So when I went over to Melbourne for the Festival of the Photocopier, I also got to squeeze in a visit to Mandy Ord, who is one of mentors for Oh Brother. As you can tell from the above picture, I was super nervous.
I met her briefly at the Festival of the Photocopier. I was super nervous and don't remember what I said at all. I was overwhelmed by the hugh amount of people at the FoTP Zine Fair (over 150 stalls). There were so many people that I couldn't focus and it felt like nothing I said had any substance. She gave me a copy of her new comic 'Trains'. Well, actually, she traded it with one of my journal comics. I think I got the better deal tbh but I love trading comics. I feel like a trading card kid (I always wanted to be one but ended up just keeping all the cards because I like the pictures).
Luckily the day after the zine fair, Mandy was free for more chats. So I hopped on a train with my copy of Trains in hand ready for round two where hopefully I'll have more interesting things to say. It was strange reading Trains (which is about Mandy trips down various Melbourne Train lines, summed up in a neat four panels) as I was travelling on the line that is commonly mentioned in the book. I think it was meta but I'm not quite sure.
Once I was at Mandy's place, I slowly calmed down and stopped sweating like crazy (I sweat a lot when I'm hot, grumpy, embarrassed, tired, nervous, living). It helped that she had an adorable dog. I've been craving a puppy to dog but apartment living / not being able to give the dog the love time it needs is problem. Until I can have my own, I guess I will just be one of those people that hangs out at dog parks, without a dog of their own.
ANYWAY - we started to talk about comics and Mandy showed me around her studio, telling about her way of working and how it's change and people she's been inspired by. It was great! I'm so excited that she is going to be my mentor. We will be sending each other post surprises, including a shared sketchbook. I'll draw something in the book and then post it to Mandy, then she will add her entry and post it back to me and so on and so forth.
Nothing beats face to face time with someone, as much as I love letters/letter writing, and I hope that I can catch up with her soon when I have a script or some thumbnails to work through with her.
This is a super text heavy blog, so I might leave it there for now.
Have an excellent week.
xx
Following on from my last post about how the design of the characters in my graphic novel, Oh Brother, have changed over the 7-ish years I’ve been working on the book, this post is about my absolute favourite thing: drawing emotions!