COMIC CREATORS SERIES - SPECIAL GUEST LEAD ARTISTS
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POP ROC Cereal Bar & Comic Shop is excited to announce a special Comic Creators Series collaboration with local artists Sally Jay Sparrow, Victoria Leeder, Dave DiPrimo, and Dragon Messmer! Each of these individuals have made special efforts in helping to launch a pilot program aimed at helping people to create their own comics. We are looking forward to working with people from all over our community throughout the month of February and to celebrate their work throughout the month of March. Each one of the following individuals has their own story to share and we are so grateful they have agreed to come to be our lead guests!
sallyjaysparrow.myportfolio.com
Sally Jay Sparrow is a comic book creator originally from Red Bank, New Jersey and is currently finishing her Illustration degree at RIT. Having completed multiple short narratives and essays, she is working on her first trade-length comic, "Light in the Chasm." "Chasm" is an educational work about how to properly teach history and the importance of doing so. She also does freelance work for Tora-Con and Anime Boston. You can find her work at sallyjaysparrow.myportfolio.com and @sallyjaysparrow on Instagram.
Anatomy of a Comic - February 5th at 6:30pm until 8pm. The purpose of this workshop is to help people understand the different elements of a comic and how they come together to create one product.
Workshop Insight: Approximately how many elements go into creating a comic?
“ In the simplest sense, comics are composed of only two elements: visuals and narrative. Every other element depends on how you choose to handle those two. There are certain conventions that many comics follow, but an artist can choose to mix photos and ink, tell a story with no dialogue, or add outside elements like music, but a comic always comes down to that combination.”
https://victoriasageleeder.myportfolio.com/work
Victoria Leeder is an artist, graphic designer, and the product and service manager for Enkaustikos! Wax Paint. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from UNCW, her hometown university. Drawing on her fine arts background, she enjoys creating comics, cartooning, and painting in her free time. Her interest in Japanese comics and animation connected her to Ohayocon, a yearly anime convention in Columbus, Ohio, where she became part of its volunteer marketing team. Outside of art, she also likes hiking, video games, and caring for her cat and parrot.
Character Development - February 12 at 6:30pm until 8pm. The purpose of this workshop is to help people learn how to bring their idea of a character to life.
Workshop Insight: Building a character.
“When you approach creating a character from scratch consider their personality - for example, are they friendly and helpful or sturdy and dependable? How can you communicate this through their design? You also want to think about what kind of world they inhabit and how they interact with it. As you go through the design process and refine your character, pay attention to their silhouette - you want them to be instantly recognizable by their overall shape. I also believe less is more; simplify where possible.”
https://www.diprimomedia.com/
Art of Storytelling - February 19 at 6:30pm until 8pm. The purpose of this workshop is to help people understand how to develop, tell, and keep an audience interested in a story.
www.skullyflowercom
Dragon has been drawing since she could hold a pencil. She loves to doodle ghosts, monsters and monstrous people. She’s most inspired by those super old cartoons, modern cartoonists, cover art from old metal albums, and graffiti. Her comics try to find beauty in the ugly, sympathy for the monstrous, light in the darkness, and visa versa. Humor underlies much of it. She’s worked in pencil, oil paint, acrylic paint, charcoal, skin (tattoo), but has settled in the comic arts with black ink on paper.
Bringing it all Together - February 26 at 6:30pm until 8pm. The purpose of this workshop is to help people pull their elements, their characters, and their stories together for presentation.
Workshop Insight: How do you choose to present your own stories?
I use panels. My comics are primarily black ink on white paper. I’ve been trying to bring more and more texture/value into the panels with cross hatching. Their final forms are: Web comic, self-published books, or one page of panels that can be framed. My journey started on the web, but my comics have always been hand-drawn on paper, and then scanned in. I’ll post a page of the story at a time as I’m making it. This serves a couple of purposes. One, I get the encouragement and attention I need to keep going. Two, it generates an audience, so that when it’s done, I can sell a book or two. I sometimes will print out a shorter story on one sheet of paper, but mostly I like to make them into books, that I publish myself.