MORE FROM THE PSYCHOHORIZON

My new plate for WKRR? is up. Please go check it out.

LIVE FROM THE PSYCHO HORIZON, FROM THE ABSOLUTE NOW

This is apparently what Harrison Ford said about George Lucas' script for Star Wars.

Ah, the Psychohorizon, finally. An infinite corridor of time, space and the mind. Lots of pseudo psychoanalysis like Transference Sickness. Transference itself is a phenomenon found in psychoanalysis but has very little to do with void virgins.

As correctly observed by Rob Davis in the comments section for this plate, this is a Poirot moment. Perhaps a game of motives and alibis is about to begin? We shall see.

Don't know why but I decided this page was all about fours. There's four panels, four sentences and each sentence is four words long.

ET CETERA

My work on the 2000AD Christmas special is done and I'm looking forward to seeing it in print. I've also got another 3 pager for something else that popped up towards the tail end of last week that needs to be done before the end of this month. More on that as and when I can spill beans.

And now for something completely different. Here's a letter I found addressed to me which mildly amused me.

Now, picture this. The young Master Culbard, to whom the above letter was addressed (I still have the envelope the letter arrived in and no it doesn't have a stamp on it, it has a royal stamp, but not an actual postage stamp with the Queens head on it), was at that time a little boy reading The Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows and The Lion and the Witch in the Wardrobe (the three main books of my childhood at that time) and listening to Mozart, Holst and Wagner (I really wasn't fond of 'pop' music). Some might say a precocious child. Others might say disturbing. And others might say - oh never mind them, they're not important anyway. But I digress. Imagine, if you will, my delight at such a wonderfully naive and innocent age upon reading the following:

"The Prince and Princess of Wales have asked me -"

They specifically asked. They said, "Henrietta dearest, do be a chum and write to that dear fellow and thank him for us would you. It was awfully kind of him to write to us and to spare a moments thought for us given how frightfully busy he is with all this and all that." Or at least that's likely the way I would have seen it aged nine.

"Their Royal Highnesses were most touched by the good wishes you have expressed"

What the heck did I write that gave merit to a letter from Buckingham blooming Palace?

I can only imagine it may have gone something like this:

DAVID TENNANT QUITS DOCTOR WHO

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!!! David Tennant has just announced that he's leaving Doctor Who after the next four specials which will be broadcast over the coming year.

Rumor has it that Paterson Joseph is to step into the 11th Doctor's shoes, 3-1 according to the BBC against four unlikely ones. Joseph can be seen here playing the Marquis de Carabas in Neverwhere:

And lastly, Russell Tovey was apparently RTD's tip to replace Tennant seen here playing the werewolf in the BBC pilot drama, Being Human (created and written by Doctor Who writer, Toby Whithouse - this show's getting a full series apparently):

HOUND INKS

The Hound of the Baskervilles © 2008 SelfMadeHero

WKRR? MWIP!

These are the last two pages of WKRR? I've appeared on. Thought I'd show the full pages as Dave Taylor's gone to all the effort and done a lovely job of sticking the pages together. You can see all the full pages of the strip shown in sequential order over here.

BACK FROM BIRMINGHAM

Got back from the Birmingham International Comic Show late on Saturday night. What a hoot!

Got to meet up with the lovely folk from SelfMadeHero again, signed some books for some incredibly nice people who were all saying incredibly nice things. And the first copy of Dorian Gray that I signed was for Mark Buckingham and his wife Irma. I also finally met Sean Phillips and got up to speed with Criminal and managed to get a copy of Seven psychos. Oh, and I got a comp copy of The Girly Comic (from marvelous Jay and Selina at Factor Fiction) which has 'War Canary' in it in full color! And I hooked up again with my dear chums Dave Taylor and Colin Fawcett with whom I ate food and drank wine (we actually got a free lunch).

In other news I'm going to be making more appearances in November. I've off to Bradford to run a workshop at the Bradford Animation Festival on Thursday the 13th of November (at 10:30 in the morning for two hours):

Storyboarding, alongside character design and scriptwriting, is one of the key stages of producing a quality animation. In this two hour workshop, Ian Culbard (animation filmmaker with experience in directing commercials, television, and short films) offers an insight into the skills involved in producing effective storyboards.

That same week I'm dashing off to London to appear on a panel. Over at Paul Gravett's site there's info on a panel I'm going to be on:

Turning Classics Into Comics
Shakespeare, Brontë, Wilde and Dickens are getting visual makeovers as comics. How does prose transfer to panels? What is lost, and found, in translation? Richard Appignanesi and Ian Edgington talk with their visualisers Mustashrik, Chie Kutsuwada and Ian Culbard, and John M Burns and Mike Collins discuss their versions of Jane Eyre and A Christmas Carol. Plus signings.
Supported by Classical Comics, SelfMadeHero & Letraset
Tickets: Each talk - £6, £5 concs, £4 members
Tickets: All three of today's talks - £15, £12 concs, £9 members
Where: Nash & Brandon Rooms, ICA
When: Sunday, 16 November, 6pm to 7.30pm

So November's going to be quite a busy and exciting month for me.

