Will Sliney: Drawing on his vast experience

Comicbook illustrator Will Sliney tells Don O’Mahony about his new skill-sharing project

HE’S the Co Cork-based illustrator behind Marvel’s new Spider-Man 2099 series and he’s heard all the lines before.

“You were waiting for that,” he says, offering a charitable smile, when reminded of the legendary Spider-Man dictum ‘With great power there must also come great responsibility’.

Will Sliney’s job may revolve around fantasy world figures but these are characters anchored in real and recognisable worlds no different to our own.

And in showing he is not divorced from real life concerns, he is demonstrating a level of moral responsibility that would surely bring a smile to the masked crusader’s face.

Sliney is very good at his job, something that was recognised by comics giant Marvel this year when they offered him an exclusive contract.

But rather than living the high life elsewhere, he was inspired by the generosity shown to him by some of the great comic book illustrators, and wanted to give similar mentoring to up-and-coming illustrators in Ireland.

With that in mind, he approached various local bodies such as Cork County Council about the possibility of creating a space where industry and aspiring hopefuls can work together. This week sees the realisation of this dream in the shape of Cork Creative Space, an open studio of full-time professionals working in the freelance digital industry, such as comic artists, video editors/directors and graphic designers.

A graduate of a multimedia course at Cork Institute of Technology, Sliney recalls the moment when the idea came to him.

“There was an industry design meeting here in Cork not so long ago, and there’s a lot of people in fairness that really want to get Cork together and promote it as a creative city and things like that, but I kind of felt coming out of the meeting that there wasn’t enough talk about the most important thing to promote something creative is to promote the people, to promote the actual talent.

“And the other area then is that I often find that there’s a bridge between the industry and between people who want to learn and people who want to get into it. So the whole idea behind this open studio is that it would be a mixture of full-time freelance professionals in the creative industry.”

A pilot version of the concept runs at CIT’s Bishopstown campus from today to September 23. It will see Sliney, film director Shaun O’Connor and video games concept artist Eva Widermann working in the company of 15 novices.

Sliney is keen to stress it is a shared creative environment.

“I might be working away on my own thing and then when I get up and stretch my legs I can go over and I can take a look and see how they’re getting on. And the whole way through it they can ask questions and things like that as well, of course, but it’s not like I’m standing up in front of a white board for the whole day,” he says.

Sliney envisions a situation where other freelance professionals will eventually take the current mentors’ place. Comparisons with the information technology exchange, CoderDojo, meet with Sliney’s approval.

“They’ll share their skills and off they go then. So what I imagine what will happen is the people that are learning will then eventually step up to that level themselves. So there becomes no barrier between this person and the industry.”

He also hopes the enterprise can find a location in Cork city where the public can see what’s happening, like a sort of a zoo.

“And they’ll almost see these animals inside working away,” he chuckles. “Just to kind of create a bit of a buzz about it.”

- To coincide with Creative Space Cork, there will be an exhibition of the first 20 pages of the first issue of Spider-Man 2099 at Cork County Hall on Culture Night, Friday, between 6-8pm. Will Sliney will be present