THING 2010

For all prospectful graphic novelists! This is for you! I attended THING 2010 yesterday, which is the uk's web and independent comics fair! If any of you need to have a good sense of the reality of being an independent graphic novelist this was a good insight into how much it takes to make it and how much competition is out there! But regardless of scaring you these events are really good for also getting yourself seen and heard and recommend anyone serious about being a graphic novelist to try and attend at least one or two with the uni whilst still a student! Things which I noticed that I think help at these events is production. Too many people are happy to churn out work on standard printing paper with no real appeal of craft, now I know it's more about the comics and this isn't artist book, but seriously if you make anything for these fairs give it some thought to how you can make your work sophisticated. Chiu's and my own work got alot of attention solely based on the use of using recycled paper to print on, obviously if you were doing big print runs this might not be practical, but for these fairs and making your work stand out I seriously recommend it! Plus if you handle it right it's a good way to make a nice bit of extra cash! Feel free to ask me more if you're interested as happy to tell more, but thought it would be a good thing to highlight for you guys to get involved in, especially as I sold about 6 ink soups, which if you're involved in again means you're getting yourself out there!

Cheers!

Murray


Here's a link to a bunch of pictures from the fair to give you an idea of what it looked like! Unfortunately from this album the picture taken of us missed out the table and was us generally looking like idiots- (sigh) BUT it gives otherwise a very good idea of what the event was like!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/keozen/sets/72157623726321686/