Traveling man Panel - 'Breaking into Comics'

By the end of last year, me and my brother had decided to focus in comics, and specifically on creating our original story about anthropomorphic animals. So when I heard of Travelling man's panel called 'breaking into comics' with Richard Starkings, Peter Dohety, Tula Lotay and Tim Perkins, which was held in Leeds on Saturday the 13th of September at 4pm, I was very excited.

Each artist firstly talked about how they got into comics, starting with Peter Dohety, (far left) who famously worked on 2000AD. He got into comics as when showing a potential employer his portfolio, John Wagner, creator of Judge Dredd, happened to walk passed and see his work. And he liked it. He was then hired to illustrated Wagner's new (at the time) comic, 'Young Death.'

Tula Lotay (Supreme blue rose) started using Instagram for which she started receiving huge amounts of positive feedback from her work, which she found very helpful as it was an intimidate response from strangers and not family and friends, (who sometimes could be saying such compliments to be nice. Someone then saw this work and asked her if they could send it on to the head of Vertigo comics.

Tim Perkins (far right, who has worked at Marvel, DC, 2000AD, and is currently working on 'Worlds End') got into the industry by applying for a place to put is work in the series The Mighty World of Marvel, which was a non paid job but got your name out. Artist Barry Kitson then contacted Perkins and said that he had a tight deadline and if he could help. So he stayed at Kitson's house for the weekend and helped finish his comic. His name then became known by artist and editors.

Richard Starkings broke into the industry by starting with lettering. He realised that (in this time) buying sheets of special paper called bristol board, which were expensive and had to be bought per page. So he started selling fonts, so this extra cost was unnecessary.

TIPS.


Throughout this panel these four artist gave the audience tips on how to get into the industry and what its like working in comics.

• Tim Perkins said "You are instrumental for you breaking into comics. There are loads of artists working in the industry who live in the North of England, including Duncan Fredrigo, Peter Dohety, Richard Starkings, John Smith, Brain Talbot, Lee Gallagher and more so don't be worried about where you live.

•  Both Peter Doherty and Tula Lotay agreed that knowing people in the industry and getting your face known is half the work. When people know you a re friendly, trustworthy and reliable, you are more likely to get work.

• Richard Starkings commented on showing your portfolio to editors. "Be new and original. Don't compare yourself to hundreds of other people drawing Spiderman or Batman, because they could be better. But if you have created something new it is seen with enthusiastic and fresh eyes."

• Tula Lotay talked about the importance of working with or in close proximity to other artists, becuase you can bounce ideas off each other and feed off each others enthusiasm. 

•  You can be two to get a job: Fast. Good. Easy to work with. Often artist who work fast produce worse work, but the fact it gets out quickly balances the pro's and cons of this.

Lastly we got to ask the panel questions. One audience member asked about the pros and cons of self publishing. Which can be bot good and bad. It is alot of time, effort, and very costly. Tim Perkins recently went into self publishing for his new series 'Worlds end' and said its a five figure sort of price. But in the modern age web series and digital publishing can get your work seen by a wide audience, but not in a traditional book.

I asked the panel "If you wanted to pitch a new original series your working on to a publisher, which publisher is best and why?" Tula Lotay said she thought Image comics would be best, as they have been for her. This seemed to be the all round strong opinion. Richard Starkings said "Image isn't like a publisher, its like a bank. They give you the money to produce your story, and when it sells the get it back with extra."

They also don't own your property, you still own all the rights to your work and creations. But this does mean everything is down to you. Art, Lettering, Logo, Script, everything." This is exactly what I want from a publisher. He also mentioned that Boom Studios is a good choice, but they hold a none creator own policy, more a creator share one, meaning you share the rights to your work. He also said Dark Horse is a very good option.

This panel was very helpful and informative for my work, as well as being fun, humorous, and having a light hearted atmosphere in the room making it a very enjoyable experience. I learnt that I think Image comics might be the right publisher for us. Their style of publishing and freedom the let you have is what we seek, and were highly recommended from their own employee's. Once I heard that Eric Stevenson (Editor at Image comics) would be doing a portfolio review at Thought Bubble I was given a business card of Martha Julian, Project Co-ordinator, with how to contact her to secure ourselves a place to see him.