The Elusive Title

23 June 2015 | rozihath

Good evening happy campers,

It’s that time of the week again! And this time, I can’t think of a title – though as it’s coming up to my fourth year anniversary of blogging so I feel I’ve earned a pass for today. So, nerr.

I’ve had a nice busy week of organising twenty things at once, though I did take some time on Friday on my travels to Manchester to check out an exhibition and a degree show. First off was the Manchester Museum’s Making Monuments on Rapa Nui – The Statues from Easter Island, which is on until September. Learning about other cultures is really interesting, and it gives me plenty of ideas for future stuff.

Rapa Nui Monuments – A quick sketch-a-roo.

Secondly was the Manchester Met degree show, with Illustration with Animation, Graphic Design and Creative Practise on the same level. I was pretty blown away by the standard of work there, it was a really impressive display! It’s definitely got me thinking even more about my third year, and what challenges (and how much grey hair) my degree show will bring. Here were some of my highlights from Man Met!

So there’s enough of a terrifying kick into third year for now, though spending part of the summer brainstorming ideas of fundraising with my fellow students may well be in order. Along with the long list of other things I have to do before September. Bring it on! (She says, wincing..)

In other news, this past week I came across an event through Richy K. Chandler and Keara Stewart; Art Aid Nepal and their call for submissions for an anthology, around the theme of ‘home’. They are seeking contributions from artists until Thursday (25th), with proceeds going to support education and art therapy for children affected by Nepal’s earthquake. The brief is pretty open, with content being accepted in the form of a single page illustration, painting or comic/sequential art. Now, as I’ve been doing quite a bit of comic related work at the moment I decided to do a one-hit wonder for this, and mapped up my ideas on my weekend train journey’s and then sketched out and completed the piece yesterday morning. Even better, I managed to finish the piece before my 6-hour shift at the paid job, which made me nicely ahead of my week’s drawing-work schedule. Hurray! Here’s the piece below;

It was a really nice piece to work on, with a brief touch of mixed processes honing the point, well, home. All submissions for this project are reviewed before selection, so fingers crossed I may get some good news in the coming weeks. Though, either way it was nice to work on something a bit more editorial, and I hope I did the theme justice.

Finally, I’ve been working on another short-deadline piece for the past week in the form of a two-page comic submission for Dirty Rotten Comics. Their summer anthology deadline is in a week, so I’ve had a busy day today inking away my creation, with the hopes that it’ll be complete by tomorrow if not Thursday by the latest. I’ll have to keep a top secret cap on that one until it’s complete though.. Because secret stuff is WAY more fun. Aside from that I’ll hopefully be able to let you all in on a few more secrets in the coming weeks.. For now, be rest assured that I’m hard at work and eating plenty of biscuits. Until next week!

Må Kraften Være Med Dig

26 May 2015 | rozihath

Good evening faithful readers!

Well, what a week it’s been. With the new job and extra overtime last week, it feels like I have absolutely nothing to show for myself tonight. Which, is pretty right. Laters!

…..

Nah, I’m only kidding. It was a tough week, but I have been busy thinking and planning away for a few upcoming projects. Unfortunately for now, they have to remain top secret.. But all will be revealed soon!

One thing I can talk about (which I didn’t manage to cover last week), is that mid-month I decided to take it upon myself to force my drawings into people’s homes. How, you ask? Well! My other half’s brother and his wife have brought a new mini Star Wars fan into the world, yay!

Some of my more retro followers may remember a previous birth-announcement style original I made for a friend back in 2012. Well, almost three years later (wow, times flies…) I decided to give it a go Star Wars style;

Having my other half as a huge Star Wars fan, and his family too, I didn’t have to do too much research into this piece – which is always nice! Plus, it was a lot of fun for me to draw, as who doesn’t love Star Wars, right? The theory behind it is that Tatooine makes sense as the background setting, as that’s where Luke Skywalker grew up. Without going into too much background detail I still needed it to be obvious, so the two suns made that nice and easy. Out of all the characters to interact with I didn’t want to do anything cheesey like a Death Star toy, or heaven forbid Jar Jar Binks, so I went with R2-D2. I may be a little bit biased, as y’know, R2-D2 is the best character, but my reasoning is that all of the droids are age-less so the piece doesn’t conflict with anything (the in-depth workings of huge fans is not something to be messed with). So, yes! I’m really happy with the piece, and as it was a surprise it was really nice to see how happy it made the new parents to young Luke! I believe Luke’s older sister Isabel is a huge Frozen fan, so I may see Olaf and carrot noses in my future..

