Degree Show 2018

Cartoon and Comic Arts 

Degree Show#5  

aims to be bigger and better than ever before 

Its that time of year when the studio gets a fresh lick of paint and table and chairs get moved around and generally the studio becomes an exhibition space. This year is no exception to that rule as Cartoon and Comic Arts degree show is back, bigger and better than ever., With the largest cohort ever to graduate - 30 students will receive the most treasured of accolades BA Honours in Cartoon and Comic Arts!

Tidying the show and prepping the show took place as normal with the students all pitching into help out.
This year saw the cohort using the computer lab as a couple of them had produced Web Comics and this allowed people to come and sit and read the comics all the way through.

For the evening event the students produced a buffet 

with a nice homemade cake to finish it off. The splatter in the middle is in recognition of the Stall in Erlangen Comic Salon.

Drew Hird received a special award from the Scarr Hall people for his achievements throughout th e3 years. 

The show was opened by Keith Brymer Jones from the TV Show the Great British Throw Down. The speech was actually quiet good!

Here is a selection of Images from the event on the day 

3rd Years Mini One Day Exhibition

A mini One Day Exhibition

As third years the work load goes through the roof. Along with that the pressures of putting on your own degree show is especially stressful. To try and compensate this, we at Staffordshire University Cartoon and Comic Arts, implemented a mini One Day Exhibition to allow students to get used to presenting their work. We encouraged the students to think outside the box with ideas about their work. We also build an bit of a spare wall for the students to display on. 

Ok, probably not the best spread in the world, but it went, and it encouraged students to come along and join in with the event, i was happy that a few Fine Art students who were working late in the studio also came and joined in the fun.  

 

 The initial aim was to get the students to hang what they thought was their best work from the first semester. This meant that they had to mount work and learn about putting it up. 

Having moved onto the Mezzanine in the old Fine Arts area, this gave us an opportunity to use the layout, which is primarily an exhibition space anyway.

We had a mock day where we laid out the work and had a bit of a party, to welcome back students straight after the Christmas break and a this also allowed students from various years a chance to work/talk/and interact with one another. 

Off the success of the exhibition, it was decided to hold a proper curated event in the Uni UniQube along College Road on Monday 19th February at 5.30pm 

So I look forward to telling you more about that when we start to put it together soon. 

Getting Ready for the Degree Show

For the 4th year the BA Hons Cartoon and Comic Arts students will be putting on a degree show with the Opening Night on Friday 2nd June at 6pm in the Cadman Building.

So there has been a lot of preparation work needed to get the studio in a position ready to be made ready for the show boards to be installed.

Keep an eye on the Twitter account CartoonandComic for the show build up date.

Degree Show Success

Degree Show

Cartoon and Comic Arts goes from Strength to Strength

Another year has drawn to an end and so has the Cartoon and Comic Arts award. This year saw students put on the biggest and best degree show ever. 

With 21 students graduating this year it was clearly the largest cohort to date to go through the 3 years. Along the way we've made a few tweaks to ensure we still provide one of the best and original award in the UK. 

After the initial set up of the area, this time we held our show in the life drawing room, which does seem appropriate as it is one of the awards main teaching rooms. 

We went fro a corporate feel to the event, though this is what was intended with the red banner along the top and the grey skirting board. The aim was to get it more reflect the catalogue that was produced to go along with the show.

The opening night was good and we tried to organise a portfolio review for students, so they could bring their portfolios in and see what industry professionals would say was missing for 3rd years, or for 2nd years for them to things that they could concentrate on in their final year.

 Above is a panoramic view of the cartoon and comic arts degree show space. 

There was a selection of refreshments at teh event which seemed to go down well amongst the guests and the students!!

Students talked with a range of visiting people about their work and sold a fair amount of their comic work during the night. 

Azzuro Zito has a swift drink before talking about his work to a VIP

Zu handled himself perfectly with the arrival of the Lord Mayor for Stoke-on-Trent.

            

Obviously the Lord Mayor want to chat with a range of students and people about their work. But overall the Mayor was impressed with what he saw at the event, taking specific time to look and talk to students about their stories and their artwork. 

The night also had to honoured guests from Industry to chat and talk to people about the work. Kevin Gunstone is a well re-known comic book writer, with several of his work current in production 

above are a couple of images of students at the degree show.

Along with individual students talking about their individual work, above Nadia Williams and Tara Washington talk about their start up company Tanra Studios. This is a project that both the ex students have been working on since the success of going to MCM at the end of their second year on the award. They had a similar idea about this corporation of people who are able to enter peoples dreams and sort out their problems.

Above - the area also had its own pop up comic stand where students work which was published went on sale.

Here is a range of work that was on sale and available during the week long the degree show.

The room was generally well full for the entire night as mother fathers and honoured guests mingled and studied a range of work on display