TOK

Snuck this one in late last night. Poor Bronx. I was listening to AC/DC's 'Back in Black' when I started inking. The last panel was drawn to AC/DC's Thunderstruck. I've no idea why I was listening to AC/DC at the time. I don't usually. But it certainly got me in the mood and thankfully spurred me on to finish this panel quite quickly.

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES

The Hound of the Baskervilles © 2008 SelfMadeHero

Work is well and truly underway on The Hound of the Baskervilles and momentum's picking up (we're a month in now). Here's an early idea for the cover (this won't be the final cover but you do get to see Holmes here, and an early Watson (Watson's nose is a little different now). We're shaking off the bumbling buffoonery of Nigel Bruce and the deerstalker and the Calabash of Paget and Gillette respectively.

DEATH RATTLE

Is it heck. My money's on no. What do you reckon?

BIRMINGHAM INTERNATIONAL COMICS SHOW SIGNING

I'm going to be signing copies of Dorian Gray along with Ian Edginton (I won't be signing copies of Ian Edginton - that would be weird) at 1pm on Saturday in Birmingham at the Birmingham International Comic Show.

Also, 'War Canary' a story written by Selina Lock and drawn by me, will be appearing in the latest issue of 'The Girly Comic' and will be on sale at the show, so make sure you pick up a copy while you're there.

Meanwhile ... I've done yet another 'plate' for WKRR? As the Astral team take on an Outer God, Mars Mesmer steps up to the plate ...

AICN GIVES "OVER THE HILL" A MENTION

Just a quick note. It's been all comic news of late but here's a teeny bit of animation news; remember that film I co-produced with Split-Second Films last year? Called "Over the Hill" directed by Peter Baynton? I co-produced it, mentored Pete as a director and even did a teeny weeny bit of animation on it.... well it gets a favorable mention over at AICN along with the news that its been entered for Oscar consideration for 2009. Exciting stuff.

CREEPY

A very quick brush, texture and typeface test for nothing in particular.

More news on something in particular forthcoming as Edginton and I will be producing a story for 2000AD in the very near future. My adventures in comics continue.

WASTED

Wasted- Matthew Bryan by Raymond Prado from Raymond Prado on Vimeo.

Great music video. Comics related round about the 02.30 mark.

ALAN MOORE KNOWS THE SCORE

This is just part 10. Check out the rest here.

LADIES FIRST (UPDATED: includes inks)

BEFORE: Drawn using a Col-Erase 20044 Blue pencil (which I always draw with) and inked using a Pentel brush pen.

AFTER: Scanned into photoshop, nuked with 'adjustments>threshold' then colored using numerous, glorious effect filters. Notably 'pixelate>Color Halftone' which I love using (turned all the way up to 11... the default is 8 but them dots is too small for that exaggerated four-color look).

WKRR? seems to be getting back on track after a two week long hiatus. Had to scratch out my effort as quick as Quentin because I've not got very much time to contribute to the WKRR? at the moment what with all the work I'm doing on Holmes. More on that in a bit.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

The Picture of Dorian Gray © 2008 SelfMadeHero

The Picture of Dorian Gray is out this October. I got my proof copy just the other day and am pleased as punch. Smells gorgeous (a good quality printing ink is like catnip to me) and looks and feels gorgeous too (SelfMadeHero pulling out all the stops as they always do with their books).

The Picture of Dorian Gray will be available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon .com and Play.com as well as all good bookstores.

THE GAME IS AFOOT...

Right. Big news. I've started work on my next graphic novel for SelfMadeHero and their Eye Classics imprint. I'm rather excited to be working once again with Ian Edginton who's recent book "Stickleback: England's Glory" was described by SFX magazine as a "modern-day Victorian classic". Over the coming months I'll be updating this blog with sneak peaks, probably a few tutorials and the like, all pertaining to the production of this book. The name of the author who's book we are adapting is my favorite author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And the title of the book is The Hound of the Baskervilles. But that's not all. We're adapting The Hound of the Baskervilles with a view to adapting all the books. We're doing the lot. The Hound of the Baskervilles is just the first in a series which if all goes according to plan will be released semiannually from 2009.

The game is afoot.

DEATH STAR OVER SAN FRANCISCO

Thanks to Col for the heads up.

IT'S NOT POLITE TO HIT A LADY

This has 'epic' and 'kick ass' stamped all over it:

37, 42, 6, 2.

More numerical homage on the WKRR? Going from The Mothman Prophecies Number 37 to The Prisoner AND Battlestar Galactica's Number 6 right the way across to the end of the universe with The Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy's meaning of life the universe and everything with 42 and finally back to The Prisoner again with Number 2. Numerical nonsense aside, "Dickie Bird" is slang in this neck of the woods for "word" (so she's saying 'not a word' basically, for those not up on their cockney rhyming slang and not of the British Isles) and a reference to the fact that all the characters in this scene when they're not referring to one another as numbers are actually named after birds.

