Wednesday 26 January 2011

Seven Stories Comics Anthology

Way back in June, we ran a four-day-long workshop for two groups of young, aspiring comic book creators at the Seven Stories Centre for Children's Books. We covered everything from characters to page layouts, themes to plot points and pencils to inks. When the sessions were finished, each participant had written, designed and illustrated a two-page strip which we scanned, collated and printed into an anthology aptly named '14 Tales, 4 Days, Seven Stories'

The sessions were a big success, so much so that they led to an even bigger course of sessions at Holystone Primary School that will see the creation of a second anthology of incredible work. So what better way to motivate ourselves and our pupils than to look back on the crowning achievement that led us here?


These are the pencils I created for the front cover. The characters are my own renditions of some of the amazing designs the young people came up with, including Cupcake Girl, Bed Woman, Captain Wonderpants and Sushi Dude. Check out a few snippets below:


Once everything was scanned and I had inked the designs for the cover, Daniel wrote a foreword and created a crossword to go inside and we took it to the printers. Then, every participant received one of these lovely publications in the mail:



Everything is still in development over at Holystone, but we'll be updating the blog with our progress when we reach certain milestones so check back soon to see what we've been up to. A big thanks again to Seven Stories for having us in June and to the young people for their excellent work!