Improvisation

I'll be at the Lakes International Comics Art Festival again this year - hope to see you there ! Final notes on what I'm up to, and a handy comic strip walking guide here.

I'll be running my improvisation photoshoots - come along and become part of my comic strip art. This year, I'll also be doing an exhibition at the local YWCA, as part of the festival Window Trails.

June 2015 - 20pp strip - "What can we tell the Trees" underway. I've also made the arrangements to be at this year's Comics Art Festival again, so come along and be filmed/interviewed, and be a part of my work.

May 2015 - another 18pp strip - "Lists of Unsolved problems" - is pretty much in the bag. I've also recorded a video of the creation of a 4-page strip, which I'll edit and post sometime soon you can find here

April 2015 (Easter weekend) - the first 29 pages are complete, and held together/much improved by a little conceit that I came up with at the last minute (yay improvisation!)

March 2015 Update here (the pages referred to in January have since been retired, such is the nature of creative destruction!!)

January 2015 Update - first 12 pages are complete, with an outline structure for a first book of 60-90 pages

November 2014 Update here

I'm improvising a full-length graphic novel. It's about the stories we tell about the creation of the world, a history of (the control of) information, the nature of truth, the humdrum details of everyday lives, and so much more.

It's mainstream literature, not your average superhero/sci-fi tropes (although I do enjoy some of those). I don't want to be the next Alan Moore, but the next Peter Carey, Italo Calvino or Russell Hoban.

The process goes kind of like this.

At the second Comic Art Festival in Kendal, in October 2014, I met with the players of Kendal Community Theatre, and members of the public, and we (that's me, and local photographers Paul, Tim, Alan and Julie) took a lot of photographs, of people being interviewed, playing games and talking.

At that point, I had some rough ideas of the themes, but no concrete story in mind. I'm writing that now, based on the images that were captured.

The pictures will be used as the starting point for the digital art of the comics. Contents from the interview will also feed into the plot.

I'll be blogging the whole process here. Follow me on twitter too, for news and updates.

Expect the finished work sometime in 2015 !

A few samples / "test swatches" of the art are shown below, and more can be found here