“…starting something new before finishing the last thing(s)”

On By hesirIn Comic Cons, Comics ArtLeave a comment

So here we are, it’s the week leading up to Thought Bubble 2023 / TBF23. Just days away really.

I’ll be there (with Sarah too, which is great, as it’s always more of a fun weekend when we are there together), and I’ll have the usual array of comics and prints (and maybe even two new banners, see the side panels in the art above).

I’m looking forward to seeing some regular faces, meeting new people, as always happens there, and to catching up with old friends too (as we have often used the event as a focus point for our Norwich Art School friends meet-up).

But, regarding the comics and prints, particularly the comics, I’m hoping this is the last year I have to turn around to people who arrive at the table in eager anticipation of something new (and I love these people for that enthusiasm I really do, please don’t stop asking!)  only to have to say, “No, sorry, I’ve no new Cthulhiad comics again this year… I’ve just been too busy with other stuff.”

Unfortunately this year, I will still be saying that.

And it makes me crazy in the brain.

I’d really hoped to have something new on the table, but it just didn’t happen. I talked about it with Sarah on a number of occasions, but the year just seemed to slip through my fingers, again.

It’s not like I can’t show people that I’m working on those other things (at least the comics ones), you can see that happening in the posts from earlier this year. 

I’ve new work on Book 3 of “The Lance” (ie the final part of my two books The White Ship, and Drakon), and I started a whole new thing, well two actually, one a book looking at a retelling of the events around the life of the Gorgon, Medusa. Which I’m really enjoying working on (see some sketches below). 

The other being a set of short fantasy adventures, which would be cool to have more time to work on, but might have to take a back burner seat while I finish these other projects. There are others too, some even scripted already, but they’ll be even further back, on the back-back burner if you will.

Earlier this week on a forum for creatives (admittedly in a different medium, i.e. not comics), I wrote the words, “…in the rich tradition of starting something new before finishing the last thing(s), I’ve started toying with a new thing”…

I think this is part of the issue… so many ideas, and never enough time… or never enough well used time.

The other reason is, I’m just working… ie, not on my own personal work, per se, but on collaborations and work for hire, for or with others. This being where the money to live and pay for things like printing and being able to even think about turning up to events like TB comes from.

And once you start doing that, it becomes incredibly hard to step away from it and find the time to work on your own things. Any free time you do get, you think, “Will I have the time to make some significant ground on that big project? To do it justice? And if not, why not do something smaller instead?” Which, when you do that, all you have done is started another thing you haven’t finished, and once again you’ve got yourself caught up in a self-perpetuating cycle.

It’s not like I haven’t been here before, here’s my old DevArt profile pic from 2003, twenty years ago…

Half of something, indeed…

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really been thoroughly enjoying the professional work I have been doing. 

I’ve produced some of my strongest painted work of my career over the last year or so*, I’ve made some of my favourite comics art in that time too, done my first solo painted cover (I’d definitely like to try more of that). Even produced things that have inspired me and given me a way forward for some of those personal projects that are sitting in the wings. And gone back to my roots, laughs, by taking on duties on a western** comic… I’m sure you’ll here about that in the near future.

*much of which again, isn’t going to be seen, even in my portfolio for a while as I’m under NDAs until the work is out in the world. All of this makes it look like you aren’t working and producing new stuff, but that’s the business.

** my first fully finished self-published comic was a western, called The Indian Fighter – currently out of print.

Add to all that, this recurring (post Covid?) brain fog into the mix, and, well… you get the picture.

…

So, what to do?

Well, I guess this post is really me just saying, that I need to have a serious think about how I organise my time.

I need to fit in time for those projects of my own that are sitting there almost ready to go, but are just not being done or finished. 

I’m hoping that this coming year is the year I get the balance right.

In the meantime, I’ll see you this coming weekend. And though for those of you who have bought my stuff in the past there might not be much in the way of new or unseen, it will still be great to say hello if you pass the table.

Look, new banners!

Regardless, let’s just have a great festival, and as always chat and rave and rant about our love of comics. It should be fun, come and say “Hi.”

We’ll be at table B34 in the DSTLRY Hall.

See you there.

g,

Some bonus coloured Cthulhiad Art…

#JustPaperAndInk – a pop up indie comics show

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So, this happened earlier in the year… #JustPaperAndInk (article by Broken Frontier)

June through July (2023) to be precise.

Basically a small independent comics creator pop up exhibition curated by Sean Azzopardi of PhatComics and myself. And, I guess, sort of an extension of the discreet exhibition he had held at his former shared studio space, called, “Framed”. with some of the artists who had showcased their work there, also having work in this show.

