Filed under: Film and Sequential Art, Previous Thought Bubble Festivals, Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012, What is Sequential Art? | Tags: Better Things, Documentaries, Films About comics, Indiegogo, Jeffrey Catherine Jones
Hey gang!
Plans are continuing apace for this year’s Thought Bubble, and we’ll have a full update coming soon with regards to all manner of shenanigans we’ve got in the pipeline. For now, we’ve got a quick little post about a fundraising appeal (with some excellent rewards up for grabs) for a lovely documentary that we had the immense pleasure of screening during last year’s Thought Bubble festival.
Here’s what our fearless leader, Thought Bubble festival director, Lisa Wood had to say about the film:
Better Things is an extremely insightful look into both the life and work of Jeffrey Catherine Jones – one of the foremost fantasy artists of her generation, and sure to be a source of immense inspiration for generations to come.
Jones was one of the few artists to pave the way for a more painted abstract feel to comic books in the 70′s and 80′s, and as such her work deserves much wider recognition, and this film serves as a testament to that need. Her artwork would have been just at home in a classical art gallery as a comic book, with Frazetta describing her as “the world’s greatest living painter”, and seeing the pieces, and their sometimes turbulent inception, brought to life on screen is a delight.
The documentary also offers an invaluable look in to the lives and working environment of other similar artists and contemporaries of Jones who were working around that time such as Vaughn Bode, and the group known as ‘The Studio’, which included greats such as Michael Kaluta, Bernie Wrigtson, and Barry Winsor-Smith, all of whom would in some way drive and inspire the advances in comic art for years to come.
One of the best documentaries I have seen, on a much loved artist who will be sorely missed.
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The Indiegogo fundraising campaign for the film’s wider release is currently running, and full details can be found here. There’s some amazingly candid interviews with creators that were working in comics at the time, and have been influenced by her work since, and some great rewards (including an excellent art book with an amazing line-up of contributors), so well worth checking out.
We’d like to be able to show more films like this at Thought Bubble, and part of that is making sure the ones that do get made find their audience.
We’ll be back soon with the first round of updates for this year’s festival. EXCITE!
Filed under: Film and Sequential Art, Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012, What is Sequential Art? | Tags: 1000 Words, Comics, film, music, Sequential Art, Talks, television, video games, writing
Over the last couple of weeks, the extremely lovely Matt Sheret has been popping up videos from the ’1000 Words’ strand of talks that he curated (along with web-presence-phobic Thought Bubbler Mikey B) at this year’s Thought Bubble convention. After the jump there’s a summary of the event, and links to all the talks collected in one handy block, but first – a few thank you’s…
If any of you went to last year’s We Are Words + Pictures strand of talks on independent comic creation at Thought Bubble’s convention, then that was organised by Matt too, and this was coming off the back of his working as Thought Bubble 2011′s Writer in Residence, so to say that we owe Matt a debt of gratitude is a bit of an understatement. We’d highly recommend checking out his Paper Science anthology, and, if we can convince him and Mikey to put on 2000 Words: A Space Odyssey next year, then we’re sure we’ll be thanking him again in December 2013. Cheers Matt, you’re a Good Egg.
Another big thank you has to go to Anne Hollowday, whose films on Thought Bubble and the British Comic Awards had already put us eternally into the red on the karmic balance sheet, but her filming of the 1000 Words talks has cemented the Wookiee life-debt we now owe. Thanks Anne, may your lenses ever be clear.
Massive thank you’s as well to all the speakers, including Kate Brown, Andy Belanger, Kristyna Baczynski and Laura Snapes for delivering some excellent talks on the day, all those whose presentations are presented below, and our lovely technical crew. And a big final thank you to all those who came along and made up the audience, we hope you’ll be back for more next year!
That’s enough preamble, on with the shows!
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1000 Words was a series of short talks about comics & culture by those who make them curated by Matt Sheret and Mike Bennet, full information on the talks can be found by clicking here.
