Thursday 4 December 2014

Drawing Exercise

Life Drawing and Layouts Class

We've been very lucky over the last few weeks at Staffordshire University to have comic artist John Charles working alongside the students. Obviously John has high standards and one day while chatting over a curry he mentioned how flat the students at work was. I explained that we had tried to various methods to get then think a bit longer and harder about the composition of the panel but to no avail.



So we took it on ourselves to create our  own scene which the students had to draw every panel from a different position and angle. 
We asked the student to design a 4 panel page to a script we wrote of a character vomit through a door way sitting on a chair then walking into a bedroom to pack his bed and flee. Here are some of the results 









 


Sunday 16 November 2014

Children In Need

Last Friday saw cartoon and comic arts students reopening the Pop Up Comic Shop to sell the latest work produced over the summer by 1st- 2nd years. Included in the sales were fairy tales created by 1st year students, an anthology of fairy tales told from another chargers point of view. Also TED Talks (Ideas worth spreading) a selection of talks compressed into 4 page comics. 

We also started to do caricatures of people with the money raise going to Children in Need charity.
I'm happy to say we raise  £80 mainly by the art of Kieran Hayes (Killer fishy)

Here are some pictures of the event

Friday 14 November 2014

Matthew Rice & Michael Gunn share the same vision of Stoke

New Vision of Stoke by the Vice Chancellor

I was greeted from my return from UCAS in London by an email alerting me of an article in the Sentinel (11th Nov 2014) http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Michael-Gunn-Staffordshire-University-voyage/story-24511255-detail/story.html

To quote the paragraph that made me and a few others chuckle, 

Staffordshire University, which is celebrating 100 years of education heritage in the city, shares Matthew's vision – one in which our talented and creative graduates consider Stoke-on-Trent as a springboard for their careers and where they can play a central role in its renaissance as the "stormtroopers of regeneration".

Read more: http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/Michael-Gunn-Staffordshire-University-voyage/story-24511255-detail/story.html#ixzz3J3BSQFPG 
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Saturday 1 November 2014

1st Year Students In Londo

London here we come


Last week cartoon and Comic Arts newest intake went to London. 


The aim was to get them thinking about what comics are and introduce them to the many and varied ways that comics influence our society. 

The trip to London started off with a bit of culture and the students were sent into the British Museum to seek out where Comics or sequential art has been used through out history. 



Afterwards we headed off to see Comics in their now natural place, the Comic Shop, before heading to China Town for a meal.


The following day the students went to the Cartoon & Comic Museum in Russell Street to see satirical cartoonist work by William Hogarth.











 In the afternoon Gareth Cowlin Took them to Sommerset House to see the exhibition by the Association Of Illustrators, while I headed off to London ExCel arena to set up the stall for MCM.
Saturday saw the students in MCM exploring yet another element of Cartoon & Comic Arts and how its influence has reached out across the UK to include Games, Manga, Independent Comics and Merchandising. 











 Cartoon and Comic Arts first graduating students setting up base camp in the Nova Hotel. There were there running their own stalls and selling their work