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Month: January 2009

Post Workshops

Post Workshops

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Well I’ve finished all my booked in workshops. Wow, what a ride, what a rush. I’ve been delighted by the artwork that has been produced by my students, and how they have learned a lot more about telling stories with their art.

It’s been rewarding to challenge confident students to new levels and have shy students develop confidence and skills.

I’ve learned a lot as well and my teacherly folder of handouts has more than tripled in size over the past few weeks (first teaching every day at the Young Music Society and then at the Australian National Museum).

If you would like me to bring a workshop on comics, storytelling, writing, the art of collaboration or being a funky creative humanbeing/funky creative workplace please drop me a line. I love tailoring workshops to specific groups and happy to travel (please note, I am currently based in Canberra, Australia).

Between the Lines

Between the Lines

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Today and tomorrow I will be running workshops on political cartooning for the Australian National Museum. It’s been fun preparing and discovering that ancient research I did as a teen (back when I was reading everything in the library alphabetically and diving on anything on the new release table) is valuable. I loved to read about artists and especially cartoonists processes and now I get to share it with 30 people between 8 and 14.

The struggle of course is I always want to cram in as much information and cool stuff as possible, for each 2.5 hour workshop I have about 6 hours of content. It will be fun to run a workshop and then get to run it again, normally I custom make each workshop and don’t get to repeat myself. It will run once today for about 14 people and then the same workshop will be run for another 16 people.

It should be a lot of fun and many thanks to Chris Wahl (fab artist who draws many things, including the sexier covers of Australian Mad Magazine) who has kindly let me use some of his excellent examples of charicature in my workshop.

Comicbook Opera

Comicbook Opera

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It was amazing to see our musical performed. It’s been wonderful to get small people say “great lyrics” with big grins on their faces as they get to sing about horrible monsters, cruel villains and robbing a train. It was great to hear teachers, parents and other grownups talk about the moments they loved. Some of the dance moves were utterly fantastic and much of the makeup was sweetly gruesome. There are parts of the musical I really want to rework, improvements to be made, lessons learned, but I am glad that the things that were really important to me worked well.

  • The kids had fun performing on stage – the lyrics were rewarding and the chorus liked singing them and the lyrics also invited cool dance moves.
  • The story was simple on some levels, but also had rewarding meta levels through complexity of lyrics and was open to deeper engagement and a safe place for children to explore emotions, concepts of good, bad, loss and overcoming setbacks (that was probably the coolest bit of feedback I got from a teacher discussing the musical afterwards).
  • The moments that were really important to me are moments that people have said told me how much they loved afterwards.

It has been wonderful to get so much positive support from friends and family. There’s a lot of work still ahead of us, to redevelop Comicbook Opera and find new opportunities for it, but it feels so great to have my work performed and dreams of how to take it forward.

Comicbook Opera

Comicbook Opera

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Comicbook Opera will be performed for the first time tomorrow! Thursday 15 7pm at Canberra Girls Grammar School. 200+ students performing, it’s just massive. WIN TV will be showing snippets of today’s rehersal during the news tonight (6.30pm and midnight). You might even get an interview with a happy, if sweaty and slightly glazed, Liz.

I am so delighted by the energy and vision everyone has put into the show, it’s a great honour to work with such lovely people to make Comicbook Opera live and see my words on a page become a singing dancing entity.

Paying gig – Australian Manga artists only

Paying gig – Australian Manga artists only

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Forwarded on, please approach manifest.branding@gmail.com directly if you are interested or need further information.

Melbourne Anime Festival is back in 2009 celebrating its tenth year. We are currently searching for an artist to make all of our art for this year. The skills you will need if you wish to attempt for this role are:

* Able to produce both Vector and Raster based art, preferably in Adobe native formats.
* Be able to get work done on short notice, as in as little as 3 days.
* Be able to take criticism.
* Work with the design and create additional work.
* Create multiple designs from a single brief.

The role will involve working closely with members of the Manifest Organizing Committee and taking instructions on where certain things may need to be changed. Artwork that you will be required to make could be used for:

* Posters
* Postcards
* Badges
* Program Book
* Online Promotion
* Other Promotional means

The remuneration for being selected is $2,000 plus the opportunity for bonuses for providing high quality images within certain time constraitns. The closing date for submission is January 19th at 9:00AM. You may be required to meet with members of MOC

In order to be eligible you need to present at a minimum:

* 5 pictures
* 3 Must include Peppa-chan
* 1 Must include a Male character
* 1 Must incorporate how you will stylize the celebration of the 10th Manifest
* 3 Must have been made within 12 months of the submission date
* Original computer files must be provided for at least 3 images (In order to understand how you use programs, Eg, layering methods)
* Of these computer one must be vector and one raster

Please submit your pieces of work as well as the following details:

* Full Name
* Address
* Email address
* Phone Numbers
* A description of what makes you believe you would be the best for the position
* Any possible issues that you know of that may present themselves over the year. Eg. Leaving the country or general unavailability

Either electrionically to manifest.branding@gmail.com or physically send it to
P.O. Box 21036
Little Lonsdale St
Melbourne 8011

Improvised Theatre Resource

Improvised Theatre Resource

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Mike(y) and I created a Improvised Theatre Handbook to an annual Improv Workshop and Friendly competition that runs as part of Phenomenon. I think it’s been running for three years now. The handbook contains elements and skills that we thought would be valuable to focus on and a range of warm up exercises, Short, Medium and Long Games. Mission Improv-able

I’m posting this as some fabulous teachers expressed an interest in our resource and this will make it really easy to find (I think there are links to it in the depths, but here it is on the front page).

Soon I will have details to post up about the Premiere of Comicbook Opera… the world-wide premiere is next week!