I wanted to keep the inking effects very 'in camera' as they'd say in the film business, with regard to this plate. Basically, the frantic cross hatched shading level has moved from being something I would normally have dropped over the background on an overlay channel to being part of the actual finished inks (likewise speech balloons).

THE KIRKMAN CRUSADE

A call to arms.

MWIP

I need to do more black and white work.

Following Nigel Parkinson's wonderful curve ball on the WKRR? I stumbled upon this idea just as I was waking up this morning with an somewhat unexpected and quite ferocious hangover. 'Wake up, Number 37' is a pop culture reference type thing (pertaining to "The Mothman Prophecies" wherein a character called "Indrid Cold" (aka The Mothman) who seemingly exists out of time, says it as a warning to one of the characters in the film. It must have got lodged in my brain because as I was waking up this morning it sort of popped into my head like a booming voice. Like the echo of a dream that somehow overlaps into the first few seconds of the waking day.

The number 37 is of course loaded with meaning as is every number and everything if you chose to follow the white rabbit down the hole. From the number of plays written by Shakespeare to a bad year for Antioch. From the first irregular prime number to the number of the beast (37 is 666 divided by its digits added together [37=666/(6+6+6)] ... and technically speaking, its the 'number of a man' associated with the beast, but that would mess up the lyrics to "The Number of the Beast" by Iron Maiden). 37 means everything and nothing at all.

Will be fun to see who or what 37 is, presuming Nigel picks up on that as he's Huzzah'd the next turn.

Watched 'Maestro' for the second time last night. A new 'celebrities making complete asses of themselves' tv show from the BBC but unlike previous 'celebrities making complete asses of themselves' tv shows, I rather enjoyed this one as it was about one of my favorite subjects. Classical Music. And it proved that conducting an orchestra is not unlike driving a ruddy great big tank laden with very large guns. Wonderful stuff.

MAY THE DANCE OFF BE WITH YOU...

I love the Darth Vader Thriller dance. You'd have thought they would have let the Wookie win, right?

Which reminds me...

LAST THREE PLATES FROM WKRR? AND AN EXQUISITE CORPSE!

Here's the last three plates I did for WKRR? which oddly, when put together, even though they're divided by other contributors plates in the actual story, read straight through. Out of context, the three plates still wouldn't make much sense, but I do wonder if I'd tried this from the start if I'd been able to pull it off, having one through line in the story that could be read entirely on its own. Inspired by Dave Taylor pasting his plates together over on his blog.

And whilst on the subject of being inspired ... here's something pretty awesome:

'This is a game. It is inspired by the project "Round Robin" in where a series of professional comic artists join to create an unexpected history'

The work over on Cadaver Exquisito really is quite exquisite, so please do go check it out. I was able quite easily to work my way through the story with a translator widget (that's the glory of comics, not a lot of text).

Their contributors include Bachan, Edgar Clement (both of whom have contributed thus far), Humberto Ramos, José Quintero, Patricio Betteo, Lucas Marangon, Francisco Herrera and Tony Sandoval.

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK!

Rage incarnate indeed. Love how Hulk makes short work of Asgard's equivalent to the riders of Rohan by flying through the air and punching them off their horses. Nice work. See, you don't need a herd of stampeding Mûmaks after all.

BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD

I'm looking forward to seeing this. Batman's going to be regularly teaming up with the likes of Aquaman, The Atom, Black Canary, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Doctor Fate, Fire, Flash, Green Arrow, The Green Lantern Corps, Huntress, Red Tornado and Plastic Man, with Diedrich Bader providing the voice of the not-so-dark Knight. It's also great to see Jaime Reyes as the Blue Beetle.

LION OH LION

Another Plate for 'Who Killed Round Robin?' This time hopefully further tying the Creature Constabulary and the Magical Hat into Zoctarian origins. This time introducing the not so cute and not so cuddly Kodoradomidion bounty hunters. As I currently see it they ride around the deserts of Zoctar on giant lizards hunting bounty.

Initially I was working on this plate in blue, but I eventually figured that Zoctarian moonlight would be red, as you do, so I washed everything through with red photo filter. Also, dropping the old paper texture over the top (which has a yellowed newspaper look about it) and playing with color burn channels really made the lines around Uncle Tulpa zing.

THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL

With all this talk of Gods and revelations I thought it only fitting to open this next WKRR? plate with writing on the wall (Daniel 5:1–31). Carrying on the unclaimed log entry from the previous two pages, I was sort of wondering when I did those if anyone would associate them with the character Penney or attribute them to somebody else. And I've been wanting to bring "the Detective" back into the story for quite a number of pages now, and suggest perhaps how such a story could have such a thing as a Creature Constabulary and magic hats.

When I first introduced 'the detective' (who has a name of course, Captain Noah Arkright), I actually had planned to introduce three. Basil Rathbone, Margaret Rutherford and Sidney Toler alikes, getting under one another's feet... but that would have been a nightmare so I'm glad I didn't venture further beyond the signs saying 'turn back, that way madness lies'. I settled for a cross between Basil Rathbone and Gregory Peck instead ... sort of.

