The Graphic Novel: what it is, how it got here, and where it’s going.
Local
author/illustrator Ken Steacy will introduce attendees to four other creators
who also mold words and pictures into the synergistic new form that is rapidly
gaining acceptance in the worlds of fine art and literature.The five presenters (Paul Chadwick, Gareth Gaudin, Martin Springett, Joan Steacy and Ken Steacy) will then break out into one-hour sessions to focus on their own approach to the medium, and will be available for Q&A, book signings, and sketching.
Church of St John the Divine, 925 Balmoral Road
10:00 am - 1:00 pm (Ken Steacy, Joan Steacy & Gareth Gaudin)
2:00 - 4:00 pm (Paul Chadwick and Martin Springett)
Festival admission: $5.00 at the door.
Paul Chadwick
http://concrete.blogs.com/
Paul
Chadwick shares images and anecdotes from his career spanning decades and technologies
-- from spirit-duplicated fanzines, to comics and SF illustration, to movie
storyboarding and the digital world of The Matrix Online MMRPG.Paul Chadwick (b.1957) has worked widely as an artist and writer for comic books, with collaborators like Ron Randall, Doug Wheatley, Alan Moore, John Bolton, Harlan Ellison, Jan Strnad, Randy Stradley, Archie Goodwin, Brian K. Vaughan, Ken Steacy and others.
He’s most noted for his award-winning series Concrete, about a thoughtful man stuck in a brutish, rock-coated body.
Born in Seattle, he grew up in its lakeside suburb Medina, then a haven for Boeing engineers and their families, now the site of palaces for Bill Gates and his ilk. His father Stephen F. Chadwick was City Attorney for the small hamlet.
As a teen, he joined Apa-5, the amateur press alliance of comics fans which also provided a creative outlet for future comics luminaries like Frank Miller, Mike Richardson, Randy Stradley, Chris Warner, Randy Emberlin, and others.
He attended Art Center College of Design, majoring in illustration. Around this
time Chadwick lived in a courtyard apartment building, The Golden Palm, which
teemed with talent. Bryn Barnard, Ron Harris, David Mattingly, James Gurney,
Thomas Kinkade, Kurt Cyrus, Mark Verheiden, Andy Su, Terry Robinson all lived
there, five of them as Chadwick’s roommate (at different times).Chadwick graduated in 1979, and began storyboarding movies for Disney, Warner Brothers, Lucasfilm and others. Credits include Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Strange Brew, The Big Easy and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. Chadwick says the auteurs behind two small films he worked on, Lies (Jim & Ken Wheat) and Miracle Mile (Steve DeJarnatt) were the greatest personal influences on his writing.
Chadwick also freelanced illustration, mainly for movie advertising (Streamers and Galaxy of Terror were the only finished posters among the dozens of preliminary paintings he did) and for SF and Fantasy paperbacks.
Chadwick decided to devote himself to comics, but Concrete didn’t sell at first. Chadwick’s first comic in print was The Life of St. Norbert, published by an order of Norbertine monks. Going from the sacred to the (mildly) profane, he next drew Steve Perry’s strange and silly Salimba, about a jungle girl fighting “wormboys” and a giant three-headed were-dog.
A
year on Marvel’s Dazzler completed Chadwick’s apprentice years,
and he sold Concrete in 1985 to Dark Horse comics. It has appeared intermittently
ever since.A Concrete movie has been in development for years. Chadwick has written several screenplays for it, first in collaboration with Larry Wilson, then solo. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh wrote one, as well, which briefly won a green light for the film.
The decision was reversed upon the release of the surprise hit The Blair Witch Project, which caused the sudden mass delusion that Hollywood could dispense with costly visual effects and stars. The fever passed, but Concrete’s window had closed, at least until somebody with the clout or energy decides to brave the thousand demons that lay waiting to kill every movie.
Chadwick wrote and drew (inks by Ron Randall) eight issues of The World Below, about a network of vast, mysteriously lit caverns beneath northern Washington State, and the strange beings and technology to be found there. The series has been collected in an edition similar to the seven volumes of Concrete.
The Human Dilemma, the newest Concrete series, won an Eisner Award (best cartoonist) and a Reuben Award (best in comic books division) from the National Cartoonist Society.
Chadwick also wrote the continuing story for The Matrix Online, a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game from 2003-2007.
