Sugar Glider Comics

Sugar Glider Stories 2 creator interviews 8: Moving Day

1. How did you get involved in Sugar Glider Stories?

 Sara Dunkerton (SD): Back in March 2011 I received an email out of the blue from Daniel. He introduced the Sugar Glider concept to me and basically said that so far each book had been made by a load of boys! He wanted to address the gender imbalance by introducing some female creators and Small Press Big Mouth’s Lee Grice pointed Daniel in the direction of my blog!

 I was fresh out of uni and had only begun to be introduced to the UK small press scene. I was working on the development stages for a 6 page story called “Promises” with writer Matt Gibbs for the Bayou Arcana anthology, and had also just gotten some interest in providing 4 illustrations for Iain Lowson’s RPG, Dark Harvest: The Legacy of Frankenstein! But Daniel obviously liked what he saw and I’m always ready to take a project on, so I leaped at the opportunity!

 Of course by the time Daniel contacted me again at the end of July with a few scripts to read through, I was in full flow with a slightly impromptu Dark Harvest comic entry for the Strip Magazine’s Spotlight Competition (with only a week till the competition deadline) not to mention still working on Bayou Arcana!! And Daniel wanted all art finished by the 1^st August, leaving me just over a week to do it all… If I wasn’t too busy…

 But I’d committed myself to Sugar Glider from the word go, so I told him, “Hell, yeah! I can make time!!”

 2. What attracted you to the project?

SD: When I got the scripts from Daniel, “Moving Day” instantly stood out! It just also happened to be the shortest story with only 3 pages! But what a brilliant 3 pages they were!

There was so much personality and insight into the characters, not to mention a great bit of character development, and a real beginning to an interesting and unlikely relationship between Babylon and Mother Goose. It certainly showed that Daniel loved these characters!

I wasn’t the only one who saw this - a fair few of the other artists apparently also wanted to do “Moving Day”! When I managed to convince Daniel that I could make time, he went with me for the story. And I’m so very glad he did!! The opportunity to get a bit of my art seen along side many other fantastic creators, in an already established small press comic was an opportunity I couldn’t miss!

3. Were you disappointed to be drawing a superhero story where everyone is just hanging in their civvies?

SD: Ummm… Not really. I mean initially when Daniel asked me who I thought I’d like to draw for I had a proper look through SGS1 and picked out Star, because his costume is awesome!! But I still had a lot of fun with the characters that I was given to play with.

I suppose technically Mother Goose IS wearing her costume, same for Babylon! She doesn’t have a fixed costume and rather dresses in her punky Riot Grrl style, which was really fun to design for this story! Red Kite also is wearing half a costume; he is so attached to his Super-pants!

So it was really just Barn Owl wearing plain civvies!

But none of that really mattered - the story was about the relationships between the characters and personality clashes within the mentor/pupil teams that had been put together. I mean they’d be spending time with each other out of the field and training rooms, and out of costume. It’s good to see a snapshot of that because it makes them real!

4. Were any of the artists mentioned in the strip personal favourites?

SD: They are all pretty iconic classics; David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Duran Duran. Who hasn’t listened to these guys once in a while!?

I admit though that I’m not so hot on the music scene. I have my favourites and I know what I like and that’s what matters to me. I generally only ever listen to music while drawing and travelling. But out of those artists the one that’s likely to pop up on my playlist is probably Bowie.

Sara Dunkerton, a 23 year old farm girl from a tiny village in Somerset, found her calling as an illustrator and animator during College. She carried this realisation through to university where she graduated last year (2010) at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

Out in the real world for the past year, she has worked on illustrating comics for Bayou Arcana, Dark Harvest: Resistance, Sugar Glider Stories 2 and Into the Woods: A Fairy Tale Anthology, and is loving every second!

Ever with another project eagerly lined up, she has hopes of being able to say goodbye to the boring day jobs and work full time on creative projects professionally. 

You can find more of Sara’s work at http://saradunkerton.blogspot.com/

This interview was conducted by Gavin Jones from The Sidekick Cast