Oh, one last thing - there's a joke hidden away in this one... it's written in Zoctarian across the ship as it passes overhead in the second panel.

If you've no idea what I'm on about then you've not been reading 'Who Killed Round Robin?' Shame on you.

WATCHMEN TRAILER!

Who watches the Watchmen? Well, pretty soon we'll all be watching the Watchmen as it hits cinemas March, 2009. I don't think I've ever watched a trailer so many times over. Wow. The Doc Manhattan transformation scene is really quite something.

Go and watch the Watchmen trailer for yourselves.... thanks to Apple.

PROCESS

"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."

-Vincent van Gogh

Right then. Here's the process I used to create Plate 2 of Page 26 of "Who Killed Round Robin?"

Starting with the concept - I wanted to elaborate more on what happens to people who witness the birth of an Outer God without the proper protective eye wear and seized my chance when I noticed that because of Woodrow Phoenix's perception of what I'd drawn earlier he'd drawn a previously faceless character with a face again ... and from that I got my idea. How we perceive one another's contributions is obviously just one part of what shapes the story, with people interpreting what has gone before in ways that a contributor might not have imagined in the first place. So I figured I'd find a way to cement the original intention a bit more concretely (excuse the pun).

Also I wanted to reintroduce a concept contributed by Colin Fawcett all the way back on page Page 15 (plate 3). We'll likely catch up with Cockrell and Stone's progress at some point (one would certainly hope), but I quite liked the notion that people could be used like trained circus fleas. So I started sketching. And as with most of my WKRR? contributions I just have time for one shot at it, so pretty much what you see is more or less what you get. Straight out of the tin, as 'they*' say.

Once I got the general idea down I then inked it thus ...

.... using Manga studio for the nice big brush lines. Manga Studio is all levels of awesomeness. Try it out. Took me about fifteen minutes to ink fully then on to the crosshatching.

Basically, creating a new layer I went Robert Crumb Crazy. Manga Studio organizes your work into layers... much like photoshop, which is handy as I'll explain in a minute. I then worked into the cross hatching with an erase tool and erased small ember like dots. more on that cross hatched layer in a mo...

I then exported the file into photoshop (you can export your work, layers intact, straight out of Manga Studio... did I mention how marvelous Manga Studio is?) and did a quick color rough which, when I'm doing round robin work is finished colors... but I do probably take a little while longer coloring than I do inking. It's the bulk of the work in fact. I basically color the whole thing quite baddly, with only a rough idea in my head of the contrast I want. So the colors will be quite primary to begin with. Then I isolate areas of the color and tweak them using 'photo filter' in photoshop. Which washes colors through with either a uniform warm or coldness etc. Cyan photofilter is great for deadening flesh tones if you're doing a zombie comic etc. I then pass the whole thing through a photo filter tonal wash to ensure the color is equally distributed. So the over all image feels either warm or cold or dead even. I enjoy this process way to much. It's my favorite part out of the entire coloring process. No idea why but its totally my bag. In the previous panel Penney has set the alien on fire so we loose the usual colors for this environment.

And then I take my cross hatched layer, remember that? Hopefully I haven't lost you by now with all my talk about photo filters... anyway, I switch that to an overlay channel and it burns over the image quite nicely. Then, on a layer over the original inks I drop the oppacity and work glow into the eyes of the damned and the lighting.

I add two additional layers, one with a texture over it which I put on a soft light with high contrast... it's basically a mottled texture that actually makes any overlap in the color seemingly bleed, so it gives everything a marker effect or water color effect giving the color a pinch more depth. I also have like an old newspaper texture which I drop over the whole thing on a multiply channel, which means that anything white is now creamy colored, like aged paper, and pulls the image together a bit more in terms of tone and depth and all those bells and whistles.

And lastly I add lettering, returning once more to the log entry of the previous page, describing in some detail what happens to the skin of a 'witness' who is unfortunate enough to see an Outer God being born (or to even meet one at all). I also use words of Yiddish origin for sound effects, quite specifically choosing schmaltz (which you may know as being used for 'excessive sentimentality' but is also the word for melted chicken fat, which I thought quite appropriate for the sound of someone's face falling off) and schlub (which is a clumsy, stupid, or unattractive person ... not very nice, I know).

For the finished thing, click here.

*more about 'them' later.

TELLING NOT SHOWING

Much of this post won't make sense unless you're reading the critically acclaimed (it's had some criticism and some acclaim, so technically speaking it's critically acclaimed*) "Who Killed Round Robin?" so either get yourself over there and start reading, or nod knowingly and pretend you know what I'm talking about.

Here's the inks for my new WKRR? plate (click here to see the full color version).

Riffing off of Woodrow Phoenix's opening plate for that page I decided not to stray too far from the designs Woods had laid down of the Lickey End House guests. After all, if it ain't broke...

