Comics Festival Ten Days After
Oct. 30th, 2013 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThis post has been on the simmer for a while: now it's time to wash its face and send it out into the world:
We had each chosen a different event on the Sunday to complete our four-ticket package, but neither of us had an early start, so we started the day by looking round a couple of exhibition spaces close to our hotel - and, as it turned out, next door to each other.
The Castle Dairy is primarily a restaurant, run by Kendal College in the oldest building in Kendal (a sixteenth century farmhouse, the name probably a corruption of 'Dowry' or 'Dower House'). As an exhibition space it was frustrating - too many page-sized prints hanging behind tables or in spaces that weren't lit for visibility; as a restaurant it looked good, and the interesting stuff on the walls would have been a bonus.
Next door at the Wildman Street Studios was in another class altogether: a bright and welcoming space imaginatively organised around a display of Bryan Talbot's work. From the earliest juvenilia to the latest work in progress, from original artwork to merchandising, there was plenty to look at, and a sneak preview of Digital Story Engine's documentary, too.
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durham_rambler had a 12.30 date with Posy Simmonds, and my original plan was to explore this side of town (we'd seen signs to the castle, and here was Castle Street, so surely...) but the rain was getting heavier, so I went back to the Dairy and lingered over a cup of coffee. Then back out towards the castle, and found the entrance to the park where the ruins are (it looks well worth a visit) before I was rained off again. My next event was in The Box, and I was pleased to have a chance to see inside this venue, as I was very taken with the exterior. I was less charmed to be told that there really wasn't anywhere to wait inside, and I ahould go away and have a cup of coffee or something until nearer the start time - eventually I sat in the car and read the paper.
More to it than Meets the Eye was billed as a session on colouring featuring "Peter Doherty with Duncan Fegredo". I'd chosen it primarily because in my book Duncan Fegredo is a star: he drew Grant Morrison's Kid Eternity, he drew Peter Milligan's Enigma and Girl, not to mention some great covers for Shade. Not being a Hellboy fan, I wasn't aware of what he's been doing lately (or the extent to which it seems to have eclipsed his earlier work). I did realise that I wasn't going to get a career retrospective, and that wasn't a problem, I'm always happy to hear people talk about the technicalities of their craft: I'd've gone to a panel on lettering if there'd been one, so colouring suited me just fine.
It wasn't, in fact, particularly technical: we had a few slides illustrating where other people had got it wrong, though this was very gently done, with a lot of "Actually, [name] is a very good colourist, but I wouldn't have done it like this..." and very little point and laugh. I could have done with more chronology, and a clearer explanation on how the task of the colourist, and the choices open to them, have changed with time. In a fascinating sequence of slides, Peter Doherty contrasted his recolouring of Flex Mentallo with the original: a large part of what he had done was simply to tone down the colour.
Takeaway message: 1. "White is a colour - but many colourists don't know this."
Takeaway message: 2. It's possible to worry too much about spoilers: "We thought we'd look at a few pages from the last issue of [title redacted] - just after the death of [title charater]. - Oops - er, that may be a spoiler..."
Takeaway lesson: nothing I hadn't worked out by now...
Overall, I very much enjoyed my weekend - and I thinkdurham_rambler did too, which is a better test, since he is not a hardcore comics fan. There was a good choice of events, and plenty of things to see - more than we could get round in a weekend. The banners around the town and the decorated shop windows made for a welcoming atmosphere. If they do it again next year, I'd want to go.
Which isn't to say that there aren't things I hope they'd do better (or at least, in a way that suits me better) next year.
Starting with the weather. If it isn't possible to arrange for it not to rain (and in October, in the Lake District, it probably isn't) then plan for rain, and don't require people to queue in the rain or wait in the rain for events to start. Or maybe the marketing department should have designed a festival umbrella?
I found the online booking system very difficult to navigate. I'm not talking here about the fact that when it came to it, I kept getting a message that I couldn't book online at the moment, please try again later - eventually I booked over the phone, and the service was friendly and efficient. I'm talking about the website design which showed me a smart grid of images, but would let me see at a glance which event was on when, so I could decide what I wanted to go to, and whether it clashed. It was such hard work extracting four items for my 'weekend pass' that I didn't even consider whether I wanted to add more tickets - and at no time over the weekend did anyone try to sell us more tickets. Maybe this was deliberate; maybe all events were fully booked. I hope so. We finally got hold of a browsable, dead-tree, copy of the programme on Friday evening, and started to read through it once we were settled in the restaurant with dinner ordered and a bottle of wine in front of us: at which point we were disappointed to see that Trina Robbins was doing an event in the library - when? - oh, exactly now.
(durham_rambler said he preferred the system they used at EasterCon, where your membership gave you admission to as many events as you could eat; I pointed out that the price had been about four times as great. And yes, I can see there would be other problems, too. Nonetheless...)
Every talk I went to was interesting; and every one of them left me feeling that the skills of the interviewer / moderator should not be underestimated, that when you only have an hour, a few of the right questions can elicit a lot more than an agreeable chat between friends. I may just have been unlucky, given the absence of the appointed chair of the only formal discussion panel I went to. Just saying...
And then it was all over, and we drove twice around the town trying to find our way into Booths, which is a very superior supermarket, and provided us with some promising bottles of wine and a few treats for our tea. And home through showers: one side of the road all tattered rainbows pinned to dark clouds, the other golden sunshine. Barnard Castle glowed above the Tees as we waited at the lights to cross the bridge. And home...
