The first convention I ever went to was Thought Bubble Sequential Art Festival in 2012 and it was more fun than I could have imagined; that meant that I definitely had to go this year, and with of the panels I managed to visit this time as well, it was even better.
One of my favorite things about the whole convention was the friendly atmosphere, and the chance to talk to illustrators with various levels of experience. I spoke to a couple who launched their comic online and had a few copies at hand, comic artists working for Marvel/DC/Image and illustrators just planning selling their own prints. It was great to learn a bit about how people started making money from their art after uni or even just sixth form, and I'm definitely tempted to get a table in a few years and try selling some of my own stuff.
A highlight of the convention for me was the Young Avengers panel. The series was announced to be ending a few weeks before meaning that this would be my last chance to hear the writer and artist of my favorite comic talk about that comic, so it was something I definitely could not miss.
Being the end of the series by choice, and not by cancellation, they decided to do something a little bit different. The last two issues used a New Year's Eve party to wrap things up, and they got the help of a lot of different artists to draw short stories from the event.
Jamie McKelvie is the usual artist on Young Avengers, meaning that he still got the most control over the two issues even though he was only doing art for a small part of it. He told us that he uses Google Sketch Up to plan out backgrounds for a lot of his scenes, to keep track of the locations and for certain angles. He sent the plan for background to all of the artists involved so that they were kept consistent and understandable. Jamie also gave the other artists some control over his characters' appearances; they all had specific character stories that they were each drawing, but if someone drew a background character first, they would send the pages to to the other artists and that was the outfit that they would have to use, again keeping it all consistent
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| Example of Sketchup - Not McKelvie's work |
Gillen and McKelvie, the artist and writer keep a blog with inspiration for outfits and music to go with their comics as inspiration and reference, something they can work on at all times and not just from their desks.
Below are some pages drawn by other artists over the two issues;
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| Annie Wu |
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| Emma Viceli |
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| Becky Cloonan |
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| Christian Ward |
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| Joe Quinones |
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| Ming Doyle |
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| Double cover by Jamie McKelvie |
