TALKING PICTURES
Friday 12 September 2025, 6:15pm arrival for 6:30-8:30pm
Allan Scott Auditorium, The University of South Australia, City West Campus, 55 North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia
Cost: FREE (bookings essential)
Alice Lam, Chad Molyneux, Evie “YEEVZ” Hilliar (NSW), Joshua Santospirito (TAS), Levi George, Luna de Lara, Nial O’Connor, Peter Yong, Robin Tatlow-Lord, and Tia Kearney, with Owen Heitmann (emcee)
Experience comics in a different way at Talking Pictures, a free evening of visual storytelling!
Ten fantastic comic creators will combine art and live performance for a multimedia storytelling event not to be missed. Each special guest will read a newly commissioned comic on the theme of ‘Nature’, accompanied by onscreen projections of their own art. Talking Pictures is proudly presented by UniSA Creative and its Illustration and Animation degree.
Please arrive from 6:15pm for a 6:30pm start.
Meet our exciting roster of local and interstate presenters (alphabetically by surname) below! This diverse group of artists will bring you an evening of engaging, entertaining, and thought-provoking readings, with Adelaide-based comic creator and Papercuts Comics Festival co-director Owen Heitmann as emcee.
There will be a short intermission halfway through the event. Readings before the intermission will be suitable for all ages, while the second half may contain mature themes.
This session will feature Auslan interpretation, provided by Deaf Connect. Hearing Loop equipment is also available.
The Allan Scott Auditorium is an accessible venue. If you have specific access requirements, please let us know.
To reserve your place at this event, please book your free tickets through Humanitix below.
Luna de Lara †
Luna is a Cuban-Australian illustrator, writer, and 2D animator who focuses on storytelling. They’ve worked at Monkeystack Studios on a variety of projects, including YOLO: Rainbow Trinity and YOLO: Silver Destiny, specialising in character and FX animation. Luna was an exhibitor in the 2025 Squish Squash exhibition ‘This is All Human Made’, and a short film they animated with RongYe Zhang won 3rd place in Adelaide Festival Centre’s 2023 Moving Image Program. Luna is inspired by nature, magic, and their multicultural, queer, and neurodivergent experience.
Levi George †
Levi is an animator, illustrator, and writer whose work contains an irregular blend of dark humour and light horror. He was the creator, writer, and director of the animated web series Livin’ With Steve and an Animation Lead for three seasons of the Adult Swim series YOLO: Crystal Fantasy. Levi has animated on shows like Sesame Street and The Cyanide & Happiness Show and at places such as Monkeystack and Princess Bento. He illustrated Chico the Schnauzer (Puffin Books) by Taryn Brumfitt, 2023 Australian of the Year.
Evie "YEEVZ" Hilliar †
Evie is one of Australia’s most followed comic artists on Instagram, having amassed a global following by combining sincerity and silliness. A lover of storytelling and noticer of the weird and wonderful, she specialises in drawing her feelings and crying in public. As co-producer of Read To Me (a live comics reading event that helped inspire Talking Pictures), she has honed her skills as an emcee while bringing comics to screens in venues across NSW and the ACT. Evie will also appear at Creators in Conversation.
Tia Kearney †
Tia is an Adelaide-based comic artist with a professional background as an environmental consultant. She values Australian stories and environmental themes and is perpetually inspired by the world around her. Tia recently completed her full-colour debut graphic novel, Red Wool (forthcoming from Amplified Press). Aimed at teens and young adults, it tackles themes of anxiety and grief through the story of a recently orphaned schoolgirl who risks becoming trapped in her own memories. Tia aims to create emotionally impactful stories that encourage introspection in readers.
Alice Lam †
Alice is a trans comic artist and animator of Chinese-Vietnamese descent, based in Adelaide. She has a penchant for fairy tale stories, strange witches, and complex relationships. Her comic viewfinder was shortlisted for the Comic Arts Awards of Australia, and she regularly updates her ongoing webcomic Adelaide and the Shooting Star (posting around 100 pages in the first year). In addition, she was a key animator on the science fiction comedy Lesbian Space Princess, the first feature-length animated film to be produced in South Australia.
Chad Molyneux
Chad is a multidisciplinary professional with a record of success both in animation and as a charismatic event host. He has worked for Ludo Studio and Monkeystack, animating television shows such as YOLO: Crystal Fantasy for Adult Swim and Bluey for worldwide acclaim, as well as a broad range of client work. Offscreen, he hosts regular events such as the Adelaide screenings of Loopdeloop (the global looping animation challenge) and pub trivia for The Weekly Fifty. He plays the accordion and is extremely serious about fun.
Nial O'Connor †
Nial began publishing comics under the pen name Zeldz Magnoonis in 2000 and has 20 years’ experience in creative industries across France, China, and Australia. A lifelong passion for soccer, ‘the beautiful game’, inspired both his signature comic series Pepe’s Quest and his own brand ‘futbol tribes’. His career highlights include illustration campaigns for the FIFA World Cup, a Cannes Golden Lion for Illustration, and exhibits at MOCA Shanghai and Guangzhou. He works at creative agency Malicious Delicious and teaches Illustration and Animation at UniSA.
Meg O'Shea
Unfortunately, Meg is no longer able to appear at Talking Pictures.
Joshua Santospirito †
Joshua is a Hobart-based comics-maker, multimedia artist, and musician. His graphic novels are The Islands Where We Left Our Ancestors (Scribe, 2024), Swallows Part One (2015), and The Long Weekend in Alice Springs (2013), which won the Chief Minister’s non-fiction book award in the Northern Territory. He has run the Small Press Zine Fair in Hobart since 2014, and was the co-Directeur of Her Majesty’s Favourite Really Great Graphical Festival from 2014 to 2016. As a musician, he has performed concerts across Australia and Europe.
Robin Tatlow-Lord
Robin is an illustrator, writer, cartoonist, and mum based in Adelaide, on Kaurna land. She’s been creating zines and minicomics for almost 20 years, and her minicomic Small Mortal Mammals was shortlisted for the 2019 Comic Arts Awards of Australia. Robin has illustrated four picture books and a junior fiction series, and was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Award for New Illustrator in 2021. In 2024 she attended the Comic Art Workshop at Bundanon, NSW, to work on her own comics for middle grade readers.
Peter Yong †
Peter is a concept and storyboard artist for animation and game production. He won the 2000 AD Art Stars competition in 2021 and illustrated the Judge Dredd covers for 2000 AD Prog 2288 and Prog 2346. He also wrote and drew the graphic novel The Rockabilly Plump Corps, and has created game tie-in comics for Clash Royale and Clash of Clans. Other projects he has worked on include Destroy all Humans 2, Deblob 2 and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. Peter is an instructor at CDW Studios.
† The artists whose names are marked with this symbol also have stalls at the Papercuts Market Day, where they will be selling their work.
To ensure you don’t miss out, book your free ticket to Talking Pictures now!
Talking Pictures is partly inspired by similar events held interstate under the name Read To Me, with the permission and cooperation of Read To Me co-creators Gabriel Clark and Fionn McCabe.
Presented by UniSA Creative and its Illustration and Animation degree
UniSA Creative, incorporating the South Australian School of Art, brings together the disciplines of architecture, planning, art and design, journalism, communication and media, film, television and visual effects and the creative industries to produce flexible graduates with multidisciplinary capabilities. You can find out more by visiting their website or by following them on Instagram!