The show ran for just over a month, we were based in a shop unit ran as “The Space”, a arts project ran by a local access to arts organisation and pop-up gallery team called Creat-Hive, and we were just a couple of doors along from Hull’s Forbidden Planet store in The Prospect Centre.

I got to spend my days during the show away from my usual working form home environment, and at my temporary drawing board in the gallery space itself which as always was both fun and eye opening. The show itself bookended around the Hull Comic Con weekend event too, which was great as we were able to promote that as part of our show (one of the original thoughts that had instigated our event to be fair).

I chatted to a lot of people over those few weeks, as we had over 700 people come in and engage with the work/exhibition (ie not including the people who came in looking for other things (shops, another gallery, etc) or who left once they realised it was about comics). Which is a fair amount of people. We got to chat to about #MakingComics, comics as a fairly democratised artform, and storytelling medium, and even got to discuss the possibility of further projects with other organisations in the city, and outside of it.

I cant thank enough those people who took time out of their schedules to come and chat, it was very much appreciated, so cheers… you know who you are.

We even did a radio spot with our local BBC Humberside comics fan Kofi.

The show itself was divided up into four main sections, “the big noisy art“ at the front to draw people in (which seemed to work, cheers to Sean for providing those big fun colour pieces). Then we had a section showcasing the work of several “UK indie creators“, with which we added some hard copy examples of the books hung on the wall to show the work “in its natural environment” rather than a gallery wall (to paraphrase Crumb). And we made sure to show the creators SocMed links too, in the hope that even a couple of additional follower always helps, who knows?

Followed by two linked sections looking at “Comics Made In Hull“… which was a surprisingly big section, not only for the visitors, but for us as well. We even had someone come in on the first day and tell us that they made comics in Hull too. Which was great… Comics, the unseen communities, laughs.

…and finally “Hull In Comics“, a section that showed the city itself appearing as a character in some of that local work.

As part of the interpretation in the show, we added a number of text panels looking at other aspects around the world of making comics, so that it might be perhaps more accessible for those who had left comics behind some time ago, or just for those who had never ever really engaged with the medium.

In these sections we discussed the early history of the art form, how comics are seen in Europe by comparison to the UK & US, the balance of traditional and digital comics work currently being produced (and the threats posed by so called AI/Plagiarism Software), the use of comics in education, new voices, representation and the ever present dilemma of “But, Is it Art?”.

Amongst these we scattered a number of quotes by creators, critics and celebrated comics readers from within and outside the medium, who weren’t in the show, but who had discussed important aspects of comics and their value.

We also had a few books from our own collections to chat about and use as examples in discussion.

All in all it seemed pretty well received, and we have discussed holding onto the name of the show #JustPaperAndInk for further shows and exhibitions, workshops etc.

So I guess watch this space!

NB – I’ll consider this post a raw draft… I’m sure I have some better photos than this, I’ll replace them ASAP and delete this note.

The Margin – a fantasy comic / work in progress

On By hesirIn Comics Art, Sketchbook1 Comment

Well, I’m still trying to figure out what this might look like on the site as it progresses. But I thought rather than leaving everything in script limbo, I might as well throw some art down, even if these things/pages are little more than scrappy or rough thumbnails. It will at least make the task quicker and more fluid as I pull any final version together. But here we’ll be able to watch the early version unfold (even if things change as it turns to print), and that might be fun.

So firstly, what is The Margin? Well if you read the rambling post that was “Making use of this thing”, in the latter portion I talked about wanting to do a fantasy comic, something a little more high fantasy, probably allied to my rekindled love of playing, writing and running fantasy TTRPGs, but also part of something older that I started writing way back (on the BBC Writing site and DeviantArt under the name Hesirion). Regardless, this new effort is definitely allied to the ttrpg art I’ve been making of late.
–

So this, *gestures broadly with arms*, will be that. Likely as not it will be a little clunky, as it’s an experiment, a little more freeform and meandering than even my usual standard, but it will be a way of working the kinks out of the visual storytelling whilst still, making/finishing something… even if that something I’d less polished and, well… finished. Or that’s what I’m going to tell myself. So, I guess I’ll sett up a page in the side bar dedicated to this one particular storyline, and we’ll see where we go from there. It will be something I’ll be doing between other more pressing (ie paying) projects, but it will hopefully trundle along at its own pace. Oh, and it will be in rough colour too… here the first few pages.

So “Welcome to Azhereon”…and The Margin.

Old tales, new takes…

On By hesirIn Books, Comics ArtLeave a comment

a thumbnail sketch for a cover of the as yet untitled project…

Some clips from the script in progress, both in my Google docs and where I often start, in Colour Note on my phone.

