Thought Bubble: Richard Starkings

Richard Starkings is the incredibly imaginative and talented creator and illustrator of Elephantmen. His use of anthropomorphism is fantastic and I particularly like the comics cinematic atmosphere (it has just been signed on for a movie deal.)

When looking at our work he said that he thinks our art was great should work on panels and pages. He said pin up pieces and concept art is far easier than telling a sequential story, and that should be our focus now. He liked the comic vibe, and thought the style worked. He also said (which I thought was great advise) "you can't listen to everyone's critique, because its opinion and we may all say different things contradicting one another. what you should do is take the all round vibe and go with it. Talent, precision and perfection in drawing isn't always necessary, as long as readers can see the love and devotion put into the work." He also said that in comics you needn't work on stories 3 point arcs like films as they are different media, and what works in one may not work in the other. When writing a story you should throw all your ideas in, toss them on their heads and not worry about critiques too much.

He also said that the style was good, but he did say "that's a lot of brown, comic's like Jack Kirby's art is full of colour and brightness, and by your colour range it seems this story is more gritty." It is, far more than the golden age of comics and marvel. Looking at the colours in his work displays that this scheme is one to visually help tell the story and set atmosphere (something Starkings does very well.) As he said "readers should be able to tell the story through the images, which is why you should consider the art and page layout over the script."

This feedback was fantastic, everything everybody was very flattering and pleasing, and seemed that what we should now focus on is developing the pages and working on that element of the comic, essentially to move on to the next stage of our project, and consider offering more pieces of story and what the comic will actually look like the next time we look for feedback on this project.