1000 Words 2012 video presentations:
Emma Vieceli - 50 Shades of Niche
a talk about the distinction between mainstream and niche, and about one very popular novel…
Anne Hollowday - Don’t Over Manage the Scene
a few lessons from the world of documentary filmmaking and tells us how it links to comics writing with the Marvel Method…
Si Spurrier - Day of the Dingle
some delicious brainfarts on the topic of Collaborating With Creative Humans, as filtered through a true story from Spurrier’s brief and traumatic career in TV.
Antony Johnston - And His Massive Ego
setting us straight about the terrific and powerful ego of artists and writers everywhere… or does he?
Hannah Donovan - Digital Craft
a talk about music, personal expression, and the pixels we pin to our bedroom walls.
Kieron Gillen - Decimation [2012's Keynote Talk]
As a writer, Kieron’s been dancing with comics for a decade now. He’s trying to decide if he’s learned anything. If he has, he’ll tell you about it. If not, this video will be extremely quiet…
Filed under: Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012 | Tags: 1000 Words, Comics, Emma Vieceli, Talks
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be posting footage from many of the speakers at 1000 Words, the day of talks that ran at this year’s festival.
First up, it’s Emma Vieceli, taking about the distinction between mainstream and niche, and about one very popular novel…
50 Shades of Niche by Emma Vieceli from Matthew Sheret on Vimeo.
Filed under: About Thought Bubble, Art by Guests, Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012
Hi Everyone, Matt Dyson here again.
As promised I’m back again wearing the hat of “Thought Bubble Director of Silly Fun” fresh from our first two workshop sessions at Bradford Central Library.
Over the course of Tuesday we had sessions with four school groups planned and what fantastic fun we had.
The children and I set about making our very own comics based around a short fairy tale style story where they set out on an adventure to save their pet who had gotten lost in the deep dark scary woods!
It wasn’t just the children that got involved either, we had teachers drawing along and naturally we made them stand up at the end so we could see just how much better the kids had done!
All in all it was a fantastic day. We have another session tomorrow at Shipley Library so if you’re booked in there I’ll see you soon, otherwise I hope to see you all in Leeds at the weekend!
Bye for now,
Matt
Filed under: About Thought Bubble, Art by Guests, Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012
Hey there everyone!
Matt Dyson here, I hope you’re all enjoying the festivities of the week so far and are looking forward to the convention at the weekend.
I don’t know about you but I’ve been getting so very excited about Thought Bubble. I got so excited in fact that tonight I managed to sneak my way into Thought Bubble Towers! I was walking the dusty halls when I noticed a beam of light coming down from the ceiling at the end of a long hall. I went to investigate and there, bathed in light on a risen platform, was the most beautiful of all hats! Written on it’s brim were the words “Director of Silly Fun”.
Naturally I put the hat on straight away.
My first act in my new role will to be to spread a little of that “Silly fun” around using the magic of AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION! Tomorrow morning we will be starting a series of three comics workshops at Bradford Central Library as part of the festival.
Children from local schools will get a chance to try their hand at making comics based on a short fairy tale where they are the hero! As part of my official hat based duties I shall come back and report on their progress later in the week with photos and some of their wonderful drawings of monsters!
So, if you’re one of the lucky locals who is coming along with your school then I’ll see you soon!
Matt
Director of Silly Fun (at least until they steal my hat back)
Last year’s Writer-in-residence Matthew Sheret is back at Thought Bubble this year with 1000 Words. 1000 Words is a mini-conference running on Saturday 17th, featuring comics, culture and all the bits in between. Here’s a quick preview…
Come and join us in the Alea Casino Cinema this Saturday for 1000 Words. The event will be a collection of short talks about comics & culture, by people who love both. Ten guests will be talking about the things that inspire them, whether that’s games, music, or moving pictures, each telling the world how their industry & their interests collide.
