Last year we worked with 18 brilliant disabled creatives on our Young Artist Development Programme (YADP). Their work is featured in a new zine called “Department for Wonder and Play”, more about this here. In addition to the digital and physical publication, we’re going to spotlight each artist on the blog so you can get a deeper insight into their work and process. Over to our Solidarity Coordinator Katie, who chatted to Luigi about his work.

Luigi started making artwork at around six years old, when he watched Mister Maker on CBeebies. He likes creating things because it helps him to display his imagination and feelings. Previously, he’s worked with Intoart – you can view some of his work on their website.

For this project, Luigi made a Manga comic. Manga is a type of graphic novel that originally comes from Japan. Traditionally, Manga is in black and white, and is read from right to left (which is different to how books are typically read in the UK). Luigi’s Manga strip is also like this – he’s helpfully added where to start, and which way to read it. All of his Manga strip is hand drawn with HB pencils, brush pens, micron pens and rulers.

Luigi’s work is titled Mice in Control. It’s about mice who race in radio-controlled cars – which are the same type as the real radio-controlled cars which Luigi owns! Luigi says:

I want to see my favourite RC car in action, with a character racing with it. Because I love drawing Manga, I wanted to keep making Manga pages.

Making the project was fun but tiring. So the fun part was the inking and adding tone while listening to classic tunes, and the challenging part was to come up with the story board and sketching the panels to see how it should look, and also the speech bubble to make sure it is readable and easy to understand.

Thanks so much Luigi for explaining everything that goes into a Manga strip like this – and for bringing us your Mice in Control.