I decided here not to show the Outer God - we've had glimpses of it so far, nothing too detailed, and I thought it more horrid at this point in the page to show the effects of looking at it rather than showing it. And of course the introduction of journal notes... although who's journal notes remains to be seen.

I named the burgeoning regenerating aliens "Dren". As in 'children', because they've always looked quite eerily childlike.

Also I was rather curious as to why Penney wore tinted specs. Well now we know.

(*next week I'll be calling it The New York Times Best Seller, and the week after that we're going for the Pulitzer)

THE ANGEL OF MONS AND ALL ...

With this week's Who Killed Round Robin? I snatched up the opportunity to follow myself again after poor Dave Taylor had to bow out at the last minute. Got to play around with the legend of the Angel of Mons, in which angels supposedly protected the British army during the Battle of Mons at the start of The Great War. Arthur Machen (an interesting chap - member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) had a hand in creating the legend when he wrote The Bowmen (published in the Evening News a month after the battle), inspired by accounts he'd heard from the front line. In the story phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt are summoned by a British soldier calling on the spirit of St. George.

The Battle of Agincourt again is of notable significance. It's incorrectly associated with 'flipping the bird', that most popular of obscene hand gestures. Apparently the French wanted to cut off the middle fingers of English bowmen so they could not use their bows (a cunning plan!). When the English won they displayed their middle fingers to show they still had them. Nonsense of course, but then so was the Angel of Mons. I thought it interesting though that bodkin point's (the arrows used by longbowmen at the Battle of Agincourt), were fired in sun blotting volleys at the French and yet St. George in Machen's story sent the very same bowmen to be allied with the French in order to defeat the Germans.

ALLONS-Y!!!

Who Killed Round Robin? has been going for six months now as we round the corner at 23 pages with no end in sight just yet. It's something that allows me to try something new - or rather hone a direction for my work. Of late I've been cross hatching like crazy which you may notice if you look very closely (click on the image above for a closer look). WKRR? also allows me to practice my use of color. Odd to also think that at Page 1, Plate 1, which I'd drawn last new years eve, I'd only drawn 5 pages of Dorian. I've contributed a total of 14 'plates' to WKRR?, over which time I've completed a 119 page graphic novel and have tentatively started work on another. These last 6 months have proved the most educational, I've learned a tremendous amount and am absolutely ravenous for more. Over the next couple of days or so I'm preparing my pitch for Zuda, something I've been talking about doing for ages (and not exactly been putting off either) where I'll hopefully be able to put some of those lessons to good use.

MUSIC NIGHT ON STRANGE PLANET

Sigur Rós – Inní mér syngur vitleysingur

Sigur Rós – Gobbledigook

DON'T MAKE ME ANGRY ...

I cannot wait to see the new Incredible Hulk film out later this month. I missed Iron Man when it screened, but I'm setting a date with the big green guy. I LOVE the Hulk and I cannot recommend enough Peter David's run on the The Incredible Hulk from Marvel comics back in the nineties. Truly amazing series. I was more than a little disappointed by Ang Lee's effort, so I'm hoping this new version doesn't Mister MgGee me. Speaking of Mister MgGee, I love the inclusion of the theme tune from the glorious Bixby tv series at the end of the trailer. Awesome.

OH MY GOLLY GOSH!

CLOSING TIME

I love my Pulp and Noir.

A fictional cover for a fictional book. A work of fiction in every sense of the word. Frank Solomon's my chosen pen name if ever I become a 10,000 word a day pulp novelist. Jack Tallahasse's someone I'm going to have to work with some day. Just playing around here with textures and light really as my work seems to be increasingly moving in this direction as can be seen in my latest Round Robin contribution (I got pretty obsessed with the number 3 while I was working on it, see how many references to three you can spot and what they all mean).

It's funny. The way I work just leads and I follow. I've no idea where it will end up but that's all part of the fun. Walt Simonson gave a talk at the Bristol comics expo this year about the X and Y axis of creativity and how your work changes over time and you're in constant pursuit of getting it right. There's certainly an importance in never attaining that goal. It's all about the journey. As I was working on Dorian, I learned a heck of a lot about myself as an artist over the course of 119 pages. I'm sure anyone would. And the next project Edginton and I are hopefully doing with SelfMadeHero will certainly reflect all that.

Got a lot of work to do over the coming week or so. Pitches galore.

PLAY THAT MUSIC!

The Bristol Comic Expo was a great way to wind down after Dorian Gray. Finally met with Dorian's publishers for the first time. Working remotely as I do, I don't always get to meet the people I work for. So it was nice to meet the good people at SelfMadeHero at long last. Conversation has already started moving on to the next big project and I'm currently doing some preparatory work for that along with Ian Edginton. Hopefully work on that will start proper soon.

Meanwhile I'm putting work together for another five projects, two I'm doing on my todd, one with Jay Eales of Factor Fiction, another with Ian Edginton again, but that'll come after the prep work for the next SelfMadeHero outing, and one of which is with Round Robin collaborator Colin Fawcett. More on that too as it comes in, all I can say right now is it's a corker.

