And we're off!

Year 7 of Cartoon and Comic Arts 

Well what can I say... A bit later than planned I'm back writing my blog for the new incumbent students on Cartoon and Comic Arts. This year we recruited 30 students onto the award and in turn we became on of the biggest art and design courses at Staffordshire University.

Its been a bit of a mad summer, as we changed from faculty to schools and a lot of the management team and admin staff were redeployed, and basically we were left to drift.

Anyway, for some good news, we received 100%  in the NSS  (National Student Survey) for the course. I think over the years with us moving from new room/building/site to site 2 years of building work and having to use the back entrance etc It wasn't hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel coming once, we had settled in one location and the building works had stopped. 

So it's up to us to keep the momentum going, easier said then done, but here goes ....

Pub Quiz.  

Once again big Thanks to the Team at the Glebe who made us feel welcome. and we had a brilliant pub quiz. 

It was nice to see some 2nd years turn up and make the 1st years feel welcome, though we do feel that there was a bit of cheating going on somewhere doing the pub quiz. 

  We really must apologies to the 1st Year for the standard of the prizes they won. But well done for making it through the first week of Cartoon and Comic Arts 

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.

The 3rd Years go Professional 

The new 3rd year started with a bang and off the back of the successful 5th Stoke Con Trent event  we invited a range of visiting artist to come in and talk to the students about life in the comic industry. First out of the blocks were AccentUk publishing House. 

 both Colin Mathieson (Co founder of the Publishing collective) and Gary Cruthley (Comic Artist and co writer on WESTERNoir) gave up their precious time to come and talk about life working in the market place.


This year also saw Alan Batson (Managing Director of Character Building UK Ltd) come and talk all things from Star Wars to art composition and direction to the students

This slightly departed from what our guest lecturers usually talk about 

Dan Painter Storyboard artist also made an appearance helping to students to realise the other potential areas of the industry that they might want to venture into. 

And as ever we welcomed our very own Fig Taylor from the Association of Illustrators to talk to students about working freelance and getting themselves an agent to work with .

Fig also does excellent portfolio reviews where the student can talk to her about their portfolio and if they need any help in what they have in their or any top tips.

Stoke Con Trent - Also had in Frazer Irving who hasn't been on the Comic Convention scene for a few years, but was ready to step out again. We were very lucky that he decided to do Stoke Con Trent and also to grace us with his brilliant presence.

Frazer also has developed his digital drawing skills and was willing to show this off to students.

During the first week we also tried to run a mentoring scheme where 3rd years and 1st Years came together to help in a pub quiz.

As part of the mentoring scheme there was a trip to the Monkey forest which provided the opportunity for the students to study and draw real life action. If forced them to look and observe the  creatures and the environment.

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