The Intercorstal and P&O

I've just cut up a P&O Cruises brochure to get images as a starting point for another Intercorstal project, which I'll do either as the Mr Soft project finishes, or in tandem with it. This new project will be the fourth Intercorstal-related thing I've done which heavily uses P&O promotional material, having already completed:

Witches which was based on a set of 8 promotional postcards

Valentine, based on a brochure

Mr Soft, which uses cut up pages from a P&O brochure to make comics on two of the project's four final pages.

P&O isn't the only company that I've taken promotional images from as a basis to make comics -- Collider used pages from an IKEA catalogue and Butcher's Park was made from an Epic Learning brochure. Oh, and I have a sketchbook made from a Next catalogue. But why do I use these images, and why do I return to P&O so often?

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about this, although precious few people have actually ever asked me. Here's some reasons that I've come up with:

1. The Intercorstal as a project is mostly monotone, and at some point I decided that it needed some colour. I experimented with including colour in the 'traditional' pages, but was never really happy with it. The only 'released' example I can think of is "Taking Advice From Bryan Lee O'Malley" which I did for the second TwitterArtExhibit. So a way to introduce colour is to have it there already, and base the ink work on those. And I think generally it works really well, which is why I keep coming back to it.

2. Those source images are so beautiful in their own right, it seems a shame that they are so easily passed over and dismissed. They're used by the companies involved to inspire particular emotion in order to sell their product -- most people when reading these materials don't pay a great deal of attention to the pictures. Reusing them is my way of appreciating them, making them exist as objects of beauty, rather than just tools to sell cruises/furniture/etc.

3. Nobody does blue sky like P&O. That yawning expanse of pure blue is one of their biggest selling tools -- a place of opportunity, peace, hope, that people can buy into by going on one of their cruises. And it's a great tool to use when you're looking for colour to compliment and act as counterpoint to something like The Intercorstal, which is dense, complicated and often quite violent.

There's probably a hidden psychological aspect, too -- as there is with so much of my work. I mean, I've been on a couple of P&O (one of which I've blogged about here) cruises, and my wife and her family totally love them, but whether there's an emotional reason that I keep returning to them in my art, and responding to their image in the way that I do, is probably best left to a professional to decide.

The Intercorstal: Valentine

Here's some photos of the third installment of the Intercorstal mini-comics, entitled Valentine.

The bulk of this was done as part of Alicia Rose's Secret Valentine Project. I was hopelessly late getting it ready for the February 14th deadline, and compared to the other stuff included in the project, was very very far from the 'Valentine' brief. The idea was to come up with something romantic, which in my brain translated to 'Cruises are romantic... I've got this Cruise brochure... let's make an intercorstal comic out of it!'

I scanned everyhting as I went and sent the scans to the always excellent anxietydecending to tidy up and pdf -- by some weird trick, though, the document was two pages short, so I knocked together some inserts to... well, insert.

As for releasing it... well, it'll be for free again, but I've been very shoddy at getting promised copies of previous Intercorstals out, so likely won't do a mass invitation for free stuff. That leaves me undecided on what I'll do, though. I'll keep you updated, I'm sure.

In the meantime, marvel with wonder at these photos!