Anywho, a short and brief update is it for now, I’m afraid! I’m hoping I can start to reveal my secret plans soon, if not I’ll find something to start talking about.. I promise! Oh, and Må kraften være med dig (May the force be with you)!

Takeover and Other Business!

5 May 2015 | rozihath

Good evening happy campers!

So, after a brief pause of a week off to catch up on Uni work, I still feel somewhat drowning with a week until final assessment. But I got stuff done! Stuff done is good! Plus, following last weeks news of my interview with Broken Frontier, I bring more good news from the comics universe which I’ll cover later.

Alt. Press TAKEOVER 2015! This Saturday, roll up, roll up.

First up, this weekend sees something special, with Alternative Press and The London Radical Bookfair’s TAKEOVER 2015! With an impressive line-up of attendees and an awesome looking programme of events, it’s definitely going to be something special! As mentioned before, I’ll be on the aptly named First Publications Corner with some very talented folks such as Tiny Noggin, Alexandra Cook and Fang Jui Chang. This is my first of four comics events for this summer, and my first event of this kind of my drawing career so far. I’m really excited to see what the day will bring, and as I’ll only be behind the table on a rota’d basis which will give me plenty of opportunity to wander around and have a look at all the other wonderful creator goods! I need to keep an iron clamp on my purse, mind you..

You can read more about TAKEOVER 2015 in Broken Frontier’s coverage article here

Next up: more zine business! As part of a last project at university before Easter we were asked in a relatively short space of time to create a number of drawings of our thoughts, feelings and observations in every day life. At the time I had a few too many things going on and since this point I’ve been re-working the project to make it shiner and better than before! I present to you.. Mennesker er Underlig:

‘Mennesker er Underlig’, playing around with zine shapes and forms.

Mennesker er Underlig is a self exploratory zine that looks at things from my perspective of the world, from making breakfast to walking back and forth. It was pretty fun to make in the end, and after lots of re-drawing from different comics I think it’s come together pretty nicely! Let’s hope University agree. The zine itself is a shallow folded box, inside are 15 pages of my inner monologue… Which is more exciting than it sounds. Or is it? Anywho, as it’s something that I won’t be formally introducing to the world for sale, below is a little gallery of the processes that went into making this, and some of the pages too! As always, please let me know if any of you have any thoughts or feelings about it. Oh! And before I forget, mennesker er underlig is Danish for ‘humans are strange’. Why Danish, I hear you ask? WELL! For the past 134 days or there-abouts I’ve been learning Danish ready for an exciting Scandinavian adventure later in the year. Plus, learning a language as my brain starts to deteriorate seems like a good idea, as well as being something completely separate from drawing that I can do to clear my mind. I recommend everyone should learn new languages, it’s a hoot! Plus hopefully I can make friends with some Danish illustrators and spend lots of time there eating rugbrød and rødgrød med fløde. Fremragende!

Finally, today the interwebs told me that Keara Stewart‘s zine anthology about nightmares has arrived into her hands today, for official release this Saturday at TAKEOVER! A Bit of Undigested Potato has been previewed here at Broken Frontier today, with a lovely interview with Keara herself. Personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy and see what everyone else has made for it, as I definitely enjoying doing my page for it. I recommend you all pick one up! Here’s a reminder of a sneaky-preview I gave you all a few weeks back of my submission..

Anywho, that’s it for now! I started my new part time job last week, and tomorrow is the day of the week that I crawl out of bed at 4:25am, so I’d best go and eat cherry pie in the bath before I attempt to get lulled to sleep by the sounds of screaming children playing outside. Until next week.. Over and out! x

Interview Business

20 April 2015 | rozihath

Good evening, folks and folkettes!

So, another week has flown by and we’re nearing May. Where did the time go? I had a fairly quiet week here last week, recovering from falling down snowy mountains and the prior weeks university stresses. Now I’m back to it, mainly preparing for final second year assessments and finishing off any outstanding work ready to clear my schedule for a summer of new projects and exciting things.