The first session runs between 11am and midday. First up is Emma Vieceli with 50 Shades of Niche, a talk about the impact you can have on culture when you stop saying your work is for a clique. She’s followed by filmmaker Anne Hollowday with Don’t over-manage the scene, a talk about the crossover between documentary filmmaking and the comics writing technique known as the Marvel Method.
Finally, Si Spurrier will be inflicting Day of The Dingle on the crowd, which he claims will include “Delicious brainfarts on the topic of Collaborating With Creative Humans” as filtered through a true story from Spurrier’s brief and traumatic career in TV.
The next session runs between 12.30 and 1.30. The first person stepping up in that collection will be Pitchfork‘s Associate Editor Laura Snapes. Fake Urgency is her talk, a run-down of what Record Store Day could learn from comic conventions. She’s followed by my fellow Artist-in-residence from Thought Bubble 2011 Kristyna Baczynski, whose talk Invisible Comics & Silent Songs promises to explore the similarities between comics and music.
That session will be wrapped up by Hannah Donovan, the designer of social music service This Is My Jam. She brings Digital Craft to Thought Bubble, a talk about music, personal expression and the pixels we pin to our bedroom walls.
The third session runs between 2 and 3pm, and is kicked off by Kate Brown‘s talk No Fate in which we chat about Kate’s happy place. Andy Belanger is up next, with a spot about videogames and illustration, following up the success of Toronto Comics Art Festival’s Comics vs Games jam. Antony Johnston‘s Massive Ego is the penultimate talk. His session description is a delight:
“Antony Johnston writes comics and games, wins awards, writes New York Times bestsellers, and is an all-round brilliant, perfect genius who never makes mistakes. Except when he does, because he’s actually a terrible, awful fraud who screws everything up and is just waiting to be found out. Well, not really. Yes, really! (Which is it? Find out, as Antony reveals the internal fight between ego and humility in every creator! Or maybe not!)”
Brilliant. Finally, at 3.15pm, we’ve got a half-hour keynote from Kieron Gillen. DECIMATION is Kieron’s take on ten years of comics writing. He’s trying to decide if he’s learned anything in all that time. If he has, he’ll tell you about it. If not, it’s going to be a very quiet half hour.
Ten people, ten talks, ten takes on culture, comics and lots more besides. See you there from 11am.
Filed under: About Thought Bubble, Art by Guests, Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012, What is Sequential Art?
Hello. My name’s Tom Humberstone. I’m a comic artist for the New Statesman, the creator of my own self-published comic Ellipsis, and the editor of the UK comic anthology Solipsistic Pop. But, more importantly, and more relevant to this blog, I’m also this year’s Thought Bubble Artist in Residence.
This year’s residency is a little different to last year. The idea is that I run four weekly workshop sessions at the Bradford Action for Refugee centre with children and adults of all ages. The aim of these workshops is to introduce the comic art-form to people who may not have been exposed to it before and encourage them to get involved, while sharing a few skills and techniques along the way. After the final session, I’ll be based in Leeds during the Thought Bubble festival week, compiling my thoughts on the sessions and on asylum seeking experiences, resulting in a comic which will be part of next year’s Thought Bubble anthology.
And so, with Thought Bubble project co-ordinator Martha, we headed to BAfR last week to meet Chris and the volunteers who ran the centre and who would be helping us meet and work with the families during these sessions.
We decided to build the first session as a relaxed, informal introductory drawing workshop. Something that gave everyone a chance to get to know me and what I do, while giving me the opportunity to meet everyone and get a feel for what people enjoyed drawing. It was an overwhelming experience with over twenty children (and their families) attending.
The session was planned with an informal structure in mind as we had no idea how many people or what age groups to expect. Without a specific lesson plan in place the workshop was chaotic and exhausting. But a hell of a lot of fun. Everyone’s drawings were superb and it was an exhilarating experience trying to keep up with the kids as they worked diligently away with whatever materials were within grabbing distance.
