon caricature class and portfolio review. A full lunch will be served.

Meet and Greet Reception at Matt's on Main with Tom Richmond, John Hambrock and any and all other professional cartoonists who attend the mini-fest - this event will be a fundraiser as well as a backer reward. Pizza will be provided with your donation. Cash bar.

To become a backer of the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning mini-fest Click the Donate Button in the upper left sidebar.

It's going to be a great event and we can't wait to see all of our old cartooning friends and fans and meet some new ones!

Mark Your Calendars - Festivals 2013 and 2014

Festival guest speaker for 2013 Tom Richmond

Yes, we are going to do the festival again! We have some exciting things planned and details will be forthcoming as everything firms up.

We will not run the full 3 day festival in 2013. Rather we will have a 1 day "mini-fest" that is tentatively set for Saturday, November 2. There will be great events all day and our primary featured speaker will be Tom Richmond of MAD magazine and "The Mad Art of Caricature" fame. Stay tuned for the full presentation and class schedule to be posted in the coming weeks.

In September of 2014 we will once again be back in full swing with 3 days of terrific events, both for the public and the local schools. Mark your calendar for September 25, 26, and 27th of 2014 and prepare for another great lineup of guests!

A note: We will be experimenting this year with crowd sourcing fundraising on my own. By this I mean that we hope to do the same kind of fundraising, complete with backer rewards, as we did on Kickstarter last year but through this website using paypal. Paypal allows backers to use any credit card they wish rather than having to have an Amazon account, plus they take a smaller percentage of the total funds raised in fees. Again, details will be forthcoming in the coming weeks.

Checks For Charities!

Dr. James Lustig, Festival Director Anne Morse Hambrock, and Regional Marketing Director for Children's Hospitals of Wisconsin Thomas Miller

Festival Director Anne Morse Hambrock and Executive Director for Margaret Ann's Place Ginger Heigl

It took a while to get everything processed. It then took another while to get schedules to align so that I could present the checks in person. But the money raised by The National Cartoonist Society Foundation via the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning was finally formally presented to both Margaret Ann's Place and the Children's Hospitals of Wisconsin's Kenosha Clinic!

We raised over 5,000 for each charity!

Thank you again to Rick Stromoski, the NCSF and all the cartoonists who sent work for the auction!