Cat Comix

Recently I’ve been experimenting with an idea for the book I’m working on for my MA.

The idea, in its current state, is a story revolving around a round a group of friends (who happen to be animals) exploring they’re local punk scene together. Maybe they form a band? I dunno. Either the way the book will heavily feature the crossover between punk and queer culture and sitting outside of societal norms.

Visually I’m playing around with a collage look, using photos printed on drafting film layered on top of one another. Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on a comic to decide how viable that is for a long form project.

Could I just replicate that effect on photoshop? Of course. But that’s not nearly as fun and I want to be more hands on with this project rather than it being solely screen based.

Super Spectacle

More experiemental work.

This is my final uni project; I wanted to make a sort of graphic guide to Guy Debord’s 1967 book “Society of the Spectacle”, taking critical parts from his writing and contextualising it for a contemporary audience. Above are some of the pages from the book. At this point, it’s “done”, but it is something I’d like to return to later in the year.

Sometimes it’s good to break away from the norm, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do as much as possible this year with my work.

Fox

I’ve been working on some pieces under a different guise for a project based around a single character (and some yet to be designed supporting characters)

These paintings, illustrations etc can be found on Instagram over at @anaseed_art

Don’t Look

I finally got the opportunity to make something with a Riso printer!

A small edition of 3 zines with a combination of original artwork, detournement, and passages from some radical books.

Again, this was another uni project. But it allowed me to get to grips with Riso printing and I’m eager to do it again in the future.

The Forest

Animation is something I always dabble in but never quite take the plunge to take it any further than that. For uni in the autumn of 2021, we were asked to produce a moving image piece, so naturally, I decided to go for animation.

I had this very vivid image early on of the sort of vibe I wanted to go for, inspired by the likes of The Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer. I haven’t worked with stop motion animation for a long time and this is the first time I’ve ever used a solid model with an armature with Sculpey built around it (as opposed to using just plasticine or bits of junk). Had I had more time to work on this, and perhaps a slightly better armature, I’d like to have made the animation a lot smoother with more frames. Either way, this has been a good springboard for future projects.

This is also the first piece that I’ve produced music for too.

Between the Panels

At the end of last year, I had a little chat with fellow comics person Jack Hugh Baker.

I wanted to experiment with how to layout an interview transcript as a comic so I formatted it as if we were on a podcast.

This is also the first time I’ve tried to emulate classic comic style colouring using CMYK halftones, I enjoyed the limited colour palette, I think it’ll be something I try again in the future. Maybe in a more analogue form like risograph.

You can find Jack Hugh Baker on IG over @jackhughbaker and more on his comic Sport Hero over at sportherocomic.com