Coloring Book Teaches Chicago Special Ed. Students About AIDSSpecial education students in Chicago's public schools are getting an AIDS education everytime they color.
That's because of the creation of a new coloring book called "What Are Friends For?" HIV Safe Coloring Book.
The book contains 32 large pages of illustrations that are designed to explain how HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, can and cannot be transmitted. In addition, the book also caters to the school system's diverse population by using illustrations of youths from various nationalities.
[note: unfortunately, Jet didn't find it necessary to mention who created the book !]
Chicago Profileby Bob Herguth
Cartoonist on View
The social commentary (editorial) cartoon art of Chicago Cartoonist Tim
Jackson will go on display through the month of August at the Conrad Sulzer
Regional Library located at 4455 North Lincoln Avenue (Montrose & Lincoln)
during regular library hours.
In Seven Cities
He's syndicated in African-American newspapers in Detroit, Madison and Tallahassee,
Fla., plus StreetWise-type papers in San Francisco, Denver and Cheyenne,
Wyo. Here, he's in StreetWise and N'DIGO. His cartoons are titled "Things That Make You Go Hmm..."
Stats
Raised in Dayton, Ohio. Came here [Chicago] to the Art Institute for film
and animation. "I never finished a degree [back then]. I did work-study
and needed more money. I started a freelance business, doing art around
the city, mostly cartooning." Single, 37, lives in Rogers Park.
Does Comic Books
"I have a series of comic books on social issues. I sell them to social
service agencies," schools. First topic: AIDS awareness. "I try to make sure the African-American
character is solving the problem, not creating it - which is usually what
you find in other comic books or stories."
And Now
"Art is all I do. Not just cartoons: Desktop publish Graphics for various
agencies and companies. Posters and brochures for AIDS and HIV agencies
and the Red Cross. I've been dealing with computer software creating 'Afrocentric Klips' for anyone
who wants (good) images of African Americans.
A Downer
"I show my work to kids at schools. They don't believe I did it. They
think the work is good and looks professional and naturally assume a [B]lack
person didn't do it. It's sad. It shows these kids don't have that goal
or aspiration in life because they don't think that what [B]lack people
do."
Philosophy
"I guess my humorous philosophy is : Nothing is impossible, the system
is just designed to make it seem that way."
To the Young
"Follow your dream. Don't let others discourage you."
Tapping into Afrocentric computer artDoes this sound familiar? your company is putting together a brochure of a marketing report. You want to depict African American, but to do that you would have to darken the skin of existing white computer art figures. Or, the only people of [C]olor in your clip art are Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and sports figures such as Michael Jordan.
Well, to make your life easier and your presentations more racially balanced, Chicago cartoonist Tim Jackson has created a library of computer clip art -Afrocentirc Klips- marketed by Afrocentrex , a newly formed computer graphics firm.
The first collection contains eight volumes of computer art. Users can import an any of more than 100 different illustrations into popular computer applications, such as QuarkXPress, PageMaker, Microsoft Word and WordPerfect. The file is broken down into three sets of images: Business, Careers and Church.
There are 303 Afrocentric Klips images for IBM compatible Pcs and 160 for Macintosh computers. The two versions retail for $129 and $79, receptively. To order call-----.
-C.M.B.
His own cartoons tell a lot about Tim -what he is now, what he'd like
to beBy Gail Collins, Journal-Herald Staff Writer
Tim Jackson is a teen-ager with three "selves."
He can prove it, too. They're all down on paper -embodied in cartoon characters he draws of himself. One character may be "the way I want to be," another the way he is at school and another will reflect the way he really is.
It may sound complicated, but it's not for Jackson the 18-year-old Colonel White High School senior--[as I recall, I was rather annoyed at this because I was only 17 at the time. I didn't want people thinking I was that old in my senior year! I took pride in being younger than my peers. tlj]--says he's been drawing "just about all my life" and cartooning since the fifth grade.
One of his characters is "Bookworm," patterned after himself. "He does everything I do," he says.
He also does other characters, mostly around his age. As he gets older, they get older with him.
He gets his ideas from television and everyday experience.
Jackson started out doing what he calls "Shorts," which are one page cartoons and now he's doing a series of stories around the same characters.
"They're diaries in a way - just telling my life story," he says.
He also writes stories until he runs out of paper or ideas and "it's usually the paper."
Jackson, who lives at ---Kumler Ave., said he does all of his cartoons in pencil first, then looks for mistakes, corrects them and puts the cartoons in ink. He uses a fountain pen, then a paint brush for shading.
He has taken art classes since he's been in high school and now he's taking animation as an art elective. He's interested in cinematography and animation and would like to go into some aspect of cinematography as a career.
So far, he hasn't been selling cartoons, but he wouldn't mind -if he found somebody to buy them.
But for now, he just enjoys drawing for himself.
He's' tried other art forms - portraits and landscaping, for instance, "But I always come back to cartoons."
"They're mine," he says, "I can make up everything. it all comes out in my head."
