Networking at Thought Bubble

After the Nobrow portfolio visit I started to feel confident enough to do a little networking and spoke to a guy called Paul Fryer who has a little zine comic called Rockfall. What I liked about his work was that it was black and white and he used a considerable amount of cross-hatching. I asked him a few questions about his techniques and how he started out. He told me he had been working on his own comics for over 8 year and that he held down a normal job until he became established enough to leave that work behind and concentrate full time on his artwork. We spoke a little about technique and he told me he used the same pens that I use to make his work, but also said although he loves cross hatching it is very time consuming and may not be ideal if you need to produce something quick for a client. I had been worrying a little about my technique over the last few weeks and this kind of confirmed to me I need to ease off on the cross hatching a little or find a quicker way of working that’s not so laboured. I asked Paul if I could show him my work to get some feedback and he was happy to help. He was impressed with my character designs and said he liked the hand drawn sketches and thought my work would transfer well into either animation or children’s books. I asked him how I could go about getting my name out there and Paul suggested posting up work on DeviantArt as it’s a good start to getting your work seen by a global audience although one criticism he had about Deviant was "don’t expect to get any useful feedback on your work there". I bought a couple of Paul’s comics and he kindly sketched some of his characters inside the covers for me. He asked if I had a business card, epic fail on my behalf, but I jotted down my email address for him.

You can check out the work of Paul Fryer here

Portfolio Visit - with Nobrow

Whilst at the Thought Bubble convention I managed to get in a couple of portfolio viewings. The main people I wanted to show my work to were Nobrow who are an independent publishing platform for new and established illustrators. They had a portfolio drop in session scheduled for 2pm which I was really keen to get to. It took me a while to work out where the Nobrow table was as it didn't have a plaque like the other main stalls, but when I did eventually find it I asked how I could go about getting some feedback on my portfolio. The guy said they didn’t officially start till 2 but he would be happy to look at my work there and then, which was a massive bonus as I got to beat the rush. It was a fairly brief session but the guy said I had some strong skills in character design and said I had the potential to branch out into animation, children’s books or editorial. He said I should consider adding more pages of the character design roughs and think about creating some narratives for my characters and maybe create some comic strips of the characters I did for the Disney brief and the Uganda characters. He thought that by adding more of the development of these characters to my portfolio would showcase my potential for animation and story book illustration and give me a greater scope of opportunity. He liked the hand drawn quality of my work over the digitally worked stuff and said he thought textures and digital inking were being used far too much at the moment and thought that by concentrate on generating more of the hand drawn work would be more beneficial to me. At the end of the session he asked me to leave my email details with him and recommended I set up a website to start showcasing my work to the world.

Portfolio Visit - Chase Design Consultants

On Thursday I went to Chase Design Consultants in Manchester for a portfolio visit. Having never been to the Chase before my first impression of the place was met with the delightful smell of coffee. I thought I had stepped into a posh café with a sleek print of the Mona Lisa on the wall and tables and chairs set out in the reception area. After the receptionist confirmed I was in the right place I made myself comfortable at one of the tables. I had originally arranged to meet with Mika Shephard but unfortunately she was off ill. All was not lost though as Associate Director Lise Brian was kind enough to spare me some her time to look at my work. Lise was really friendly and gave me some excellent feedback on my work. She liked the layout of my portfolio and commented on how the presentation had been well thought out. I had a good mix of black & white and colour work. She asked me if I had considered working as a children’s book illustrator as she could see my characters working well in a book, she also said she could see my work transferring well editorially especially the black and white stuff.

Lise explained that she preferred the original sketch drawings of my characters to the finished coloured versions and said it could be a style all by itself.  She would have liked to have seen more of my work, but appreciated I probably had unfinished work which I could later add. She also said It would be a good idea to show some of my finished work in context so that whoever looks at it can fully appreciate the artwork. This could be in the form of a photograph showing a poster in the setting or the finished mural print on the wall of the school. I really enjoyed my visit to the Chase and appreciate the advice I was given. I still have a lot more to do to get my portfolio up to scratch but I’m starting to get a better understanding of what a potential client might want to see and what can strengthen the skills I have.