Last week did, however, see the release of my first ever interview! Who would possibly want to listen to me talk even more than I already do, right? It was actually pretty fun to delve into the inner workings of my mind for public viewing. I mean, I talk a lot on here, but more about projects and ideas rather than the deeper digging of Andy Oliver’s interviewing skills. You can read the interview here on the Broken Frontier’s Small Pressganged site, and feel free to comment at the bottom of the page and share your views!

I've been interviewed! http://www.brokenfrontier.com/small-press-spotlight-rozi-hathaway/ — I’ve been interviewed! http://www.brokenfrontier.com/small-press-spotlight-rozi-hathaway/

A handful of the other ‘Six UK Small Press Creators to Watch in 2015‘ have already been interviewed, so far with the entertaining Danny Noble (whose new first print edition of ‘Was it… Too Much for You?’ has been previewed here today, and is on sale now!), the graphic medicine focused Alice Urbino, and the epic part one and part two of the lovely Wallis Eates talking about her graphic memoirs. Lots of reading material for you all to work through! So, yes. Thanks to Andy Oliver of Broken Frontier for continuing his support of my work and helping to share it with the world!

In other excellent news, after a long-awaited delivery of a long-armed stapler, the collaborative zine ‘Down to Your Skivvies’ is now on sale via my Etsy Store!

Down to Your Skivvies zine

Down to Your Skivvies is available to buy here for the grand total of £3, plus £1 postage and packaging (UK). In case anyone missed previous posts, here’s what it’s all about;

Down to Your Skivvies is a collaborative UK illustration zine, created by three illustration students from the University of Northampton. Issue one is covering all things ladies! Focusing on issues of feminism and celebrating women, this A5, 28-page zine is printed on standard laser printer paper with either a pink or purple cover. Because, y’know. Why not?

THIS ZINE INCLUDES:
– Original work from the creators,
– Interview with Jamila Prowse, creator of Typical Girls magazine,
– Interview with Fiona McDonald, fine artist dealing with feminist issues,
– Interview with Hannah Berry, UK comics creator and graphic novellist,
– Article about Sarah McIntyre’s #Nonidentikit,
– Plus more!

So, if you’re interested then head on over and purchase your own copy in a very fetching pink or purple cover shade – BUY ME HERE.
Also, if you happen to be attending any of the events I’ve been confirmed at this summer, I will be selling issue one there also. For clarity, here’s a quick recap of the events you can find me at!

–

Saturday 9th May – Alternative Press & The London Radical Bookfair presents: TAKEOVER 2015 – First Publications Corner – 12-7pm, 47/49 Tanner Street, London. Facebook Event can be found here.

Saturday 6th June – Crouch End Comic Arts Festival (CECAF) – Six UK Small Press Creators to Watch 2015 – 11am-5pm, Earl Haig, London. Facebook Event can be found here.

Saturday 29th August – MancsterCon – 10am-4:30pm, University of Salford, Media City Campus, Manchester. Facebook Event can be found here.

Saturday 14th – Sunday 15th November – Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival – Leeds Dock, Royal Armouries, Leeds. Facebook Event page hasn’t been created yet, but you can keep up to date with news via the Facebook page or Twitter.

–

mancsterconpanel

I’m also really excited to have been asked to join the very talented Tom Ward of the Merrick comics, Chris Welsh from WART comics and Andrew Tunney (creator of Girl&Boy, of which I discovered alongside Merrick – The Comic at MancsterCon 2014 – covered in my blog here) on a panel discussion at MancsterCon, regarding working as an indie comics creator! I can’t wait! And I shall definitely be taking notes on what the other guys are saying..

Anyway, I think that’s it for now! Here’s to another week of good news. Peace out! x

The End is in Sight!

30 March 2015 | rozihath

Good evening happy campers,

Well, it felt as if this week would never come, but here it is! Just one more presentation at University to go, and the second year of lectures will be over. Sure, there will be some work to do over Easter to improve some assignment work, but no more caffeine-chugging sessions of working 12 hours a day! Well. For a little while, anyway.

