Cartoon and Comic Arts Highlights

Winter Fair
In preparation for selling at MCM, our Cartoon and Comic Arts students took part in a successful Winter Fair.  The Fair is designed to enhance their marketing skills and enhance their awareness of the facilities that the University offers them.

We also sold across the campus for Halloween, with cohorts of students working together to produce spooking comics.

From laser cutting Christmas lights, making bespoke Zines, and selling every type of comic story you can imagine, each year the atmosphere of the Fair resonates throughout the Uni and motivates the students for Semester 2.  Read more

Guest Speakers
We've had an amazing diverse range of guest speakers over the course of the semester.  This has included comics editor David Leach and Broken Frontier’s Andy Oliver.  These sessions are invaluable for our CCA students, as they can network and industry experts are happy to pass on their knowledge and experiences.

Comic Conventions
Many of our Cartoon and Comic alumni have been selling their own comics at a range of UK conventions, including MCM Birmingham and Thought Bubble in Harrogate, which is one of the major comic festivals in the UK.  Many of our students are able to attend these to get a flavour of working as a professional maker-seller and are able to network with our extensive alumni community.

Briefs from Anorak and pitches to The Beano!
Our Level 6 students have undertaken a live brief from independent children's comic Anorak, with three of them being commissioned to produce artwork for the magazine in a paid opportunity. 
Level 5 students pitched their comedic work to the editor of The Beano, who was impressed with the quality of their projects., even commenting "consider my cap doffed!" in response to one of the 2nd year's work.  This in a great confidence boost as the Level 5 students look forward to attending the upcoming MCM convention.  Students will be selling their work to convention attendees and the CCA teaching team will be delivering talks about the course.  We hope to see you there!

StArtCon
A range of CCA students have taken part in StArtCon, which involves a range of creative students from across the university selling their creative endeavours. Coinciding with an Open day, this was a busy, fun-filled day, with the opportunity to sell and discuss their work with many visiting members of the public.

Finding Your Audience
As part of the Cartoon and Comic Arts ‘Finding Your Audience’ module, the students are encouraged to develop comics for a wide range of audiences.  One of those audiences is a younger readership, so we go along to a school in nearby Macclesfield to talk about the University of Staffordshire, the Cartoon and Comic Arts course and comics in general.

The children are always eager to help the students to develop exciting stories and characters, so each child draws a ‘rainforest creature’ for the students.  The good thing about this age group is that their imagination isn’t hampered by physics or logic!  As there’s around 60 children and 30 students in the workshop, each student is given two drawings to work with.  The students are then tasked with drawing their version of the children’s characters and having those characters then go on a three page adventure.

Once the comics are drawn, the children get to see their ideas brought to life. It’s an excellent experience, as the children are always overjoyed at seeing their creations in a comic.  Course Leader Gareth gets a real buzz showing them their characters in the excellent comics by our students on a big screen and hearing the kids go “wow, that’s mine!” etc.

We then seek feedback from the children.  The CCA students are always so eager to receive the approval of the children, and it motivates them to produce their top work!