eccc 2017

Sarah Stern is an up-and-coming talent in the world of comics. She primarily provides color art for comics like Goldie Vance and Brave Chef Brianna, but she's also created storyboards for animation, and recently created a webcomic, Cindersong, which she writes, illustrates, and colors herself. ComicsAlliance had the chance to talk to Stern at Emerald City Comicon, where we nerded out about how the heck colorists create magic on the page, and talked about fantasy worldbuilding and making friends in the comics world.

Tamra Bonvillain is one of the hardest working people in comics. She's coloring a ton of comics: Doom Patrol, Wayward, Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Nighthawk... the list goes on and on. If you're into comics, whether it be Marvel and DC superhero books, or creator-owned comics, you've read something colored by Bonvillain. ComicsAlliance sat down with Bonvillain at Emerald City Comicon to talk about her history in comics, her coloring style, and giving credit where credit is due.

Andrea Demonakos is one of the many women in comics whose hard work is never properly appreciated. Working as an organizer and coordinator at Emerald City Comicon, then ReedPOP, and named last year as the new festival director for the Vancouver Comic Arts Festival, Demonakos is an integral figure in the comics convention and festival scene, and that gives her a great perspective on the comics community. ComicsAlliance reached out to Demonakos post-ECCC to find out more about what it takes to run a comic con, why comic conventions are so important for creators, and what advice she has for first-time attendees.

Ngozi Ukazu is a sensation in the world of webcomics. Her series Check, Please has an amazingly strong fandom --- translating the comic into other languages, indexing it, creating fanart and fanfic --- and her Kickstarter to print Check, Please Year 2 destroyed its goal in a matter of hours. Check, Please follows Eric Bittle, former figure skater, during his years at Samwell University. He joins Samwell's hockey team and, well, it changes his life. ComicsAlliance had a chance to chat with Ukazu at Emerald City Comicon about hockey fandom, relationships, and finding humor in all kinds of situations.

At last year's Image Expo, Image Comics and C. Spike Trotman's Iron Circus Comics announced a fund called Creators For Creators that would provide a grant for talented and undiscovered creators, allowing them the the freedom and flexibility to explore their art. Yesterday, at the final day of Emerald City Comic Con, the fund announced illustrator and cartoonist M. Dean as the first recipient of the 2017 Creators For Creators grant, for their upcoming project I Am Young.