It was a success but we also came away aware that we needed a slightly tighter structure for the following week.
A little further forethought and planning – now knowing more about the people attending the workshops – worked a treat! Our second session introduced the comics angle in a more focused way. Younger kids who were less interested in drawing were given their own space in the centre to play with toys while the ones who wanted to draw remained on the desks provided. This allowed me to get in front of the class and teach a few comic basics up on the whiteboard. I started off with some simple tips and tricks for drawing faces, expressions and a little about economy of line. We later touched upon some of the visual language of comic art such as wavy lines to signify smells, or expressive dashes being used to denote speed.
In this new, slightly more controlled, although still informal, environment – we got to work creating comics in some specially prepared booklets with fixed panel layouts. This is the part of teaching comics that always blows me away. Kids don’t need you to tell them much at this point. They know instinctively what to do. The mixture of words and pictures is innately obvious to them. They may not know something is called a caption or speech balloon, but the concept is already lodged in their brain as a standard way to communicate a story. I don’t know whether this is because comics tap into some instinctual way in which we all want to tell stories, or if children are exposed to this medium from an early age, but it almost always surprises me how quickly kids take to the form.
The level of creativity and imagination the children displayed when drawing their comics was a delight. Some children took some paper away with them after the first session and came back with fully coloured, completed comics for me to read when they arrived and the things they did with panel layouts was wonderfully formalist. It made me slightly regret adding fixed panels to the booklets I’d brought with me but I think that having a bit of structure was the right choice as too many options can be off-putting to some of the kids and can be a bit intimidating.
We all came away from the second session with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for the next one. I’m looking forward to introducing the children to some new comic and storytelling ideas next week as I think they’ve already nailed these early introductory sessions.
I’m also starting to remember names, faces, and develop a rapport with the kids now which was, I’ll admit, something I was concerned about as most of my experience with teaching has been one-off workshops and lessons. Nothing which has involved working with the same people over the course of a few weeks. For someone who spends most of their time working in a studio on their own, it’s a remarkably rewarding experience.
One I’d recommend all artists do at some point. I’ll be checking back in with some more thoughts after our third and fourth sessions.
Thanks for reading and see you at Thought Bubble!
- Tom
Hey hey hey hey hey hey!
Hope you’re doing well, did you read Building Stories yet? You probably should. And the new Love and Rockets, apparently it’s a Gilberto heavy issue, but that’s not a bad thing, is it? Oh, and Prophet, how good is th-
WAIT. STOP. We do not have time for this, because we have some BIG NEWS.
The full programme for this year’s Thought Bubble Festival is now up to view on-line! It’s our biggest programme of events ever, with 80 separate bits of brilliance taking place over 8 days (11th – 18th November) at venues around Leeds and beyond! The events listing for this year’s convention (17th & 18th November) can also be viewed as a stand-alone programme right here, and tickets for that can be bought online here.
This year we have a number of great events taking place that have limited capacities, and require signing up before hand in order to secure a place, they’ll fill up fast, so book soon to avoid disappointment, and we’ve flagged them up below for your convenience:
Monday 12th November
Dr Sketchys Leeds presents Heroes vs Villains:
Travelling Man Lounge, 1st floor, 107 Kirkgate, Leeds, LS1 6DP, 7pm – 9.30pm, £5 entry, 18+
Prepare for some iconic super-villainous & herotastic antics with an evening of classic Dr Sketchy’s anti-art-school life-drawing action! Bring art equipment & sketch pads & prepare for a battle of good vs evil.
Burlesque & heaps of posing with the lovely burly girls:
Miss Jupiter AKA Daisy Cutter
Join Miss Jupiter as she cries, drinks wine & mourns the demise of herself.
Poison Ivy AKA Ivy Wilde
The tale of Dr. Pamela Lillian Isleys’ transformation into Gotham’s eco super-villain right before your very eyes! Find out how this sweet, shy wallflower becomes one of Gotham’s most notorious villains…
Please note: spaces are limited, so please e-mail martha@thoughtbubblefestival.com & book a place quickly to avoid disappointment!
