Posts Tagged: Higher Futures 4U

comics / commercial work — No Comments
28
Jul 11

HF4U Comic Competition

I often teach short cartooning workshops for primary school kids at the World of Work events organised by Higher Futures 4U and they always seem to go down well with the children and teachers alike. So Ana at HF4U had the idea of running a Comic Competition with schools in the North West and asked me if I’d like to be involved. I agreed of course and drew up a 4 page tips sheet on how to draw comics featuring the HF4U mascot, Sam, to be sent out to schools. I was shocked when Ana told me they’d received over 500 entries in return! Ana and her team whittled them down to a top 25 and Ana and I picked 15 winners and runners up, all of which you can see here. The prize for 1st place was a set of art supplies, a print making set for the school and the winning entry re-drawn by me. Out of 500+ entries the most entertaining, funny, well written and  imaginatively drawn entry was ‘The Dream Catcher and the Tomatoes’ by Anvay Sudame, age 11!

Here’s Anvay’s winning entry followed by my version of it.

I had a great time interpreting Anvay’s comic, I kept as close as possible to his original layout and colour choices. I love Anvay’s character designs for the aliens and the Police chief (check out all the pouches!) and the little details like the Alien Leader having four voices. The tomato gun was great fun to draw too. It’s really a good comic I think, his writing goes further than the ‘Sam gets back to Earth okay’ point, which a lot of other entries ended on, and his art is very consistent and detailed. He also knows how to use a good special effect too!

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending the assembly on Anvay’s last day of school at Abbott Community Primary School in Manchester. There Ana and I presented him with his grand prize of his framed original comic, a framed print of my version, my original artwork and a copy of Paper Science 4 and 5. Anvay was quiet but clearly pleased and his Mum, who was there with all the other parents of the leaving students, was super proud and took photos of us both. Ana took the photo on the left, which I grabbed from a write up on the HF4U blog written by the star of the comic, Sam himself.

Congratulations again to Anvay and all the other winners and runners up, and thank you to Ana and Higher Futures 4U for asking me to take part in this. And if you’re a comic artist reading this, I invite you to blow Anvay’s mind and draw some fan art for him.

 

comics / news — 4 Comments
8
Aug 10

HF4U Workshops

At the very end of June, a day after returning from the scorching Glastonbury Festival, I did two Comics & Drawing workshops over two days with children at BBC Manchester for Higher Futures 4U to show them the possible creative careers open to them. I’ve blogged before about the great work this organisation does and these sessions were the 4th time I’ve worked with them.

I thought it would be good to write about the drawing examples I use in these workshops but as it is a long and image heavy post, I have put it behind a cut.

Keep reading HF4U Workshops

comics / news — 4 Comments
9
Dec 09

Higher Futures 4U

Last week on a rainy and windy Thursday, I went along with comic writer Andy Diggle (The Losers, Batman, Green Arrow, 200oAD, loads more) to the BBC on Oxford Road, here in Manchester. Andy had been asked by Higher Futures 4U to go along as one of the creative professionals to chat to the kids about different career paths open to them. They wanted an artist to go along too so I was asked, and gladly went along to aid Andy in a short comics workshop. There’s more details of the event on the Higher Future’s 4U blog, where it actually refers to us as experts!

Here are some photos from the day taken by HF4U photographer Sam (copyright Higher Futures 4U):

HF4U-1

Andy began by talking about how he first got into comics, how he started writing, what he’s worked on and the process of writing a comic.

HF4U-2

HF4U-3

I followed by saying how I started drawing at a young age, copying Garfield and the Thundercats logo, and then I demonstrated how you can guess famous characters from just a couple of lines. An exercise I learned from the excellent comic artist and teacher Jim Medway, while assisting him with his classes. I’m finishing off Bart Simpson and Spongebob Squarepants here at the request of some of the kids.

HF4U-4

We ended each 15-20 minute session with some questions which were all great. I remember being stumped by “What happens if you forget how to draw something?” and “Can you draw a horse?”.

We could only chat to the kids and hope that our enthusiasm and example showed them that you can do you the things you love for a living when you grow up. It was hard to gauge if the kids were actually inspired on the day but from the photo above it looks to me like they enjoyed it.

Thanks to Andy for bringing me along, and a big thanks to Ana at HF4U for having us and for the big box of proper posh Thornton’s chocolates we got at the end.

I’d like to do more of this kind of thing, it’s kind of daunting but highly enjoyable.