What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2014?
Plenty of great things happened. Lots of rad exhibitions, I applied for and got accepted into my first comics anthologies and somehow managed to keep a monthly comics sketch night running for an entire year! But the super duper highlights were:
1) Being accepted as an artist for the National Young Writers' Festival and getting to talk about my comics and how I create them.
2) When the sketch group I co-run with my lovely partner, Owen Heitmann, won an Award for best New Project 2014, and
3) When visiting Squishface Studio in Melbourne, earlier this year, missing out meeting Art Speigelman by 15 minutes. Not really a highlight but it's always a good story to tell.
What are some of the comics you've enjoyed in 2014?
Hidden by Mirranda Burton (who is based in Victoria, Australia) was a fascinating read. A collection of stories about working with and teaching art to intellectually disabled adults. The art feels like it's been carefully etched in a woodblock and stories are well crafted and genuine.
Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen and Shannon Watters has been pretty great - and it's one of the few comics I've ever wanted that comes as a regular single issue thing instead of a graphic novel, so that's pretty exciting going in regularly for a comic. Kickass girls kicking ass - so good!
Soppy by Phillipa Rice. The cutest visual delight I've read in while. Using a black, white and red colour scheme this is lovely tale about the cutest relationship ever between illustrator/comics artist Phillipa Rice and illustrator/comics artist Luke Pearson. It's so adorable!
I also discovered the whole back catalogue of Guy Delisle's work this year. I know I'm a little behind the A-game on that one but his travelogue comics are so great, I think everyone should read them. The simplistic style brings so many emotions and feelings that I was immersed in the various cultures and countries that he visits from the unique way point of view of an animator or a spouse of someone working for Doctors without borders.
What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2014?
Playing in my roller derby league's grand final and even though we came second, I played one of my best games and had a buttload of fun.
What are you looking forward to in 2015?
Hanging out with my babin' friends, getting through the pile of books by my bed, doing some sweet duet exhibitions with my wonderful boyfriend, work on my webcomic about teens solving crime (because I'll always be on that bandwagon) and hopefully going part-time at (dayjob) work so I can be in the studio more.
