Tax Man

I've just finished my first paid gig doing comic art, yes, that's right, paid comic art, sounds unusual, I know, but it's true! Not to do the other comic stuff I'm doing a disservice you understand, I'm doing that for the love of it! But cold, hard currency certainly helps to pay the bills and keep you motivated... it's the icing on the cake when you're having fun anyway!

The strip is a nice little 5 page story to help a firm of accountants showcase some of the services they offer their clients. I got the business via a friend on the 2000AD forum, the job it's self is through a cool design agency called eatsleepthink.


I think the thing I enjoyed most was designing the villains, essentially they were to be Superpowered-Tax-Collectors - YIKES! One was to be a calculator, one was a standard supervillian (with a pulled-down bowler hat) and the last was a "big boss" style bowler hat with legs.


It's pretty appropriate given the start of the new tax year this week! Hopefully, it's also the beginning of a trend!

Time Bomb!

I inked up that sketch for someone on the 2000ad forum.


Pretty happy with how it's turned out.

HiEx 2010

What can I say about HiEx that hasn't already been said elsewhere? What superlatives are left? The answers are not much and none, HiEx was a great experience and although it was over almost a whole week ago, it's still fresh in my mind as being one of the best conventions I've had the pleasure of attending. Thanks to Rich and Vicky for organizing such a great event!
As a result of going, there are some interesting pots of goop bubbling away nicely that I might be asked to taste if I'm lucky. But more about those culinary delights as they reach the table.


I still don't have anything much I can show, but here's a rough for a sketch of Johnny Alpha and Wulf Sternhammer.
In other news, I have been nominated for an Eagle Award in the best newcomer category! Seriously! I know! Thanks then go to the very kind soul who did that for me!
Fractal Friction, Jim Campbell and Rich Clements have also all been nominated in various other categories! I'll be sure to let you all know if I win, but let's face it, the opposition is mightily impressive!

HiEx Packing and Portfolio

Been pretty busy in the last few weeks, still settling into the new home (and art office studio workspace thing)...
...so there has been a distinct lack of posts.


All I have that I can show currently is the work I did on Teen Wulf and this is pretty much my favourite page from the whole strip. Fingers crossed this one page won't give too much away, but will whet your appetite for the rest!
Hopefully all my pre printing pimping means that you've already ordered this from the wonderful chaps at FutureQuake. I also hope you will enjoy it, it was a lot of fun to do!

Been preparing and packing this week for a long trek north to the HiEx Comic Convention (this coming weekend). I struggled to get my portfolio sorted until I entered the mindset "what if someone asked me what to include in a portfolio?".

Ruthlessly, I stripped out everything but my strongest sequential pages... now everyone says don't include pin-ups, but you know, I've had pretty good responses to this piece in the past and I think a pin-up can be something that sticks in a editor's mind, helping them to identify you. (WARNING: possibly slightly naughty for work and/or minors).
So I'm starting with that and then moving onto 6 pages of sequential work inc. a double page spread. Then I've got an illustration that will be printed in a book later in the year and a few other pieces of coloured work I'm particularly happy with. All in that's 10 folio sleeves, possibly a little more than I need but the order is such that hopefully by the point they get through the sequential stuff they'll be interested enough to see the rest.

Wish me luck, as I am driving all the way to Inverness, admittedly with a stop off in the Lakes courtesy of a very kind friend, but nevertheless, that's a long old drive. I'll be back soon, hopefully with some more stuff I can share!

2000AD Prog 1 Redux

Warren Ellis is running a fun competition over on his web forum.


The brief:
You are an artist/designer. You have to put together the cover for the first issue of a weekly science-fiction anthology comic called 2000AD. You don't know much about what's in it. You've been given the following pieces of information to include on the cover somehow:
"featuring the new DAN DARE"
"M.A.C.H. 1 - his incredible hyperpower will amaze you!"
"SPACE-AGE DINOSAURS! Read 'FLESH' "
"STOP PRESS! GREAT BRITAIN INVADED!"
The cover must include a logo and the numbering, which you've been told is not the usual "issue one," but "Programme 1."

I thought it would be funny if Dan Dare had been a girl for the relaunch... The image is from something I did previously, but didn't want to show here at the time.

Wulf Whistle

I'm back! This post has nothing to do with Whistling however! Unless a 'Phew', counts!


PHEW! I've just finished up the last pages for the Teen Wulf strip for Dogbreath.
In total it's a whopping thirteen page strip written by the wonderful Rich Clements, lettered by the immensely underappreciated Bolt-01 and has another logo designed by me.


Yes it's (in part) trying to mimic the 'Teen Wolf' logo from the Michael J Fox film... but the 'Wulf' lettering is all my own!

Strip will be published in issue 22 of Dogbreath and is launching at the HiEx Comic Convention in Inverness in just over a fortnight!

Leap of Faith

Once again my good lady and I are moving, this time hopefully though will be the last move for a long, long time! Internet will not be hooked up for a couple of days and so, this might be the last post for a while!
To tide the old blog over then, here's another teaser for that Teen Wulf strip.