Chadwick is currently drawing a miniseries for DC, Seven Against Chaos, written by Harlan Ellison, and writing and drawing a non- Concrete graphic novel for Dark Horse Comics. top
Gareth Gaudin
www.magicteeth.ca
Gareth
will be talking about the history of comics, their rise and fall and rise again
in the marketplace, the high and low points in the medium's history and whatever
else the audience wants to know about. His brain is full to capacity with comic
information.Gareth Gaudin is a Victoria cartoonist who committed himself to drawing one cartoon per day every day for the rest of his life. So far, five years into this art project, he hasn't missed a day yet. He compiles his on-going serialized daily graphic novel in books and comics called The Magic Teeth Dailies. Conveniently, he also co-owns Legends Comics & Books in downtown Victoria where he sells his wares.
The Perogy Cat, his most visible creation was introduced as a way to woo a cute girl he was sitting beside in University back in 2002. The lovely girl had a cat named Tabitha who was diabetic and Gareth took it upon himself to draw cat cartoons and sell them to raise money for her insulin. The dailies capture it all: The cute girl and Gareth started dating, Got engaged (issue #3), got married (issue #13), had a European honeymoon (issue #22) and had their first child (issue #27). All of which was captured in ink for posterity. top
Other images: day 1554, day 1580
Martin Springett
www.martinspringett.com
Award
winning artist Martin Springett will present a brief overview of his thirty
year career in illustration featuring fantasy book covers for adult, young adult
readers and picture books for young children. Martin is currently working on
three graphic novels. He will talk about process, technique and inspiration
and how the personal and the professional intertwine to create the finished
product. Martin is also a musician and uses music to extend the story telling
process. Martin Springett was born in Crayford, Kent, England, in 1947. He studied art (that is he learned to play the Guitar) for two semesters at the Brassey School of Art in Hastings, Sussex. He emigrated to the West Coast of Canada in 1965, but returned to the UK in 1973 to pursue music in various bands. He spent time in Germany, and toured through Europe.
While in London Martin started to illustrate and design record covers for Columbia records. Upon his return to Vancouver, Martin carried on with music and illustrated various books and magazines. In 1978 he moved to Toronto, maintaining activity in every area where illustration is required. He released his own album, "The Gardening Club", in 1983.
In
1984 Martin was commissioned to illustrate the cover of "The Summer Tree"
by Guy Gavriel Kay. This and the subsequent volumes of The Fionavar Tapestry
Trilogy were published around the world along with Martin's covers.Martin continued his work in fantasy illustration, illustrating many covers for fantasy novels, including "The Traveller In Black" by John Brunner. In 1990 he illustrated his first childrens book, "Mei Ming and the Dragon's Daughter" written by Lydia Bailey. Martin has just finished illustrating his sixth childrens book, called "The Follower" by Richard Thompson. He has been nominated for various awards, including the Govenor Generals Award For Illustration. He has won the Aurora Award For Excellence in Fantasy Art, and two Silver Awrads from the Art Directors Club of Toronto and Best Classical Record Cover of The Year Award (UK).
Martin still pursues the Musical Muse, recently producing a new CD, "Blue Evening" with his band "FREEFALL", an independent, instrumental album called "Rough Magic"; a collection of explorations on the guitar, and a collection of tunes inspired by the writings of Guy Gavriel Kay called "Bright Weaving". top
Other images: Golem, Owein, Wixletree
Ken Steacy
www.kenspublishing.com
Ken
will be presenting a slideshow titled The Sequential Narrative: a Structural
Analysis, an examination of graphic narratives in terms of form and content,
which won him the Lieutenant Governor’s medal at the Ontario College of
Art & Design three decades ago. Building on this historical foundation,
he will bring the audience up-to-date with develoments in the field during the
intervening years, including the rise of self-publishing, on-demand publishing,
and webcomics.Ken Steacy is a Canadian Air Force brat who decided at age eleven to become a professional comic book artist. He pursued this intent until the magic moment occurred in 1974 with the publication in ORB magazine of Super Student, a two page strip that he wrote, pencilled, inked, and lettered. This holistic approach has been a hallmark of his work ever since, true to his belief that specialization is for insects, not artists. He also believes that the arbitrary distinctions between Art and Illustration should go away forever. His favorite colour is currently sanguine.
