A'llo to the internet. Abe here, with his wee comic about his time in Belgium. may have strayed in the tiniest fashion from reportage/travel comic... but these things do happen...  rest assured, my experience of the Belgium comics scene left me filled with excitment et al... those guys really appreciate the medium. Ho humm.

A short comic about my experience in Brussels!! Every girl needs a positive role model~!  

(Please click to enlarge!)

Some of the interns were lucky enough to attend Karrie's fun-filled book launch last night! Photos will be uploaded soon! In the meantime, you can order your copy through Amazon, though it'll be quicker to visit your local comic book store! 

Also, please check out her exciting interactive website she made with Jonathan Plackett!

Watch the animation promo created with the help of the talented Adam Zygadlo.

- Susan.

Brussels: PART 4 - Comics!

Time for the last part of our Brussels report: RESPONSE COMICS!

We decided to create comics based on what we experienced and how we felt after the trip. Keep checking back here to see more comics from us, the first of which comes from Jade.

Click to enlarge!

And here is my little comic offering :

-Merlin Evans-

Brussels: PART 3

Welcome to the penultimate report on our Brussels trip! In Part 3 we'll be telling you all about our last day in Belgium before we travelled home late Monday evening.

Once again it was an early start because we had a lot of walking to do on Monday. We went on a comic walk, you see! For half the day we went on a journey around the capital looking for something amazing: COMICS MURALS. It was amazing. AMAZING. I'm sorry I'll stop saying the word amazing. BUT IT WAS.

We had yet another helpful guide, Roxanne, to show us where all the murals were hidden throughout the city.

Aren't they AMAZI--

It was so inspiring seeing a country so dedicated to their comics as part of their culture. Just LOOK at how huge and how many murals there are. Wonderful to see. Our photos really don't do them justice, they were awesome.

Phew, we needed a sit down afterwards though. We quickly ate lunch, and hurried off to the nearest comic shop, which happened to be "Brusels" (spelt with an umlaut). All of us took the opportunity to pick up some beautiful comic collections in this amazingly diverse shop, which even had comics in our native tongue, hurray for being able to read them AND look at the gorgeous artwork.
We spent a little TOO long in there however, and had to rush off - we were due to be at the Sint Lukas art academy that afternoon! RUN RUN RUN! Past the strip joints, up the ridiculously steep hill, across the busy roads - ah, here we are. Sint Lukas, where our very own Karrie Fransman was giving a lecture~

Then she sprung a surprise on us: We had to present our work too! EEP. However the students were really friendly and we all got up to show our comics and individual styles. They seemed really interested, which was great, and we got to chat to a lot of them in the break. Once again they were surprised that the attitude towards comics in Britain is so different to that of their own. Iiinteresting.

Following telling them all a bit about ourselves, we got them to take part in our never ending comic activity which we'd brought with us, and you'll be able to see the collected drawings in our exhibition in March.

And that was that. TIME TO RUN FOR A TRAIN AGAIN PFFFT.

Yep, we hopped on a train back to the centre of the city, then made our way home on the Eurostar. 

"Goodbye Brussels, it was fun attempting to speak French with you."

We learnt a whole lot on this trip, and are so grateful we had the opportunity to go. Thanks go to John Lyon's Charity and the londonprintstudio, Nadia for travelling with us, and Shamisa for organising the whole trip.

Look forward to the last part of our report, in which we shall bring you some of our own comics (as we know of no better way to express our feelings post-trip). We hope you've enjoyed these reports!

Brussels: PART 2

It's time for the next exciting episode of Comic Interns in Brussels!

Today's post will detail our exciting adventures on Day 2 of our trip to Belgium (which was a delightfully FREEZING Sunday).

 

After our first night at the hostel we woke early to make our way to the Comic Museum. On the way were plenty of beautiful structures, walkways and chocolate and book shops, which we gawked at longingly. Oddly for a weekday though they were all closed in the morning - Shamisa informed us that the Belgians are certainly not early risers!

 

And then we arrived at the stunning Comic Museum! It was a gorgeous art deco style building, with lots of scale/lifesize models of characters and vehicles from famous comics. If you squint you can just make out Asterix in the lobby, and a certain space rocket. And Tintin here was joined by Haddock and Calculus on either side. They were fantastic displays of the country's love for these comics.

We were led around the museum by the wonderfully enthusiastic Bart Hofman. He was a great guide to us, and explained a lot about Belgian comics history. The museum itself was very extensive, with detailed exhibits on Tintin, Lucky Luke, Marsipilami, and many other serialised comics. Most informative - we didn't want to leave!

Alas, our time in Brussels was only short and so we made our way toward (yep, you guessed it) the train station - but fear not, we went somewhere even MORE exciting than the comic museum.

IMPOSSIBLE I hear you cry. Tis not.

You see, we spent the rest of the day in ...

THE HERGE MUSEUM.

