The park centre at Lesnes Abbey (in Abbey Wood) is perfect for the festival. Here's a Comic Jam going on in the foyer:
And the final version (starring Gary Northfield and Bob the Fly).
Big thanks to Gary Northfield and Nicky Evans (on the left), who run Bog Eyed Books and who organised the day's events! Comics chum Woodrow Phoenix popped by to say hello, and Wilbur Dawbarn ran one of the workshops.
Gary and Nicky just had twins, who came along - as you can see, Tor Freeman and I were expert baby juggers.
For my session, I featured the tower block that my Vern & Lettuce comic is set in, and talked about world building. I showed them how the first thing I did was design a tower block, then fill it with different types of animals; from there, it was easier to come up with stories just by imagining how all the different characters might interact as neighbours, and things that might go wrong and need fixing. After that, the audience helped me brainstorm another kind of structure we could populate with characters, and they picked a tree house. So we all drew tree houses, filled them with characters and their flats with some furnishings, and imagined stories that might happen between the characters. Here's a peek at some of the drawings:
Big thanks to everyone who came along, and keep an eye on Bog Eyed Books social media (Bog Eyed Books on Facebook, @BogEyedBooks on Twitter, @bogeyedbooks on Instagram) for the next event!
