Newport Comic Workshops

Last week, on February 20th and 21st, we had the pleasure of visiting Newport, Gwent in Wales where we delivered two full day comic workshops to KS2 pupils: all boys.

We first travelled down on the Sunday, ready for an early Monday morning start at the Millbrook Resource Centre. This would be everyone's first day back at school after mid-term.The events were fantastically well organised by our host, Adelaide Richards, who worked with twelve different local schools: four pupils and a teacher from each attended the events in a very inspiring workroom.


Both days were packed with activity and the boys learned how to create their own comic worlds, from character design to story ideas, from planning stage to final realisation.


Everyone had loads of fun and the participants came up with some brilliant characters and really great ideas. The kids' enthusiasm was contagious and created a magical atmosphere.



We flew back to Glasgow on the Tuesday evening, exhausted and thoroughly exhilarated!

Thanks to everyone at the Millbrook Resource Centre for making us feel so very welcome, for helping with the smooth running of the days, and for organising the great food for all of us (some kids even had two or more second helpings!).

Special thanks to Adelaide and Suzanne and little Morly too!




We took loads more pictures, so to see more photos, comments, and pupils' work, please visit our photo album here.



Oh! and last but not least, we can't resist showing you this picture taken at lunch break: eating desert and reading comics, if only school could be like that every day!

Comic Exhibition at Scotland House in Brussels

Scottish Comics, the Environment and Creativity

We are delighted to announce our involvement in an exciting exhibition of Scottish Comics at Scotland House in Brussels.

On November 30th an exhibition of 24 graphic prints, curated by the University of Dundee’s Dr Chris Murray and produced by Dundee Contemporary Arts, opened at Scotland House, the Scottish Government’s EU office in Brussels.

Launched by Scottish Sports Minister Shona Robison as part of Scotland House’s St Andrew’s Day celebrations the exhibition, entitled G’ie me a spark o’ nature’s fire, draws on Dundee’s historic association with comics and features newly commissioned prints by well-established and emerging graphic artists from across Scotland.

Selected participants were asked to produce concepts or finished short stories reflecting themes of Energy and Climate Change, The Marine Environment, Research and Creativity, Freedom, Justice and Security, and also encouraged to give an insight into the creative process.

Here is the short (four page) story we came up with, based on the theme of climate change and ecology. And, with Belgium being the home of Hergé, we couldn't resist paying hommage to one of our favourite comic characters: Tintin.

To illustrate the creative process, we also produced a short video, showing the thinking and process behind the various stages of making the comic.






View full press release here

Live at Leeds

Last week saw us visit Leeds for Thought Bubble 2011 and the Leeds Graphic Novel Awards.

We were thrilled to learn that Louis - Night Salad was one of the books shorlisted for the award (and delighted with the diamond shaped prize we received).


On the afternoon of Friday the 18th, children from several schools in Leeds gathered for the ceremony, an afternoon away from school which they really enjoyed!

We gave a short talk about working on Louis - Night Salad, along with presentations from the fabulous Sarah McIntyre and the equally fabulous Etherington Brothers, who were also on the shorlist.

It was great hanging out after the talk with our fellow contestants and with everyone involved from the school libraries and Leeds Central Library, and also last year's winner Dave Shelton who handed the prize to Sarah! Books and posters and postcards were signed by all of us, photographs were taken, muffins were eaten. Many thanks to Debbie Moody of Leeds Central Library for inviting us to talk and for organising this wonderful event.


That evening saw us attending the busy opening party of the Thought Bubble Festival at the Marriott. We had a fantastic time at the convention, and our stall was even kitted out with an additional drop-in colour-in workshop table.


Kids and adults came and had fun or just chilled out colouring Louis in!


And even some zombies couldn't resist!

Louis - Red Letter Day out now!

Today we are very excited to see the release of Louis - Red Letter Day.

It looks AMAZING! Totally redrawn and repainted.


Some of you may remember the original comic: a multiple Eisner Award nominee (for Best Graphic Album New and Best Title for a Youger Audience), and Ignatz Award nominee for Promising New Talent, back in 2000.

Click to enlarge and spot the difference!


We still love Louis - Red Letter Day, and wanted to make it available again in this new hardback edition. And, we've even added a bonus "making of" section, revealing some of the secrets of how we create the Louis stories!