The page this comes from was an absolute joy to do, I'd devised an interesting panel layout and I think it really worked.
I've just seen Vicky's final version of the colours for the double page spread too... it's gonna be pretty special when that issue of Dogbreath is released at HiEx...

Teen Wulf Teaser

Busy, busy, busy. Here's a sneak peak at a panel from a rather funky double-page-spread that's being planned for the next issue of Dogbreath... It will be my first collaboration in print too as it's being coloured by the incredibly talented artist and busy HiEx organising firefighter Vicky Stonebridge.


You know, you really could do worse than to order some of the FutureQuakePress titles such as Dogbreath and Zarjaz. What's that, you've just ordered some today?... Good!

Black Death

Inked.


If you're going to HiEx you can try to win this in their raffle. If you wanted to that is.

Done to Death

Yikers! a week between posts - that ain't good!
I've been busy - an imminent house move, various other drawing-y bits and the Teen Wulf strip for Dogbreath have kept me from having stuff to blog about.
I was out waiting for a plumber and whilst I waited, I managed to sketch this up!


Judge Death, I still think he's one of the best ever Dredd-world villains despite having been slightly too comedic in certain stories.

Two Year Review

Two years ago, yesterday, I left the job I had as a promotional toy designer. The aim had been to build a new career as a freelance illustrator and move to Cambridge. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure if I could make it work, or whether I'd be happy.
The world economy collapsed almost simultaneously, I couldn't have picked a worse time to try to make a go of a new business...
Later in the year, I realised that I wanted to draw comics, a forgotten dream-job of mine from about the age of 12. Given the state of that industry though, I wasn't making it any easier for myself.


Just over a year ago, I produced the above piece as a warm-up for the Red Dragon strip the fantastic guys at FutureQuake had asked me to do for the 2000AD fanzine Zarjaz. Since then I have done a few more strips for their fanzines and that has led to some VERY interesting opportunities, without which, well, you know the rest!

It's been a very eventful time. I've done quite a few freelance commissions. I have moved to Cambridge. I'm poised to begin my career as a professional Comic book artist too. Although it's been hard work and whilst it would be easier if I had more regular paid work coming in... you know what? I think I am happy!

Lit from Below

15 minute Dredd time again! This came in well under, but I liked it and didn't want to over-work the sketch!


The clichéd drama lighting works better than I expected actually.

Teen Wulf

Ahh, some news has been reported on thequaequamblog about my involvement on a fun little project that has been brewing since last year's Bristol Comic Expo.
Teen Wulf, a two part story about Wulf Sternhammer's youthful exploits. The first part will be available in the next (imminent) issue of Dogbreath!


I did this sketch as a warm-up whilst Rich Clements, (who should need no introduction to regular readers of my blog) was writing the script.
I've blogged about this in one, two or three teaser postings before...
I'm working on the second part now, and then it's onwards with Corvus, also written by Rich!

Credit to Nic Wilkinson at Insomnia for the great punning on the title.

Sci-Fi Art Now

Late last year I produced a piece for John Freeman's Sci-Fi Art Now book, the final version of that is still under raps for now.
Well, over the last week, I have been working on another piece for the book. Originally intended as a Steampunk Warfare piece. I played around with an aerial 'dogfight' from WWII as a start point. Spitfires take on a Heinkel He111 bomber with a sort of Art Nouveau influence added to their styling. "THAT'S NOT STEAMPUNK!" I hear you cry, and you're right, it ain't and that was the problem... also that the Spitfires, even with Davinci style wings just asserted their character too heavily.


In my efforts to "Steampunk" this, I found a sort of definition of what it is... "The path not travelled." How would a future or a modern day look if something that had fallen by the wayside in our own world had become a dominant influence/force? It still wasn't really inspiring me, it has to be said...
I thought the problem was that I was lacking any human content, so I tried to add the perspective of one of the Spitfire pilots, albeit skewed with a weird hat design. This naturally led to an inset panel, which in turn led to me developing a whole 'comic strip' treatment for it. One that was based in part upon Roy Lichtenstein's 1963 piece: 'WHAAM!" its self inspired by a DC comic from 1962.


It's just not a single illustration for an art book though, is it? and also there's still that problem with the Spitfire hanging around... I was pretty happy with the Heinkel redesign but still felt the piece lacked something. If the main panel was to succeed, I'd need to feature some kind of narrative. I decided in the end to focus on the 'Future War' aspect of the submission. I thought about a War of the Worlds style flying tripod maybe mixed with a Matrix Sentinel thing... I designed straight out alien ships too, but it was still failing to give me a backstory in my head that I cared about. An unrelated factoid drifted into my brain regarding swarms of small creatures attacking large animals...


Making the seemingly more vulnerable side the winning one was much more interesting to me, almost instantly, in my head, I saw a bonkers looking soldier with rocket boots... air borne infantry! I doubt it is an original idea, but it was that concept that made it work for me. Suddenly, it all seemed to work, in my mind I had a backstory that interested me, there was human content in the illustration and I realised that the ship was vaguely Flash Gordon in influence too!

I'm happy with this and my other submission. I hope that both of them will feature in the book, but there are only 200 spaces and with submissions from some pretty big names in Sci-Fi illustration and comics already in, I'll count myself lucky if I'm included at all!