Two Birthdays

This post marks the third birthday of my blog. Weirdly, this is also post 333, does that make it 50% evil?!

A good pal said to me over the seasonal break that he would like to see my take on The Dude, from the Coen Bros. fabulous The Big Lebowski.
I've got a real soft spot for The Dude, His Dudeness or El Duderino (if you're not into the whole brevity thing).

Like the film itself, there was a nice syncronicity to events, my friend's birthday is tomorrow, my blog would be 3 today, it was a nice quick sketch that I knew he was after and that suited my current status of waiting for feedback on the project I'm working on. Nothing was f**cked, So I drew him a card!


I don't think I've quite captured what I was after, but Jeff Bridges is a tricky chap to depict, even trying to get an essence of The Dude is a tall order... the desire to include (clever) quote related 'in jokes' was definitely not satisfied and originally I intended to do a group shot including Walter and Donny too, but sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes... well, he eats you!

Moore's Mini Me

It's such a stupid little joke...


My sincere apologies to Alan Moore...

Showing a Bit of Leg!

John Freeman (down the tubes and much more besides) has a book in the works called Sci-Fi Art Now and he has requested submissions for it. I decided it was worth taking my sketched concept from last week to a finished piece for this project.


Here is a little teaser (so to speak) for the final piece I have submitted. It's a great brief and I really enjoyed putting this together, I just hope John likes my submission!

Spider-man 01

The next topic for DrawerGeeks is Spider-man. I've not only gone overboard on this, I've taken a whole life raft with me (and we've both got carried away!). Yes, I've scripted, sketched and provisionally lettered this two-page strip. These are the pencil roughs ready to tighten-up. I've got a lot to do before Friday as I want this fully coloured for submission also!


If you'd rather wait for the final lettered strip to appreciate the thing in full, please look away now!



I think it's pretty clear what's going on - just a little gag suggested by Matt.

I wanted some strip work other than Dredd and 2000Ad related stuff in my (comics) portfolio - hopefully I'll get to show this at the Birmingham International Comics Show this year. My heart is definitely still in 2000AD, but I need to consider other avenues and Spidey has always been one of my other favourites.

Camelyena

I've been off for a few days and I'm back a little more refreshed than when I left and definitely ready to get stuck into the pile of things I now have to catch up on.
The 'Twisted Creatures' or the examples of 'Darwin's Worst Evolutionary Nightmare' continue unabated with the current animal being the Hyena. Matt and Phil have both completed their wonderful versions already.


Matt has nominated the Camel for the next animal for our respective treatments. I hope Matt and Phil won't mind that this little cheat will modify the two creatures into one submission. It also fits Illustration Friday's current topic of modify.

Mixing the body of the Camel with the head of the Hyena has come up with something truly bizarre - but there is something I like about it. With a bit more work I think this could easily work as one of the 'genetically modified' Podz creatures I worked on before I was a freelancer.

I guess it falls to me to nominate the next animal - unless I've been disqualified!
Next creature: Salamander

Sun Wukong (Monkey)

Well, more Monkey. I really shouldn't have found this brilliant topic as torturous as it has been.
I think it's a fairly common phenomenon. Given a job/topic that you'd love to do and do well - there is a tendency for the creativity to freeze up on you. A psychological road-block that gets in the way of you and the destination you'd hoped to arrive at. I think you need to keep going though - being a professional dictates that you can't just give up entirely. By taking a couple of detours, you might not end up where you thought you'd like to go, but the journey will have been interesting and you might end up somewhere just as good.



And with that word "journey" in mind. Sun Wukong is the traditional name for the character "Monkey" from 'Journey to the West', an old Chinese legend. Popularized in the 70s by the classic TV show "Monkey Magic" and then again in recent years by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's stage adaptation.

I'm fairly happy with the treatment and approach to this, albeit a reasonably straight copy of the TV show's. My inked sketch, quickly coloured in photoshop would serve as a character design for a more dynamic martial art style action pose, but time has run out on me, so this will be my submission for DrawerGeeks this time round.

Super-Monkey

DrawerGeeks' new topic is Monkey. I've had real problems with this - I was originally going to do a monkey killing two birds with one stone - but it didn't have the quirky quality I was looking for. Then I thought "Space Monkey" but something I've seen kept creeping into my mind...

