Andy Anderson: Workshop Bursary

During another year of incredible Workshop Bursaries at Gaada, we had the pleasure of working with local comic book legend, Andy Anderson.

We first met Andy during a screenprinting project with Forward Directions when we learnt about Andy’s number one character, Barry Tait. During his time Workshop Bursary sessions, Andy developed the comic series further with line drawings and riso prints.

Andy shares his experience:

“During my Gaada Workshop Bursary I was working on a comic about a detective character I created slowly years ago called Barry Tait. Story ideas started to bubble up to the surface during Lockdown then I wrote the first adventure story in Shetland while in Whalsay which is the origins to Barry’s adventures up in Shetland as a Detective, similar to a TV Pilot. This was written entirely from Barry’s viewpoint and other characters started developing naturally along the way as well. When I started coming to Gaada I took those story notes with me because I had a feeling it was a good place to start by creating this story visually somehow, so I showed these notes and then started developing the comic.

One of the many major benefits was Gaada already being very familiar with the Barry Tait character already after screen printing T-shirts and bags years ago. So we discussed the notes I took in along the way, which definitely helped expand and develop the comic and the story way beyond my own expectations. Like how the comic begins, and adding new characters during comic development, and figuring out dynamics between characters, as well as setting tone for some parts of this. During this process, they also suggested including some key aspects about him which are mainly things I feel make him stand out as his own character, like some of his strong skills which reminded me how ideal it is to showcase and explore anything poignant and/or pivotal to a lead or main character in a first story. This also helped with reminding me how strong and visual this comic should be.

I can say strongly that the bursary definitely made me feel creatively supported. I’m always creative and I always get inspired but it’s utilising these two that’s always the hard task at hand, so when these bursaries got going and I knew where the story was going in the comic, this got me to working on it in my spare time too which was great. Also Gaada was very reassuring with reminding me that the drawings don’t have to be done in the right order, or any particular order. There were times when there were drawings I didn’t feel happy with but they reassured those instances too. At the moment, I want to focus on my creativity in as much of my spare time as possible but I feel I’m hit a brick wall with the comic and need help to find out what happens next, so I can’t wait to return to Gaada soon.”

We are excited that Andy has now started weekly One-to-One workshops at Gaada. We look forward to seeing where Andy and Barry Tait go next!

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Workshop Bursaries are made possible with the support of Creative Scotland and Shetland Charitable Trust