11th HOUR PROMOTIONS!

I'll be attending Bristol International Comic Expo where I'll be handing these flyers out for Who Killed Round Robin? like a mad ... octopus ... handing out .... er ... flyers. Only occurred to me this morning that we should perhaps promote the round robin while we're there, so it is all hasty-hasty-cut-and-pasty (did I just say that? Way too much 'Chorlton and the Wheelies' and 'Rentaghost' when I was a child, waaay too much.)

RETRO ROCKETS GO!

"Great googly-moogly, gear-heads! This' been a race an' a half an' no mistake!"

Retro Rockets Go! is up and running over at the Dark Horse Presents MySpace page. Written by Ian Edginton and drawn by me in a manic four days. A race an' half an' no mistake!

Go Rockets go!

WALKING WOUNDED

Didn't sleep last night. Extreme agony in my left shoulder. Pain killers weren't working - electric blankets weren't working. Really son-of-a-bitch painful. So I went to see the doc this morning and found out I have tendinitis. So I'm on anti-inflammatories for the next ten days and grateful it isn't my right shoulder. If it doesn't calm down by the time I run out of anti-inflammatories then they (the them) are going to inject steroids into my shoulder. Nice.

Ya boo sucks.

STICK A FORK IN ME, I'M DONE

The Picture of Dorian Gray is done! Finished it today!!!

I also bagged an 8 page story for Dark Horse which I did last weekend, with Ian Edginton at the typewriter and me at the drawing board. A short tale of daring do, action and adventure. Should be appearing on Dark Horse Presents (their MySpace page) in a week or so). I had precious little time to do it in, given my Dorian schedule was so close to d-day.

I've spent the last two months working seven days a week. I'm looking forward to the weekend. In fact, tomorrow morning, I'm having the day off. Yay! Something I rarely do.

I'm going to find it pretty weird not working on Dorian again. I'm going to miss the old devil.

'Lover's to bed, tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn ...'

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Well, according to the good people at Self Made Hero and their imprint Eye Classics, this is that graphic novel I've been working on for the past few months now. ;-)

I can't show any of the work I've done on it here just yet, but you can see from the sidebar of the article one of the paintings I did of Dorian. Only the most famous fictional paintings there is. No pressure. No siree.

Click the title to see the page.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

A Graphic Adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Novel

“If it were I who was to be forever young and the picture that was to grow old!
...I would give my soul for that!”

This graphic novel rejuvenates Oscar Wilde’s classic The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story of a man who, exhilarated by his friends’ praise of his youth and beauty, asks to be able to retain them eternally. When he discovers that his wish has been granted and that the portrait painted by his friend Basil will age instead of him, Dorian’s naivety turns into narcissism and a feeling of invulnerability. Influenced by the decadent aristocrat Lord Henry, he soon embarks upon a career of selfish hedonism, breaking several lives on the way. But while Dorian thinks himself unaccountable for his sins, the portrait shows him the true darkness of his soul. Ultimately, Dorian will find out that although you can ignore your conscience for a while, it always catches up with you... In this dark tale, the master of provocation Oscar Wilde gives a modern turn to the Gothic genre, fusing the Faustian theme with moral ambiguity and dandy attitude.

In other news, we took a trip a few weeks ago to visit my mother in London. I found stashed away in a cupboard two packs of photocopy paper I used to draw on way back when I used to live at my mum's, so this will be my late teens as I was out by 19 .... so a good chunk of years ago. And it was the very best drawing paper. I've not really been able to find any with quite the same bite. So I was really pleased. Back in the day I used to get through so many 500 sheet packs in like a matter of weeks that trees would quake in fear when I walked past them.
I'm in drawing heaven right now, drawing on these pages with my old Col-Erase 20044 Blue pencils (my weapon of choice). Bliss.

ALMOST THERE!!

Well, I'm almost at a point where I can spill the beans and say what I've been working on for the past few months and why I've not been posting artwork of late. All I can say is it's a graphic novel, Ian Edginton has written it, and it'll be out in the autumn. I can't show any sketches from it, or pages or anything yet. It's been a real education working on the book, it really has, and I hope to be sharing some of that education real soon.

In the meantime, here's an elephant painting a self portrait.



Now all I need to find is a chimpanzee using photoshop.

Oh, wait...

SO, WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?

I would love to just once be able to say, "I'm a beatboxing flutist".

WHO KILLED ROUND ROBIN? (from pencils to finished art)

The Round Robin keeps going. Three entries in this week in quick succession so go check it out. My latest entry I decided to keep some semblance of a work-in-progress thing to show how a plate of this Round Robin looks in various states of undress. I turned this one around in about two, maybe three hours. Of the three stages, the coloring took the longest. I love getting to the coloring, it's the point in the work where you sit there trying all manner of combinations, like I'm picking out which tie goes with which shirt. It's a lot of fun (especially for a guy who doesn't wear ties). Anyway, back to the process starting at the beginning.

