The influence of Roller Skates

Jeanne’s designs of the Roller Skating Ant

roller skating taught me autonomy

dancing with a partner

speed

rhythm & music

rotating

knee agility

3D imagination

energy efficiency

choreography

fitness

balance

sighting backwards

turning glucose into fuel

gave me my “ant identity”

Definition #363 Comic Character

Jeanne’s designs of the Roller Skating Ant

Ant as a Grandma, wind-skating

It was on this day in 1897 that the first comic strip appeared in a newspaper. The strip, created by Richard Outcault, was published under different names but usually known by the name of its main character, the Yellow Kid. The Yellow Kid started appearing in single-panel cartoons in 1896, but on this day, it was first published as a multipaneled comic strip, titled “The Yellow Kid Takes a Hand at Golf.” Six panels showed the Yellow Kid’s mixed success at attempting to hit a golf ball. At the beginning he declares, “I am playing dis game an I don’t want no fresh mug te gimme any tips see,” and then he proceeds to knock out several bystanders with his golf club.

to see Jeanne’s graphic novel for free go to:

http://www.blurb.com/books/5669716-the-roller-skating-ant

Definition #312 Ants

Cover: The Roller Skating Ant

Ants

by Daniel Hoffman

Theirs is a perfection of pure form.
Nobody but has his proper place and knows it.
Everything they do is functional.
Each foray in a zigzag line
Each prodigious lifting
Of thirty-two times their own weight
Each excavation into the earth’s core
Each erection
Of a crumbly parapetted tower —

None of these feats is a private pleasure,
None of them done
For the sake of the skill alone —

They’ve got a going concern down there,
A full egg-hatchery
A wet-nursery of aphids
A trained troop of maintenance engineers
Sanitation experts
A corps of hunters
And butchers
An army

A queen
Each
Is nothing without the others, each being a part
Of something greater than all of them put together
A purpose which none of them knows
Since each is only
The one thing that he does. There is
A true consistency
Toward which their actions tend.
The ants have bred and inbred to perfection.
The strains of their genes that survive survive.
Every possible contingency
Has been foreseen and written into the plan.

Nothing they do will be wrong.

“Ants” by Daniel Hoffman from Beyond Silence. © Louisiana State University Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission.

New Graphic Novel: The Roller Skating Ant

Cover: The Roller Skating Ant

For a free preview, please go to:

http://www.blurb.com/b/5669716-the-roller-skating-ant

Try to click on the diagonal arrows to fill the screen with the 2 page layout in the Flash Animation.