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<\/a>Despite any lingering nervousness, the students are looking forward to finally displaying their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think that all of us students who are taking the Comics and Graphic Novels program now are looking forward to having an opportunity to spread our name around,\u201d says Nielsen, \u201ckind of gain an in to the [comic scene] in Victoria. I am definitely looking forward to meeting the mentors that are going to be there. Getting personal time with someone like [Black Panther<\/em> artist] Brian Stelfreeze is pretty unique.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will be several guest speakers and mentors in attendance whom the students and attendees will get to interact with, along with several activities for attendees to participate in, such as the comics jam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA comics jam is essentially when one person starts a comic with a single panel and then hands the piece of paper around, and other artists get a chance to fill in the story word for word or panel for panel,\u201d says Nielsen. \u201cIt\u2019s really fun because every person brings their own creative element or character to the story and it quickly grows in hilarity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The festival encourages cosplay and has a dedicated room for attendees to sketch cosplayers and stretch their own creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s also a room full of tables for additional artists and young artists who have taken the program in the past or would like to get some publicity,\u201d says Nielsen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the panels and activities, the Artist\u2019s Alley will have merch for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are taking three of the eight-page comics that we\u2019ve done this year and we\u2019re putting them together into an anthology that each of us will be selling, so it will all be original work. It will all be inspired by different prompts by the prof, but it will all be very unique,\u201d says McDonald.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The students in the program have learned that the medium of comics is full of compromises and inherent limitations, but these aren\u2019t necessarily bad things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur prof has a good saying: \u2018The absence of limitation is the enemy of art.\u2019 It just talks about the fact that the more limitations you have, the more you have to problem-solve, the more you have to come up with clever solutions, which makes the art more powerful and more unique,\u201d says McDonald.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the students are excited to show off their work, their enthusiasm doesn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven though comics have been around since the golden age in the 1950s, people are still coming up with new tropes and ways to tell the story, which really enrich the medium,\u201d says Nielsen. \u201cI think we\u2019re at the forefront of a new age of comics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n