This past week has seen the completion of the first ever zine I’ve worked on! Zara Ward, Kamala Roberts and myself created Down to your Skivvies as a part of a University assignment that we’re hoping can be carried forward and continued over summer and into next year! This first issue we’ve looked at celebrating women in illustration and the arts, and touched upon areas of feminism and understanding what it is to be feminist. We have interviews, an article, our own work and also our first submission coming from a first year illustration student. Below is a picture of the zine, and also of the interview I did with Hannah Berry – unfortunately my interview with Hannah was conducted over email so I had to rely on my imagination of how our interview would look if we were face to face. We both agreed that there would be balloons.

The zine will be available for sale shortly via my Etsy site, for three whole Great British pounds sterling. Which, when you think about it, is pretty good for 28 pages of content printed with love*. I shall keep you all posted with when the zine goes up for sale online.

* more like, with increased anger at how the University printers are absolutely, ridiculously awful and drive me insane.

In more zine related news, I’m very happy to have finished my one-page black and white comic for Keara Stewart! I’ve been referring to this project as a zine for a little while as my heads been buried in projects galore, but due to all the interest Keara is making it an anthology – how EXCITING! I’m absolutely honoured to have been asked to contribute, and I had a lot of fun creating my piece for Keara. I believe there will be some Broken Frontier coverage coming up before the anthology is released, so keep your peepers open! Naturally, I’ll allow a little sneak preview….

Sneaky preview... Keara's anthology - coming soon! — Sneaky preview… Keara’s anthology – coming soon!

Also, in the world of fairness, I found out last week that I was unfortunately unsuccessful for my application for ELCAF, the East London Comics Arts Festival in June. You can’t win them all, sadly, and although I was really looking forward to this one, they received over 400 applications and only had about 70 tables, so I’m not taking it personally! This morning, however, I received an email from Thought Bubble Festival held in Leeds in November saying I’ve been successful. YAAAAY!! Thought Bubble has to be one of the biggest of the comic art festivals in the UK, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to have a nice half table selling my work! This makes for MancsterCon in August, and Leeds in November, so I’m just waiting to hear back about Alternative Press TAKEOVER 2015 in London, in May! Busy busy busy. I’m really excited to meet some of my idols and acquaintances I’ve made over the past few months, so once I’m back off holiday I’ll be making up my Game Plan for summer 2015. Work Hard / Eat Biscuits Hard. Am I right?

Speaking of holiday, this time next week I’ll be sliding down the French Alps face-first with my snowboard in the air (woooohoo!), so I will be unable to grace you all with my presence. Rest assured, I will be waffling away on my return, and I’ve taken extra precautions this time and have invested in some uncomfortable wrist guards to fit under my snowboard gloves so I don’t damage my hands in any way whilst falling on my bum every 5 minutes. I’m confident that some fresh mountain air and some Jägermeister will rejuvenate the ol’ brain cells, plus people keep saying that relaxing is.. good? What is this ‘relaxing’, thing.. PFFT. I’ll give it a whirl, anyway!

For now, I wish you all a happy Easter! I hope you all manage to have successful egg hunts in the garden whilst trying to chase the dog. Oh wait, that’s just my family?

See you all in two weeks!! Peace out! x

Machines

23 March 2015 | rozihath

Good evening ladies and gentlemen!

Ahh.. What’s that I hear? That’s the sweet sound of completed projects, essays, assignments and briefs.. The sound of stress-headaches slowly dissipating and being replaced with long-nights sleep and lessened under-eye bags (well….. here’s hoping). Although it’s not time to completely breathe a sigh of relief just yet, I’m now completely on top of my workload and ahead of the curve for remaining deadlines! It’s a smug and content feeling, I must admit.

One area that I’m happy to have completed is the Machines project, which launched as a part of a University based exhibition last Thursday. Us second year students were handed this brief at the beginning of the term, all we were given was the word ‘machines’, and we could interpret it in any way we envisioned. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I chose to incorporate a back-story narrative with the hope of possibly turning the idea into a comic one day. I’m not entirely sure I’ll take it any further, but it was fun to try out narrative in a different way! Below are some images of the exhibition in it’s finished stages, including some work from my fellow students.

‘Machines’ university exhibition

Some seductive collagraph prints.

