OUIL603 Extended Practice - Thought Bubble #Getintocomics, Boards & Evaluation

Overall, I was super happy to have had the chance to have taken part in the #getintocomics project. Given it's significance, and the fact it was running at the same time as our OUIL601 Context of Practice module, I had to drop a few briefs to accomodate for it - most notably the 2000AD one (which was my original Thought Bubble 'plan') and it also meant some of my other more personally-driven briefs had to take a back seat until I could get the bulk of the work done for this - such as the 'Getting away with Murder' and 'Om Nom Nom' briefs, which can be found in earlier posts. 

I feel more than anything this project gave me the opportunity to work alongside a really great creative - in the form of Tom, who has given me loads of really solid advice about how to approach large grant-funded projects, and really useful insight into the world of comics.  I've made numerous connections with other volunteers, artists and creators through doing this, and it's also rekindled my love of painting and working on large scale work. 

Even though it wasn't a 'personal glory' brief (as technically it was somebody else's project) - I feel what made it worth doing was the experience and also the knowledge i've now gotten from doing it, and I feel going forwards this is going to really inform my practice a lot more going forwards. It's also - strangely, encouraged me to look outside of the pool of comics and narrative a lot more, and investigate a wider approach to image making - as i'm starting to feel that it might not be where my strength lies. 

It might not have been the intended effect (with project being all about 'getting into comics') but hopefully it'll be a positive further down the line!

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Thought Bubble #Getintocomics, Part 5

A selection of my favourite snaps from the weekend: both of my boxes and the others at Thought Bubble. 

Thought Bubble's convention weekend was one of the most intense but also one of the most enjoyable weekends ever. We worked as a set of 'hybrid' volunteers - working on the comic boxes and working on the festival. It was so good to see people interacting with the project and really getting involved!

In terms of the actual work itself - the boxes looked really good in-situ, nobody got injured from anything falling on anyone which was good. The only downside to working as an assistant to somebody else's project, and not having it as your 'own' thing is that none of the painting work was visibly 'credited' to me - and all of my work was created as part of the overall project. This is the only downside in contrast to having a table at Thought Bubble; Not that I wasn't compensated - as both Martha and Tom were really lovely, I got my expenses/hours paid as part of being a student ambassador, plus food. 

As i'm still a student - this project has been invaluable, if only for the contacts i've received through making friends and interacting with people involved. Martha in particular, as an organiser has been great (I got a table for Thought Bubble this year right off the bat) - And Tom has continued to be a great help throughout the course. I feel for future projects, I feel much more confident and knowledgeable about taking a similar project on by myself and leading it, which is something i'd probably be a lot less knowledgeable of If I hadn't done this! 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Thought Bubble #Getintocomics, Part 4

Here's a work in progress picture! 

I approached painting this the way i've done murals in the past; first I compiled the best of my initial ideas into a 'board' (basically an A4 printout, which you can see on the left). Then - I got an A2 sheet of paper and plotted out how everything was going to be laid out on the ply board. I enlarged the sketch onto the board with a marker - then I started blocking out all the colours with a base layer of acrylic paint. 

This is what the front board looks like painted! I painted the base colours in first, then the details (which you can see on the tree) and then 'inked' the lines over the top with more black acrylic paint. 

One of the nice things about acrylic paint is that you can paint over your sketch lines, and any mistakes you make. It's (mostly) waterproof (though it will peel if it's not properly sealed) - which makes the boxes suitable to be outside. Me and Tom had a bit of a nightmare with his other boxes due to some dodgy emulsion that went chalky in the rain - so the bases in this one and all the other boxes were acrylic-painted as well. 

The downside to painting just with acrylic and not with something like spray paint, is that it can be a mind-numbingly slow process. The act of just putting in the base colours took me almost 10 hours on the front, because some layers needed multiple coats to become properly opaque. 

The other thing of note: the type wasn't added until later, and was chosen by Tom. The type was added actually with a hand-made stencil - using an enlarged photocopy sheet. Whilst I don't think id've used the type that he did - we were very short on time by this point and it just needed to be done. The technique was still pretty clever, and one that i'll remember for the future!

 

The last WIP shot, with the backing board - assembled on it's frame. Thor's Hammer is so heavy. 

In total from start to finish, this is probably about 15 hours of work, spread over about a month. When I wasn't in the studio, we were touring the boxes round various locations in leeds as part of an agreement with Leeds Inspired, turning this into a very significant brief. The overall crafting side of making it though was very, very fun and it reminded me how much I miss doing large-scale pieces of work! 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Thought Bubble #getintocomics, Part 3

This is me, in the box Adam originally helped design. I think I make quite a good monster.

As mentioned previously - working in the studio with Tom was pretty handy, because he had a lot to talk about working as an artist, being in the comics industry - and also links to organisations that helped to make the #getintocomics project come to life. 

The studio space we worked in for the project was actually an empty office unit in Thorpe Park, out next to Colton, en route to Leeds. A company called Skippko provides this; for £10 a week, they'll give you a empty unit anywhere in the city for you to use as a studio space. 