It was brilliant. The architecture of the building was so quirky, and there was so much to see. Truly an inspiring part of our trip, the museum featured extensive displays of Herge's work on the Tintin comics, as well as his other illustration work. We were privileged to see behind the scenes test prints, sketches, scribblings, designs and even lifesize models of memorable objects from the comics, such as the shark submarine featured in the Red Rackham's Treasure story. It was amazing to see all that Herge had accomplished in his life in this one building.

Unfoooortunately, we could only take pictures in the lobby... so we quickly snapped these and then bought lots and lots of lovely Tintin merch in the gift shop. Can't recommend visiting this museum enough.

Once again, we didn't really want to leave, but we had dinner reservations so back on the train we hopped. Back in Brussels, we had a lovely meal in a Moroccan restaurant with Shamisa's friendly mother and brother, who were so nice and told us a lot about what the average person thinks of comics in Belgium. They were genuinely surprised that the British perspective on comics was so different to their own. It was a lovely evening, and was a great end to a great day.

We hope you're enjoying reading about our time in Belgium - look forward to Part 3, in which we'll tell you all about the comics murals and Sint Lukas academy, and how we felt on our last day of the trip.

Meet Al Davison.

(Please click to enlarge.)

Meeting the admirable, Al Davison in londonprintstudio was an eye opening experience! Not only a knowledgable and a passionate comics artist, he also is crammed packed with touching personal stories. His client list includes, DC/Vertigo comics, Dark Horse Entertainment and Penguin Books.

To read more about his life experiences and see his drawings of the unconscious, please support his project, "The Alchemist's Easel".

To summarise here are a few tips he taught us:

6 Elements to a plot: (This comic follows the plot format)

1] Introduce the character

2] Introduce the location

3] Reveal the character in the location

4] Conflict or Question

5] Explore the conflict/question

6] Resolve! 

► People read BLACK faster than white. 

► Larger images/open frames are slower to read, they can act as a full stop. 

► Remember GUTTERS! The larger the gutter, the more time has passed. The thinner the gutter, the less time has passed.

► Due to the book format of reading right to left, splash pages should be on the left for impact.

(As it increases the suspense as the reader turns the page).

► Use speech bubbles to guide the reader through the flow of the page. If there are two characters speaking in a frame, the character positioned on the left should speak first.

- Susan. 

(Happy holidays! ♥) 

Brussels: PART 1

Okay, here's how we see it: we're going to break down our visit to Brussels into four parts, so that we can tell you all how much fun we had and how much we learnt in digestible chunks; Part 1 will cover Saturday, Part 2 will cover Sunday, Part 3 will cover Monday (these will all be photo posts) and Part 4 will present some entertaining blog comics from each of us. Y'got all that? Good! Let's get started with
Part 1: SATURDAY.

So after a very early start for most of us, we arrived in Brussels via the Eurostar. It was a fun journey, a lot of us had never been through the tunnel before. It was so cold when we got there! SHIVER SHIVER.

We quickly nipped to the hostel to drop off our bags and then our first day in Brussels actually began.

Simply walking through the capital we were amazed at the Grand Place and all of the wonderful architecture. It is a beautiful city, don't let Abe's strip fool you, it's not all dodgy red light districts!

 

The city was so well decorated for the festive period, especially at night (which you will see in Part 2).
Around midday we sampled Belgian waffles! THEY WERE SO TASTYYY. But the trip was not, of course, just about the delicious food (we'll come to the chocolates eventually) - in the background of us chewing away, you can see...

                                                                     Yup, it's Tintin!
This was one of many comics walls (yes, you read that correctly!) around the city, and we'll show you them all in Part 3.

 

So we now come to the main event of Saturday: Heading for Strip Turnhout. Antwerp Station stunned us with its multiple levels of trains and lovely architecture. This was also the first of many trains over the course of the weekend that we ran for; we seemed to do a lot of running!



















We got to Strip Turnhout for the afternoon, and got to hear some really interesting talks about the international creation of comics and how the comics scenes differ around the world, featuring speakers such as Paul Gravett and Rashid Alik. While we promoted our collective at one of the sales tables, we also got to see the comics exhibition about the Keikeboes comic strips; and a British exhibition featuring our very own Karrie Fransman, last years intern Rachel Emily Taylor, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and others. All of their comics were really interesting in terms of breaking and reconstructing the rules of comics.
After the event was a live music and interview event on stage, which featured Posy Simmonds. It was lovely to hear a little bit about how she feels about her work.

The event was over quickly as we had arrived quite late in the day, but we all really enjoyed it. We got to meet so many other great people from the comics community including Kevin O'Neill, Woodrow Pheonix, Peter Stanbury, and many many more, during the after event dinner.

Alas, that was Saturday over! After drinking some crazy strong hot chocolates and waving goodbye to Turnhout, We ran for yet another train, almost missed it, and then made our way back to Brussels to get some needed rest for our next jam-packed day in the city. In Part 2 we'll cover what happened on Sunday, including the Belgian Comics Museum and the Herge Museum! LE GASP!
In the meantime, here's us looking longingly at some comics in one of the many bookshops we passed over the weekend:

Look forward to Part 2 of our Brussels report!
-Jade