First up. Pencils. I call it pencils cause it's rough, obviously there's no lead involved because I'm drawing straight into a graphics tablet but it serves the same purpose as pencils so... I work really really loosely when its me that's going to be inking it. In fact, its fair to say I divide up the artworking process between the pencils and the inks. I sort of know the pencils ain't the be all and end all as nobody but me (and now you) is going to see them. And working this way drives me because it spurs me on to get to the second part of the process, the inking. Kind of like dangling a carrot. And then I'm spurred on in the inking because it's getting ever closer to the coloring. And so on.

Note how in the pencils you have the Captain's pipe sticking out of his yapper. Well, by the inking stage I've decided he's not smoking his pipe, he's holding it. I draw that straight in in inks. I ink in Manga Studio. Which I have to say is the best bit of comics software I've ever come across where inking is concerned. You can calibrate the weight of your line in Manga studio, just as you would a brush pen. And you can turn the page. It's glorious. Is as close to using a brush pen on paper as you can get.

Once I get the inking done then it's goodbye pencils and I'm moving onto colors. I export my inks out of Manga Studio as a photoshop document. Then I create a layer under the inks and fill it grayscale (my export is set to grayscale mode when I first open it up in photoshop). Okay, so in Manga Studio there's two stages, the pencils and the inks. Well, the photoshop part of the job is broken up into two stages also. Tone and color. So I start in grayscale, I put down a tone of mid gray. Under this layer there's a white fill. I then rub out parts of the mid tone and lay down darker tones until I basically end up with a tonal image. I then switch modes. Straight to RGB. I isolate areas for coloring and then using image=adjustment=photofilter I turn the gray areas into color. It's a very quick way to color. Very quick. I mix and match various combinations till I have what I want. Basically window shopping. What this effectively does is turn photoshop into your own personal shopper. Rather than trying to find something quite nebulous (ie: coming up with swatches out of the blue), it gets photoshop to show you quite quickly what it's got). And then it's just a case of mixing and matching. The trick here once you have your basic colors is to then ensure you have some consistency. So what I do is I take the whole thing roughly colored and then wash them through with the photofilter again. So all the colors then have a consistent palette to them. Like throwing in a red sock into a white wash I guess. It actually simplifies the color palette quite nicely. Then you can add stark areas of color, like yellow eyes for example, and they really stand out. If this doesn't make much sense I'll make sure I save off the stages of the color process and with my next entry I'll do an in depth spot on color.

I then apply texture. Texture can actually be quite forgiving. It like another wash through but this time it pulls the color together. In this instance I used a parchment texture and ran that through the whole thing. incredibly subtle but it makes a world of difference I make the layer a Soft Light layer so it's only very subtle and tweak the opacity. Again, picking out ties. And then using red and yellow selected in my color boxes I create another layer and filter=render=cloud and then pixelate color halftone to get that ziptone effect. I gradient it out so it fades towards the top and "Overlay" it on the empty background so it only effects the colors of the background. Overlay makes the colors quite stark in contrast. I love Overlay and Soft Light. They work best in RGB because thy really punch out the color. I then merge these into the color layer and I'm done.

Last thing I do is lettering and that's it. Done and done.

WHO KILLED ROUND ROBIN? EAGLE AWARD NOMINATIONS!

Who Killed Round Robin? has been shortlisted for a nomination for an Eagle Award for Best Web-based Comic. To those who may not be aware, the Eagle is to the Bafta's what the Eisner is to the Oscars. So please do go and vote for our webcomic by visiting the Eagle Awards voting page and vote for us!

DIONYSOS - ANIMATED VIDEOS

I discovered Dionysos through their animated videos. Check out this post from almost a year ago. Here's two more rather splendid offerings.

WHO KILLED ROUND ROBIN? CONTINUES

If you haven't been already, go check it out.

SERVICE WITH A SMILE

My local comic shop closed today. Which is no big deal, right? I mean there's another two comic shops in town, I can always buy books there. Or I can be really hip and get my comics mailed to me from some online authority on comics.

But it is a big deal. One made all too clear to me when Dark Horse published my stuff back in 2006 in the New Recruits anthology. You see, getting published is, I learned, relatively easy compared to actually selling your comics, getting people to actually read your stuff. You can, after all, publish yourself. Not a problem. But selling your stuff - reaching the readers... well, this is where the comic shop comes in. But a comic shop isn't just four walls, a roof and a bunch of spinner racks where you get your weekly fix. A comic shop is people. You see, my local comic shop closed today and it is a big deal for two very good reasons. David Smith and Matt McGowan. These two guys could 'sell' comics. They were very fine salesman and yeah, I'd often walk out of their store with a little more than I initially went in to buy. Which is great. It's great for the customer because the customer ultimately discovers new and exciting things that way, and more importantly it's great for the artists and the writers because their material is reaching audiences that never would have normally given their work a second glance.

Always friendly, always polite and always eager to help their customers - the real shame isn't just that my local comic shop closed today, it's that as of tomorrow David and Matt won't be selling people comics anymore.

I wish them every success in the future in whatever they decide to do.