Buy Louis - Red Letter Day

Skint! Artwork

We had a fantastic time launching Skint! last month at the International Adult Literacies Conference in Stirling. Members of the Scottish Youth Theatre re-enacted a small part from the book/play, with our artwork as a backdrop, and it was amazing. The actress playing Carly actually looked like Carly in the book (strange to see as the drawings were created long before).

As part of the launch we gave a short speech, along with Gowan Calder who wrote the script, talking about how the project was put together. It started with Sandra sketching out a few characters while Gowan was busy thinking about the script. Here are some of them:


In the book, the character gallery ended up like this (again, selected characters here only):


Because of the unusual nature of the project we decided to proceed slowly at first, with Gowan producing a couple of very rough pages of script, just to get a feel for what the images would bring, and thus know what she could leave out in the script, in terms of direction, character and location description and so forth; as well as allowing everyone to grasp the interaction between characters and between the text and image pages.

Then Gowan worked towards a final draft from which rough layout pages were created. These had to be approved before any final artwork could be started. This stage was actually quite straightforward and we completed the layout for the entire book over a period of four weeks. Skint! is quite an unusual and experimental book in many ways, as the script is on one page and the artwork is on the facing page, much like in a traditional illustrated book. It is designed mainly to be read in a group for role playing: although it works well too for individual reading. We produced the graphic novel pages so that they enhance the reading of the script and set the scenes, as well as developing the characters.


The final pages were pencilled and then directly coloured on computer (after a clean up of the pencils in Photoshop). For the Louis graphic novels, Sandra had been painting by hand with acrylic inks and then inking by hand over the colouring, so this was a nice change.



One of the finished panel images, one of our favourites, from Jamie's story:

Louis - Red Letter Day

Louis - Red Letter Day has now gone into production. We received the ozalids this week and all has been approved. Looking forward to seeing the finished book!

Official release date is 10th of November 2011!

And we're delighted to announce that we have been successful in securing investment from Creative Scotland for the publication.

Preorder the book on amazon now



Louis - Red Letter Day will be launched at Thought Bubble festival in Leeds on November 19 where we'll be signing copies!

We're also delighted to attending the ceremony for the Leeds Graphic Novel Awards on November 18, as Louis - Night Salad is on the shortlist.

For bookshops and libraries: Louis - Red Letter Day can be ordered through Turnaround Publisher Services, wholesalers and library suppliers (Gardners, Bertrams...)

For comic shops: the graphic novel can still be ordered from Diamond Previews, page 308, item code SEP111173.



Promotional material for shops, schools and libraries is available on request.

1001 Comics...

Paul Gravett's excellent new book is out now. We are pleased to say that 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die features Louis!

Guernsey Book Week 2011

We'd been looking forward to our trip to Guernsey for Book Week 2011 ever since the Guille Allès library invited us, and we weren't disappointed!

Leaving Glasgow in the rain, in a small plane, we soon found ourselves landing in sunny Southampton. From there it was another short flight to Guernsey where we met our hosts and representatives from their Book Week sponsor Ardel.


And, we had the pleasure of meeting our fellow authors Chris Wormell and Sonia Leong, who were also touring the schools.


Our schedule was intense: starting early on Monday morning we visited 14 different primary schools and delivered 15 illustrated talks/workshops over a period of 5 days. In all we must have spoken to over 1500 children from KS2 and had an absolutely brilliant time!







We received an incredible amount of feedback and were extremely impressed by the drawings that the pupils produced.



On the Thursday evening we gave a public talk (along with Chris and Sonia), and then presented copies of Louis - Night Salad to the winners of the KS2 competition. (We'd asked them to "Draw the Creepiest Character".) The KS1s got to enter a colouring competition and were rewarded with copies of Chris' book.



Special thanks to Jane Falla and Sarah Nicholls, and also to Elizabeth, Ellie and Rachel who drove us each day and supported our work in every school. Guernsey has 300miles of road, and resembles a maze. Without their expertise and kind assistance we wouldn't have been able to see this wonderful island.


We even got the chance to dip our toes in the sea - a welcome refreshment!


You can see more photos on our picasa web album here.