Charlie Adlard, Emma Vieceli, Mark Buckingham and more join Lakes Festival line-up

Charile Adlard. Photo: Olivier Roller

Photo: Olivier Roller

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival has announced six more guests for its 2014 event, including welcome return visits from The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard and Vampire Academy artist Emma Vieceli.

Top designer and comics creator Rian Hughes, Fables artist Mark Buckingham, self-taught Japanese artist Junko and Dutch underground comics artist Joost Swarte will also join other comic creators for Kendal’s second comics extravaganza.

“I’m so happy to be returning to the Lakes Festival as a guest this time around,” enthuses Emma. “In its opening year, the event proved itself to be one worth saving the date for. Kendal, as well as having familial relevance to me, is a beautiful town nestled in the Lake District; worth a visit even without the draw of a comics festival. But, as well as its beauty, it’s filled with a community who gathered around the convention last year, proving themselves to be enthusiastic, welcoming and clearly excited about seeing how the event could grow… I don’t blame them. I am too!”

Previously announced guests for the Festival include Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons, digital comics frontiersman Scott McCloud, leading US comics writer Gail Simone, and artists Sean Phillips, COSTA Award winner Bryan Talbot and Jonathan Edwards, who has designed the event’s “Mascot Family”.

“Kendal truly has the potential to be the Angouleme of the UK,” says Charlie Adlard, “and for that reason alone, I love this festival. Please ask me back every year!”

Charlie Adlard describes himself as a “veteran” of the British comic industry, working in the business for over 20 years. He’s spent the majority of his time since 2004 working on the award-winning The Walking Dead, but down the years he’s also worked on projects as far reaching as Mars Attacks, The X-Files, Judge Dredd, Savage, Batman, The X-Men and Superman – and creator-owned projects closer to his heart like Astronauts In Trouble, Codeflesh, Rock Bottom, and White Death.

Art from White Death by fellow guest Robbie Morrison and Charlie will be exhibited as part of the Festival.

Art for the cover of Fables #134 by Mark Buckingham.

Art for the cover of Fables #134 by Mark Buckingham.

 

Perhaps best known today for his work on DC Comics award-winning Fables and Sandman for Vertigo and IDW’s Doctor Who titles, Mark Buckingham has been working in comics for over 25 years, building a reputation for design, storytelling and a chameleon-like diversity of art styles. His past credits include Miracleman (Marvelman), Hellblazer, Death, Shade the Changing Man, Generation-X, Batman: Shadow of the Bat, The Titans and Peter Parker: Spider-Man.

Mark has been the regular artist on Fables for DC Comics since 2002 and now in its final year, working with its writer and creator Bill Willingham, and also illustrated Bill’s Down the Mysterly River prose novel for Tor Books. 2014 began with the launch of his new series for Vertigo, Dead Boy Detectives, spinning Neil Gaiman’s characters from Sandman #25 into their own monthly series with novelist Toby Litt.

Mark will soon be reuniting directly with author Neil Gaiman as they return to work together on the Miracleman series for Marvel.

Art by Rian Hughes

Art by Rian Hughes

British illustrator, award-winning graphic designer, comics artist and typographer Rian Hughes studied at the London College of Communication before working for an advertising agency, Smash Hits and i-D magazine and a series of record sleeve design companies. Under the name Device he provides design, custom type and illustration for advertising campaigns, record sleeves, book jackets, graphic novels and television.

For Belgium’s Magic Strip he co-wrote and drew the graphic novel The Science Service, published in five languages, followed by Dare, an “iconoclastic revamp of the ’50s comic hero Dan Dare” (Time Out), collected as part of the 2012 title Yesterday’s Tomorrows. Since then, Rian has worked extensively for the British and American comic industries as designer, typographer and illustrator, recently redesigning the Fantastic Four and the X-Men logos for Marvel, and Batman, Incorporated for DC Comics.