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Tuesday 13th November
Zombie Knit:
Leeds Central Library Art Library Reading Room, 5-7pm, Families & young people, Free
Join Sarah from Wessenden Woollies, designer extraordinaire, & learn to knit & create your very own cute zombie in only 2 hours! Each participant can take home & keep their creations. All materials provided.
All are welcome, but the knitting session is recommended for 16+ individuals, however families are very welcome as there will be colouring-in sessions running at the same time to keep young children occupied.
Please note: spaces for this workshop are now fully booked!
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Wednesday 14th November
Cthulhu Crochet:
Leeds Central Library Art Library Reading Room, 5-7pm, Families & young People, Free
Join Sarah from Wessenden Woollies, designer extraordinaire, & learn to crochet & create your very own Cthulhu monster in only 2 hours! Each participant can take home & keep their creations. All materials provided.
All are welcome, but the knitting session is recommended for 16+ individuals, however families are very welcome as there will be colouring-in sessions running at the same time to keep young children occupied.
Please note: spaces are limited, so please e-mail martha@thoughtbubblefestival.com & book a place quickly to avoid disappointment!
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Thursday 15th November
Comics Forum 2012 – Day One
Leeds Central Library, Exhibition Space, from 9am – 4.45pm, limited entry (please see below for full details)
Comics Forum 2012 kicks off with a range of great talks on multiculturalism in comics by top speakers from around the world! Themes to be discussed include: negotiation, monstrosity, integration, functions of comics, challenging assumptions, reconfiguration, conflict & representation.
Tickets cost £10 (one day), £20 (two days) or £30 (four days (includes weekend Thought Bubble convention pass, saving £10)).
Please visit comicsforum.org for full details & to book tickets.
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Comics vs Games
Travelling Man Lounge, 1st floor, 107 Kirkgate, Leeds, LS1 6DP, from 5.30pm – 7.30pm, free entry, but space is limited, so please sign up beforehand, 18+
Following on from the hugely successful comics vs games project that ran as part of May’s Toronto International Film Festival Nexus, led by Miguel Sternberg from the Hand Eye Society, we’re pleased to welcome Andy Belanger – designer on the Black Church game & creator of the Black Church comic – to give a talk & demonstration of the five games created.
This will be followed by an informal play session & an exclusive chance to try the games out for yourself!
Please note: spaces are limited, so please e-mail martha@thoughtbubblefestival.com and book a place quickly to avoid disappointment!
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Drink and Draw
Travelling Man Lounge, 1st floor, 107 Kirkgate, Leeds, LS1 6DP, from 8pm ‘til late, £5 entry, strictly 18+
Join special guests Andy Belanger (Kill Shakespeare, Black Church) & Becky Cloonan (The Mire, Conan) for an informal evening of drinking & drawing.
Please note: tickets are very limited, so please e-mail martha@thoughtbubblefestival.com & book a place quickly to avoid disappointment!
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Friday 16th November
Comics Forum 2012 Day 2
Leeds Central Library, Exhibition Space, from 10am – 5pm, limited entry (please see below for full details)
Day 2 of Comics Forum 2012 features more fantastic talks from international academics on panels covering the themes of: justice, identity, 9/11, depiction, progress, nationality, situating experimentation & body image.
To top it all off, today’s keynote event is Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead) in conversation with Dr Hugo Frey (University of Chichester).
Tickets cost £10 (one day), £20 (two day) or £30 (four days (includes two days Thought Bubble convention pass, saving £10)).
Please visit comicsforum.org for full details & to book tickets.
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Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th November
Marvel Portfolio Critiques with Steve Wacker
Alea Downstairs Area, from 11am – 5pm, appointments must be made in advance, free but a convention pass must be purchased, 18+
This year we are pleased to announce that once again Marvel Comics will be holding a talent search at Thought Bubble!
