2nd years get ready to take MCM by storm

2nd year Cartoon and Comic Arts students getting ready for MCM London May 2016 

Once again its that time of year where the troops are getting ready to produce their comics and head off to London for the biggest comic con in the UK ... MCM. with over 100,000 people expected to visit during the 3 days the convention is open, it has grown in size. 

Along side this so has the Cartoon and Comic Arts award which will be taking 20 students to the event to sell their own original work and comics. 

here are their logos as they appear on the MCM Comic Village Website

Carta Comics Consists of Hanna Stanway, Phoenix Cooper-Morriss, Tony Holdsworth, Paul Walshaw, Isaac Hirshfield Wight

Covenant of Arcana - Alessandra Lombardi, Megan Strobb, Daniel Johnson, Tom Bickles-Guilfoyle

Farpoint Comics - Shaun Nichols, Mark Farnell, Zach Cobb, Michy Kahuya, Matt Fair 

Mythical Inc - Kale Mcleer, Lawrence Copeman, Oliver Humm, Natalie Burgher, Sam Megaw

New and Old technologies working together to make art

New and old Art

Last Friday, we tried something we've never done before on Cartoon & Comic Arts. That was introducing the students to a 3D programme called Mudbox by Autodesk. A vast amount of the students on the award have never used Photoshop let alone a 3d package. But undeterred by this we attempted to do it anyway. 

The aim is to get them to do something traditional and then incorporate new technologies to show them how it can help to improve their work.

Obviously some of them to to it like ducks to water - others it was a little harder. 

Portrait Drawing 

The other thing we did was to do portrait drawings, unfortunately I sprained my hand the other evening, which made the whole teaching task very hard. But I think I got the message over. 

More importantly, it was an opportunity for the students to do the Cartoon & Comic Arts Mantra - Draw....Draw.... Draw. 

The Idea is to get the students to build on their core skills that were developed in the first semester. Where we encouraged them to design characters then to build the models out of Plasticine.

From the images below you'll see that some of them aren't that bad an artist. 

This time we are going ask them to try and model their portraits using the 3d Software.

 

 

Now we quickly realised that between the drawing and the 3d modelling there is potentially a lot that can go wrong. But education at this level you don't always get the answer you expect. It is about taking the students out of their comfort zone and pushing them. So in the next few weeks it will be interesting to see what develops. 

 


It's already interesting to note that the students who haven't done any art foundation are the stubborn ones who wont push themselves. And see any