Gareth Hinds graduated from U-32 in ‘89 and he is now a graphic novelist. The U-32 Chronicle was able to interview him about what he does now and his time in high school.
Hinds takes classic literature such as MacBeth, Beowulf and other classics of the western civilization. He uses his own unique structure while still following how the original book states.
Hinds first started out making comics in middle school. He then went into high school doing the same thing, “I did a comic strip for the Chronicle that ran for two and a half years. I had to rush to finish it before graduation.” He enjoyed his Chronicle adventures so much that he said, “I thought for a while that I might become an editorial illustrator as my career.”
While at U-32, he painted a mural between the Arts department and the English department. It was “a stone age education scene” with a couple of teens learning how to count rocks with a cave and volcano in the background. Hinds described his high school experience as, “all the stuff you see in high school comedies.”
Hinds had a lot of favorite teachers while here; the only one still teaching at U-32 is Steve Barrows. According to Hinds, “I was mostly self-taught, so I’d like to think I would have found success as an artist regardless of the high school I went to. But having a positive experience with classic lit was obviously very important to where I’ve ended up, so the English department gets a good bit of credit for that.”
After high school, Hinds went to college and for a brief period of working with video game designers he decided to go back to “his first love” of drawing. He “imagines the paper as more of a stage and lets the characters move around and … interact within the story.”
Hinds broke out of the traditional comic book setting and brought his own unique ideas into telling the story. He now uses word blobs and floats them around the scene he wishes to portray with his drawing.