Because of time constraints, the format for reviews will be as follows: your portfolio must be emailed in advance, then, if your portfolio is selected, you’ll be called back for a full review by senior Marvel editor Stephen Wacker.
Please submit your portfolio to tbportfolioreview@gmail.com by 11th November 2012
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Image Portfolio Reviews with Eric Stephenson
Alea Downstairs Area, from 2pm – 5pm, appointments must be made in advance, free but a convention pass must be purchased, 18+
This year we are delighted to announce that Image Comics will be holding a talent search at Thought Bubble!
Because of time constraints, the format for reviews will be as follows: your portfolio must be emailed in advance, if your portfolio is selected, you’ll be called back for a full review by Executive Director of Image Comics Eric Stephenson.
Please submit your portfolio to martha@thoughtbubblefestival.com by 11th November 2012
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Hope that all looks lovely to you lovely people, and we’ll see you in November! LOVELY!
Hey you guys!
This year’s Thought Bubble Festival is now a mere 86 days away, which is a trifling 7,439,400 seconds! Hurrah! It’ll just fly by. Because of this we’ve released a whole batch of information about upcoming events, and who’s going to be at TBF12, so much so that we reckon it requires a recap!
PREVIOUSLY ON 24, uh, THOUGHT BUBBLE…
Northern Sequential Art Competition 2012
The Northern Sequential Arts Competition is now open to all residents of the UK, with £200 worth of graphic novels up for grabs, and the chance to see your artwork printed in our next comic anthology to be won! All entries will also be displayed in a special exhibition at Leeds Library from 1st – 30th November 2012.
Deadline for entries is October 1st 2012, full competition information and entry guidelines can be found online at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/events/northern-sequential-art-competition/
2000 AD Portfolio Competition 2012
This year we’ve teamed up with the galaxy’s greatest comic, 2000 AD, to give one of you the chance to win paid work illustrating one of Tharg the Mighty’s Future Shocks! In order to enter, you’ll need to illustrate a sample script from 2000 AD and bring it along to the Thought Bubble convention on Saturday November 17th to be reviewed by the 2000 AD creatives in attendance.
Full details for the competition and the sample script can be found online at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/events/2000ad-portfolio-competition/
Thought Bubble Anthology 2012
The Image Comics solicits are out for this November’s new releases, which means details for our new charity anthology are now out in the open!
This year’s comic includes work from (deep breath), Warren Ellis, Richard Starkings, Gail Simone, Ivan Brandon, Skottie Young, Dave Johnson, Sean Phillips, Fiona Staples, Tony Harris, Barry Kitson, Boo Cook, Emma Vieceli, Leigh Gallagher, and many MANY more!
The anthology itself will be a big old A3 beast, printed on some lovely heavy paper, with 32 pages of original content, and will be in shops from 7TH NOVEMBER 2012. All profits from its sale will go to the Barnardos Charity.
More details can be found at http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=40468 (scroll down).
Thought Bubble Convention 2012 Updates
We’ve updated the exhibitors pages, so check out the wealth of talent that’ll be showing their wares at this year’s convention, with Saviles Hall exhibitors up at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/exhibitors/saviles-hall/ and Armouries Hall exhibitors up at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/exhibitors/royal-armouries-hall/ so much awesome!
We’ve also updated the guests pages, with over 70 top names confirmed as attending this year’s festival, and still more to announce as November creeps ever closer! Check out the lovely lot we’ve announced so far at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/guests/
Hotel rooms at this year’s official partner – Leeds Marriott – are filling up fast, so be sure to book soon if you want to be at the heart of all the bubbly action this November. Full details can be found on our website at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/information/hotels/
Tickets are on sale for this year’s convention, both online at http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/information/tickets/ and in Travelling Man comic shops across the North of England. The first 500 weekend passes pre-booked guarantee access to our most excellent after-party, and there’s still some of these available, so get yours quick!
