New toys

Aimee got me some new pens as part of my birthday pressents including a pack of Faber Castell Shades of Grey brush pens which I've had my eye on for a long while.
They're a little tricky at first try, and really thats all I've had time for with so much work on. Here's a very quick doodle just to test how the pens actually look:

The brush tips are smallish (the same as the black Faber Castell ink pens), and dont seem to be made for broad strokes, so it was an odd feeling shading with such a small tip. The ink is also translucent, so when you overlap two shades, it will produce a darker one (as you can see in the middle of the forehead) and because the shade is so clean, I can imagine it being hard to blend and create gradients.

I'll post something more once I've had a bit of practice.

Disaster spreads the world over

Bob Heske has been busy promoting the soon-to-be-released 2012: Final Prayer graphic novel anthology (here's one of the flashback panels from my eight pages below):

He's appeared on a crazy amount of websites, and he may just tell the whole world about this project before the imminent apocolypse. Here's a list of the websites he's either been interviewed on, or feature news of the GN:

Interviews:
comicmonsters.com
Superheronation.com

Coverage:
Secretidentitypodcast.com
Movieblips.dailyradar.com
Havendistro.com
Horror movies and Stuff
Theouthousers.com
Comicbitsonline.com
Projectfanboy.com
Investcomics.com

Told you he'd been busy.

You can see a preview chapter of the book, a whole story in fact, as well as Cancertown cover artist Paul Cartwrights' cover for 2012: Final Prayer over at myebook

New ways to play(Station)

I was going to blog something else today, but at exactly the right time I got the OK to reveal some exciting news: Cancertown is coming to the PSP (PlayStation®portable) as a digital comic!

All of Insomnia Publications' graphic novels will be released as monthly digital chapters from the Digital Comics Store on the PlayStation®Network starting this December when the service launches. Dont take my word for it though, check out the official press release on Insomnia's Red Eye blog for more details including the launch titles that will be available.

The PSP digital comics store is being supported by big comic companys like Marvel and IDW so looks like this thing could catch on. It may even grap some new comic readers as well.

In other Insomnia news that I forgot to mention, Temple APA, the downloadable comics showcase magazine has done a huge piece on Insomnia is their latest issue that can be found here. They've featured a good bit of my art in there too.

It's a good time to be an Insomniac :)

Back from BICS

Had a great weekend at BICS followed closely by my 25th birthday yesterday so I'm a little exhausted, but very happy.

Had the pleasure of meeting many Insomnia Creators for the first time over the weekened, as well as catching up with a few of my frequent collaborators. Here I am with only a few of them :

Michuri Morikawa, Cy Dethan, Andrew Croskey, Valia Kapadai and me.

Insomnia's newest launch titles, Burke and Hare and Buskers, got off to a great start and Insomnia's table had a crowd around it the whole weekend. Also on display at the stand was Ferret's massive Cancertown quilt, which I got to see for the first time. I think you can get a sense of scale in the photo below:

Insomnia's Alasdair and Duncan myself with Ferret's huge Cancertown quilt

Special thanks goes to Valia Kapadai who painted me this beautiful rendition of some Cancertown characters (and let me borrow the above photos for this blog):

Cancertown by Valia kapadai

Check out valia's Deviant art page to see all the other fantastic paintings she produced for her Insomnia buddies.

Other things that happened:

• I spent a lot of drinking time with Stacy and Alex, from the Small Press Big Mouth and Everything comes Back to 2000AD podcats (respectively), the Eclectic Micks and many other like minded people.
• I picked up Bryan Talbots Grandville, Valia's 100%Mushy comic and Ian Sharman's Alpha Gods
• I finally met in Peter Forbes in person
• Andrew Croskery finally met his art team of Alex Willmore and Lauren Ann Sharp (as did I)
• I found some really interesting brush pens via Simon Wyatt, who generously gave me one to take home and try.
• Talked a little about the Cancertown sequel with Cy and Nic.

For a more revolutionary take on the the weekend, check out Cy's fantasy styled role playing blog post, which is quite possibly the best con report ever.

I've a lot of drawing on the table these days, which I'm happy about, so I'm going to be cutting the blog back to once a week, which will probably be every Wednesday night. Hopefully some new art and less rambling by then...