OME
Harry Croft
Illustration 2024
Harry created a 28-page self-published comic called “Canny Good Comics”. This comic featured a variety of short comic stories that are very immature and light-hearted. Harry wrote, scripted, storyboarded, edited and also outsourced the comic for printing to be sold and displayed. The comic is well suited to his intended target audience of 6–12-year-olds, and is very comedic. He primarily used Procreate for his work as it was software with which he became very familiar and comfortable during his tenure at university. While working on the comic he was inspired by his rough upbringing and he found that using local colloquialisms, and a very British dry humour, made his comic more relatable to him and his audience.
Harry's characters and doodles are an expression of how he wants to create light-hearted characters and creatures to entertain and present a brighter world, through their colourful appearances and childish sense of humour. Harry likes to make these because he was inspired by his own childhood, in the North East, from a troubled home. He found art as a way of escapism into his own fun light-hearted world. He has also experimented with photography by taking pictures and illustrating his characters over the photographs. He has done this because he thought his designs would contrast well in a real-world environment.
As an artist, he is very passionate about creating his artwork digitally. Through Harry's artistic journey, he found that digital art allows him to experiment and create art in ways he struggled with using more traditional methods. The ability to improvise and change things without wasting material is something he appreciates about it.
Harry was inspired by books such as Horrible Histories and the works of Roald Dahl. While being aimed at children, these have elements of dark and crude humour that people of any age can enjoy whilst also respecting and being appropriate to their target audience. This is the opposite of catering down to them as some authors and illustrators tend to do with children's books and comics.
After graduation, Harry intends to develop his skills further by staying at the Northern School of Art for a design Master’s course. With the Master’s course, he intends to further develop his portfolio and also gain a wider range of skills that he can use for his work. After the MA Harry intends to be a commercial illustrator working on a wide range of projects from comics to books and posters.