One Down, Two to Go

Good afternoon folks!

It’s been a week-and-a-half since Leeds already, huh? Time flies when you’re moving house and have a whopper of a cold. But, lurgy-moaning aside.. Thought Bubble. What a festival! As always it totally lived up to all expectations and I had an absolute blast. I was lucky enough to be tabling next to Sam Williams of Good Comics and his thermos of coffee, so we both ruled the table and a half of comics between us and tried not to spend all our takings on other people’s beautiful printed wares.

Thank you so much to everyone who came by, especially to those who already have some of my comics and came round especially to pick up something new. You guys in particular make my heart melt a little. Check out our Hathaway-Good Comics joined tables below, and a special guest appearance of GC’s Paddy in a frame as he couldn’t be there in person. Yes, I had to explain many times that Paddy is in fact not deceased, and yes, one person was genuinely concerned for his well-being. But it’s fine, we had Good Comics published creators pose with Paddy to make him feel like he was really there!

Saturday was the busiest day of the two in the Cookridge Street Marquee; it seemed to be the first marquee of festival that people stumbled into which definitely helped boost sales. The steady flow of visitors seemingly stayed constant all day, and by the evening it felt like a very quick day indeed! Also, the yearly tradition of the mid-con unofficial karaoke party was in full swing this year, though you’ll all still be pleased to know that I still managed to safely hang back and save everyone from my strangled-feline style melodies. Sunday was a quieter but still fairly busy day, with more tired and bleary-eyed creators bumbling around doing their shopping during the quiet spells… -cough- including me -cough-.

Sunday ended with a nice pint and the traditional Five Guys burger meal, followed by the slow train home through every village of the Pennines back to Manchester. Thankfully there was penty of reading material – check out this sweet haul:

Clockwise from LHS: Alex Automatic by Fraser Campbell, Cindy and Biscuit by Dan White, The Wolf and The Fox by Joe Latham, Haven’t I Read This Somewhere Before? free comic hand-out, Murder Mystery by Emma Reynolds, The Legend Of La Mariposa bundle by James Lawrence, and Habitat by Big Brown Eyes Collective.

The Wolf and The Fox by Joe Latham especially turned me into a melt-in-the-middle dollop behind my table on Sunday afternoon, and La Mariposa by James Lawrence has some amazing facial expressions and a great back story – speaking of which, you can find the full web-comic for free over here, starting right from the beginning. Also, Habitat by Big Brown Eyes Collective, as you can see is now out in the world and ready to be seen! I’ve had my contributor copy handed to me by the sisters of BBE, and you can get yours here on their Etsy store. See a snippet of my illustration for the anthology below!

And that wraps up the TBubz coverage! Huge thanks as always to the Thought Bubble organisers and red-shirt wearing volunteers for making the event such a pleasure to sell at. It really does make all the difference.

Before Thought Bubble kicked off, I went on over to 42nd Street in Manchester, the charity that I’m supporting through sales of my ‘These Mountains Aren’t Yours to Climb Alone’ print currently on sale on my Etsy store. I went along to say hi to the staff and pick up some leaflets to display alongside my Thought Bubble table display, and to use going forward when I’m tabling at events to help sell the prints. Don’t forget, the prints are still available online here, with 50% of the sale going to 42nd Street Manchester, a charity that supports young people aged 11-25 with their emotional well-being and mental health. The work they do is incredibly important, and you can help by getting your hands on some artwork at the same time!

In other news, this weekend is the annual Bristol Comic & Zine Fair (BCZF) at The Station in Bristol. Originally I didn’t quite get in, but thankfully the Bristolian Comics Gods shined down on me as I managed to nab a reserve spot and this Cinderella will now definitely be going to the ball. Cosmos & Other Stories is now down to only a handful of copies, so if you’re in the area act quick and come pick one up from me, or get your copy online in the Good Comics shop. Plus, I’ll be there with the usual suspects of Njálla, Ø, Self-Care & Vegetables and also some copies of the newest Broken Frontier Small Press Yearbook featuring my short comic that came out earlier this year (see below).

And that just about wraps it up for now! Next week I’ll be back with some nice new things I’ve started drawing for Inktober, but if you want to keep up with them in the meantime you can follow my inklings over on Twitter. I will hopefully see some of you at Bristol on Saturday, and if not.. until next time!

 

x

Another week bites the dust.

Good evening, happy campers!

So, it’s been another productive week at Rozi-HQ. More postal orders have been shipped out to some lovely folks around the UK, and even to the land of the free over in the USA – thanks everyone! Special thanks to Andy Oliver for his relentless promotion of The Red Road, alongside his wonderful article I mentioned last week. All the feedback I’ve received has been glowing, and I’m really pleased that people have enjoyed the envelope doodles I’ve been sending out with postal orders. I’ve also received my first feedback on my Etsy store, yippee! It’s all very exciting, and slowly the manic pace of launch and getting out the first bundle of orders has slowed down to a steady trickle, and back to reality I shuffle.

