Introducing Dave Windett & John Gatehouse

We're excited to introduce our first team of contributors to the Newcastle Science Comic, Dave Windett and John Gatehouse.

Dave Windett is a professional comics artist and illustrator, his work has been published in Britain, Europe and America.

He has drawn comics featuring numerous licensed characters, including Inspector Gadget, Eek the Cat, Ace Ventura, Daffy Duck and Korky the Cat .

For the Scandinavian market he has illustrated educational books, business manuals and comics.

He has also designed original characters for a variety of publications and provided illustrations for everything from magazines and websites to mobile phones, games, and children's shoes.

Samples of his work can be seen at - http://www.davewindett.com/ and on his blog at - http://www.davewindett.com/blog/

John Gatehouse has written over 100 books and annuals, over 300 television shows and thousands of comic strips and short stories for children.

He has produced stories for legendary characters such as Inspector Gadget, Pokemon, Scooby Doo, Garfield, Dracula, Spider-Man, Ace Ventura Pet Detective, The Hurricanes, Digimon, Rugrats, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and hundreds of other Intellecutal Properties.


John and Dave are currently working together on two projects.

Monster Hunt, a series of Children's books for Penguin (USA) the first of which should be available this Autumn.

The Kaci Bell Mysteries, a newspaper style adventure strip which he and John plan to publish as both a daily web-comic and printed collection once the story is finished. At the time of writing over 100 episodes have already been drawn.

A collection of the Lazarus Lemming strips (that they created for the weekly DFC comic) is due to be "published" on the digital comics platform Comixology and their kid's book, Trick or Treat is still available from Amazon.


Check out these fantastic roughs they did for us. The final version is looking great but you'll have to wait for the comic to see it all.

Science FACT-ion

Our schools pack is now available to download. Can you tell the difference between Science fact and science fiction? Artists Terry Wiley, Andrew Waugh and Cuttlefish explore inventions throughout space and time, join them - in the name of science!

Here's a work in progress sketch from the schools pack of our daring scientist explorer. 

Students are also challenged to draw an invention from the future, something that doesn't exist yet but could be in every home by the year 2050. Winners of the competition will appear in the Newcastle Science Comic.

British Science Festival School Packs: Science FACT-ion schools activity pack, for 8 to 13 year olds. 

Collaborative Drawing at Super Mash-Up

It took some photo stitching but here is the full collaborative drawing from the evening. It was great to see so many folks talking about and drawing their thoughts on science.

There's a lot going on here, maybe you'll be able to spot which of these doodles grew up to be a comic page as we start sharing our progress pictures.

Expression of Interest Deadline

If you haven't got your expressions of interest in already then I suggest you sit yourself down with a cup of tea and do it right now, it'll only take five minutes.

Why right now? Because the deadline is this Sunday, 27th January at midnight GMT.

Download the expression of interest document (link removed as deadline has now passed), fill it in and send it to newcastlesciencecomic@gmail.com

We're not looking for fully formed ideas yet so even if you don't know what you want to do yet please let us know that you want to do something. 

Super Mash-Up!

On Wednesday the 16th January Newcastle Science Comic had a Super Mash-Up, the first meeting of artists, writers and scientists interested in contributing to the comic. Science and comics aren't naturally considered a good match but they're both used to explain things. Comics are a fantastically accessible way of telling a story and science is full of fantastic stories that really need to be told, the ideal match!

We kicked off the event with a little activity that will probably look familiar to anybody who's been near the internet in the last year. What do people think you do? It was interesting to see that most people's mothers couldn't really keep track of what they do. It also seems nobody actually does what they think they do.

What people think I do - post it note version - photos by Mike D, drawings by a scientist.

Science, the great employability machine - photos by Mike D, drawings by a scientist.

The words in balloons - photos by Mike D, drawings by a writer.

Born free - photos by Mike D, drawings by an artist.

The event got off to a great start and collaboration was already in the air. Newcastle Science Comic's chief editor Lydia Wysocki made a presentation on comics and their usefulness for communication and explaining. Some examples included Will Eisner's How to Strip your Baby, a page from his M-16 U.S. Army Rifle Maintenance Booklet (commissioned by the U.S. Army) and the safety instructions on the back of an airplane seat.

We also heard from Dr Mike Jeffries, an ecologist who researches pond life; water beetles, dragonflies and the like, how they come and go over the years and in response to changing landscapes. Dr Jeffries uses comics to raise awareness and explore environmental themes related to his research. He also encourages his geography students to make comics to explore their personal worlds, making geography unique and relevant to their lives and surroundings.

Friendships were made, pictionary was played and some of our artists found their scientific soul mates. Not everybody could make it to Newcastle on the day so we had some online portfolios to show off too, technology is a wonderful thing, thank you science. The next few weeks will be all about putting our teams in touch with each other and bouncing even more scientific ideas back and forth.

Artists and scientists playing pictionary - photo by @EngageNE.

Communicating in words and pictures, that's a comic that - photo by @EngageNE.

If you were at the mash-up and drew a thing or took a photo of a thing then please do share it with us, we'd love to show it on our blog. We've got some more "What people think I do" sticky notes to share over the next few days and a fantastic giant collaborative drawing by everybody at the mash-up to try and fit in a scanner.

Who are we?

The editorial team for the Newcastle Science Comic are five members of the newcastle comics and zine community, with the support of the engagement co-ordinator at Newcastle University, Rose Wu.

If you'd like to talk to us about the Newcastle Science Comic, please email: newcastlesciencecomic@gmail.com

You can read more about us at the links below.

• Lydia Wysocki
• Paul Thompson
• Brittany Coxon
• Michael Duckett
• Michael Thompson

Please note that Lydia and Paul also work at Newcastle University and are taking part in this project outside of their day jobs.  This may mean there are slight delays in responding to emails about this project so it does not interfere with their day jobs.

The image above is by Cuttlefish Comics. Prominent images in the background of this blog are also by Cuttlefish and Oscillating Brow.

Welcome!

Science includes the study of EPIC THEMES. Themes so epic they go beyond research journals and textbooks. You know, the sort of EPIC THEMES that leap off the pages of comic books into the hearts and minds of children.

The beauty of EPIC THEMES is that you can take them as seriously as you like. Some particularly awesome EPIC THEMES are:

• robots
• explosions and danger
• dinosaurs
• space, time and travel
• very big things and very small things
• things we can eat and things that can eat us (and other stuff to do with the human body)
• codes, ciphers and hidden messages
• heroes and villains
• matters of life and death

We're working with Newcastle University to produce a science comic book as part of the British Science Festival in September 2013 in Newcastle. We’re planning to print about 8000 copies of a full colour comic and will make a more detailed brief available in due course.

A team and a brief? A team and a brief! The project’s warming up in November 2012 – here’s an expression of interest form (link removed as deadline has now passed) if you’d like to know a little more.

There’ll be more information as things progress, but this holding page is it for the moment. If you’d like to talk more get in touch using newcastlesciencecomic@gmail.com