Sutu (aka Stuart Campbell) uses art and technology in new ways to tell stories. He has been commissioned by the likes of Marvel, Google and Disney to create VR art for properties such as Doctor Strange and Ready Player One. He has also created three VR documentaries; Inside Manus for SBS, Mind at War for Ryot Films and The Battle of Hamel for the Australian War Memorial.
He is also known for his interactive comics including the Webby Award-winning Nawlz, NEOMAD, Modern Polaxis and the Eisner-nominated These Memories Won’t Last. He holds a Honorary Doctorate of Digital Media from Central Queensland University, is a Sundance and Tribeca Fellow and is the co-founder of EyeJack an Augmented Reality company.
About NEOMAD
NEOMAD is a comic series created with the communtity of Roebourne, WA as a part of Big hART’s Yijala Yala Project. It’s a futuristic fantasy based on real places, real people and the world’s oldest continuing culture.
Set over three episodes, NEOMAD follows the story of the Love Punks, a group of techno savvy young heroes from the Pilbara who speed through a digitised desert full of spy bots, magic crystals, fallen rocket boosters and mysterious petroglyphs. Initially released as an interactive iPad app, the series is now also available in book form.
NEOMAD was created with the help of over 40 young people in the Ieramugadu (Roebourne) community through a series of workshops in scriptwriting, literacy, Photoshop, filmmaking and sound recording over an 18 month period. Award winning illustrator and interactive designer Stu Campbell (Sutu) spent over 500 hours teaching young students to apply a complex colouring system to more than 600 scenes to create NEOMAD. These young people, aged between 7 and 14, star in the comic as the Love Punks and the Satellite Sisters and assisted with the script, the dialogue and live film segments.
NEOMAD is set around Murujuga (the Burrup Peninsula), which is home to approximately one million petroglyphs (etched rock art), some of which are over thirty thousand years old. These ancient carvings are markings of food sources, ceremonial sites and spirituality. NEOMAD is one way the thousands of years of cultural heritage associated with Murujuga are now being interpreted using contemporary tools.
In NEOMAD Episode 1: 'Space Junk' we meet the Love Punks, who are crammed on a hoverquad speeding through the desert, getting up to a bit of mischief and outsmarting the authorities. When a rocket booster falls from the sky branded with a fantastical petroglyph, the Love Punks are in for an adventure to find out its meaning. In Episode 2: 'The Last Crystal' we meet the gravity-defying Satellite Sisters who are keeping an eye on their precious country from space, while on earth, the Love Punks spend time with the Rangers out at Murujuga learning where the petroglyphs come from. In Episode 3: 'Pork Chop Plots' a gigantic tourist shuttle is heading towards a sacred constellation, and the Love Punks and Satellite Sisters have to save the world from intergalactic catastrophe!
NEOMAD has been presented at several Australian conferences, has been profiled widley through international media sites and journals and was featured in the Bucheon International Comic Festival in South Korea in 2012. In 2013 NEOMAD was a finalist in the New Media Awards in Los Angeles, was awarded ‘Best game/meultimedia production’ at the ATOM awards and was named by the prestigious Kirkus Reviews as one of the best book Apps of 2013. In 2016 NEOMAD won the Gold Ledger Award acknowledging excellence in Australian comic art and publishing.
The comics were originally published by Gestalt Comics as three separate books and then later published as a three-comic complete set which is available to purchase from Big hART’s online store and the ACMI shop.
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