That’s all for now, we’ll be back soon with this year’s full festival programme, EXCITEMENT!
Filed under: About Thought Bubble, Previous Thought Bubble Festivals, Programme 2012, Thought Bubble 2012
Hello! How are you? You look well. How about this weather, eh? Terrible, isn’t it. And the earth being taken over by brain eating slugs, how rubbish was that? Still, Olympics are coming, and that’ll be… a thing, I guess?
Ok, pleasantries over, let’s dive into the serious business of the day – Thought Bubble Festival 2012 updates!
There has been a lot happening recently, so I’ll try to sum it up as briefly as possible, we’ve all got internet homes to internet go to, after all! (It’s been a long couple of months. Sorry.)
HERE WE GO!!!
Tickets
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s Thought Bubble convention, you can get them online, at Leeds City Centre Box Office, or at Travelling Man stores in the North of England. The first 500 weekend passes ordered confer guaranteed entry to our very fun mid-con party (details coming soon!), and when all these have gone we’ll put up an announcement on all our social media gubbins (gubbi?).
Please note – pre-ordered tickets will not be posted out, just collect them at the hall on the day, and if you want to take advantage of cosplay discounts, etc, then please buy them on the door. We don’t have a cap on ticket sales, so come one, come all, and help us celebrate the best dang ol’ creative medium in the world!
Full details of how to get them can be found here.
Hotel
This year’s official hotel is the Leeds Marriott, we worked with them last year, and they were a delight, so we’re super pleased to be able to base all our sleeping, eating, and drinking needs there again this year. They’ve helpfully made available a special rate for Thought Bubble attendees, but please be aware that rooms are filling up fast so please act quickly if to avoid disappointment.
Full details of how to book a room can be found here.
Guests
You’ve seen our guest list, right? We figured that you guys all love comics, so we’d better bring you the best in the biz, we don’t really have a guest of honour this year because the list is so big and varied, but we hope there’s someone for everyone on there. We’ve also got our biggest exhibitor list EVER this year, and Saviles Hall and Royal Armouries Hall are going to be chock full of awesome wares to peruse.
Full list of this year’s guests can be found here, and details of exhibitors here.
British Comic Awards
We’ll be releasing details of this year’s festival programme over the next couple of months, and we’ve got a whole bunch of secret projects to announce that we hope will make this year’s festival the best yet, and on that note – the first was revealed at the beginning of this month. The British Comic Awards are a project we’ve been working on for the last year, conceived and founded by Adam Cadwell, the BCAs seek to highlight and acknowledge the best that Brit comics have to offer, and give them the attention they deserve. The inaugural BCA awards presentation ceremony will take place at this year’s Thought Bubble on November 17th.
Full details of the awards and how to get involved can be found here.
Comics Forum
Always the most interesting aspect of Thought Bubble – the Comics Forum academic conference is taking place over two days on November 15th and 16th this year, and is focused on the subject of multi-culturalism. The call for papers is still open, but closes on July 18th, so make sure to get your proposal in before then to be in with a chance to take part.
Full details of this year’s Comics Forum can be found here.
Anthology
This year’s anthology looks set to be a corker, it’s going to be bigger than last year’s, with more creators contributing, and by the looks of the pages we’re getting in – it’s going to look bloomin’ gorgeous. As with last year it’ll be published by our friends at Image Comics, and all profits from the sales will go to the Barnardos Charity.
Details of last year’s anthology can be found here.
Northern Sequential Art Competition
Related to the anthology – this year’s Northern Sequential Art Competition will be launching this month, will some fabulous prizes on offer, one of which will see the winning entrant having their work published in 2013’s anthology. We get some amazing entries every year, and we can’t wait to see what you guys come up with this time around.
Full details of previous NSACs can be found here.
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PHEW! That’s not even the start of what we have planned for this year, so keep an eye on the blog as we’ll have more updates for you soon!
128 days to go! YAY!