Fellow students work

My shady little corner..

01/03/2026

Two years ago, the Kepler 2 Telescope caught sight of an exo-planet displaying similar characteristics to our own planet Earth. Following this discovery, a curiosity rover had been to this new planet, newly named by NASA as the planet ‘Spyryt’. Sent through an open worm-hole, the Spyryt Curiosity Rover shuttle accelerated through time and recently landed on the barren wasteland. Nobody could have expected what images started to be sent back.

The following pictures have been sent from the Spyryt Curiosity Rover, and additionally the use of 3D printing has allowed samples to be sent back digitally, though testing is still incomplete. Spyryt’s desolate, dystopian landscape is being kept quiet from the public for now, but questions are being asked. And we don’t know how to answer them…

I had some interesting feedback from my peers and lecturer, general consensus seems to be that I should have increased the size of the newspaper articles, or made more – which is understandable. It’s hard to envision an exhibition in a space before it goes in, so looking at it on the wall it may have been better to have more/larger satirical articles. On the whole the feedback seemed to be positive (I think??), I knew what I wanted to do and I executed it to a good standard, and I can’t pick fault with any particular part, but I’m definitely feeling the void of having no particular character/protagonist. I approached the brief with a comic in mind, but due to the time constraints involved I couldn’t really focus on any of the story from back on Earth with engaging characters and things like that. But hey, I take is all as valuable experience. We had to incorporate a 3D element into our pieces, so that’s what the interesting pile of dirt, rocks, computer parts and medical supplies is! That was definitely fun, and apparently it counts as ‘art’. Maybe I should smuggle it into the Tate and see if I can sell it for some obscene amount of money to fund my next comic?

Talking of comics, after seeing the lunar eclipse on Friday I thought of my characters from The Red Road, and how I kind of miss drawing them. Is that weird? I like to think that it’s an understandable sufferance; as comics people spend so many ridiculous hours drawing the same characters over and over again, they kind of feel like dear friends at the end of it all. Maybe I’m just a romantic, but I thought of Bear and Coyote as I accidentally-tried-not-to-blind-myself from the beautiful, surreal sight of an eclipse mid-morning, and felt compelled to catch up with my old friends in this quick drawing/painting;

Image (10)

I didn’t have much time to draw and paint this one, but I’m thinking of maybe doing some limited prints for the festival season (if I’m successful.. I hope you’re all still keeping your fingers, toes and eyes crossed?) if people are interested. We shall see! As the University deadlines fade into history I remember that burning passion for drawing and that I have the whole summer to draw to my little hearts content! Yippee!

Now, as referenced with my excitement last week, the zine I’ve been working on with two fellow students is almost ready to be printed. We came up with a name, just final touches and printing to be done! Now, I’m probably biased, but this zine is going to be really interesting, and you should definitely be excited to see some previews next week before I put some up for sale on my Etsy store. Also, I’ve had to make another small zine in the past week for an assignment that’s being printed tomorrow. AND I have been plotting out a small one-pager comic for another zine I was asked to contribute on from the lovely Keara Stewart, which will be going on sale at zine fairs and selected stores in the coming months.. So lots of zine business bridging the gap before I can get working on the next story!

Anywho, I believe that’s it for now! I can’t relax too much – best get back to some Uni work before I forget something critically important. Keep your eyes peeled for next week, there will be ZINES EVERYWHERE! Peace out! x

It’s not the destination, it’s the ride.

9 March 2015 | rozihath

Good evening my happy followers!

So, another week gone, and a fresh week full of challenges and piles of work await my undivided attention.. It’s getting to that key time where all of my university deadlines fall around the same week of each other, so I’m manically trying to get everything done to the highest possible level that I can do whilst still juggling a few other things and whatever is left of my sanity. On the plus side, I had an incredibly efficient week last week, and although that doesn’t make things that much easier in the run-up to the deadline mine field, it does help a little. One thing I’m really happy to have completed is as follows..

