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Comic Con Africa 2024 Wrap Up
September 26 - 29 2024
With the illustrious illustrator of The Way of the Butterfly, Loyiso Mkize.
Signing comics.
*I must have seen someone in a funny costume walking past
When you write a comic book about a samurai, you've got to pose with some Japanese fans, just for control.
Loyiso Mkize drew this live in front of a wrapt audience.
This A0 size poster was pasted the floor at our booth.
And this larger than life poster was hung up as our backdrop on the booth.
Mandla Dube, the man, the myth, the legend behind the Legend behind Yasuke.
Screenwriting Masterclass - AVIJOZI 2024
14 September 2024
One of the biggest challenges in conducting an open masterclass is that you never quite know the level of expertise and experience of the people who will attend. I prepared a presentation titled "The 5 Essential Characters For Story Conflict" and began the session by conducting a brief poll amongst the more than 100 participants.
"How many of you work professionally as screenwriters?"
Two hands went up.
"How many have something you've written produced?"
A few more hands went up.
"And how many are aspiring screenwriters?"
Almost the entire room raised their hands.
At that moment I decided to park my presentation, and explained my challenge to the class, making it clear that I would much rather attend to their specific needs and questions, rather than ram down some preconceived notions of mine down their throats. I invited them to ask questions about screenwriting - any questions at all - and wrote down their questions on a whiteboard. As soon as I got to a list of 15, I set to work answering them one by ine.
What I stumbled upon was a technique to keep people engaged throughout the the four hours and fifteen minutes long session. That's how long it lasted. The topic that generate the greatest interest and spawned several follow-on questions was, "How do you do worldbuilding for a fantasy or sci-fi story."