He studied film and video as analogies to the sequential narrative, later known as graphic novels, at the Ontario College of Art & Design, but drove all of his profs crazy by turning in comic strips instead of film or video. They finally figured out what he was up to and awarded him a pile of scholarships, including the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal.
Since then Ken has written and illustrated the exploits of practically every popular character you could name, including Astro Boy, Harry Potter, Batman, Superman, Spider-man and the X-Men. His four major works in print are The Sacred & the Profane (co-authored by Dean Motter), Night and the Enemy (stories by Harlan Ellison), Megapowers (written by physicist Jack Weyland) and Tempus Fugitive (which he did all by himself). Other graphic novels featuring his own IP are currently in progress.
Ken
spent two very intense years at Sanctuary Woods Multimedia creating, producing,
directing and illustrating The Awesome Adventures of Victor Vector & Yondo,
an interactive edutainment CD-ROM series for kids. He later produced a three
issue comic book mini-series chronicling the further adventures of VV&Y
in print. He has worked for many years with LUCASFILM, producing stories and
computer-rendered illustrations for Star Wars books and prints, and has collaborated
on numerous occasions with author Douglas Coupland.Chronicle Books has published Brightwork, a celebration of classic American car ornamentation which Ken wrote, designed and art directed. He also produced all of the display artwork for the Space Place gallery at Edmonton’s TELUS World of Science, designed the sets and promotional material for a production of West Side Story, and painted stacks of World of Warcraft, Marvel Masterpieces, and Indiana Jones gaming cards. Ken produced storyboards and design elements for the Rainmaker Entertainment digitally animated feature film Escape From Planet Earth, and rebranded a number of local enterprises, including Baggins, the world’s largest Converse shoe store.
A series of his paintings depicting the peacetime activities of navigators in the Canadian Armed Forces is part of the permanent collection of the National War Museum in Ottawa, two of which are included in a touring exhibition which opened at the McMichael Collection. The Winchester Gallery in Victoria is hosting a major retrospective of Ken’s work during the month of March, 2009.
Tom McBomb Productions Inc. was created as a vehicle for production of digital video, on-demand books & periodicals, and other cool stuff. Together with his wife Joan, who is also an author/illustrator, they run Ken Steacy Publishing which can be viewed online at www.kenspublishing.com top
Other images: Megapowers
Joan Thornborrow Steacy
www.kenspublishing.com/books/stt
Joan
will be presenting her book "So, That's That!" an illustrated biography
of her father, a feisty southern Ontario scrap metal dealer who lived to be
100. This archetypal immigrant’s story was based on stories her dad told
her over the years that were both amusing and tragic. These stories fired her
imagination and she will describe the process by which the spark of an idea
was fully realized in this book. Joan encourages anyone who has the desire,
motivation, and determination to tell their own story. She will have some of
the original artwork and copies of her book on display. She will also give a sneak peak at pages from the graphic novel she is currently working on, which is slated to be complete later this year. Tentatively titled Aurora BoreAlice, it’s an autobiographic portrait of an artist as a young woman struggling to find her voice in the maelstrom of a Toronto art school during the seventies.
Joan Thornborrow Steacy moved to Victoria from Ontario in 1987. She studied art fundamentals at Sheridan College In Oakville Ontario, then graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1979, and received a diploma in The Humanities at the University of Victoria in 2001.
She
has explored many areas of expression in the visual arts, including drawing,
painting, sculpture, theatrical production, multi-media, and digital image processing.
Much of her artwork is figurative in content, and her commissioned works are
in private collections across Canada. Her commercial work as a digital painter
for children's' books, comic books, and graphic novels has been published in
the United States and Japan. Joan has shown in both group and solo shows here in Victoria and in Ontario. In 2001 she was commissioned to do a public work of art in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, a larger-than-life-sized bronze sculpture titled "Ballerina" (but popularly known as The fertility goddess).
Joan has also taught art at The Beach Art Centre in Toronto, and at Xchanges Gallery here in Victoria. She wrote and illustrated her first storybook, titled "So, Thats That!" a biographical tribute to her father who lived to be 100. She currently teaches at Island Blue, and is working on a creative non-fiction graphic novel about her years at OCAD in the late seventies.
All linked art is © the respective artists.
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