PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland’s comic scene is booming – even for students.
Right now, there are students at Pacific Northwest College of Art who are getting a crash course in creating a comic from beginning to end like the pros, with the help of their instructor Jonathan Hill.
As a comic creator himself, Hill’s got plenty of wisdom to impart but says he merely supervises while his students take the reins.
Students create the comics within an anthology, the first of which was Unversed, then its sequel No Refunds came next, create the Kickstarter to fund the comic, plan for design and print it themselves.
It’s not a student-made collection of comics: it’s a great collection of up-and-coming artists and writers (who happen to be students).
This year’s students will be publishing the third and final comic called Postscript.
“This is going to be the last time we do this book because it’s a lot of work on me. We basically do the Kickstarter at the end of the school year. I spend the summer doing design and sending out rewards and all that sort of stuff. It’s a lot of work,” said Hill. “I love doing it. I love that the students have the opportunity to learn about what goes into making a book, what goes into funding a book, thinking about what the market of the book is and just giving them all these professional practices.”
The students of today are tomorrow’s comic creators, according to Hill. And he’s right.
Clive Hawken was one of Hill’s students. If you don’t know Hawken he is the artist working on the Comixology original Delver with Portland-based writer MK Reed and Chicago-based writer Spike Troutman.
“For me as an educator, I just want to give them all the tools they have so that they can leave the marketplace and be ready to work,” said Hill.
The students launched their Kickstarter for Postscript on Friday, May 17.
To donate (or share if you can’t donate) click here.
On Friday, May 17, the students who are creating this comic will be at Nucleus Portland at 1445 SE Hawthorne for a celebratory Drink and Draw! You can buy some art, support their project and buy an artist (or yourself) a drink. See you there!