I don't really like this Super-Monkey, conceptually I think it's a bit weak - no nice puns to be had with the name Clark Kent or Kal-El... I think at some low point in the Superman franchise there may have been a Super-Monkey. I thought about doing a strip where I just spoof Superman totally but I'm not that excited about it. If it's not working, move on. So here is the best of the aborted approaches.

Donkey O'Tay and Sancho Panda

Two? TWO posts in one day? surely not!
Twisted Creatures again... a quickly coloured up ink sketch.


I had chosen the humble Donkey for this round, please follow the links to see Matt's and Phil's for very different, but wonderful takes on the theme.

Ever since I was small I've always mis-heard the pronunciation of Don Quixote... This idea wasn't going anywhere until I talked to my lovely wife the other day and she casually said "What about Donkey O'Tay and Sancho Panda?" - I swear, I nearly wet myself.

Phil has chosen the Hyena as the next victim creature.

Science Fiction Theatre

I'm truly finding it hard to be productive and efficient at the moment.


I've got plenty to do - mainly preparation for the upcoming Bristol Comic Convention so heaven knows why I've been fiddling around with this piece this afternoon!

Under the Bridge

Well, I'm nearly settled in the new abode but I'm struggling to find my stride with regard to getting back to work properly... I need to focus rapidly as deadlines are starting to loom like mountains on the horizon now!
What I could do with is a "no pressure, no ties" sort of thing, something small, where it doesn't matter what the final piece looks like, just a deadline of some sort...

...the new topic for DrawerGeeks is TROLL.



The thought process behind this one was simply: There is no way something as evil and conniving as a troll is going to be outwitted by something as bone-headed as a goat.
I vote for an alternative ending for 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff' when the third and oldest goat happens upon the bridge the Troll thinks that this goat, although bigger, looks a bit stringy. The Troll decides to saddle this goat up, ride into the field where the other littler goats went and have himself a nice feast. Then it's off to market to sell the big dumb animal he's riding.

Valentine's Day

Did this for my lovely wife's Valentine's Day card.


There's not much to say except that really.

Other than this marks the first whole year of being self employed as an illustrator...

That's cause to celebrate!

My Font

I found this great free online font generation service via Mark Cardwell's Bad Librarianship blog. I'd been thinking I'd like to have a go at getting my own block capitals done as a font... Well I think there's a lot more potential than simply that with this fab online service.


I got this workable truetype font as an almost instantaneous result of uploading a template page and pressing a button. I know there are some problems with a bit of the kerning, but with a bit of fiddling, I think you could get a great font as a result.

I don't normally big-up things like this, but this one was relevent and useful to me.

Dredd (page three - inked)

I've inked up page three now. I'm pretty happy with how it's all going right now...



I've deliberately given Dredd's helmet the frown lines - it's something that the under-loved Ron Smith used to do with his Dredd. I never really used to like Ron Smith's work when I was a teenager, but having re-read some of my old 2000AD to get in the mood for this project, I couldn't help but be amazed at how consistent Ron's Judge Dredd is!

Also of note on this page (well I think so) is the Banksy style graffiti artist (wall scrawler) that Dredd is arresting in the bottom left hand panel.

I've recently discovered Paul Rainey's 2000AD Prog Slog Blog. For those of you unfamiliar with 2000AD and its amazing array of characters, it's a great place to get aquainted!

Illustration Friday - "Poof"

On Saturday they were going to turn on The Large Hadron Collider. This is a massive particle accelerator which will be used to observe and study the smallest particles known to man...

There is some talk that they are going to use it to try to recreate the circumstances of the big bang!

There are mixed views of what actually turning it on will mean. With the scientists looking forward to seeing some results from the $ 8billion investment and other parties proclaiming that the world will be sucked into an artificially produced black hole...



I don't know much about the physics of this, but it sounds like a crazy sci-fi movie where these well-meaning boffins came up with an idea and just did it. You know, after realizing that they could do it, they didn't actually stop to consider if they actually should... and now we're all gonna die horribly or in this case vanish in a puff/poof of logic.

For more info on the LHC simply search 'Large Hadron Collider' into any good search engine... in some news reports it looks like they've postponed the apocalypse until 21st October now!