Thursday 26 May 2011

Pepping It Up

Final art then for the much pimped Tyranny Rex commission:


Sometimes I go to silly lengths for effect. Rob asked for an in joke - the script for Phase V of Zenith... Grant Morrison wrote four books of Zenith, so-called phases, but I doubt there will ever be a fifth. You can only just see it in the final piece, and it took about half an hour of fiddling to get it right - D'Oh! I'm not even going to mention how long it took to find reference for the Our Price bag.


Finally on this, for the process completists amongst you - here are the final inks too.


I'm available for commissions like this and the Dredd piece I did earlier in the year. please feel free to contact me via the e-mail address in the sidebar for a quote.

Sunday 22 May 2011

Mint Sauce

Well on course for the final piece now.


If you missed the previous posts, you can see the progress up to this point here, here and here!

Saturday 21 May 2011

Blown Whale

It's unfinished, it's probably not very funny, but there's no way I'll get something finished up in time... so here's a sketch of what I would have done for Blue Whale over on A Little Bit Bunny.


I'll say it again, Google Sketchup is a an incredible resource... for this piece, I wanted to do one of the classic size comparisons... so I popped along to the sketch-up warehouse and hey presto, some kind soul has already done 90% of the hard work... so thank you Chris for your routemaster bus model, very helpful.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Posing Tyranny

Work in progress again, back on the Tyranny Rex commission. Rob wanted me to vary a few things from the interim layout but I wasn't quite happy with Tyranny anyway, so I tried a couple of extra poses out...


I got a bit carried away and then couldn't decide which one worked best... if in doubt, let the client decide!


Rob chose 'E'... and suggested I wrap her tail around a dancer's pole! Things are coming together nicely now, and I'll post up the rough pencils here in the next couple of days.

Monday 16 May 2011

What's new Pussy Cat?

Not much that I can talk about to be honest...

This weekend was a dash around extravaganza. Bristol Comic Expo on the Saturday and a family event on the Sunday. All in all a good weekend.

There were some fine chats had with some good folk, and as is usual with a convention, I missed loads of other friends I'd wanted to see. On this occasion, not at all surprising as I was buzzing around so much in the short time I was there.

Thanks to John Freeman, Brady Webb, Joel Meadows & Gary Marshall, Emma Hayley, Andi Ewington and Eddie Deighton for very kind words about my portfolio - I've got some good feedback to think about and there are some very interesting irons in the fire as a result of the dash around, but more on that as things pan out.

It was nice to meet a lot of the members of the 2000ad forum (some old and some new friends amongst them) and I had great (if brief) chats also with Dunk Nimmo, Mike Carroll and Leonie, John Higgins, Nick Dyer, Dave Evans, Rich Clements, Matt Timson, Stacy Whittle, Jim Campbell, Emma Vieceli, Dave Stokes, Vicky Stonebridge, Nick Wilkinson, Cy Dethan, Steven Downey, Matt Gibbs, Chris Wildgoose, Matthew Mclaughlin, Owen Watts, Dave Thompson, Conor Boyle, Liz Boyle, Kerrin Shaw and last but not least (and enigmatic even in person) The Emperor... apologies to anyone I've forgotten (please let me know and I'll add a link for you!).

I don't really have anything else I can show at the moment so, in the meantime, here's a piece I did for A Little Bit Bunny a while ago.


The creature was Owl, but hopefully it doesn't need too much more explanation. It was a nice distraction, and hopefully shows some other skills. Blue Whale is the next creature, if you felt like joining in!

Thursday 12 May 2011

Lapping it up

After the rough sketches and some discussion, Rob decided that he'd like to include Zenith in the commission piece too.

I suggested that Tyranny could be a dancer at a club called Peppermint Dino... the joke is kind of obvious, but I thought it was funny enough to run with.


I've done a few options for Tyranny's final pose and there are a few other bits to address in the final pencils. Rob seems happy, so far and the final piece should work out quite well!

That's about it for now, I'm off to Bristol Comic Expo on Saturday - bit of a flying visit really, if you see me - stop me and say Hi!

Sunday 8 May 2011

Tyranny Pin-up

I'm currently doing a Tyranny Rex commission. After Kapow, I was contacted by Rob Ellis, who is a bit of a Tyranny Rex fan.

Rob wanted me to do a commission for him, but asked if there was any way to break down the costs. I wanted to be as flexible as I could and so we agreed on a process that would involve him buying all the preparatory work as I do it.

These are my initial sketches, very loosely using 'Cheesecake' pin-ups as a starting point.


We've moved a little away from that initial concept now, to try tell more of a story... but I thought it was worth showing these quick process pieces.


I like the cheekiness of this final one, but hopefully we're working towards something that encompasses that and much more!



This week will be another slow one for the blog as I'll be preparing for Bristol Comic Convention - where hopefully there will be exciting developments - I'm only there on the Saturday, so if you see me streaking past in a blur, please stop me and say Hi!

Dependent upon what I can get sorted, I may post the next stage that Rob and I have agreed on before I dash out the door!