Behind the Scenes: Get Schooled With Sideburn

I try to evolve Sideburn all the time. We've increased in size four times in 24 issues, first adding more pages, then increasing in size, increasing in size again, then adding more pages again - always forward, never backwards.

We've added regulars too, Trophy Queen has run since issue 2, while the Who, What, Where interviews have been in the magazine since issue 3.

While some magazines are happy to print any old dross emailed to them, without checking it for accuracy, spelling, grammar or plain old interest, we try to serve up quality reads from a variety of sources. It often hard work, but it's the only way we want to do it. One of our most recent regulars is the riding guide called Get Schooled, and it's a good example of the process we go through.

The idea is an amateur dirt track racer (normally Dave Skooter Farm, sometimes me) interviews a pro racer for tips on a specific aspect of racing. It involves us tracking down a racer, and extracting some learned-the-hard-way knowledge out of them, then writing it up, then sending it to illustrator, Ryan Quickfall who does further research, even photographing to get the positions right, sending sketched ideas back and forth to me, then producing the final coloured artwork. And that produces two pages of the the 116 we serve up four times a year.

These are the subjects, and experts, and the issue they appear in...

21 Get the Holeshot with Johnny Lewis
22 How to Crash with David Aldana
23 Draft to Victory with Bryan Smith
24 Short Track badassery with Briar Bauman
25 Body English with Chris Carr

If you like magazines made with love and care, perhaps think about buying Sideburn magazine from sideburn.bigcartel.com. We'd appreciate it. G

Preliminary sketch sent from Ryan Quickfall to Sideburn HQ.

Follow-up photo, accompanied by note asking, 'Is this what Chris Carr meant?'

Final artwork before final inking.