22 Panels Comic Art Exhibition Poster

An image I have contributed to the 22 Panels Falmouth Comic Art Show's poster for this years exhibition, whose title is inspired by Silver Age comic artist Wally Wood. For those unfamiliar with Wally Wood he created a quintessential comic 'cheat sheet' known as '22 panels that always work', that contain various compositions of panels to make dialogue heavy scenes in comic books dynamic and engaging.

This leads onto the image I have done. The event organizer wanted exhibitors to create their own rendition of a panel, or more from Wally Wood's 22 panels sheet. These panels will be used to create the poster to help promote the show.

And so here is my panel...

Went for a 50's sci-fi-esque rendition as an homage to the type of comics Wally Wood drew back in the day, and the ones I adore most.

For this piece I decided to try something new, and went about inking this panel with a Rotring art nib pen. I have gotten very bored of using fine liners which often create dull lines, which is something I have known awhile and couldn't be bothered to try other things till now. I absolutely love this pen, and shall be trying it out more so I am more comfortable using it for my comic work.

Finally in case you are interested, other artists that have been working on this poster and will be exhibiting at the show are Lee O' Connor, Jack Teagle, Tiernen Trevallion, Henry Flint, John Spelling, Paul Grist, EdieOP, Steve May, Rob Cross, Phil Harvey, Keith Sparrow and Grayham P. Puttock.

Return of the Silver Phantom!

Well I have been gone awhile, but here is a juicy glimpse of what I have been preoccupied with.

I am currently working away on issue one of my comic 'A Shadow of Steel!' featuring the Silver Phantom. The comic is due to be released on May 4th free comic book day and DevCon in Plymouth. I know that I said I would be more proactive on the blog this year, and I do intend be but right now between this and other projects and life its all time consuming. Rest assured though I will keep you updated with this comics progress. Until next time.

A New Year

It's a new beginning to a new year and here is the cover piece for the 24 hour comic that I did last October. Still working on a title font but here is the image in its full splendor. With the beginning of a new year it is also a time of reflection. 2013 has not been as productive as I had initially hoped and that was due to other commitments and generally hitting a few creative road blocks. It has now been over a year since I graduated and I feel that as a creative I still have a ways to go to find myself, so to speak. But hopefully with 2014 I can continue in my journey and try to be more proactive in keeping this blog up to date.

So I've decided to do some short comics as a means to develop my storytelling through sequential imagery. In addition I will also be working on issue 1 of 'A Shadow of Steel!' and make some visual notes for an idea I have for a graphic novel. 

Stay tuned and watch this space as things progress.

Cards

A birthday card drawing for someone's birthday, that features Smaug the stupendous but in a cute baby form. Colouring treasure isn't all that bad, but I think this year has taught me clearly that there is only so much you can do just colouring via a mouse track pad. So next year I'll invest in a drawing tablet. At last.

And here is a Christmas card drawing, again for someone I know featuring the Space Hamster. I hope everyone had a joyous Christmas and plenty of turkey and puddings. 

24 hour comic

Quite awhile ago I was invited by my University to partake in an event at Plymouth's City Museum, to do a 24 hour comic. Except we did it a little differently which was doing it over two days with each day only having 12 hours to do 12 pages. It was an exciting format and I decided to leave the twelfth page on a cliffhanger, and have a narration going along with it that harks back to the classic film serials of the 1920's-30's.
Unfortunately I didn't make it to 24 pages and only managed 16, but there were things from that experience that I will take on in future works.
On a final note, Plymouth University's Illustration course is setting up its own print press and will be aiming to print all the comics from the event as spot coloured, risograph printed comics next year.

You can view the comic below.

DevCon 1

Me and the lovely Diana Mazuru at our first convention table.

Carrying over from the last post, me and Diana decided that we would do our first convention at DevCon1 and so we got fairly busy preparing our table for the convention and we felt we had very little to put out there. Turned out we had a bit too much. Regardless we managed to have fun and we sold way more items than we thought we would. For instance I completely sold out my first print run of issue 0 of "A Shadow of Steel!" which caught me by surprise, but it was such a shot in the arm for my confidence and I am now more dedicated to actually doing more comics featuring 'The Silver Phantom'. 

It was also a really great social experience for us too, as we met some great and interesting people. 

In the words of Conrad Verner "It's surprising how many people out there are just waiting for someone to talk to them". 

Also I picked up a comic drawn by two good friends of mine called 'Arthur Shilling' and I have to say its one of the best indie comics I have read so far. If you're interested here's the link to their Facebook page. Drawn by artists Rob Cross and Steve May. 

Additionally I got to chat to other artists Lee O'Connor and Jock about comics and for them to critique my work that I valued. 

Finally if you missed out going to DevCon1 and are interested in buying my comic, I will be at 22 Panels at The Poly in Falmouth with soon to receive additional copies of my comic.

Prepare for the Terror!

Its been a busy time for me and now I can show you what I'm working towards. I am currently creating my first comic featuring 'Thunder' who is now dubbed as 'The Silver Phantom' as a friend pointed out to me many existing comic characters that are called Thunder or have it in the title. So to avoid any copyright infringements I decided to give him a name that wouldn't sound too out of place from the golden era of comics. 

So here is the cover for issue 0 of 'A Shadow of Steel'. Its been a long time coming making this comic and its felt rewarding to finally have the confidence to utilize what I've learnt and create something that really interests me. 

Right now I'm at the stage where the pages are being finalized and getting the printing sorted out. So fingers crossed that this will be finished in time to be launched at the Plymouth comic convention 21st September.

