Scott Kurtz

To start our new project, we were to pick an artist from a list that Professor Pannafino had chosen. From this list, I chose Scott Kurtz, a founding father of the medium of webcomics. Scott is 43, was born in Watsonville, California, March 15th, 1971 and attended University of Noth Texas. When I searched Kurtz on Google Images, the first thing I saw was a drawing from the classic webcomic Penny Arcade. I immediately thought, "That's so awesome! I wouldn't have thought he was a part of this!". I always heard on how nerdy and geeky Penny Arcade was but I never had the chance to read it. Going further into my research, I found out he has collaborated with some of the most renowned "geek" webcomics such as: Penny Arcade, The Trenches, PvP (Player vs Player), and Table Titans. PvP and Table Titans are actually his own comics. PvP has been running every week day since 1998 and Table Titans, every Tuesday and Thursday, since 2013. Table Titans, to my understanding, is a spin-off of PvP with reoccurring from the PvP series. It follows the endeavors of the characters Alan Fischer, Andrew Drummond and Val Bronzebottom while playing Dungeons & Dragons. Sometimes the story does stray away from Dungeons & Dragons and goes into their actual lives outside of the game. Not to forget, Kurtz has also been working with Wizards of the Coast, publisher of D&D, to release official rules, books, merchandise, and much more to add on to the experience of Table Titans. Another aspect of Table Titans that is really neat is that there is other information that is released weekly like Bestiary, information about all of the monsters (every Monday), Proclamations, random news and tips for the comic and anything related to D&D (every Friday), and Tales from the Table, fan submitted stories about D&D (every week day). This comic has be really interested because I have played D&D before and it's pretty challenging. Whatever our next project is, I know I would like to play off of his Table Titans comic in some way. Scott has also received awards for his comics and artwork. He won the Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic in 2006 and the Harvey Award for Best Online Comic Work in 2010. The awards were both for his PvP comic. There is also a website called UStream where Kurtz streams himself drawing and talking about PvP. Kurtz seems to be very active since he is involved with a couple of webcomics other than his own. He has been in the webcomic business for over fifteen years. From reading some of his Tweets, it looks like he is an avid gamer as well. This definitely adds to his character and what influences him on a daily basis. It's really nice to know that he tries to communicate with his fans through social media so everyone knows what he likes, dislikes, and what he is thinking. Overall, I'm glad I chose Scott Kurtz. His style is really great. Each comic series he works with all have the same kind of artistic tone to them and you know that it is his work.

Works Cited
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Kurtz
http://pvponline.com/about
http://www.tabletitans.com/new-readers
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pvptv
http://archive.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4news/20121207

Below is the MoodBoard I have created for Scott Kurtz.