In early February I was approached via Facebook by a charity called Ride for Willen; They have organised a 800 mile charity bike ride from Paris to Nice, over both Alpe d’Huez and Mont Ventoux, with the aim of raising much needed funds for the Willen Hospice in Milton Keynes. Alongside the sponsored bike ride, they have an additional site called Ride.Eat.Drink set up to further support the Willen Hospice by selling illustrated gifts and prints. Naomi, a good friend of mine from Uni, had also been approached to create a piece and she made this incredibly detailed paper-cut original illustration for sale. Now, I was a little late to the party as I needed to get some uni work out of the way first, but thanks to my other good friend known as The Mohawk, cycling king, I finally came up with this piece which I finished on Thursday evening! Check it out;

Donated illustration to charity; Ride for Willen

According to my previously mentioned friend, The Mohawk, the secret behind the enjoyment of cycling is the views – and this really stuck with me. Although I’m not a cyclist myself, I am definitely an appreciator of good views, and after some research and presenting The Mohawk with some ideas, he helped me narrow down my concepts which I then sketched up and refined further. And then, well.. There it is! I tried to really capture the essence of the peace and tranquillity from riding (not the leg-burning pain I was blessed with the last time I used a bike machine at the gym..). I also didn’t want to focus too much on who, or what bike it is, so it’s open to the imagination a little more. Anyway, the Ride.Eat.Drink team seemed to really like the piece, so I’m happy to be able to help! Prints of the piece should be going up for sale in the next couple of days, and you can further support the sponsored bike ride by visiting their donation page here or buying illustrated goodies here. Success!

Talking of finished pieces, I finally finished my submission for The Penguin Random House Design Award last week. As a brief also for a university assignment, I re-designed the book cover for the Puffin book Carrie’s War. It took a lot of critical analysis, re-drawing and re-jigging to get this piece as good as I could get it, and it was an insanely hard piece of work for some reason.. I think my brain is hardwired into narrative, so trying to give an essence of a whole book in one cover, whilst gaining viewer interest and maintaining that hold on the casual browser into picking it up and reading over.. Phew! I’m getting tired just thinking about it again! Props to people who can do it all (book covers, editorial, narrative, gifts, e.t.c), hopefully this book cover has taught me a lot and makes the next attempt a lot easier, but it was definitely a big challenge for me.

I’m not entirely optimistic that it’s a winning entry, there are so many applicants for the competition it’s like being a very small student entry fish in a very large tank of other highly talented student fish. Anyway, regardless of the competition it’s been a healthy change for me to do something different, though I miss comics!

Finally, this past week I submitted my applications for ELCAF (East London Comics and Art Festival) being held on June 20th-21st, and also Thought Bubble Festival held in Leeds on the weekend of 14th-15th November. In the world of comic art festivals (rather than the more well-known Comic-Con’s, which are more aimed towards the mass-market) Thought Bubble is one of the huge hitters. It’s been going since 2006, and rises in popularity every year. Along with the Comic Arts Festival in the Lake District, these two are the kings of festivals in the North of England. ELCAF in London is a fairly new festival, run by the publishers Nobrow. Both of these I would be hugely honoured to be able to attend, and I should find out by the end of the month whether I’ve been successful or not! Teamed with the more independently run MancsterCon that I’ve been confirmed for in August, I’m really hopeful that this year just keeps on getting more awesome! Fingers and toes crossed, everybody!

Right, I shall leave it at that for now. I shall be back with you all like clock-work in the next week for more updates on all the gossip from Rozi-HQ. Over and out! x

The Red Road

20 January 201520 January 2015 | rozihath

Good evening ladies and gents,

Well, what a week it’s been! Following my last post, everything went incredibly smoothly with releasing The Red Road on Thursday 15th January. Any concerns or small worries I had floated away on a magical, comic-filled cloud when I got to the printers and laid eyes on my big box of books. Huge thanks to the folks at Hampton Print in Northampton who were absolutely fantastic and helped me through the whole process. As much as you think you know how to set up a comic, something always comes up – thankfully the printing experts at Hampton have made my comic look wonderful, and I jumped for joy when I ~~saw how the recycled off-white paper added new depths to the story~~ geeked out over the paper quality.

Check out that recycled paper.. Ooft. Warms the soul!