Comic books not afraid to get realby Dahleen Glanton
Don't look for Tim Jackson's cartoons in the comic pages of your favorite newspaper or magazine. You're more likely to find them in a waiting room at the city Health Department, or in Chicago Public school classrooms.
If you do happen to come across a copy don't expect to be swept away in a fantasy of romance and adventure. Jackson's characters are pretty average folks, more like real-life people trying to cope with real-life problems.
Since his first comic book was published in 1982, dealing with people who are hearing impaired, Jackson has used light humor and pictures to draw attention to tough social issues like AIDS and teenage drug abuse. He has published eight so far.
Through his 11- and 12-year-old characters, he also addresses the issue of sexual awareness , that inevitable state in life when youngsters realize that members of the opposite sex aren't all goofy, birdbrain, know-it-all nerds.
Another story tells of a young boy who is trying to cope with his parents' divorce. And in another, a group of "graffiti artists" who spray-painted walls with gang symbols learn to use their art in a more positive way. [Actually, this is an incident that happened in real life while teaching an art class, and is not something that takes place in the story "The Case of the Great Graffiti." tlj]
"My comic books deal with everyday things. They just happen to have a [B]lack person in the lead role," said Jackson, 33. "I wanted to present positive images and show kids who would be reading the books that they can do these things too.
"The African American community needs to see positive self-images. You won't find that in a cartoon like 'The Phantom,' which always shows African as superstitious and ignorant."
Jackson sells his comic books to public agencies like the Chicago Department of Health and Chicago Public Schools. But that isn't what he had in mind when he first started out as a cartoonist.
"Initially, I wanted to create a cartoon for a newspaper syndicate," Jackson said. "When I started in the late `70s I felt like there were just no cartoons in the paper that had [B]lack characters and that examined social issues.
"But I was never able to create anything the editors found to be what they were looking for. After I was turned down by the syndicates so many times, I started to use them [the cartoons] in my comic books."
Jackson's characters don't use street slang. They don't wear their hats cocked to the side, and they're inquisitive, bright, and for the most part obedient kids.
Among the recurrent characters is a youngster named Bookworm, who Jackson describes as a hard-working African-American youth who is trying his best to get a good education.
"Some kids suspect that he's not like them because 'he doesn't talk like he's [B]lack,'" adds his creator.
There is Auric, the "athletic super-monster [the what?], male mentality character" who often learns lessons by the way his words and actions affect other people.
"And there's Turbo, a Cambodian kid "whose personality hasn't been fully developed yet," said Jackson. As a member of the KYD club - Klub for Young Detectives - Turbo usually is the one who asks the probing questions that lead to the lesson presented in the story.
"I had a discussion once with a cartoon editor who said the characters didn't seem [B]lack enough," Jackson said. "I asked what he thought [B]lack life was like. Do we do things so different form other people on the planet that we have to be depicted in a different way? We do the same things everyone else does. We just happen t be African-Americans."
Some of his story ideas come from his own life experiences. Others he learned while working at a youth center in Edgewater during the mid-1980s.
"I worked with a lot of African-American and Asian children, and the material available just wasn't fitting to them," said Jackson.
They didn't feel they could relate to it because it didn't show pictures of them."
Though the books are written for kids, Jackson hopes that parents also might pick them up and learn a thing or two.
Jackson publishes the books himself by using the profit form one batch to finance the next.
Young cartoonist offers his own look at DaytonThe cartoons on this page were drawn by Tim Jackson, 20, a graduate of Colonel White High School who now lives on Kumler Avenue [remember folks, this was 1978!]
Jackson, currently part of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act - funded Neighborhood Artist Program, studied art at Sinclair Community College for a year and hopes to make cartooning his career.
From time to time the Dayton Daily News will print some of Jackson's cartoons like these today, on topic of Dayton area interest.
Jackson says the drawings are not editorial or comic, just loose and off-beet. In his words, the cartoons "look at Dayton not necessarily realistically, and not completely fancifully."
Some may make you laugh, but most may simply make you say, "Yep, that's Dayton."
Timothy Jackson
Writer, Illustrator, Cartoonist
As a young African American artist and illustrator, Timothy Jackson has
already made significant social contributions to youth because of the medium
through which he works - cartoons. Timothy writes and illustrates social
message comics and cartoons. His work is directed toward African American,
Hispanic and Asian children with the goal of creating positive self-images
through the form that entertains as well as educates.
Timothy works through his won art service company, Creative License Studio,
which he founded in 1986. He provides affordable, quality art for smaller
businesses and organizations to fit their limited budgets, publishers his
social awareness comics and sells them large agencies such as the Chicago
Department of Health.
Plans are in the works to found a not-for-profit organization CESA, Inc.
(Cartoons Elevating Social Awareness). CESA will work with talented young
people of color in Chicago to allow them to learn cartooning skills and
get with their peers. Timothy will guide them in the skills needed to create
professional quality art that can be published and give them a sense of
accomplishment. What they have done will be available through CESA and Creative
License Studio to the schools, social service agencies and other channels
to elevate the social awareness of the community.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Mr. Jackson began cartooning as a child. He further
developed his skills at the School of the Art Institute [of Chicago].
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