Hugh (Shug) Raine Interview

Next up to be inter­viewed is the Gene Simmons-esque Hugh (Shug) Raine;

1 / Can you intro­duce yourself?

I’m Hugh Raine, also known as Shug (which is a name I inher­ited from the Scottish-Australian side of my family).

I’m a pro­fes­sional greet­ings card illus­trator and freel­ance car­toon­ist liv­ing in Dews­bury, West Yorkshire.

I have a very long tongue which I will show you at con­ven­tions if you ask nicely and/or buy a badge.

2 / What drew you to comics?

Ini­tially, I went through the same DC Thompson route as every­one else, although they sort of annoyed me — even as a child — with incess­ant puns and smug self-referencing.

I thought I’d com­pletely “out­grown” com­ics (although I was still watch­ing a lot of Nick­elodeon) until I star­ted pick­ing up UK reprints of Mar­vel com­ics. Of course, it wasn’t long before I found comic shops and real­ised there were other types of books in there that would appeal to the car­toon­ist in me. I star­ted read­ing Peter Bagge’s Hate and never looked back.

I stud­ied anim­a­tion at uni­ver­sity (as many of us comic makers did) and since writ­ing a short film and a comic are basic­ally the same, I had sketch­books full of ideas for both. I knew a bunch of guys who put together a type of comic-‘zine and joined in. Later, I would start my own comic-‘zine called REET!, spawn­ing many of the char­ac­ters I now use in my longer works.

3 / Who do you count as your influences?

My comic influ­ences are Peter Bagge, Steven Weiss­man, Pat Mori­arty, John Kric­falusi and recently Nich­olas Mahler, although I try not to let the com­ics I like influ­ence me too much since they’re mostly Amer­ican and I’m try­ing to embrace my York­shire roots. Instead, I favour medi­ums out­side of com­ics like com­edy, tele­vi­sion, car­toons, music, film, Hallowe’en, travel, the weather… Or in other words: everything else!

4 / Can you describe your work­ing process?

I let an idea grow unhindered in my head for about a year, occa­sion­ally doing the odd sketch while it takes shape. A lot of these early sketches end up in the fin­ished book but I need the story to have evolved on its own enough before I start writ­ing and thumb­nail­ing. I thumb­nail the pages on post-it notes in a roughly lin­ear fash­ion and begin to piece everything together.

With my last pro­ject and from now on, I only give myself a rough idea of the dia­logue, pre­fer­ring to type it in one go over the fin­ished art­work. It gives the words more spon­taneity and a more con­ver­sa­tional feel.

I still work with pen­cil and paper, and I usu­ally ink using a Pilot V-Sign, which has a nice, soft nib. Lately, I’ve star­ted using a dip pen and ink for occa­sional projects.

I rarely pro­duce a decent ori­ginal that I could sell. Instead, I allow myself to make mis­takes, know­ing that it can all be cleaned up and assembled digit­ally in Pho­toshop, where I also do my colouring.

5 / What does your workspace/studio look like?

Noth­ing like this. I tidied it for this photo. My com­puter is eight years old but still does the business.

My work desk at the greet­ings card com­pany looks much cooler… But it has top secret card con­cepts all over it so you can’t see it!

Other than that, I work on the kit­chen table with the door open so I can see through to the TV in the liv­ing room, or I draw on my lap on the couch, releg­at­ing my wife to the sev­en­ties orange arm­chair and giv­ing myself ter­rible chest pains that make a loud, deep pop when I stretch it out.

6 / What are you work­ing on at the moment?

I’ve just fin­ished my mini-series, Find Comet, Hit Comet, Watch Comet, Sleep, which I’ve col­lec­ted into a per­fect bound book and have been selling through my web­site and at con­ven­tions. I’m tout­ing it around for now but am due to start my next book about a flood, which will be the second of my pro­posed “dis­aster tri­logy” books! I plan to pub­lish it online for free as an exper­i­ment. I can still hear Steve Tillotson’s words ringing in my ears when I offered him a comic to buy on my table at The UK web & Mini Comix Thing: ‘Nah. I read that on your web­site!’ But I do believe that show­ing it for free to a lar­ger audi­ence can only help sales in the long run.

I’ve star­ted to soundtrack my work. My comet book is accom­pan­ied by six­teen free tracks. I plan to soundtrack most of my com­ics from now on, basic­ally mak­ing the kind of music I enjoy listen­ing to.

I’m also pimp­ing myself out for selec­ted antho­lo­gies, along the lines of the recent Paper Sci­ence #3.

7 / What are your ambi­tions for the future?

I’m work­ing towards get­ting some­thing pub­lished. It would be nice to have my comet book pub­lished but I’m real­istic in know­ing that it’s my first full length book and I should work on the next one instead of stand­ing still.

The great thing about self-publishing is that I can always sell my books online should my pub­lish­ing ambi­tions never be real­ised… But it would be really lovely to see one of my books on Amazon mar­ket­place for twenty pence.

I’m also due to start a col­lab­or­at­ive web­comic with a bunch of extremely tal­en­ted chaps that I’m pretty excited about. Our work com­pli­ments each oth­ers’ very nicely so I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing what we come up with. If only we could settle on a title…

Steve Tillot­son and I plan to do another Leeds Altern­at­ive Com­ics Fair around late spring. The first one was a mini success!

8 / What advice would you give to an aspir­ing ama­teur cartoonist?

Put the hours in as early as pos­sible. I recently stumbled upon some pages of a comic I did when I was about thirteen-years-old. I’d always estim­ated there were about thirty pages or so. To my abso­lute shock and hor­ror, I dis­covered there were seventy-two pages! And we’re talk­ing an aver­age of twenty-eight pan­els per page. That’s over two thou­sand pan­els! I can’t even remem­ber put­ting all that time in, but I did and it paid off.

If you want to make com­ics, don’t pol­lute your mind with com­ics by other people, (bey­ond learn­ing the lan­guage of com­ics — but even then, that’s not massively import­ant). Be influ­enced by everything. A good story is a good story, whatever form it’s presen­ted in. There’s more to life than com­ics — as brill as they are!

Real­ise that people on the scene aren’t rude, they’re prob­ably just shy. I’m only just real­ising this now.

I’d also say that mater­i­als do not mat­ter in the slight­est. I still use cheap sup­plies like copy paper and cheap tra­cing paper. If you know what you’re doing, no amount of bris­tol board or Rotring pens will help.

9 / What do you think of the health of the UK com­ics scene at the moment, and what do you think it can do better?

I don’t really have a frame of ref­er­ence since I used to work on my com­ics in a sort of artistic bubble before bar­ging onto the con­ven­tion scene in 2007, but the con­ven­tions seem busy, vibrant and occa­sion­ally very prof­it­able (if you’re ready to diversify)!

The people are mostly a friendly, wel­com­ing bunch. Mostly.

But I think comic makers (myself included) could do to stay away from Twit­ter and it’s twee con­ver­sa­tions about cer­eal and do some actual bloody work!

10 / Where is the best place to buy your work?

My web­site, www.reetcomic.co.uk There’s also a bunch of free music on there ready to download!

Thanks, Shug! As usual, go and click some links, buy some com­ics and fol­low Shug on Twit­ter, although you prob­ably don’t want to engage him in con­ver­sa­tion about cereal.