BICS Year Two

Well this weekend was my second year at BICS. ( The Birmingham International Comics' Show, as previously linked to.)

FRIDAY:
We had decided to take the hassle out of the journey and went via train, by booking ages in advance, the good lady and I got there and back for the sum total of £32!
I arrived pretty relaxed and uncharacteristically chipper and confident. The Hotel, Holiday Inn (Queensway, City Centre) was brilliant and in that respect it was a nice contrast to The Britannia that we stayed in last year. The only other thing to say was that we were in what appeared to be a room equipped for disabled people and for the entirety of the stay I had this scene from the it crowd in my head!

The evening was spent in the fabulous Wellington pub - a real ale pub with a selection of 10 real ales on tap. Met up with Rich Clements, Vicky Stonebridge and Dave Evans (the FutureQuake gang) and also Duncan Nimmo, another contributor to the current issue Dogbreath. It was a fine evening with good people and lubricated with very good quality drink! I think the strong beer contributed to a weird dream about submitting my work to Tharg, in the dream he liked my samples, but I awoke from the dream feeling somewhat scuppered and a bit groggy. After an hour or so, I drifted back to sleep.

SATURDAY:
Headed over to the ThinkTank/Millenium Point. I had a quick chat to my good pals PJ Holden and Dylan Teague - and as always, they were generous and helpful in reviewing my porfolio. Then it was a quick stop over at the FutureQuake table to pick up my comp copies of Zarjaz & Dogbreath both of these are still available to buy if you haven't already ordered your copies. I showed Dave and Rich the art for the strip I'd been working on for them too, I'm chuffed to say they were pleased with the pages.

There are a number of developments from Saturday that I'd like to keep under my hat for now, suffice to say I think I'm moving in the right direction...
I once again had the opportunity to show Tharg my samples - those very ones I was working on only last week. I still don't think I feel confident that I'm interpreting his comments correctly. Basically he said that there were some nice things going on in the pages and that I should send the samples in to the usual address and that he would put them on file and let me know if a suitable strip arose. I'm taking that with a pinch of salt as I don't want to go getting ahead of myself. (I did say I would rework a couple of panels before I submitted the samples, see below).

Over the course of the day, I met up with some cool people - Matt Soffe and his good friend Olly, Jim Campbell, Jim Boswell, Nic Wilkinson, Gary Erskine, Stacy Whittle, Ben Clark, Matt Banners and Paul Gravett amongst other exellent folk whose names I'm ashamed to say I have forgotten.

The evening was spent in the Briar Rose, the local Weatherspoon's pub just a few doors down from the Wellington. In short, great laughs, good people.

SUNDAY:
My head was a little swimmy, but I was buoyed up by the developments of the previous day. All I really had time for was a quick chat and cheerio before my portfolio review with Michael Wright - a DC commissioning editor. He said he thought I had some drawing chops - I took this as a compliment, ultimately I don't think he thought I was up to the required standard for DC or Marvel but he said I might make it as a penciller at somepoint... ahh well, whatever will be will be. I made a quick dash out of there thinking I had only a narrow window in which to catch my train out of Birmingham... we ended up at Birminham New street station about an hour early - but that was good as it gave me a chance to take stock of events and have a good chat with my better half about what it meant for us going forward.

Of all the pieces in my portfolio, there must be something about this piece, because it caused for the second year running, by far and away the most comment. I guess it says something about the comic reading demographic - worth pursuing in more pin-up pieces I reckon then.

Sorry for the wordy post - normal service will resume in due course.

Slasher!

I've finished the inks and the tone for the first part of the story. I've mucked about briefly with a logo and the lettering too.

I was going to use something like DragonBones or Ales and Wenches from Blambot to letter this strip, but after doing only two balloons of text and trying both - I kind of knew that it was going to just look gimmicky...
I probably won't show anything more from this until it's due to be printed and I think that's likely to be around this time next year!

Birmingham Debriefing

Well, I'm back from the show and taking stock of all that happened.

We arrived at around six to the less than perfect Hotel Britannia and if you're thinking of planning a nice visit to Brum your chances of that are hugely increased by staying elsewhere. Although the central location is an advantage, I'd have preferred to walk a little further.

At the check-in desk I met up with Dylan Teague - who deserves thanks for being so helpful and encouraging throughout the weekend. He also introduced me to Patrick Goddard, another 2000AD artist.

I milled around a lot on Saturday, had my work critiqued by Garry Leach, he thought some of it worked really well - but that I need to be careful with stuff like foreshortening and construction - he felt that, with experience, that would come more easily.

I bumped into PJ Holden and had a really nice chat with him about his exciting iPhone comic endeavour. Finally got to have a play with it too - very cool - link again for iPhone/iPod touch owners: http://tinyurl.com/4qjr4p

Tharg (Matt Smith) was once again very encouraging - he said that he thought my story-telling was pretty solid i.e you could read the story and know what was going on without having to have the words - he still felt some of my characters were a little stiff and overall he felt the pages could still be a bit more dynamic.

The greatest encouragement of the whole weekend came from Matt Yeo of Bulletproof comics. I found it hard to hear his kind words, shrinking violet that I am, somewhere in there though it's begun to sink in! And thanks also go to all the guys associated with bulletproof that he introduced me to, I really appreciated the confidence boosting comments.

In the afternoon, I had a great discussion with D'Israeli (Matt Brooker) whilst he did this sketch of Johnny Alpha (Strontium Dog) for me.


(click for full image)

I asked him for a sketch of the 2000AD character he'd most like to have drawn but hadn't worked on. Check out the goofy bloke who's holding the sketch here!
Of all the wisdom he imparted, one of Matt's comments sticks in my mind, the crux of which was; comics are probably the hardest discipline to master, the most underrated and under-appreciated and probably the poorest paid of all the visual arts, so you've got to be dedicated to it!

I also caught up with Dave Taylor and Jon Haward who chatted about the difficulties of actually securing enough work. Worrying, but necessary to hear I think!

Something I've hesitated to post here because of the content, is a piece I did for Alberto Ruiz's Brand Studio Press as a response to an open call for ''Eye Candy' from Strangers'. To my amazement, this was the most popular piece in my portfolio.


If you're not easily offended by gratuitous skin baring or gun-toting psycho-babes in negligees then click the cropped head shot for the full image. Beware, perv content on this is very high indeed, definitely PG 13 if you know what I mean!

On Sunday, it had all quietened down a lot and I chatted to Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo who both did little doodles for me too.

I need to follow up a few other leads and things, most notably with Berserker Comics who're publishing work from favourites of mine, Alan Grant, Glenn Fabry and Simon Bisley.

All in all a positive experience and I feel I learnt a lot too. I met loads of cool people, fans and creators alike, so much so, I'm thinking about attending the Leeds thought bubble show. I'm also thinking how I might improve my chances of getting work if I do go.

I know I haven't shown any of my artwork for a while, I'll have a few sketches to show from the next Taormina shortly so pop back soon. I might also have some stuff from other projects I'm planning too...