The Lakes International Comic Art Festival has joined the Tapas.io digital comics community, publishing free online versions of some of its many projects created since it began in 2013.
The first projects re-published on the platform are the 2018 LICAF Journal, presenting a snapshot of that year’s event. Official festival “comic journalist” Graeme McNee interviewed over 25 guests, volunteers, staff and, eh, one sheep to make the comic. Part documentary, part artistic expression, it gives readers an introduction to what attending the Festival could be like and the amount of work that goes into the preparation and organising of such an event.
Also available is the 2019 Festival Journal by Jean-Baptiste Pollien, a.k.a. Jibé (also available directly from the Festival web site as a PDF here), celebrating the 2019 weekend-long event in Kendal.
Jibé happily recounts his experience of visiting the Festival with other European guests, and it’s quite clear that, like attendees, this talented comic creator enjoyed his time in the Lake District!
The physical Lakes International Comic Art Festival will return in October 2021, but the ongoing uncertainty caused by the Coronavirus Pandemic necessitated the organisation’s first major foray into the digital world with LICAF LIVE this year, following quickly on the heels of its initial web projects such as supporting artist Marc Jackson’s Marc Makes Comics YouTube Channel for aspiring young comic artists and its recently-launched Digital Colouring Project.
For full programming plans, which also include LITTLE LICAF LIVE, designed especially for kids (12 and under) and families – a wonderland of workshops, downloadable resources, readings and more – visit the main part of our Festival web site.
Also now free to read on Tapas is the Lost in Space anthology – the winning entries in the Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2014 competition, run in conjunction with Titan Comics. This was a challenge to find undiscovered talent with a “Lost in Space” theme. The winners were announced at Lancaster Comics Day in 2015 by the digital project’s editor, John Freeman.
The competition, co-ordinated by Katie White and Phil Welch, asked comic artists and writers to to create an original comic of four to six pages in length, with the winners seeing their strips published in a digital anthology, originally released by Titan Comics on behalf of the Festival.
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Since its launch in October 2012, Tapas Media has gathered over 54,000 creators, 76,000 series, and over 1,200,000 episodes. Headquartered in Burlingame, the company has received over $15 million in funding to date.
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