Dates: 16th to 19th October 2017

Venue: IDS, Building 8, GTU, 75 Kostava Street, Tbilisi

Event: Workshop: An IDS Student’s Graphic Story for a Comic Book Format: IDS / US Embassy in Tbilisi / NGO "Empower Quest Georgia" Instructor: David Mack, Author, Artist, Designer, Illustrator, Director  

More information on https://www.facebook.com/David-Mack-21231086294/?fref=mentions

Poster © David Mack

It has become a good tradition that IDS opens a new year of studies with a prominent visitor. David Mack is the Emmy nominated, New York Times Best Selling Author & Artist of KABUKI comics series, writer of Marvel's Daredevil, cover artist of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and creator of artwork for the opening titles of the new Jessica Jones Netflix TV series, as well as illustrator of Fight Club 2 by Chuck Palahniuk. Mack visited IDS in his capacity as US Comic Book Ambassador of Arts & Story for US State Dept.

Prior to give the IDS students the assignment for his workshop, David spoke about his creations. The scope of his work is enormous. For the Oscar-nominated film Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he created the art & concept for the titles sequence, which received recognition for the Excellence in Titles Design Award. He had contributed artwork for the opening titles of Robert Rodriguez's Matador TV series, and art (and a cameo role) for the Powers TV series at Sony. He had authored the children’s book THE SHY CREATURES, illustrated and designed music albums, including work for Paul McCartney, Amanda Palmer, Thomas Jane, Vincent D'Onofrio, painted Tori Amos for her RAINN benefit calendars, and directed three music videos for Amanda Palmer. David was a storyboard artist for Dead Can Dance   music video, made designs for toy companies in Hong Kong, animation art for MTV, ad campaign for SAKURA art materials, and wrote and designed video game characters for film director John Woo and Electronic Arts. He also wrote the interactive animated viral promo for Mission Impossible Four and contributed the artwork for Dr. Arun Ghandi’s essay on the Culture of Non-Violence.

IDS is not the first higher education institution to show interest in David Mack’s work. His KABUKI books have been the subject of under-graduate and graduate university courses in Art and Literature and listed as required reading. His work has been studied in graduate seminars at USC. He’s lectured at universities and taught classes in writing, drawing, and painting all over the world, including an invitation to speak at Harvard at their annual Science Fiction Writing convention. In 2012, David Mack delivered an inspiring TED Talk. In 2016 the US State Dept. honored Mack as a US Comic Book Ambassador selected to travel abroad to teach storytelling in other countries as a cultural ambassador, beginning here in Tbilisi.

The six IDS students who, by 19 October, successfully completed David’s assignments, presented him their hand-drawn ideas for comics’ narratives, and received his critical acclaim, have been awarded with an IDS-sponsored trip to Italy in December - for another workshop.