Patreon Comics

Rocks, rain and a refreshed website

| rozihath

Good afternoon happy campers!

Welcome to the shiny new-look for my site! I realised a month-or-so ago that I’d had my existing website theme for nearly 5 years (ways to feel old list, number 6) so it’d been long overdue for a refresher.

It took a while, but here it is! What do you think? Have a browse around and let me know how easy it is to use. Send your answers on a self-addressed envelope to the comments section below.

So, on with the blog! Firstly, let me talk to you about what’s been going on in my head. Aside from this.

I’ve been in a period of reflection recently, in which I’ve looked at how I want to move forward professionally. For one, I’ve been super busy on Good Comics projects – it’s been an incredibly rewarding experience and is changing the way I want to approach my own work. The community spirit and engaging with people is what makes the comics community so great to be a part of, and for me personally, that shouldn’t be hampered by charging for content.

This led me to the decision to end my Patreon creator page and go back to posting work freely on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and here. For some people, it may work really well, but Patreon never quite worked for me. And, the idea of sheltering my work from people unless they paid left me in a morally weird area for a while.

Patreon cancelled and website refreshed, I feel revitalised and ready for future challenges, projects and experiences. Bring it on!

Onto more physical creations, I’ve been carefully editing the large layout sheets I drew and painted my rocks comic onto, and have been setting them up to print. Check these panels out:

Now I’ve cut out each individual panel it’s made it easier to smooth out some of the paper buckling/ridges that occurred from putting watercolour on paper not suited for wet media. It’s still definitely more of a rough-and-ready comic, which is why I’m thinking of printing it DIY style at home instead of through a professional printer. Whatever the method, I’m going to bring it out in time for Swindon Zine Fest at the end of July. Rock on!

In other news, Sam and I had a really fun commission recently from comics scholar Dr Harriet Earle who is writing a book for Routledge’s New Critical Idiom series on comics. She got in touch for a couple of diagrams to go alongside specific areas of the book, and we got to draw up some fun pieces for it! Check out my umbrella of comics:

It may not be the most water-resistant piece of kit, but I’m happy with how it turned out!

And that’s about it for now! I’ve been testing the waters on some digital drawing tools so keep an eye on social media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) for some previews, and check back here again soon for some progress shots.

Until next time!

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Febru-wary as to why it’s still so cold?

| rozihath

This broadcast is brought to you by the team of thank-heck-it’s-stopped-raining and why-can’t-I-feel-my-shins.

Good afternoon folks!

We’re now mid-way through the shortest month of the year, and the days are getting that little bit longer. Longer days means less time on the cusp of a nap (11-4pm are currently my struggle-hours), which means productivity should be going through the roof come May. Woo-hoo!

Regardless of my drooping lids, it’s been a pretty busy start to the year so far. At Good Comics HQ (not to be confused with GCHQ) we’ve been launching the site, the blog and the podcast, and at Rozi HQ I’ve been splitting my time between sewing projects, zine ideas and an illustration for a magazine submission. Keen to hear more? Keep on reading!

In early January I started working on a new illustration, after seeing a call for submissions for Severine magazine – Severine is a UK-based literary and art journal which both gets printed and is available online. 

The theme was “between”, and I really wanted to work on something fairly mysterious and ethereal that felt like it had a story attached to it. As primarily a comics creator I sometimes struggle to make non-narrative illustrations as I feel like I lack an emotional connection with the character, and therefore feel distant to it all.

For Between, I tried to work on it slowly over a longer period of time and had it hanging up so I could keep looking at it and keep coming back to how she came to be here with her dog. I’m still on the fence as to whether this helped or not! Although, Sam’s darling daughter quipped that it looked like a woman being eaten by an alligator. Does anyone else see this? If so, it totally changes the concept… Between the jaws?

Thanks to a) bruising the bone in my hand falling off my skateboard, and then b) spending a week mostly horizontal clearing up a nasty chest infection with antibiotics, it did take me the entire month to make this piece, scraping in at the last minute to submit. Whether it’s successful or not, we’ll see – fingers crossed everyone! If you’re interested in the entire process of how I created this, down to colour testing and the initial sketches, check out my Patreon page!

In other news, February saw the launch of the brand new Good Comics website! That’s right folks; a brand new site, shop and pitching guidelines are up. What’s more, we’ve announced our next release: Gareth A. Hopkins Petrichor which will be out on the 18th February. Read all about it here on the Good Comics blog, pre-order it right here, and check out the brand new Good Comics podcast where Sam and I talk to Gareth about his new book, his process, and karaoke choices.

It’s been really fun pushing this out to the world, and we didn’t just stop with the website and podcast. We’ve also started a new feature on the blog called Good Fridays, where we’ll be posting up short comics from creators. First up was the excellent Nadiyah Rizkis with her short comic That Time of Year. It’s fantastic – go check it out immediately!

So that wraps up a very busy month and a half. Us three wise folks of Good Comics are also deep into our baseball movie podcast Big Boys Don’t Bunt, so if you’re interested in hearing Paddy, Sam and me talking about baseball movies (it’s more interesting than it sounds. Or, at least I hope it is!) then you can check that out here.

What’s next? I think mid-Feb to March is a time to look at zines and zine art. Maybe make some mini-comics? Who knows! To see what happens as it happens you can subscribe to my Patreon and get all my late-evening creating straight to your inbox. Otherwise, I’ll see you next time!

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