Leeds Comic Con

Yesterday I attended the Leeds Comic Con, this was the first time I’d been to anything like this and it was a real eye opener. As you would expect there were lots of people dressed up in costumes of their favourite comic book characters and the atmosphere was very friendly. The festival was split into various different buildings around Leeds with different activities going on but the main venue was split between the Saviles Hall and the Royal Armoury building. At first I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of stalls packed into one room and the amount of people, but after doing a couple of laps of the venue to establish where I wanted to go I soon found my feet. As I described in an earlier post there were some really big names there including illustrators from both Marvel and DC Comics and many different illustrators for Super Hero comics, Sci-Fi and Manga. Apart from these obvious stalls there were also a great many stalls of artists selling their own hand made merchandise including t-shirts, badges, zines, jewellery, figurines and masks. There were also a few children’s book illustrators and writers over at the Armories building including Sarah Mcintyre and Gillian Rogerson who were running a Madcap Pirate Drop-in art workshop where everyone was welcome to create piratey pictures and comics. After doing a lot of walking around between the two buildings I found that people were really easy to talk to and were also happy to impart their knowledge on how to get started in the business and this gave me the perfect opportunity to do a little networking and show my portfolio around. There was an epic fail on my behalf that I didn’t have a business card with me, but I wrote down my email address for all the people that asked for my card.

Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival

This week is turning out to be a really busy week for me with the opportunity for portfolio visits popping up everywhere. Last week I managed to get my grubby little hands on some tickets for the Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival in Leeds on Saturday 19^th November, which is this coming weekend and I must say the line up is looking absolutely brilliant. At the moment I’m a bit spoilt for choice as to what to see and do when I get there (I feel a well needed list coming on). Just scrolling through the guide book there are some great looking workshops to attend including Manga, Madcap Pirate, Dr Simpo’s Drop-In Comix. Also listed in the guide are the opportunities to get your portfolio seen with drop in sessions from Nobrow and SelfMadeHero, which I will certainly be looking to get in on. There are also a couple of portfolio critique sessions with the big guns Marvels Steve Wacker and a Dragons Den style portfolio session with 2000AD, but to be totally honest I’m way too scared to book into those sessions as I don’t see myself as the next Will Eisner (I’d love to be a fly on the wall though!).

Another event advertised in the guidebook is an art exhibition at the Traveling Man in Leeds between 14^th and 20^th of November entitled “Comics, Creatures & Curios” it sounds really interesting and if I have time in my busy schedule I will be heading down there to check it out. 

Visiting Lecture - Craig Oldham

A few weeks ago we had a visiting lecture by Craig Oldham who is a designer and art director at the award winning design agency Music in Manchester.

The title of the lecture was “But Isn’t That Your Job?” and was an informative and funny talk about Craig’s personal experiences with illustrators through 6 different projects. The first project was a marketing campaign for Manchester City Football Club called the “Big Four”. The job of the campaign was to promote four new players the club had bought and whip up some excitement amongst the fans and I guess in doing so taunt the other big football clubs.  At some point in their career each of these new players had played for one of the top-opposing clubs. A poster was created for each player and was themed according to the player’s attributes on the pitch. The below posters left to right are Emmanuel Adebayor illustrated by Michael Gillette, Craig Bellamy illustrated by Todd Slater, Shaun Wright Phillips illustrated by Chris White and Carlos Teves illustrated by Shephard Fairey. Although I know absolutely nothing about football Craig made the presentation of the project really enjoyable and I must say I found his raw style of presenting very refreshing. Craig described the process from roughs to finished pieces and spoke about the many problems the project presented in terms of budget and artwork. Another interesting project that was highlighted was the re-branding of Chester Zoo. Craig approached illustrator Adam Hayes who is a master of typography and asked him to create several sets of lettering for the project, which were later turned into a font. Adams approach to the project was one of complete enthusiasm, and you could definitely tell he really enjoyed what he was doing.

Through each project Craig explained how important it was to find the right illustrator for the job and told us how difficult it can be to find illustrators out there. This just goes to show how important self-marketing is and having a good web presence is the start of making sure you get seen.

Craig Oldham Poster

We recently had a brief to create a poster for a visiting talk about art direction, which will be given this coming Thursday by Music design agencies art director Craig Oldham. The brief was to create a completely illustrated A3 poster that focuses on a detail or concept from Craig's website: www.craigoldham.co.uk
My idea for this poster came from a minuscule aspect on Craig's website that said he was a prince fan (I hope  he didn't mean Prince William or that's this post knackered). I thought it would be fun to create a characterture of Craig in full Prince attire and imagined the title being a bone of contention between artist and designer. I really enjoyed working with a limited colour pallet for this project and think It might be a way that suits my style in the future.