Thought Bubble Festival Round-Up

Good morning ladies and gents,

So, it’s all over! The exciting blur that was Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds this past weekend has been and gone in a flash, and I’m dealing with some serious post-festival blues. It probably doesn’t help that it’s dark and gloomy outside and I’m a bit sleep deprived, but Thought Bubble was so much fun I didn’t really want it to end. But, alas, I’m back into the throngs of university assignments and real life nonsense, which my brain doesn’t seem to be particularly in gear for. Third year woes.

The Thought Bubble Festival held in Leeds was a week-long event with a load of workshops and events, with the pièce de résistance being the comics festival over the weekend. Open both Saturday and Sunday 10am-5pm, I was lucky to be plonked next to some absolutely lovely table buddies, Van Nim and Richy K. Chandler over in New Dock Hall, the biggest of the three halls used for the comic festival. There were many, many lovely comic people to see over the weekend, and I even got given some lovely goodies in the form of the Dead Singers Society and the HOME Art Aid Nepal Anthology, plus a comic-swap with Richy for his Tempo Lush Tales of the Tanoox! Here’s the weekend in a nutshell..

Special thanks definitely has to go to Samuel C. Williams for including me in his coffee runs over the weekend; as you can imagine this comic selling business is a rather tiring affair so I spent the weekend entirely propped up on caffeine. Other highlights include bumping into Andrew Tunney, (who I’d met properly at MancsterCon earlier this year) and helping his vigilante mission against faux-steampunk; witnessing some impressive renditions in the comic-karaoke on Saturday evening (yes Paddy, I’m still in awe); and wondering if those crazed sneezes were even real or not, with Danny Noble, Andy Oliver, Elizabeth Querstret and Matt, and Wallis Eates. AND, I finally got to meet Mike Medaglia, whose work is absolutely beautiful. There were so many people I missed seeing just because of how zombie-fied I was by the end, but it was a great weekend and I couldn’t have wished for better company and conversations! A HUGE thank you to everyone who stopped by my table and said hello, purchased goodies and took the time to chat. Also, extra special thanks to Alan Henderson who picked up my The Red Road original artwork in the alternate colours! Finally, big big thanks to the organisers of Thought Bubble for making it absolutely fantastic to be a part of – it was my first Thought Bubble and it definitely won’t be my last.

Phew, what a weekend. I’m looking forward to finding some time in the next few days to curl up in bed with my new reading material, the HOME anthology and Tales of the Tanoox, but for now I’m in dire need of catching up on university assignment work. Fun times! On the bright side, there are some exciting things coming this way soon.. Next week will see normal service resume with a good catch up on what I’ve been working on. So, until then, have a good week everyone! Over and out.

x

The Elusive Title

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;

'HOME' - Art Aid Nepal Anthology Submission

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!

x