I’m very lucky in that the majority of people who requested a pre-order paid up swiftly, so off to the Post Office I floated – armed with doodled envelops – and now nummerous copies of The Red Road are in their new homes, each numbered and packaged with love. Also, I’m incredibly lucky to have had a very swift review from Andy Oliver over at Broken Frontier! You can read the whole article here. It is a very strange feeling reading a review about yourself, it was an equally exhilarating-yet-other-worldly experience when Broken Frontier reviewed HOAX Psychosis Blues, and I feel incredibly honoured to have received two such glowing reviews from Andy, and his tireless promotion of The Red Road since posting the article has been outstanding. I keep having to pinch myself to check if it’s real!

Stunningly rendered, and painfully beautiful in its own way, The Red Road is an outstanding debut print offering. Keep your eyes on Rozi Hathaway’s work this year because she’s one of half a dozen or so names I have on my list of self-publishing talents I believe will make the next step up in 2015.

– Andy Oliver, for Broken Frontier

Thanks Andy! I’d also like to take a moment just to thank everybody who has purchased a copy or even paid attention to the book. It’s very close to my heart for several reasons, and putting it out there to the world has been one of the most scariest points of my career so far. But incredibly rewarding -what a start to the year! Clearly I’d better up my game for the coming months.. *gulp* I’d also like to mention that if it hadn’t been for Ravi Thornton pushing me to do my best work during HOAX Psychosis Blues, I wouldn’t have the knowledge and know-how to even attempt a project like The Red Road – so thank you, as always, for the opportunity, Ravi!

For now I shall patiently await any news from some of the independent-friendly shops that I’ve sent copies to, and for anyone who would like to review The Red Road more formally than, “Yeah it’s cool m8.” – I have set up a new reviews section on my About page. It’ll be a test-run to see whether it’s worthwhile me having reviews, but as my Etsy page is still fresh off the block and review-less.

Remember, you can still purchase your very own copy of The Red Road from my Etsy store for the bargain price of £6!

Anyway, that’s it for now! I have a whole bunch of new University assignments I’m still working out how to make into comics (Shhh… It may just work..!) so it’s back to the grind! I shall be back with an update next week – but for now, over and out! x

It’s Printing Time!

11 January 201511 January 2015 | rozihath

Good evening ladies and gents!

So, I have big, happy shiny news that glistens in the sunlight (though not like one of those weird Twilight ‘vampire’ things..). It also scares me somewhat, but I’m just going to ignore that for now:

My comic, The Red Road has evolved over the past few months. It emerged as from a single idea, from there is became lines and paint on numerous pieces of paper, and then to the long process of editing and piecing together on a screen. And finally, as of this week, over to the local printers who are finishing the process by making 100 beautiful copies. Printed onto an off-white eco-friendly paper, with perfect binding (i.e. stapling), The Red Road will be in my warm and loving arms by Thursday!

Ooo

Preview2

Preview3

Like anything created and then thrown out to the world, it is a anxious time.. Although this time it’s worse – financing the printing has been an odd feeling, one of which started very happily and then as time has gone on in the past week I’ve started wondering what on earth I’ve done. Y’know, the usual happy thoughts! Thankfully, after only a couple of meltdowns I’m ready to go and just waiting.. I’m usually pretty good at being patient, but now I have a dent in my finances I just want to see what happens!!

Anyway! Down to the important business.

I have rejuvenated my Etsy shop which you can go have a look at here >> https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/rozihathaway

It is looking a little empty at the moment, but I’m working on it! From Thursday The Red Road will be available for purchase from here for the grand, epic total of £6. Each copy is numbered out of 100, and will be posted out in it’s own little cellophane envelope and board-backed packaging to ensure that it arrives in perfect condition. The comic is A5 in size, and as previously mentioned printed onto recycled eco-friendly paper at a weight of 140gsm. To read more about the story itself please look at my previous post here!

Anyone who parts with their hard earned cash to purchase something that I made is a hero in my eyes, so thank you to anyone who is interested in my work. It’s a never-fading compliment to have a story I nurtured and put so much into sitting in someone’s home, making people smile. This story is close to my heart for many reasons, but working with these characters for all this time I really can’t wait to see and hear what people think. So, before I get too soppy, head on over to my Facebook page and enjoy the daily countdown starting from tonight.. See what happens tomorrow and I hope you’re all as excited as I am! For now – laters! x

Rozi Hathaway

Comics & Illustration

Something New!