ReYa

BroCon Interview: Sophie O’Gara

Between the bustling of the artist alley tables during BroCon, Sophie and I sat down to have a talk about it all. Sophie is an artist, president of the Anime and Manga society at Limerick University and also one of the organizers of BroCon.

What made you start drawing and what med you start drawing manga?

Sophie: My Aunt and sister are artists so for me to draw was very natural. I started out watching Pokémon and Digimon on TV. At first I didn’t know they where from Japan but when I was about 14 I started to understand and it went from there.

Is there any discussion here about it not being manga because it’s drawn in ireland instead of Japan?

Sophie: It’s not as big of a thing here where it comes from. Here it’s just considered a style of drawing. Manga is very much a niche thing here in Ireland. There are so few of us that draw it, so we all collaborate and keep in contact regardless what level they are on. There is no room to exclude anyone as there are not that many of us.

What do you think is the biggest difference between drawing comics in Ireland and somewhere else?

Sophie: Comics are considered childish here. They don’t take them serious or think you can making a living from them. I think this discourages people from even trying. It’s a shame as we are famous for our story tellers and it’s so much part of our culture that it’s ridiculous we don’t have more native comics. I think it’s due to the Celtic tiger years. We where more interested in science all of a sudden, now we are slowly losing our artistic side.

What do you feel is compelling with manga?

Sophie: It’s important to keep the legends and culture alive in popular culture. This is something manga is very good at doing, especially with japanese culture. Here the old stories and legends are not told anymore, it’s become mostly for tourists and children.

What do you think is the biggest difference between the japanese and the irish way of looking at comics?

Sophie: Japan doesn’t just market comics for children, like they do in Ireland. They do them for many different subjects but they’ll do some versions for children and some for adults. Here it’s all only for children.

You are also the President of the Anime and Manga Society here at Limerick University, could you tell us a bit more about that?

Sophie: We have 90 members and within the society we have a very high number of active people, 60 or so, who go to other cons, goes to the different meet ups and what not. Each week we have 3 activities, screenings of anime, drawing and japanese culture workshops. We all teach each other and anyone can hold a class if they want. The drawing workshops only has one rule, you can do what you want, but you must draw. It doesn’t have to be good or ambitious, you can sit there doodling, but you must draw. We have found a lot of people who drew at somepoint in their lives but stopped at some point, are now starting again at the weekly manga workshop.

What do you think has been the hardest thing with organizing a con?

Sophie: Organisation. We started planing the con in October last year (con was in July) and it was bearly enough time. It was really hard finding people to help. We where a combination of both new people and people from other committees working together so that generated a lot of meetings and as most of the people organising where on the committees of other organisations already, it was hard to find time to do anything with the con between all the meetings. Trying to find and decide on a venue was also very hard but the University was very accomedating and without them I doubt we would have been able to run the convention at all.

If you could go back in time and do something different about the con, what would that be?

Sophie: Better advertisement. We where mostly using word of mouth to advertise this time.  If I could do it again I would put up lots of posters in Limerick and other places and work more actively for people to hear about us. This was our first time organising a con, so we had to learn a lot, but we hope to do even better next time.

Sophie’s art can be found at: http://ravingsohma.deviantart.com/