While working on the thumbnails and script for Theogony (the 3rd book of The Lance) I veered off track and started to develop another script, this one looking at the tale of Medusa. I’d mentioned Perseus in the prologue to Theogony, again relating to the monster-society of the wider Cthulhiad books. The notion was that this new outing would not focus so much on the “heroics” of Perseus, but instead the intrigue around the tale, on Medusa’s origins, and perhaps her (and her sister’s) purpose. Looking at how both Medusa and Perseus might well have been just tools, unwitting pieces in an unseen game. Finally taking a look at the character and motivations of the actual (potential) villains of the tale.

It’s all still in text form for the most part. And not all of that is complete, but it’s getting there. Some thumbnails are starting to happen. It’s fun… and I’m enjoying reading around my subject.

I’m currently not focussing on the length of the project, just on getting all the seemingly relevant story pieces into place. And giving the whole thing it’s own internal logic, plus looking at my overt writing, the tone, dialogue, trying to walk that difficult line between overly archaic language, and contemporary readability. It all still a little purple at the moment. So very much in the former of those two schools, but hopefully I can edit some of that down… in the meantime, back to more imminent deadlines.

Museum & Heritage Comics.

On By hesirIn Books, Collaborations, Commissions, Teaching & WorkshopsLeave a comment

I talked previously about the book I produced for Barnsley Museums some time ago, here. It was an experience I enjoyed, as I’ve always been interested in history/heritage. And through that project I was subsequently commissioned to create two more (albeit short) comics projects, this time actually based here in Hull.

The comics were to tie in to the ongoing Maritime Tales project (which I’d already produced illustrations for), a series of events and commissioned interactions that were designed to keep the idea of the Maritime Museum (as it underwent its huge refurb) alive in the minds of the people of Hull. The first event was The Hull Kraken. A narrative based event that saw the emergence of a mysterious but vast tentacled creature in the city, and its movement through the streets from building to building. Here’s a local article on that side of the event.

The covers to the two books produced, the narratives of which feature a pair of precocious mythology and art buffs, kids who dissect the folklore and history of the city and its art.

My role with the comic was to provide a backstory for the creature, creating a story that moved between the present day were a pair of precocious kids helping out at a Saturday Museum Club discover something odd and decide to investigate. Meanwhile the story they uncover tracks the journey from Hull to the Arctic and back of a 19th Century ship of curious characters, and their subsequent return with something very curious locked in a crate, that gets mislaid upon its arrival back in the city, only to be discovered in the present, with its curious passenger, alive and well (and now huge). The books were designed to be used as handouts, and contained a map designed by a local agency to tie in with a number of other heritage trail events, and so the book was published in the thousands, most of which went in the first two weekends.

The first book, The Strange Case of the Very Strange Case, was a really fun exercise in layering the comic with dozens of Easter eggs, both visual and in the writing, through the naming of things and by making a bunch of historical connections. Part of the project saw me presenting a workshop at Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery to discuss the making of the comic, were I discussed the writing as well as the art process.

While the second book, Drawing (near the isle of the) Sirens, focussed on the Herbert Draper painting, Ulysses and the Sirens in the Ferens Art Gallery, and saw the same two kids from the first comic, discussing the various mythological descriptions of Sirens, and comparing that to the incarnations we often see in Victorian paintings (ie. appearing as mermaids rather than bird like creatures), and why that might be, whilst also discussing some of the other myth relegated sights around Hull, including the great statue of Oceanus that is hidden away just off a main thoroughfare. This second comic also featured a number of art works from the gallery hidden amongst the siren art in the book, acting as an Easter egg hunt for visitors.

With both books I was given free reign to write and interpret as sequential art, and so felt very connected to the end products produced.

…

These projects, often filled with a mixture of straight narrative, explanatory asides, surreal visual guesses and and other visual non sequiturs were a real joy to work on, both as a writer and as an artist, to the point which even if not commissioned by others, it’s my goal to create some more. Specifically about aspects of Hull’s heritage and history, now that I’m settled back here for good.

Of the various projects like this that I’m interested in exploring, the one I’m most enthusiastic for is “A history of Hull’s Deaf Community and the Hull & East Riding Deaf Institute (now Hull Deaf Centre). My wife is manager of the centre. She is a CODA (child of deaf adults) and a signer/BSL user (we actually met when I had a profoundly deaf student I my games design degree class). I’ve grown a fascination with the history of the centre, and the organisation of the charity which began in the city in the mid 19th century, and even currently give the tours of the centre (purpose built for the deaf in 1926) on the Heritage Open Days in September of each year. Taking that interest into my chosen storytelling medium seems like a very natural progression.

The finish art/book would be given over to the charity to produce and sell to raise funds as they see fit.

The script is already started, my plan would be to involve the current deaf community in the themes that might be discussed and interwoven into the wider social history and discussion of the evolution of this robust community. As a back up, I’d also be interested in developing a brief history of BSL to accompany the work.