Festival Season

Good afternoon happy campers!

What’s that I can hear? The soothing sound of a free calendar? That’s right, the last two festivals of the year have been and gone, and what excellent festivals they were.

Thought Bubble Festival was held over the weekend 22nd-23rd September in central Leeds, it’s newer location for the second year running. This year I was in the very large ComiXology marquee, with David B. Cooper (colourist: Alex Automatic, Sleeping Dogs, Pirate Fun) to my left, and my dearest Good Comics on my right. I felt particularly smug this year as normally I travel up the morning of Thought Bubble feeling ridiculously tired and worn out before the 8 hours of day one tabling begins. This year, however, as I was driving from Bournemouth to Leeds, Sam and I travelled up on Friday and spent the evening in Leeds with the other half of Good Comics – Dr Paddy. We ventured across to the pre-Thought Bubble party gathering at Travelling Man in Leeds for the Avery Hill launch of Katriona Chapman’s Follow Me In and Kristyna Baczynski’s Retrograde Orbit, which was fun!

Thought Bubble itself was excellent; I had the opportunity to meet so many new people and see some regulars, with people who bought comics from me last year coming back to see what was new and say hello. I also had a nearly tear-inducing moment when one person bought a few of my books, went away and read them both in a café before coming back to tell me how much she enjoyed them. This, folks, is why I do what I do.

As you may be aware, Thought Bubble was also the official launch for my newest self-published newspaper comic, Moon. I’ve had so much positive feedback so far, I’m really glad everyone’s enjoyed seeing something a little different. Creating Moon in such a short space of time was incredibly isolating and also meant I didn’t have the time to talk about it in blogs or beam about its progress on social media, so launching it at Thought Bubble and being able to sit back and listen to people’s feedback was really, really nice.

Speaking of Moon, it’s now available on my Etsy store with additional stickers and temporary tattoos! Have you been plastering yourself with Moon temp tattoos? Send me some photos, I’d love to see how they turned out!

Moving onto the last festival of the year, one of my all-time favourites Bristol Comic & Zine Fair (BCZF) was this past Saturday 5th October, held at The Station in Bristol. BCZF is excellent for many reasons; for one, it’s free entry for the public so anyone can wander in and discover the breadth of different comic genres around. Secondly, it’s in Bristol so the creative scene there is always great, and finally, they have some of the best food around. Again, I had some really nice chats with people and the atmosphere is always friendly. Thanks so much to both the teams at Thought Bubble and BCZF for all their hard work in putting on excellent shows!

BCZF table fun!

Whilst in Bristol Sam and I stayed with Mike, who has recently started Assembly Press, a risograph printing studio in Easton, Bristol. We played around with his older risograph machine in years previous, but this year he has upgraded to a two-colour machine, meaning we could quickly and easily try out some two-colour prints! I reused a design I previously ran through the riso, with amazing results. Check it out! (fluoro orange and yellow; fluoro pink and fluoro orange).

If you’re into creating work on a risograph printer or if you’d like to give it a try, Assembly Press has a special offer running until the end of August for 50xA3 prints for £30. Contact AP via Instagram for any enquiries!

That just about rounds it up for now. Phew, it’s been a busy one!

x

Under the Sea

Good afternoon happy campers!

So, another seven days have clocked past and I’m feeling more comfortable with being up to my chin in assignment work. Final year stress? It’s a breeze! Ha.. Famous last words. But whilst I’m enjoying this false sense of security, I have my most recent project to show you all!

So, two weeks ago us happy third years were given a choice of articles to illustrate for an editorial brief. I chose one which was around the idea of the road, the space between places. Entitled ‘Toward Portland’, the already published article is a first person thought trail from an author describing over the course of a one page essay how the road is the place between places, also referencing other non-place places, like the twilight, midnight and abyss zones of the deep sea and all the spookies that reside down there. The writer also mentions his interest in travel starting from a young age, trying to dig to china in his back yard. Out of the two images we had to create, the only real constraint was that the first image, in a magazine setting, would have a crease running down the centre. This basically means I had to offset the image and counterbalance it, so that nothing ‘essential’ would be lost in the middle fold. All good practise, though! So, with all that in mind, you can see finished images below (click for bigger version);

There’s always something exciting about researching a new idea or topic. The deep sea concept jumped out at me immediately, and thanks to this awesome interactive animation I stumbled across on the BBC, I now know far more about the journey to the centre of the earth than I ever have. Fascinating stuff! The antikythera wreck and mechanism immediately jumped out at me, and I used theoretic diagrams in the second image. Also, those deep sea spookies you can see are the likes of amphipods (which didn’t make the final cut, sorry amphipods), the marine hatchetfish, and deep sea jellies such as the comb jellyfish and a sinister looking siphonophore. That last charmer can be up to 40 meters long with millions of stinging cells which it deploys in a net to completely obliterate anything that drifts towards it. With that in mind, I can safely say that I’m more than content on land, and plan not to meet these particular creatures any time soon. But yes, this was a nice change and a fun project full of complex and enticing ideas. Refreshing!

In other news, the ‘HOME’ themed Art Aid Nepal anthology has been reviewed by Andy Oliver at Broken Frontier this week! Check out an extract from the review below;

“Home also provides contributions that invite the reader to construct their own narratives around a single image. Katriona Chapman (Katzine – her page right) is another artist to emphasise that our relationships are integral to our sense of home while Rozi Hathaway (The Red Road and one of our ‘Six UK Small Press Creators to Watch in 2015’) provides a quiet but poignant moment of finding one’s place in the world amidst chaos and disorder. Asia Alfasi similarly highlights the importance of memories in relation to the thematic heart of the anthology.

To a degree it feels almost redundant if not inappropriate to be critically analysing a compilation of work that has been created with such altruistic intentions. However, regardless of the origins of its existence, Home is a reflective and contemplative collection of evocative work that all readers will relate to. Great comics and a great cause in one package. This one deserves your support.”

Andy Oliver, Broken Frontier review of Art Aid Nepal HOME Anthology

As I mentioned last week, this is something I’m incredibly proud to be a part of. Elena Vitagliano and Kripa Joshi have done a fantastic job at raising the hoped £2000 so far, but with 6 days to go there’s still a chance to make more of a difference. Here’s what they say about it..

“By raising £2000 we hope to provide workshops for the children in these temporary shelters. But we don’t want to stop at that… we have bigger dreams too.
If we can raise £2500 we will give each of those children a journal and art materials so they have tools for creative outlet. And if we raise more than £3000 we would conduct teacher training in the worst affected area to equip them with skills on how they can bring creativity into their classrooms through some very basic and easily found materials.
The more money we raise, the more areas we will be able to reach with the training. With your help we hope to reach as many children as possible and continue to provide support.”

You can still donate to the Kickstarter project until Monday 19th October, and you can do so here!

That’s it for now, folks! The Next Big Thing is in the beginning research stages of compiling what I have so far before I progress onto creating the story. Exciting stuff! Well, for me it is, anyway. Until next week..!

x