We had each chosen a different event on the Sunday to complete our four-ticket package, but neither of us had an early start, so we started the day by looking round a couple of exhibition spaces close to our hotel - and, as it turned out, next door to each other.
The Castle Dairy is primarily a restaurant, run by Kendal College in the oldest building in Kendal (a sixteenth century farmhouse, the name probably a corruption of 'Dowry' or 'Dower House'). As an exhibition space it was frustrating - too many page-sized prints hanging behind tables or in spaces that weren't lit for visibility; as a restaurant it looked good, and the interesting stuff on the walls would have been a bonus.
Next door at the Wildman Street Studios was in another class altogether: a bright and welcoming space imaginatively organised around a display of Bryan Talbot's work. From the earliest juvenilia to the latest work in progress, from original artwork to merchandising, there was plenty to look at, and a sneak preview of Digital Story Engine's documentary, too.
durham_rambler had a 12.30 date with Posy Simmonds, and my original plan was to explore this side of town (we'd seen signs to the castle, and here was Castle Street, so surely...) but the rain was getting heavier, so I went back to the Dairy and lingered over a cup of coffee. Then back out towards the castle, and found the entrance to the park where the ruins are (it looks well worth a visit) before I was rained off again. My next event was in The Box, and I was pleased to have a chance to see inside this venue, as I was very taken with the exterior. I was less charmed to be told that there really wasn't anywhere to wait inside, and I ahould go away and have a cup of coffee or something until nearer the start time - eventually I sat in the car and read the paper.More to it than Meets the Eye was billed as a session on colouring featuring "Peter Doherty with Duncan Fegredo". I'd chosen it primarily because in my book Duncan Fegredo is a star: he drew Grant Morrison's Kid Eternity, he drew Peter Milligan's Enigma and Girl, not to mention some great covers for Shade. Not being a Hellboy fan, I wasn't aware of what he's been doing lately (or the extent to which it seems to have eclipsed his earlier work). I did realise that I wasn't going to get a career retrospective, and that wasn't a problem, I'm always happy to hear people talk about the technicalities of their craft: I'd've gone to a panel on lettering if there'd been one, so colouring suited me just fine.
It wasn't, in fact, particularly technical: we had a few slides illustrating where other people had got it wrong, though this was very gently done, with a lot of "Actually, [name] is a very good colourist, but I wouldn't have done it like this..." and very little point and laugh. I could have done with more chronology, and a clearer explanation on how the task of the colourist, and the choices open to them, have changed with time. In a fascinating sequence of slides, Peter Doherty contrasted his recolouring of Flex Mentallo with the original: a large part of what he had done was simply to tone down the colour.
Takeaway message: 1. "White is a colour - but many colourists don't know this."
Takeaway message: 2. It's possible to worry too much about spoilers: "We thought we'd look at a few pages from the last issue of [title redacted] - just after the death of [title charater]. - Oops - er, that may be a spoiler..."
Takeaway lesson: nothing I hadn't worked out by now...
Overall, I very much enjoyed my weekend - and I think
durham_rambler did too, which is a better test, since he is not a hardcore comics fan. There was a good choice of events, and plenty of things to see - more than we could get round in a weekend. The banners around the town and the decorated shop windows made for a welcoming atmosphere. If they do it again next year, I'd want to go.Which isn't to say that there aren't things I hope they'd do better (or at least, in a way that suits me better) next year.
Starting with the weather. If it isn't possible to arrange for it not to rain (and in October, in the Lake District, it probably isn't) then plan for rain, and don't require people to queue in the rain or wait in the rain for events to start. Or maybe the marketing department should have designed a festival umbrella?
I found the online booking system very difficult to navigate. I'm not talking here about the fact that when it came to it, I kept getting a message that I couldn't book online at the moment, please try again later - eventually I booked over the phone, and the service was friendly and efficient. I'm talking about the website design which showed me a smart grid of images, but would let me see at a glance which event was on when, so I could decide what I wanted to go to, and whether it clashed. It was such hard work extracting four items for my 'weekend pass' that I didn't even consider whether I wanted to add more tickets - and at no time over the weekend did anyone try to sell us more tickets. Maybe this was deliberate; maybe all events were fully booked. I hope so. We finally got hold of a browsable, dead-tree, copy of the programme on Friday evening, and started to read through it once we were settled in the restaurant with dinner ordered and a bottle of wine in front of us: at which point we were disappointed to see that Trina Robbins was doing an event in the library - when? - oh, exactly now.
(
durham_rambler said he preferred the system they used at EasterCon, where your membership gave you admission to as many events as you could eat; I pointed out that the price had been about four times as great. And yes, I can see there would be other problems, too. Nonetheless...)Every talk I went to was interesting; and every one of them left me feeling that the skills of the interviewer / moderator should not be underestimated, that when you only have an hour, a few of the right questions can elicit a lot more than an agreeable chat between friends. I may just have been unlucky, given the absence of the appointed chair of the only formal discussion panel I went to. Just saying...
And then it was all over, and we drove twice around the town trying to find our way into Booths, which is a very superior supermarket, and provided us with some promising bottles of wine and a few treats for our tea. And home through showers: one side of the road all tattered rainbows pinned to dark clouds, the other golden sunshine. Barnard Castle glowed above the Tees as we waited at the lights to cross the bridge. And home...
