The Red Dragon

Page 33 of Fractal Friction is up.


It features a massive Red Dragon... you know what to do!

Alas, Poor Yorick!

Here's a panel from something I've been working on... I've edited it (a bit) so as not to give the game away too much (I hope).


I've tried to use black more on this... I was just experimenting really, but moody was the order of the day so, I wanted to at least have some hatching and areas of 'spotted' blacks.

'Her' Again

Rough pencils:


Rougher still:


Rough as a bag of sand paper:


I was running out of time when I was working on the pencils and had to rush these roughs somewhat... I doubt anyone would have been able to ink these for me, there was a substantial amount of tightening up before I went to inks.

There was a slight change of plan with page one, panel four, after the Emperor made a suggestion about the two "heroes" perhaps falling together. Originally I'd conceived of a situation where the beheaded guy's head was resting between his legs, but I think the reworked version is so much more successful as it allowed for the head to still be looking at Her... even in death, he is besotted with Her!

Inks:




There is much to be happy about with these pages, although one thing stands out to me as needing some work, page two, panel one, is a little unclear what is going on, scale is also an issue - if I'm honest this was a problem panel. If I was tackling it again I would probably eliminate the whale, it's not really earning its keep and in a creature heavy page, some sort of funky raft might be funnier...

It was a pretty quick turnaround, I completed all the art in pretty quick time, so I won't beat myself up too much over one slightly dodgy panel and a couple of inconsistencies.

Something Big is Coming

This is panel 1 from a strip I've just finished working on...


*EDIT - I was in a hurry yesterday*
The strip was written by the magnificent and omnipresent Emperor and lettered by the ever fantastic Mr. Jim Campbell, and it's all about Her!
The full strip should be viewable later today over on this topic on the MillarWorld forum... fingers crossed for me eh?

Right, off to Bristol I go!

Fractal Friction Page 21

Cor! Can you believe we are up to page 21?!?!!
For those of you interested in this sort of thing... Here are the original pencils, including the panel that was revised.


And here are the inks.


If you want to see what a spot of colour did to these inks, head on over to Fractal Friction to see the finished page...

Inaba Katana

Judge Inspector Inaba, one of the Judges from another City in Judge Dredd's world, in this case, Hondo-City. This is a 'sketch' that I had promised for John who runs the Cellar of Dredd Blog.


I've been having real problems with my drawing, for the last week and a half, so yesterday I took a break and sketched this up, I've spent a little while fiddling with it in photoshop and I've finally managed to produce something I'm happy with.
I think it could stand being cropped differently, but it was drawn at A4 so I thought I would leave it at those proportions.

A Little Trouble in Dublin

I've just had my comp copy of another book I've illustrated for Cambridge University Press, like the ones I did last year it was done for the Discovery Readers range.


This one, A Little Trouble in Dublin was 25 illustrations in all, and after the approval of my rough pencils it was pretty much an illustration a day schedule.


Precocious teenage twins Andy and Mary get into a scrape with some criminals who run a forged euros racket in Dublin. Here, they've ended up at the Garda station where I designed a "watch out" poster, that gets mostly obscured... it was too visually distracting when it was where the map of Ireland is now, so I sacrificed it, the effort wasn't wasted though as it helped continuity in the next image where the twins had changed their clothes...


Four merit points for anyone who spots the two "in" gags I've included in the previous images and a gold star for anyone who gets the gag in the following one.


Don't ask if you're right though, I'll never tell!

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!

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!

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

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!

Fractal Friction Page 8

Here are my inks for Fractal Friction page 8 - available to read in glorious full colour over at the Fractal Friction main blogsite.


What do you mean, you're still not reading it!

She's Leaving Home

She's off again, but this time in colour.

The page is being lettered by Jim Campbell now! Gentlemen, start your engines, this where the fun begins!
See the full page here

To start reading Fractal Friction from the beginning, look here!

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!

Fractal Friction Page 3

Some of you will have already found the fab new web-comic thingy I'm involved with. For those that haven't, Fractal Friction is the endeavour of an eclectic group of fine, talented comic creators, and me. It's my turn and here are the inks for page three...


To see the final lettered and coloured version click over to Fractal Friction to read the story so far...

2000AD Advent Calendar

Over on the 2000AD forums a really great idea was put forward by Pete Wells of the 2000AD covers uncovered blog fame - each day during December, one or more board member will post something into an "advent calendar" topic. Pete has already posted his 1st December Judge Dredd X-mas movie epic and I'm certainly excited to see what else is in store... here is my effort for today's door!


I thought I'd celebrate one of my favourite new stories of 2009 - the terrific Zombo created by Henry Flint and written by Al Ewing.

V&A Illustration awards

I've entered the V&A Illustration Awards 2010 with the work I produced for Cambridge University Press. The work was for a couple of books published earlier in the year, but I have only entered with illustrations done for Tales of Terror.


My entries can be found here. It's all very exciting. Fingers crossed for me everyone!

The reason I entered was a twitter post I saw made by Dave Gibbons. Now, I'm not wholly sure I like twitter, but without it, I doubt I'd have entered...

Zenith and Gronk

Earlier in the year, I illustrated two strips for the fab chaps at FutureQuake Press...
The first was Red Dragon, a Zenith prequel.


The second was Strontium Gronk, A Strontium Dog spin-off.


What do you mean you still haven't bought copies? GO NOW and order them... PLEASE?

Unlettered art for all the pages can be found both on my comicspace page and on my DeviantART.

Joker - Teeth

The next topic for DrawerGeeks is teeth and I did my piece early this time. As this was intended as a companion piece to Harley Quinn anyway, I decided to submit it to Scotch Corner as well - those lovely guys were kind enough to feature it over the weekend!


I, as I'm sure many others have been, was incredibly impressed with how the Joker was portrayed in The Dark Knight. A lot of that was down to Heath Ledger, but I thought the Chelsea Grin was a great idea and I don't know how original it was but I thought about trying to take that one step further, whilst I was sketching I reasoned: "What if the Joker had cut off his lips in order to create a permanent smile?". It's a horrible thought and it surprised me - sometimes you have to go with those thoughts and not self edit...