Ce qui sera, sera.

WHO KILLED ROUND ROBIN?

What better way to start the New Year than with a round robin? At the stroke of midnight last night, while fireworks were going off and a tsunami of celebration flooded from the east to the west across the globe (are we all in 2008 yet?), I posted the first panel of the first page of an online round robin comic called "Who Killed Round Robin?"

The other contributors are Colin Fawcett, Craig Conlan, D'Israeli, Dave Taylor, Nigel Parkinson and Woodrow Phoenix. Click the link in the banner below to find yourself magically there.

It will (with any luck) get updated regularly if all goes according to plan, so keep checking back for updates. Dave Taylor's next up.

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: Dave Taylor has posted his contribution. Colin Fawcett is up next. Keep checking the round robin for updates.

BAH, HUMBUG!

WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?

Haven't put any of my own work up in a while so here goes. The Joker. Tis the season to be jolly.

WEDNESDAY'S CHILD IS FULL OF WOE!

But I was born on a Friday, which makes me loving and giving - but not according to the 1887 original version which had Wednesday's child bestowed with such fortune and Friday's child saddled with woe. Which brings me to another bit of Trivia. Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family took her name from 'Wednesday's child is full of woe". Her middle name was 'Friday'. All bases covered.

It's actually the early hours of the morning here in Blighty. I'm up working late and evidently talking gibberish so here's some music instead.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN ALL YOUR LIFE & GOODBYE TO THE NORMALS

I moseyed on over to the BBC's film network today completely by chance and found, much to my delight, the work of writer George Kay and director Jim Field Smith. The first is a film called "Where Have I Been All Your Life?":

A young man's personal search unlocks a series of revelations and recriminations that escalate from the emotional, via the darkly comic to the plain farcical.

And the second is "Goodbye to the Normals" which can also be seen on youtube and concerns a young boy leaving home.

'TWAS THE DARK KNIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS ...

DOCTOR WHO: VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED TRAILER

It's almost that time of year again ... no, not Christmas, the other thing ...

THE GOLDEN COMPASS

Took my niece to see The Golden Compass at the weekend (finally got my weekends back). The cinema experience when going to see films with children is sort of akin to Christmas being reinvigorated with magic once again now my wife and I have a son.

I have to confess, in hindsight I thought the film was okay, but at the time I thoroughly enjoyed it (fueled somewhat by the novelty). Whilst wonderfully realized visually I wasn't too certain it had been wonderfully executed in terms of adaptation, but for the most part performances were fine, the casting fitting almost perfectly with how I had imagined the book. I was however perplexed by the film's ending (in contrast to the book), and shocked by a certain fight scene for it's moment of startling but bloodless gore. I had to explain to my niece there was going to be another film as the fade to black prompted her to ask "is that it?". After the film an in depth conversation ensued concerning Daemon's (the familiars in the film) as we waited in the lobby for my sister to come and collect us. I picked a hare after Lee Scoresby's Daemon - Hester the Hare (I was particularly fond of its ears) and my niece rather impractically picked a Killer Whale. That said though, it had been raining rather heavily all day so I suppose it wasn't so impractical after all.

FAREWELL NOVEMBER 2007

It's been a hectic month. I could almost write the whole of November off as one long endurance test. And the fun is far from over yet. I haven't had a weekend free since the beginning of November. I've been working on three commercials back to back and a comic book (more info on that as soon as I'm allowed to tell). Been looking forward to December as the next couple of months is all comic book work which makes for a nice change of pace. Oh, and I get my weekends back. Yay!

Now for a little music. Two tracks from the outstandingly excellent Akira soundtrack. Never mind that it's an amazing manga and an incredible anime, listen to the score!

TO DAYS TO COME, ALL MY LOVE TO LONG AGO.

A change of desktop theme indeed. A touch of nostalgia from Doctor Who in this special for Children in Need. Note how the score changes to the eighties style fifth Doctor era midway through. Great stuff.

BAF 07

It's been a while since I last posted. I've had my head beneath the parapet and have been working hard on three commercials back to back. I've not got any weekends off for the whole of November. Needs must when the devil drives! Looking forward to December when things slow down a pace and I get my weekends back. On top of all these commercials I managed to prepare a powerpoint presentation of my storyboard work and comic book work for the Bradford Animation Festival. Jim Walker hosted a panel which consisted of Ginger Gibbons, Kevin Baldwin and myself.

It was my first ever presentation/talk so in the days leading up to it, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm so busy at the moment and thinking about half a dozen other things at once, I would most likely have been quite nervous, but I just didn't have time to be nervous. So I just got on with it. I arrived about 45 mins before the talk and had to leave 45 mins after I'd finished because I had to get back to HQ. Busy busy busy. As it was it all ran smoothly. The staff at BAF 07 where lovely and incredibly helpful, the Q&A with the audience went great with people asking interesting questions; the whole thing went off without a hitch and I had a thoroughly good time. Oh, and Bob Godfrey was in the audience (even more reason to be nervous, talking in front of such a luminary of the animation industry).