A Grand Day Out

"Blah, blah, comics, blah, blah, deadlines, blah, blah, fired again..." Me lecturing at the University of Teesside.
Photo: Nigel Kitching

Just back from Middlesbrough, where I was guest lecturing at the University of Teesside. Doesn't that sound grand? Actually, it just means my old mate Nigel Kitching*, who's a part-time lecturer there, invited me over to drone on at his poor students for an hour or so about freelance life.

Left: Looks like I put too much sugar 0n me Puffa-Puffa Rice that morning.
Photo: Nigel Kitching.

It seemed to go down reasonably well, despite my drastically mis-timing my career retrospective (45 minutes on Some Scribbles I Did While I Was At College, 15 on Stuff You Might Actually Have Heard Of.) But, judging from the comments of people I talked to afterwards, I think I more-or-less got across what I intended, which was to give them a sense of where I'd been at their age, how I'd progressed after leaving college, and how many duffings-up I'd endured in the process.

If I do this sort of thing again, I think I'll try and pick fewer pieces to talk about at length, but maybe post a load of stuff on the web so that anyone whose interested can see the process of development in more detail.

Steven Walker & Heather Sheppard, who turns out to be a distant relation of the astronaut John Glenn, which is nearly but not quite enough to make me forgive her for having a better Mac and Wacom tablet than me :-)

In the afternoon I had a chance to talk to some of the students in the studios; I was really impressed by the standard of work the students were putting out, and the dedication and work ethic of the ones I talked to. I was also rudely awakened to the fact that the techno-fear that haunts my generation is just not shared by these kids; the head-start my computer literacy has given me is going to evaporate like the morning dew in the next five years or so... but all paranoia aside, it was refreshing swapping ideas, and in particular I learned a few things myself while giving Steven (shown above) some tips on using Adobe Illustrator.

Concept drawing from Company Mann, a rejected project for 2000AD.
Copyright © 2004 Nigel Kitching and Me.

*Nigel first came to public attention writing and drawing cyber-punk series The Light Brigade for Trident Comics in the 1990's. He was the regular artist on Mark Millar's first published series, Saviour, before becoming a mainstay on Sonic the Comic for most of its nine year run. His his most recent published work in comics was AHAB (drawn by Richard Elson) for 2000AD.
We first worked together when I drew a couple of fill-in issues of The Light Brigade for him. Later, he contributed to both my series for Deadline magazine, Timulo and Fatal Charm. We've also collaborated on a couple of projects that never saw print; a humour strip called Fly in the Ointment for Deadline, and Company Mann (originally designed by Mike McMahon) for 2000AD (see above).

Middlesbrough is a place of contrasts; around the University of Teesside Campus,
the contrast between run-down areas and new development can be ridiculously sharp.