UNICEF 3

Production Process

UNICEF 1 - UNICEF home
UNICEF 2 - Front Covers
UNICEF 4 - A Writer Comments
UNICEF 5 - Comic Pages

December:
The Briefing

January:
The Nail Biting

March:
Commissioning

April:
Refining

Image forthcoming

This is more of an annual reunion than a business meeting. I travel 150 miles to listen to a ten minute briefing in which Heather Jarvis, Head of Education at UNICEF, ticks off a list of Articles the next comic should cover. If they relate to particularly sensitive issues (as with the 2003 'sex issue') there may be a further ten minutes discussion before we slip into chatting about films, hill walking and the art of mixing concrete. After a slap up big city meal, I jump back on the train and begin to worry.

I spend two dire months researching the subjects, reading lurid reports of gross inhumanities to kids and making notes. Each day I become more convinced it is impossible to make a comic out of such depressing material. A lot of time is spent in phone conversations with Heather which begin, "I was thinking we could…" and end with "OK, so it wasn't such a brilliant idea." Eventually a picture begins to emerge of how the comic might be structured.

I contact a number of writers with reputations for tackling tricky issues and try to interest them in contributing. Though most have never written for comics, a free meal usually softens them up. I give them a précis of the Convention, a broad outline of their areas of concern and a load of waffle about making grim subjects entertaining. Some do their research first, then write. Others work the otherway round. I blitz their email with material gleaned from the internet and UNICEF.

Armed with the writer's synopsis, I spend a month making myself unpopular, suggesting alternative storylines, themes they might not have thought of or areas they haven't researched. It is a rare scribe who doesn't need nudging. Children's issues, particularly in the Third World, are not something they have reason to know a lot about. For some it's back to school to learn how to write for comics. For others it's a challenge not to upset their egos.

May:
The Storyboard

June:
Commissioning II

July:
The Pencils

August:
Finished Artwork

Image forthcoming

Regardless of which cartoonist ultimately draws what story, I have to make sure the script fits the designated number of pages and works visually. Crocodile tears are shed as I cut acres of text in preference for two lines and a pretty picture. Somewhere in all this the final story is submitted to Heather Jarvis for UNICEF's approval. She runs it past her colleagues and a 'readers group' of young people, who later check out the finished artwork before we go to publication.

Choosing the cartoonists is about style. Dark stories need artists who can conjure broody, atmospheric images. Daft ones, like those always on the back cover, need somebody whose style is wacky, such as Hunt Emerson, Britain's top underground cartoonist. They receive the script, a breakdown of panels per page and an earful recommending how the story should look graphically. Meantime Heather and I go to work on the inside front and back - the hard information for teachers and pupils.

I check the pencil sketches mainly to save the artists time at the inking stage. Occasionally the odd panel needs redrawing or the continuity reworking but mostly only the fine detail requires attention. Even the finished artwork can sometimes stand improvement by adding a judicious detail omitted in the sketches. The amount of picture research our cartoonists put into ensuring the story looks authentic always impresses me. John McCrea photographs models before drawing his stories.

By now we are generally running late, it's actually September and I'm tearing my hair out. There is no point screaming at the team, not if we want quality. All our writers and artists have demanding deadlines but they try and make UNICEF a priority. Finally CDs of their jpeg files arrive and I get down to plugging them into the comic's layout. Computers have become indispensable for artists whose raw materials are pencil and paper. The final comic is run past UNICEF.

September:
Print Run

Cartoonists

Brick

Hunt Emerson

Helen Entwistle

John McCrea

Warren Pleece

Julie Sinclair

Justin Wyatt

The print run of the first comic was less than 5,000. Six years on over 300,000 have been produced. No matter how long we have lived with the project, all of us are like mothers with new babies when the finished product arrives through the letter box. For all of us the work we do for UNICEF has a special significance. For me there is a two month rest before I start over.