Opera house

Well I am back from the whirlwind that was ‘Graphic’ Sydney Opera house festival for 2011. It’s been 3 days past and I’m still tired.. which may say more about me then the festival itself. The ever fabulous emmajeans from Emm-art was kind enough to accompany  me.

Things that we did attend:

Comic Making

Were going to attend the Ozcomics panel but due to bus times we did not arrive in time. So next on our list was the ‘Comic Making’ session. On board were comic makers Matt Huynh, Mandy Ord, Leigh Rigozzi, Pat Grant and Andrew Weldon.

Emma listening attentively to Matt while I look at my paper in a grumpy fashion.

Emma and I were under the tutelage of Mr Matt Hyhn. We were directed into a big room of long tables surrounded by colour photocopiers. White boards on one side and the view of the harbour though full size windows on the opposite. Matt’s approach was to bring to mind the aspects of story telling that are unique to comics such as bubbles, sounds effects, panels etc. We did a little comic created with no pictures and played around with making metaphorical, contrary and literal panels and text. People were friendly, Matt was exhausted by mid session. There did seem an issue with sound with multiple groups in one room. All in all fun was had. Sadly, Emma & I had to run off to the next thing early…

Chinese Animation 

The animation was interesting. About 10 different creator/creator teams making short animations. Most seemed to take them about a year of dedicated work to get a 10 minute feature done which seems crazy. But I guess that’s the nature of the animation beast.

Eddie Campbell and ‘the lovely horrible stuff’

The Eddie Campbell session was amusing. He rambled on about various anecdotal info, money and told stories about crazy family life. All was illustrated with photos and comics. He was very entertaining in a slightly chaotic fashion – he only remembered to explain that the presentation was about his upcoming book on money (‘the lovely horrible stuff’) at very end. (Apparently his agent called out to remind him from the audience before he said goodbye.)

Here is a random quote that Emma grabbed from the talk:

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” Robert Hughes

Beholding the wonder that is technology.

Scott McCloud
As with almost any comic artist I know Scott Mc Cloud’s ‘Understanding Comic’ was the a big mind opening revelation of awesome. It was a physical manifestation of  ‘this is why comics are good and to be valued’ that you could hold onto and smack disbelievers over the head with. So I was looking forward to the talk. Unfortunately the talk was only an hour… however the delivery was a polished fancy Key Note presentation. He delivered it really well … probably cause he has done the same speech many many many many times before. Despite that it was all very entertaining and informative.

Lastly Robert Crumb…

This unfortunately did not happen. Sadly due to Crumb’s wife getting scared at a stupid newspaper article denouncing him and his works he withdrew from the show. So that was disappointing. I was refunded but I would have preferred the talk. While I’m disappointed that he did not follow though I can understand  the need to protect the fears of the person you love.

My only dislikes of the event (besides the withdrawal of Mr Crumb) –  no session time ending listed for any of the events so some collied and others we found ourselves with a bunch of extra time we did not know what to do with. Also a timetable of all the events on one PDF and where they are would have be would have been damn helpful.

So.. all in all fun was had. Saw many creators in brief passing and others with the consumption of hot chocolate.

I wonder what crazyness there will be next year….

-Until then I remain the Gavin