Panel – Brief

“We all wish we had superpowers: We all wish we could do more than we can do”

Stan Lee 1922 – 2018

This statement by Stan Lee has always rung true with me. I have always enjoyed the escapism comics have brought me. To this day Stan Lee is one of the driving forces behind why I continue to shoot cosplay, I truly enjoy bringing characters from my child hood to life in my own way and giving the people I work with a break from normal life.

After finding this genre  I have met some truly amazing creative people, who do not only dress up as their favourite characters, but they also embody the character and bring joy to children through their charity work.

After the success with previous panel’s of this Genre, I really had to think about how I could take this to the next level, after much consideration I decided to create my panel around Hero’s after they have stopped Being hero’s looking at what they may be doing in their downtime, yet I still wanted to get part’s of the characters into the images which sometimes is more than just a look, it’s a mannerism, I then planned to put them in simple situations which you would expect normal people to be in but not their characters, I would then showcase how these characters would deal with these situations that we all have to deal with all the time.

This panel, is made up of a selection of marvel, DC and Disney characters. Each character was picked as they have been in my life for quite some time, or they have made an impression on me, but even after this I wanted to make these images more about my connection to the town I live in and my family. My family came to area during world war 2, my grandfather was a desert rat with Montgomery, while my grandma was left at home to look after a large family, during the blitz grandma was evacuated to Atwick, which is very close to Hornsea as Hull suffered quite a bit at the hands of the Luftwaffe. After the war my grandfather returned home and the family decided to stay in the area and some went to work for the local Pottery, with this in mind I started my hunt for a complete Hornsea pottery coffee set , I manged to find a complete set at a local car boot, and knew what I wanted to do with it.

You will see I have used a collection of props which link together in order to bring my ideas for this panel to life, some of these are used in numerous images and are there for the characters to be using to relax or sober them up. I also wanted to give a nod to my local free paper, as sometimes they ask to use my images for stories, which I enjoy giving something back to the community.

I have always tried to have a nod to the character’s back story, which forms a massive part of any comic book, you always need a good back story. This could be with the use of colour / expression of even their actions, some characters are very hot headed and even when they are relaxing they would find themselves in situations which would still wind them up, I imagine some of the characters would probably not change despite being off the clock.. and would probably still be drunk. You will  also notice in some of my images subtle connections  which link to other characters, this again is a nod to how the characters have interacted over the many years in the comic books and is done as homage to Stan lee.

‘Excelsior’

( always upward)