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My new designed book - shipped in time for Valentine's Day

Hey, look at this! Recognise this guy and his comic?



If you came along to the Pop Up Festival last month, you might have met Zoom Rockman and seen him give his workshop comics talk, with his brother Ace.




And this is exciting, The Independent have picked up the story, they're excited to see an 11-year-old kid making, self-publishing and marketing his own comics.





And they've printed some of his work! A great media day for indie comics, hurrah!



Cheers for the Pop Up mention, Zoom! :D I hope lots of other kids will realise just how possible it is to start making and publishing comics NOW, and not wait until they're grown up. All you need to publish a comic is paper, something to draw with, some way to reproduce it (by hand, with a photocopier, with a computer printer, with an online printing company such as Lulu, or DPS who printed our ink+PAPER anthology), a blog or website (which can be found free online), willingness to put in the hours, and you're off!



You can read the full Independent article on their website. And here's Zoom's website, go explore!

Earlier in the year, I went to Winchester House School for World Book Day. The art teacher, Tobias Till, reported back that after I left, there'd been a big flurry of comics making, and I invited him to bring along some of his crew to sell their comics at last weekend's Pop Up Festival. I also encouraged them to keep a blog about the trip, and they did! Here it is!

Winchester House at the Pop Up Comics Big-Top of Awesome!

Katie’s first ride in a London black cab.




Some warm up exercises.



PopUp sign outside Central St Martins building.



Setting up comic stall. Sarah McIntyre in background with black and white hat.



Setting prices for home-made comics.





Learning some drawing tips from the professionals.



Enthusing some young artists



Great ice cream van for essential refreshments.



Starzie and Frankie take part in a Monster Draw Off.



A spinning wheel to give comic writers ideas for characters.



Some authors who took part in a guess the author competition.



Zoom Rockman gave a talk about his comics and how he makes them.



Cooling down after a hard day’s work…..



Investing the profits from comic sales.





Train ride home – reading Zoom Rockman’s latest copy of The Zoom.

The big day finally came, and it was AWESOME! The Comics Big-Top of Awesome totally rocked London's Pop Up Festival and kids and adults alike were pumping character drawings and comics out of that pavilion.



Here was our amazing team: Neill Cameron, Nana Li, me, Gary Northfield, Jamie Littler, Jamie Smart and David O'Connell. (You can see the books they make if you click here.) When Pop Up Director Dylan Calder offered me the chance to curate one of the festival venues and do anything I wanted, it could have been daunting, but it wasn't, because I knew I could get my awesome comics friends to come along and help me run it. And most of them do a lot of comics festivals and events, so they know how to work with kids and get them excited and eager to make up their own stories. Being able to draw and tell stories, combined with a sense of humour means this stuff comes pretty naturally to them.



And the day DID run amazingly well! All the creators had a good idea of which kids needed guidance making their comics, and sat alongside them, drawing and chatting with them. And besides the comics making that went all on day, we had a solid programme of awesome events!



David O'Connell shot footage of one round of the COMICS BATTLE, a fiercely fought drawing duel: Gary Northfield vs Jamie Littler!



It was fun coming home and seeing the tweets:



When Dave, Stuart and I arrived in the morning, the incredibly talented and dedicated art student team from Central Saint Martins had been working hard until site closing time the night before and the place looked AMAZING!




They'd worked with me on a layout for the venue, and as for decorating it, Neill Cameron and I came up with the idea of making it a comics circus theme, fellow Pop Up curator Candy Gourlay suggested the idea of the Story Wheels, and I asked them to make it bright and fit in as many animal characters as possible. And I was absolutely thrilled at what they came up with! (You can see more photos of the team - Isa Caruncho, Chiahui Liao and Maddy Rita Faye - on my last blog post here.)



Our team was actually bigger than the seven adult comics artists, we had four more people on board, selling comics they'd made and drawing portraits: Frankie, Katie, Staizie and Zoom Rockman. It was one of the first times the three girls from Winchester House School had sold their comics, and they were making a comics diary of their trip to London with their art teacher, fab printmaker Tobias Till. Zoom, age 11, has been making and selling comics for several years, and I heard that he'd even been flown out to Korea to talk about comics there! The guy doesn't let being young stop him, which is the height of awesomeness.