Envelope doodles, woooo!
Envelope doodles, woooo!

In the interest of new and upcoming things, I spent a very happy morning in the university print rooms on Friday morning creating mountains. That’s right. I’ve been making MOUNTAINS. Well, prints of mountains.. At the ol’ University, we not-quite-blindingly-stressed-yet second year students have two practical projects going at the moment, and I thought I would make the most of the free print-room facilities by making some collagraph prints to use for both of these projects. Now, for those of you who are unaware of a collagraph print is, you basically make your own ‘stamp’ with card or board, by adding textures or cutting into it. You then get your groove on with some oil based paints, mixing them up and rolling them on like there’s no tomorrow – followed by rolling the ‘stamp’ and some damp paper through a hefty printing press to make wonderful looking things that take a couple of days to dry. I made two different sets of mountains, because quite clearly I have an ongoing obsession theme with mountainous scenery and I wanted to use them in both projects. So, here we are;

Red, texturey mountains. Textury is a word, right?
Red, texturey mountains. Textury is a word, right…?
Working space! Making mess..
Working space! Making mess..
Green Welsh mountains!
Green Welsh mountains, fancy.

These prints will be digitally collaged up with some proper pen and ink drawings, as per my usual style! As these two projects have no room for comic making, I thought it would be a great time to test-drive using some different techniques in my work to set it apart from every other pen and ink reliant like myself. Hopefully, if in reality they will look like what I perceive in my head, if not better, then I will be one happy bunny. Apart from that, I can’t tell you any more otherwise I’d have to.. Nah, I’m kidding. But, all will be revealed in the coming weeks!

Also, in more exciting news – for a separate project at university I’ve been in touch with my fellow HOAX‘er Hannah Berry who is kindly letting my interview her! Now, if you don’t know who Hannah Berry is, you can check out her work here, and you should definitely buy it. Buy it all. She works in a very distinct style, reminiscent of Belgian and French comic artists, much different than mainstream comics illustrators here in the UK. There’s something very unique about her style, and as she’s also a fantastic storyteller I am very much looking forward to her responses to my nerdy-art-student questions! The interview will be primarily printed for this particular assignment, but if I remember to share it I’ll pop some extracts up on here.

Right, I think that’s it for now. Remember kids, tell all your friends and family about how awesome comics are, and THEN point them in my direction for a copy of The Red Road. We’re not all just about superheroes, right? Keep an eye out for another weekly update in, well, about a week’s time for more exciting (potentially) news! Peace out x

There’s just snow pleasing some people…

So, I’ve been working on a few different projects over the past month, and now I can finally reveal one I’ve been sitting on for a while (not literally, though, I don’t think my laptop could take my weight).

Nitro Snowboards UK recently ran a competition to design a snowboard top graphic to be made into a Limited Edition production run and sold in TSA stores throughout the UK. There was no theme restrictions either, it just had to include the logo. Naturally, as a budding snowboarder I leapt at the opportunity! Snowboard and skateboard graphics are notoriously vast and quirky. Some are very plain, some are just strange, and some are so intricate you need a magnifying glass to admire every detail.On researching previous Nitro boards, a lot of the board designs seemed very neat and graphics orientated, or very intricate. It’s always a gamble trying to design something like this, as the wow factor and images of semi-naked ladies tend to be part of the appeal. At the same time, you do just get some down right beautiful designs, so it really, really does vary tremendously.

Full Snowboard Design
Jump to the left.
Sliiide to the right!

I wanted to look at the relaxing, peaceful side of snowboarding; standing on a mountain looking out at the world, it’s a pretty powerful and awe-inspiring place to be as I discovered earlier this year. Plus, I have a soft-spot for anything Native American so I drew up a dude to put in there too, on either end of the board. The quote is from John Muir, which just sums up the snowboarding mentality! My poor 4-year-old laptop struggled immensely to work with a template so large, but slowly and surely I managed to piece it all together in Photoshop. Remember me talking of scanning in textures to use digitally? Well that’s what you can see! All the colouring of the board had to be digitally done due to the size, so the textures were scanned in and played with to give the different effects I was looking for. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the design; The competition winner will be announced on the 15th July, so I have my fingers and toes crossed for that day.. I’ll be piste if I don’t win.. Get it? Ha! Ahh.. Not really, it was mega fun just making my design. May the best boarder win!

As it definitely isn’t able to cope with this sort of work-load anymore, I have exictedly poured my mediocre savings into upgrading my laptop in a ‘shut up and take my money’ moment of desperation. With lots of storage the best processor I could get, I’m pretty excited for it to be built and sent out mid-July! Finally I’ll be able to reference Chrome and use Photoshop simutaniously without having to twiddle my thumbs for 15 minutes whilst I’m waiting for Photoshop to catch up. How exciting.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m finishing up another project today which I will be releasing to the world next week, so keep an eye out for that. Over and out! x