This is an amazing alternative to paying extortionate rent prices - but the downside is you can be moved at any time (which happened mid-project) and depending on the unit there can be restrictions in mess (Thorpe Park were incredibly stringent about keeping the unit clean - which meant for a few panicky paint accidents at certain points). Skippko also provide art workshops for different communities in Leeds - which is interesting, and something I might investigate more about later.

The other thing Tom tipped me off to whilst working with him was Leeds Inspired. They're an organisation funded by the Arts Council to help facilitate arts and culture projects in Leeds - and they give out grants on various scales to help artists fund projects - from £1,000-£15,000 at a time. To get this you usually have to put an application in, pitch an idea and if they like it you agree on a set grant amount. They funded the #Getintocomics project, and they also funded Tom's previous Thought Bubble project, 'Kodama Woods', which had 3D installations combined with on-the-day workshops. 

Prior to this, i'd never considered grants as a route to pursue as an illustrator - it had seemed a thing much more exclusive to fine artists. However, the freedom to be able to source funding for your own projects, as opposed to having to tailor your work to the whims of an art director seems a lot more appealing to me - though there are obviously pro's and cons to both approaches. 

As well as his advice about grants, Tom talked to me a lot about his work with 2000AD. Theres a good interview with him here for 'The Streets Today' that touches a lot on what we talked about. 

Although he is an illustrator and artist, his main trade with 2000AD is as a writer - and it was interesting to hear about the way creatives work with comics publishers. For example - a lot of artists usually make a lot of extra pennies on the side from selling off the original sketch blueprints for comic pages (I didn't even know you were allowed to do this!) - and that 2000AD operates somewhat like an in-between from the big, commercial giants of people like Marvel & DC and the more smaller-scale comic creator community. They're very obviously a commercial publisher - but their creators tend to have a little more freedom in how they produce work compared to the more stringent Marvel & DC. 

At this point I was still really interested in pursuing comic book work more - one of my original chosen briefs was to enter the 2000AD competition that runs every year at Thought bubble. However - due to the commitments i'd taken on getting the #Getintocomics work finished, I ended up having to drop it. This allowed me more time to properly focus on #Getintocomics as a significant brief, and in hindsight it allowed me to move my practice away from narrative and sequence, which I think was a benefit. 

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Thoughtbubble #getintocomics, Part 2

This was the first public outing for both of the new comic boxes. It was really exciting seeing something i'd helped design and paint in a public space! 

As part of painting the boxes, me and Zatul were heavily involved in volunteering and helping out with the Thoughtbubble team at various events. Getting to know Martha and Tom through doing this was a really cool opportunity - as both of them work professionally with arts: Martha as an organiser of events (being the main organiser of Thought Bubble) and Tom in working as both a large-scale Artist and a Writer in comics. Both of them have given me really interesting advice - and I think it shows the importance sometimes of just getting involved with stuff.

Once the alien one was finished - Tom asked if I could immediately get on with designing another one, to get it under way as soon as possible. Thought Bubble wanted a box that was loosely based on 'kids' comics - Things like The Phoenix, Jampirates...but also on popular cartoon franchises like 'Adventure Time' and 'Bee and Puppycat' - Shows that look a little bit like this:

 

I tried to capture that in the idea's I did - really bright, colourful, a bit surreal and weird too. I sent these to Tom and he really liked the look of them, and thought they'd work well as a box - with a few tweaks. With this in mind, I started drawing it up to work large scale and 3D.

OUIL603 Extended Practice - Thoughtbubble #getintocomics, Part 1

So as part of being a student ambassador, me and Adam Allsuch Boardman got to help tutor and run a session with the ED Graphics group down at Vernon Street. This was the first introduction we had to Tom and Martha - two people from Thought Bubble, who were there to help make props and draw ideas for potential comic book boxes - as displayed above. 

The workshop was designed to showcase Thought Bubble, and also show the process of how the boxes were built and designed. At the end of the session, each one of the students had made their own prop to go inside the box - and everyone also had numerous thumbnails and ideas that were then compiled to make the next lot of boxes further down the line.

As student ambassadors, we also joined in! heres what I did:

Tom asked us to think about different comic 'themes', so I cam up with a sci-fi, alien abduction cover. I also doodled some monsters with some of the pens, which ended up serving me well later down the line. 

Tom really liked the thumbs that me and Adam had done - he asked us if we had experience painting large-scale, so we could make a start on painting them up. I've done large-scale mural paintings a lot in the past, and i've been itching to do a lot more of it, so I was really up for doing it! We got some of the students to help us paint the bases, whilst everyone else continued with their propmaking workshop.

Unfortunately - we didn't get the time to finish painting them off, but I was really eager to carry on working and helping out on painting them if I could, so I gave Tom a business card and asked him to get back in touch if he needed any more help with anything. Luckily for me - he did, and me, zatul and adam started to help out on the project!