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.

22 Panels

It's time to dust the cobwebs from this site and give you people some updates. Back in October me and Diana attended a comic art exhibition in Falmouth, dubbed 22 Panels named after Wally Wood's 22 Panels.

We were neighbours to a wonderful quirky artist Edie who does dark, whimsical children's book illustrations. It was a great environment to be in, with so many creatives in one room and no traders in sight...well maybe one or two. I wish there were more events that really celebrate the art of comics and for artists to come together and talk, sometimes ideas or collaborations come about at these types of gatherings. 

Anyway here are a few sketches I did whilst at 22 panels.

One last thing to say is that I now have additional printed copies of issue 0 of "A Shadow of Steel". If you'd like a copy please feel free to contact me so we can arrange purchase and delivery.

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.

A Shadow of Steel! Printed

Hey folks it's been a hectic month since my last post, but it was a good hectic month. Since the last post I was working away at the pages of my comic and last minute additions to the script and then having to get off to the printers in time.

And here is the result of that hard work. I have to give credit to the printers for an excellent job with the print outs, the colours came out perfectly and the paper quality is a little thicker than normal comics, but that doesn't bother me. If you have a comic project going and you need to find a printer to go to, then I recommend UK Comics who did my comic, they are really friendly and give good service. Here's the link to their site.

Here is page preview of the interiors.

I am pleased that I completed a personal challenge to make and print my own comic, and now the real work begins with keeping the series going in tri-monthly issues. At least that's how long it took for this to be done, whilst doing other work too. 

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.