Coming Soon...

Angouleme 2010

Almost a month ago, myself, Dan Lester, Francesca Cassavetti and Sean Azzopardi set off for the Angouleme International Comics Festival armed with our awesome B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S anthology and a fine array of our individual works. Sean had been there before as a visitor a few years ago and had also arranged us some accommodation in the form of our very own converted barn with four bedrooms, a snooker table and a huge log fire. We also had Francesca who speaks fluent French. Without her, the entire trip would have been a massive fail.

It was an incredible four days which opened my eyes to how much the comics scene over here is still in its baby stages (but growing fast) and in terms of how open I thought the general public are in this country to the idea of comicbooks as a serious thing. And also in terms of the scale and organisation of comic events in this country.

I've left it a little late to do a full write up, here are the main things I remember coming away from it...

• A four day comic festival isn't quite as daunting as it sounds.
• The town of Angouleme (southern France, kinda near Bordeaux) is beautiful. I wish I'd gotten up off my arse and explored it a little more, as well as all the other things the festival had to offer. The town is taken over by this festival, with giant tents dotted around the place, alongside talks and exhibitions, TV and radio journalists everywhere, guests and exhibitors from all over the world, dancing in the streets, balloons, fireworks, mass hysteria and free love.
• We were in the best tent in town. I'm not sure how many there were in total, the others I saw were housing the big European publishers as well as Marvel, DC and some Manga publishers. You could spend ages walking around and taking in the huge variety of comics on display in our tent, a massive cross section of genres, art styles and formats from creators all over the world.
• 24 page, A5 comics aren't very popular. They want 50 pages at the least, preferably in a big format with a spine.
• Did I mention Angouleme is beautiful? It's well worth visiting even when there's no festival in town. Gorgeous street art sprinkled everywhere, stunning views, lots of great little bars and tiny, winding roads to explore.

Here's some photographic material from Sean, Francesca and myself...

B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S. That's us y'see.

Adverts for Joe Sacco comics. In the street.

The bus passes were given this makeover for the festival.

I got a bit obsessive about having them all.

It's'a Mario!

Still wallowing in the joys of a new scanner, here's a couple of Mario Brothers sketches I did around Christmas, a little drunk, after a marathon session of New Super Mario Bros Wii (It's an alright game, it just made me want to go back and play Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. Which I did).

Fan-Art Project Finale

So. Eight months later, here are the final fan art pieces I did in the run up to the LUC @ 176 event that happened last Summer. David Baillie's Tongue of the Dead which is available to read online over at The Sequential, Jake Harold's Justine Tyme, which has taken a bit of a break recently as Jake copes with the horrors of university and Marc Ellerby's awesome Chloe Noonan.

All of these thanks to my lovely new scanner which will hopefully be the source of more regular blog posts from now on. Maybe.

A few words and alot of photos from the Angouleme International Comics Festival coming up next...