Sean Azzopardi coaxes the shy and retiring butterfly of the Brit comics scene Oli Smith into talking about his art and approach to comics:
“Sean: To my eye, you seem to prefer a text and illustration approach to comic making. Is this because you see your work as book material rather than comics. Or are you making a bolder statement? Do you feel that the panel and speech balloon approach restrictive?
Oli: No I see my work as comics, I think it would be snobby to call it otherwise, it’s still a combination of words and pictures. But i like the non use of speech bubbles as I usually aim for a rather dream like approach to the comics, in my head the words are all voiceovers to the action, and I hope that the writing is strong enough to allow people to differentiate between characters rather than pointing it out. Also I’m terrible at drawing decent speech bubbles and initially just prit sticked printed out sheets of dialogue onto the originals. With Summer Ball I wanted the speech to be very vague as if the reader was simply following me through the party overhearing what was said. I do like panels but tend to keep them as regular grids as I like how grids pace the comic naturally rather than stressing different events, a technique I nicked from Chris reynolds which very clearly illustrates how fast a comic should be read.”
(thanks to Matt B for the link)
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