The Importance of a Break

All I can say is that by the time our Christmas break rolled around, I was in dire need of it. I hadn't been able to travel home at all since October, so the working days seemed to drag on and on, it was starting to take its toll on my productivity and overall happiness.

When I arrived home, the Christmas decorations were up in the house and around town! The lights throughout the streets were prettiest I've ever seen, but my photos are less than adequate. The new house looked super cosy with the decorations up, the tree near the fire and garlands on the mantle, candles everywhere and robin ornaments dotted about!

The holidays were filled with many hours of gaming, tv catch up and playing board games with my brothers and parents. We even had such a good time playing charades (which was surprising since I strongly disliked charades the last time I played it) that we ran out of cards in the box and had to turn to the internet for prompts!

I can now return to uni with a refreshed sense of motivation, just in time for summative assessment and semester two. I look forward to returning in Easter at the latest.

That's all for now,

Mort

Thought Bubble 2019 - Harrogate

This weekend (the 9th and 10th of November) I was extremely lucky. Two of my good friends were tabling at Thought Bubble and found that they had an extra bed in their hotel room, and so I tagged along! Here I will record what I've learnt through this wonderful experience, and what I plan for the future.

I don't have very many left now!

As an effort to be a little more memorable than the general public, I attempted to strike up a conversation with anyone I wanted to buy something from, and to also give them a sticker as a way of bringing myself to the forefront of their minds every time they see it.

I'd had the stickers themselves for almost two years now and thought that this was the perfect opportunity to use them.

I had the pleasure of meeting past students of Glyndwr university and their friends, and observing how they're progressing with their careers. It was also very handy to have social media as I could sneak away with images of their stalls without physically taking any photos.

(The photos above do not belong to me) It was very reassuring to see the range of stalls at the convention. Some people featured zines, badges, stickers and posters, while some other people also had bigger books thrown in. People who had banners with their ocs or artwork on really caught my eye, however, there were some very colourful table cloths and very many pride flags mixed in which also caught my eye. I found that people who had boards of prices were often asked how much things were, whereas individually labelled things worked better in the chaos of wandering crowds - but beware that the price tags move! Almost everyone had a business card that they slipped into purchases.

Planning for the future, I would like to have a range of items for sale. I'd like to primarily have zines or comics for my first table, I know that stickers are not hard to make or purchase and if I can set aside time to create stand-alone images in amongst my work at uni, I don't see why I can't be ready for a convention very soon.

Banners are something that I'd like to look into, I know that my style and quality of work is improving very fast at the moment, however, the striking nature of the banner would be worth the cost at the beginning, bringing people in towards me against others who may not have banners. A quick search found that a banner from helloprint.co.uk was £31 - so well within my grasp.

While there, I was also introduced to a couple of new publishing houses that I'd not heard of previously, ShortBox, and Avery Hill Publishing. I'm unsure as to whether they would benefit me if I approached them, it's something to look into in the future and also worth my time to watch them on social media.

I've also done some quick research into dates of conventions and events (Assuming they're all around the same time each year). Obviously, there's Thought Bubble which took place on the 9-10th of this month. MCM Manchester was in July, MCM Scotland in September, London - October, and Birmingham in November. There's a Zine festival in South London in August, Shake Bristol on December 8th and Wales Comiccon (Now in Telford, England??) also in December. I'm sure a more thorough search would produce even more events, but this is a good starting point.

The future looks exciting!

See you next time,

Mort.

The artists and stalls featured here (from left to right) are Tuisku, Caitlyn, Lea, Kip, Alex, George, Lucy, Rosie, and Eve

Cardiff Sept 9th to 13th 2019

We set off just after lunch, having taken care of some last minute jobs around town, hitched up the caravan and began our journey to Cardiff. We trundled along, munching on road trip sweets and listening to the radio. Smooth sailing, right?

Wrong.

Not the best start to a holiday!

Just around the Kilgetty mark, it was apparent that there was something wrong with the van. Stuck in third gear, with no reverse, or ability to get moving again if we stopped, we needed help. We parked up in the Begelly Arms, and the owners of the pub graciously allowed us to store our caravan there until the van was fixed. The parents made some phone calls and all that was left to do was wait. The idleness didn't last long, maybe fifteen minutes went by before our knight in a fluorescent jacket turned up to take us home. The good news was that the van was fixed within minutes of it being dropped off at a garage and we could resume our holiday the next day.

Once we made it to our set destination, we set up with caravan arriving around eleven, meaning we still had some time to check off one of our activities, visiting the museum!

I very much enjoyed looking at all the fossils and the patterns that occur in nature.

The next day we visited the castle! Exploring the keep, the ramparts, the house, and learning about the history of the castle was amazing, there was even a trebuchet to look at (which I sadly didn't take a picture of).

However there was a heavy focus on war throughout the history of Wales in some of the exhibitions, the first one started off fun. They had guns that you could lift up and old fashioned military clothes to try, but as we progressed through the exhibition and the more I read, the less I enjoyed it. I ended up focusing on the young lives that had been wasted by war, and that if their deaths were worth it, we certainly have not learnt our lesson. The fact that there are still wars raging on today proves that. The second exhibition illustrated the important role the castle took in sheltering people during World War Two, and it was absolutely harrowing. The whole way down the dark corridor were old beds and benches, a small canteen and medical supplies. Worst of all was the speakers. Just as we entered the tunnel, the broadcast informing people of Britain that they were at war with Germany was playing. I could feel my heart sink and the cold crept in. The rest of the time, the speakers resounded with an air raid siren and 1930s music which seemed both inappropriate and contrastingly fitting.

I attempted to capture the songs reverberating off the stone walls, I always forget to record longer than I think I need to.

Once we'd seen all the castle had to offer, we ventured into Cardiff for a couple of hours before our parking expired. I picked myself up a couple of comics and rested in Cafe Nero.

Our final day had a rather low standard set, as I'd already visited this next place a couple of times with school. St. Fagans collects and reconstructs buildings from around Wales, the first time I set foot there, I'd been terrified out of my mind due to a 'day in the life of a Victorian school child' experience and the second time, we'd been rushed around the attractions because of the outrageous amount of time it took us to get there. This time however, I loved it. We made a beeline for the Iron Age roundhouses from Anglesey, which were awesome - I could quite happily live in one. From there we simply picked out which buildings took our fancy, we even stumbled across a merchant trader's house from Haverfordwest! We couldn't believe it. There were old shops, churches and a blacksmith, it was seriously so cool. Would recommend.

For whatever reason, the gallery refuses to put my photos in the order that I took them. Overall an awesome holiday. Looking back through the photos, I realised that I'd taken an awful lot of pictures of chairs and so, to finish, a small 'chairs across the ages' gallery:

Until next time,

Mort