Sunday, May 15, 2011

AWRF 2011 - GRAPHIC NOVELS, COMICS & CARTOONS

On stage we had the brains trust of the NZ graphic novel/comic creating business.
The collective genius was enormous and what a simply wonderful, stunning hour of entertainment they presented. I wanted more, much more.
This was true panel discussion at it's very best, one of the best I have ever attended at a literary festival, anywhere. Rivetting, lively entertainment with the outstanding chair, Adrian Kinnaird, to whom much credit for the success of the session must go, leading off followed by Ant Sang, Chris Slane, Dylan Horrocks and Karen Healy, (the self-named honorary prose writer on the panel, but also a co-founder of feminist comics website Girl-Wonder.org).

As they spoke the screen showed the images they were talking about, it was a well planned and created slide show, most effective. I loved it.

The panel began by talking about their first exposure to comics -
Tintin, Asterix, Footrot Flats, Mad, Buster, Spiderman, Batman, Donald Duck, Peanuts, Daffy Duck, War Comics and Winnie the Pooh were among those talked about fondly, and all illustrated on screen.

The each of them talked about their various publications which I found absolutely fascinating - the writing process, (similar to screen writing), initial sketches, thumb nails, pencil-ink-photoshop and much more.


I was so impressed by the immense knowledge and ability on that stage.
I also observed Chris Slane quitely sketching Dylan Horrocks at one stage!

1 comment:

Adrian Kinnaird said...

Thanks for the great review, much appreciated!
And if you could post your photos of the panel, I'd be very greatful.

Cheers,
Adrian