Wow, the Pop Up Festival site looks AMAZING! I went today for the schools and press launch, and got to see how our COMICS BIG-TOP OF AWESOME is coming along! It's all happening this weekend, and the comics festival-within-a-festival is just Saturday, so do come along! And did I mention that it's all FREE? Details on the Pop Up Festival website. And click here for our fabulous comics creator lineup and the day's comics event schedule!



The three Central Saint Martins art students are working their tails off to turn it into a fun comic space, and I was so thrilled when I walked in. Here's the fabulous team: Isa Caruncho, Maddy Rita Faye and Chiahui Liao.



Look at these critters, aren't they brilliant?! I was trying not to get in the way of their work, but I couldn't help running around examining everything.



And check out these Story Wheels! There will be three of them, and people can spin them (like fruit machines) and combine the words to get ideas for their stories, such as a deep-sea diver giraffe in a prehistoric swamp or a mermaid London sweet shop owner. (Candy Gourlay reminded me that this was her idea when we had the first brainstorming session! And I know Emma Vieceli and Jim Medway both do similar things when they lead comics workshops.)




Here's Chiahui Liao working on the big panel you'll see when you first walk up to the Comics Big-Top of Awesome.



Maddy Rita Faye is working on the monkey logo image here.



And Isa Caruncho is painting a big interior panel.



A back story: Isa's from the Philippines and Candy Gourlay is featuring a Filipino-style fiesta, so Candy and I had a huge fight at the first meeting over who would get to work with Isa. I loved her illustrative work and she was wearing a Kate Beaton comics t-shirt and I claimed her for comics and I'm so glad I won, ha ha. (Apologies, Candy!)



Here's Production Coordinator Jessica Hudsley checking our our robot.



Writer Marcus Sedgwick has been hugely ambitious in organising a whole vampire-themed theatrical production based on his young adult novel, My Swordhand is Singing.



Rehearsals have been going for awhile, and I think it's going to be quite scary, so probably not for the younger children. But should be pretty amazing.

Exciting! I got an e-mail last night from Chiahui Liao, one of the three Central Saint Martins art students who are working to make Saturday's Pop Up COMICS BIG-TOP OF AWESOME look, well, AWESOME. And it looks like they're doing a great job!



They've hit a bit of a hitch, their paint hasn't arrived yet, but Chiahui with Isa Caruncho and Maddy Rita Faye are doing their best to do everything else in the meantime, and their paint for the main set should arrive this morning. Here's one of the three Story Wheels that you visitors will be able to spin to get story-starting ideas for your comic. This is the Setting Wheel... will your story be set on an airplane? In a haunted house? In London? A prehistoric swamp? Of course, you can come up with your own idea, but we'll have some fun ones on offer to get you started.



Only two days left, are you coming along this Saturday to make comics with us, and take part in the rest of the festival, that's sure to be amazing? I've been looking at some of the stuff Candy Gourlay has in store for her Filipino-style FIESTA - bamboo dancers are the latest treat I've spotted! - and it looks amazing. Pop Up Festival details here. I've just been making name tags for the amazing team we'll have on site. Click here to find out about them and see the day's schedule.



Quite late last night, I answered some interview questions for my friend Maisie, who's passionate about comics and doing a project on them for school. I thought I'd attach my answers here, in case you want a peek. And I'll weave in a comic Maisie made about her visit to the studio I share with Gary Northfield and Lauren O'Farrell.

Maisie Jones interviews Sarah McIntyre about making comics



Maisie: What inspired you to become a comic artist?

I read loads of comics when I was a kid, but then stopped reading them for awhile when I moved to England, because I thought they were mostly just superhero comics, and I didn't like those so much. But then when I went to art college, a fellow student, Ellen Lindner, encouraged me to start my own LiveJournal blog to post my artwork. I started seeing what other people were posting, and a lot of them did both illustration and comics, and it was very inspiring to see that their comics were about all sorts of things, not just superheroes. It was also helpful for me to see that comics didn't always have to be funny, because the idea of doing a funny comic every day, like I saw in the American newspapers, seemed a bit too daunting. I didn't know what I'd do if I couldn't think of a punchline. It was a relief to find out that comics could be sad, too, or just stories, not always jokes.

When you were younger what was your fave comic?

Calvin and Hobbes! It ran every day in The Seattle Times newspaper, in black and white, and in colour on Sundays.



Maisie and her sister, Molly, visit the Fleece Station studio

How did you come up with the idea for