Down the years Rian has designed more than 500 typefaces and releases them via his own label, Device Fonts. His work is highly distinctive, a clean, vector-based drawing style dubbed “Sans Ligne” in reference to the European “Ligne Claire” school by artist Will Kane. Though enabled by the Macintosh, he considers his combination of design, illustration and typography to be a return to the working methods of the poster artists of the early 20th century, a period when artists like the Stenberg Brothers, Cassandre and Jean Carlu combined type, image and layout to achieve a dynamic, integrated whole.

Hughes is the author of Soho Dives, Soho Divas, an eclectic collection of intimate portraits of London’s burlesque performers, as well working on numerous other works on design, including Culture: Ideas Can be Dangerous. His latest Batman comic story It’s a Black and White World (both written and drawn by Hughes) was published in November 2013.

“I’ll be discussing some familiar logo designs I’ve done for Batman, Tangent, Iron Man, Fantastic Four and others,” says Rian Hughes of his planned event at the Festival, “showing the process of refining ideas to arrive at the final logo.

“I’ll also be showing my comic strip work as it relates to my mainstream illustration work in advertising and design, talking about the intricacies of font design, and how very similar concerns about narrative underpin them all.”

RAW cover by Joost Swarte

RAW cover by Joost Swarte

A music lover and regular contributor to New Yorker and Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s RAW since its first issue back in 1979, Joost Swarte started to draw comics at the end of the 1960’s while studying industrial design. In 1970 he published his first comic book, and from 1971 on he worked for the famous Dutch underground comics magazine Tante Leny Presenteert, his work steadily gaining international recognition, with his comics translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Catalonian and Italian.

He became an illustrator, graphic artist and designer in the mid-1980s, designing posters, stamps, logos, typefaces, furniture, objects – such as a carpet for Haarlem Town Hall with 61 pictograms which tell the history of the city – and even buildings, including the Toneelschuur, a theatre in Haarlem.

Joost is a true promoter of comics. In 1990 he initiated the Stripdagen Haarlem, a bi-annual international comic event, and he is the co-founder of the publishing house OOG&BLIK, which specializes in comics and graphic art.

His book Leporello, published in conjunction with a touring exhibition in Europe and featuring over 350 examples of his work, gives a good idea of his divers works in 352 images. His collected comics Is That All There Is? was published in 2012 by Fantagraphics.

Junko Mizuno

Junko Mizuno

Born in Tokyo, Junko Mizuno is a self-taught artist who is recognized for her unique style of powerful and erotic female imagery. Growing up in Tokyo, Junko’s work is based on 1970s Japanese cute culture but, refusing to be categorized, her art keeps expanding as she is inspired by everything around her. Her main sources of inspiration include fetish art, folk art, religious art, pin-up art, advertising art, greeting cards, toys, comics, food, music, and movies… and more!

In 1996, she self-produced a photocopy booklet called MINA animal DX which brought her to the attention of the publishing industry in Japan. Soon after, she debuted as a professional comic artist and illustrator.

Currently residing in San Francisco, she is constantly working on new comics, paintings, illustrations and designs for products ranging from toys to clothing.

breaks-emma-vieceli

Emma Vieceli loves telling stories with pictures. Her work includes the New York Times, best selling, Vampire Academy graphic novel series for Penguin Random House, the Yalsa 2013 recommended, Avalon Chronicles for Oni Press and her creator-owned and Eagle-nominated, Dragon Heir with Sweatdrop Studios.

Emma is currently working on the Alex Rider series for Walker books and her creator-owned Breaks, with co-writer, Malin Ryden.

As well her work on comics, Emma has worked in both games and television, recently on the A&E television series, Bates Motel providing the sketchbook found by Norman Bates!

With guests already announced and many more to come, I think you’ll agree this year’s Lakes event is shaping up rather splendidly…

• Tickets for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival go on sale from 25th April 2014. Sign up for the Festival’s newsletter here for the latest news. Web: www.comicartfestival.com

 



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