Lots of posters

So once again it's been a good while since I've been posting anything, but that's because I have been very productive which is good news. Recently I have been asked by the Department of Work and Pensions to do some poster work for them to advertise to employers and employees and the unemployed of a creative employment programme. I think its a very positive step in trying to help struggling individuals get into the creative industry and this programme aims to do that with paid internships.

If you want to learn more about the programme you can read more about it here.

When it came to designing the posters I wanted to invoke a positive spirit and found much inspiration from old WWII recruitment posters. I know that there wasn't anything positive about WWII, but the posters often put a positive spin to joining in the fight. And I wanted to show that there is something positive in this opportunity for creative people.

So here are the posters:

This poster was to visually emulate a cover design by Michael Cho from his variant of The Minutemen comic series by DC Comics. Here is the link to the original image that I based the poster design on http://chodrawings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-minutemen.html

The two above were heavily influenced by WWII recruitment posters, especially the font.

The illustrations were all hand drawn including the lettering, and were digitally tweaked and coloured.

And finally I have done yet another poster to help promote The Poly's Summer Exhibition. I also had to design a logo for their exhibition too. And here is the finished result.

The logo was very much influenced by the Aztec Sun Stones. I wanted a very distinct primal visual of the Sun to represent summer and incorporate The Poly logo too. The illustration of The Poly was done on a A4 sheet of Bristol board paper with gouache and ink.

Pencil Sketch

So for the first comic that I will be doing featuring this character of mine, I have been trying to figure out a way to create a moody atmosphere with the images with the intent that the comic would be printed in B/W, since printing in colour is too expensive. Originally I was just going to do it all in my usual single tone colour which would come out grey from the printing. But I wanted to do something that takes advantage of that print process and not let it hinder me. So I figured pencil is an obvious choice to make a dark, gritty, moody atmosphere that evokes Noir. 

And that brings us to this sketch, done in HB pencil and black watercolour pencil (a cheap one) and ink for the solid blacks. Upon reflection I feel its still a medium I am not used to in terms of rendering my images in this fashion and it will require me to keep on practicing until I think its good enough for the printed comic. 

So next time I will use different paper and a better black pencil too.

As for the story its still being refined. The first issue is being overhauled as there were too many comic book cliches. Also creating a voice for the character to come through the dialogue is harder than I thought. So basically it feels as though I am starting from scratch again.

I hope to get the comic finished by the end of August so it gives me time to get it ready and printed just in time for DevCon1. I should have some progress shots of the comic coming up soon, so keep watching this site.

More comics

After concluding the previous comic, I was immediately tasked to do another short comic. The deadline was quite tight as it was planned to be ready for the Bristol Comic Expo. Alas we never made the deadline but I had fun doing this project.
Here is a little snippet to whet your appetites.

Visit my tumblr to view the whole comic. Again I only have the artwork so there will be no words to go along with the panels. 

Sioux Warrior 3

OK a lot has happened in May, and I am still busy with multiple projects on the go. But now I have a little break to update you guys on whats been happening in my little world.
First off I was given the opportunity to contribute to the third issue of the amazing series 'Sioux Warrior' created by cape fear comics. They are a small comic press that are creating new ways for readers to engage with printed comics in a similar fashion with digital comics.
If you are curious about them I suggest you go check them out and buy their comics. They are one of the few people out there that are doing something new with the medium so I highly recommend it.

So with the advertising out of the way lets get to the good part; the art. Here are a few pages from issue 3.

Page 3

Page 4

Page 7

To view all the pages go to my tumblr blog to have a look.

A little tease

Couple of photo's of original page work that I have done for this project. Just to give you people an idea of what I have been doing and what to expect.

FCBD

It has been a hectic couple of weeks since my last post and I would love to share it with you people, but since its not yet been released yet its all under wraps. Though keep your eyes fixed on this site this month though to see what I have been up to.

Till then here are a few sketches I made during the Free Comic Book Day event that spanned the weekend.

60's Batman

Catwoman (animated series)

Classic Superman

Wonder Woman

Proto Classic Iron Man

Mr. Spock

Boba Fett

Original Red Ranger

Lost World

It's the return of me and Space Hamster. A little rusty and need to get back into the swing of things with my illustrations. Sorry I have been gone awhile but I am hoping to be posting on here more often. Though some good news to share is I am now working on two comic projects and could be doing an internship at a local art studio. So things are looking a little better then they were a few months ago. 

A Shadow of Steel

It's been awhile since I last posted up stuff, so here is a little something on a project I'm working on. I am collaborating with the 'Final Frontier' comic shop in Plymouth (again) to make a possible series of self published comic books. So far it's been an interesting project and challenge. It has been too long since I wrote my own stories so it's been hard getting back into the swing of things, but I think we have an interesting story to start things off. If there is any feedback you want to give me in relation to the compositions then please feel free to leave a comment.
I should also point out that as it doesn't have any text yet on the pages it would be hard to understand what is going on. Though once the script has been tweaked the second dummy book will have text incorporated with the images. Hope you enjoy.

Happy Valentines Day!

What can I say, this image speaks for itself so Happy Valentines Day y'all!

A story about freedom.

Below here are some pages from my sketchbook that have inspired a tale of sorts about surviving against the odds, freedom and finding a friend featuring the space hamster. More to come soon so stay tuned.

Panel 2.

It's that time again where I must update my blog with my latest creation. Me and my friend Benj decided it was high time we started a small group based project as a way to inspire and motivate our merry group in the coming of the New Year. We decided to make a 8 panel comic where one starts the first panel and gets passed around to each of us that does a panel each till it is complete. I did the second panel which as you can see makes the story a bit of a downer...for now depending on what the others plan to do.

If you are interested in seeing the progress then please check out the collective here to see this project reach its final stage.