Filed under: my comics | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, competition, graphic novels, illustration
Last year I entered the Thought Bubble festival’s Northern Sequential Art Competition with Phoenix, and above are some panels from this year’s effort, Boundary. Click on the image to read the whole comic.
The aim of this contest is to create a single A3 comics page that tells a complete story, at least six panels, black and white or colour. Sounds simple, but the hard part is getting a coherent story (with a beginning, a middle and an end!) in to one page. My secret? A whole load of tiny panels. Chris Ware eat your heart out.
This one is about a young man who, to say the least, isn’t very well traveled. The drawing style was inspired by David Small’s Stiches, Joff Winterhart’s Days of the Bagnold Summer, and Seth’s Wimbledon Green (which continues, year after year, to be a big source of inspiration). As for authors who are inspiring my writing and storytelling right now, Alan Bennet and Paul Auster are the current big influences. No wonder this comic is so bleak (and listening almost exclusively to The Smiths doesn’t help, either.) It’s undoubtedly a far cry from last year’s entry to the contest both visually and in the tone of storytelling.
Anyway, what am I trying to say here? I hope you enjoy it. That’ll do.
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Corban Wilkin: Illustrator 
I was looking through the Thought Bubble entries and this was one that really caught my eye. It’s lovely.
Comment by rajohnson2012 October 17, 2012 @ 12:24Thanks so much, that’s very kind.
There are quite a few good entries this year, and one or two definite winners in my opinion, so I think it’s better luck next year for me!
I hope the text in the comic was readable on the Thought Bubble page. They’ve posted them at quite a small scale unfortunately, whereas I think mine needs to be seen at the full A3 size to be properly readable, as I’ve posted it here on the blog.
Comment by corbanwilkin October 17, 2012 @ 13:48