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Team building on the road to Hastings – panel from The Opportunity by Will Volley

00OppCoverAn Opportunity not to be missed…

Last Friday (29 April) was your opportunity to meet Will Volley, author of The Opportunity,  a graphic novel set in Hastings. He was ‘in conversation’ at the Beacon with HOT’s Erica Smith.

When Erica discovered that Myriad Editions were publishing a graphic novel set in Hastings, she was curious to read it. What she found even more interesting was that the Hastings depicted was not the picturesque town centre, but the marginal areas of the town. If you didn’t make it on Friday, read on to get a flavour of Will Volley’s vision of Hastings.

The Opportunity is a dark story of door-to-door salesmen. It’s a character study of an ambitious team leader who has swallowed the training manual whole and is desperately striving to get rich, unable to see his inevitable downfall.

Is the story biographical?
The story was inspired by my own brief experience working for one of these marketing companies back in 2003. Being a naval gazing art graduate meant I didn’t last more than 2–3 weeks in the cut and thrust world of direct sales! But after I left I felt like I had been part of a cult. I did a lot of research and was amazed to discover that I wasn’t alone.

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I initially wanted to tell the story from the perspective of a naive job seeker (myself) becoming indoctrinated in to the business, but it kept turning into a victimization story which I quickly grew bored with, I felt it would be much more interesting to create a  slice of life drama about your typical burned out salesman, that would allow me to get inside his head, to explore his philosophy, the (get-rich-quick) culture and also this odd sales world on a microscopic level, which will hopefully speak of wider issues.

00redlakeWhy did you use Hastings as a setting?
Our office was based in Hove, but we would always travel to other towns, we went to Hastings for a week and went as far as Guildford if I remember correctly. My boss told me they always targeted run down areas, because less affluent people are more generous and less cynical when it comes to charity, and they were right.

I found some of the neighbourhoods in Hastings intimidating on first impression; when a front garden has shopping trolleys, car tyres and massive holes in the lawn it makes you think twice before knocking on the door, but once I engaged with the home owners, I found them to be the warmest people you could ever wish to meet, both kind and hilarious, it was a lot of fun.

I used Hastings as a story setting for nostalgic reasons, sort of re-living my experience, and I just felt this urgent need to draw and capture the residential landscape, the houses, the bushes, the front doors, the pavements, I really fell in love with the features. It’s a perfect backdrop for a noir story; lots of hills which create interesting angles and perspectives, big open sky which gives stunning light and lots of old fashioned lampposts! Then there are the bashed up phone boxes, with litter and graffiti which are like street scars or wounds, but I was careful not to overdo the decay, only to depict it to try to  enhance the mood of the drama, rather than putting it in every frame which would paint an unrealistic and bleak depiction of the town. I’ve noticed there’s a lot of ‘poverty porn’ particularly in British films and TV dramas which I don’t wish to contribute to!

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During the drawing stage of the book, I would get the train to Ore station then head north with my pencil and pad, stopping occasionally to make sketches, taking notes. I got lots of suspicious glances but I was careful to make sure I wasn’t just copying specific houses, I wanted to get a feel and understanding of the architecture so I could make it up as I went along rather than having to rely solely on photo reference.

What was your route in to comic art?
I worked as a storyboard artist in London for a few years after I graduated from university, but I really wanted to draw comics, so in my spare time worked on my comic book portfolio to showcase to editors. After getting a handful of jobs drawing for Image Comics I was commissioned to illustrate two graphic novels for UK publisher, Classical Comics. After I had completed those books I wanted to apply everything I had learned about comic book art and storytelling in to my own work, and this became The Opportunity.

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The Opportunity graphic style is very Noire – often pure black and white linear, or just with minimal pale grey tint. Is that your chosen medium, or was it an economically driven decision? Why did you choose not to use greyscale?
Ideally I would have loved to have the time and finances to colour the book, and it was meant to be spot coloured, but coming up with a graphic novel idea, doing the massive amounts of research, writing it, drawing it, and having to re-draw all by myself is a hell of a lot of work! so I decided to leave it as black and white.

I prefer not to use washes (grey-scale tones) firstly because grey tone softens the line, (there’s a reason you don’t print text this way – because you want it to be as continuous and seamless as possible). Also the drawing is a continuation of the lettering, they interact with each other, so my preference is always graphic, bold, ‘set in stone’, and closer to print (wood cut for instance) rather than painting. Having said that I like looking at ink washes, (Will Eisner’s work for instance).

I use the traditional methods of pencilling on to A3 sized paper, then inking over the drawing with a sable haired watercolour brush. Scanning it in to the computer and adding the lettering and grey tones separately. I did actually hand letter the entire book which took a lifetime, but it turns out my hand writing is atrocious, so in the end it made much better sense to use a professional lettered font!

The evening was also an opportunity to discover more about the Hastings and 1066 Country Cartoon Festival which will happen on The Stade on Sunday 16 October, as part of the 950th anniversary events.

The Beacon
67–68 St Mary’s Terrace
Hastings
TN34 3LS

website: www.beaconhastings.com

 

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Posted 16:48 Wednesday, Apr 27, 2016 In: Visual Arts

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