Vampires! Zombies! Cowboys!!

I've had this idea for doing a Zombie Western in my head for a while. I had mentioned it to Andrew Croskery at one of the Belfast comic creators meet ups, back when Kronos City was but a twinkle in his eye (and some very messy notes in a book; the guy writes everything on paper first then begrudingly types it up) and he was intrigued by the idea.


We were going to enter the Gaurdian comic strip competition with it and Andrew promptly wrote a 19 panel strip that would stretch over two broadsheet pages. Then of course I looked at the actual deadline and it was something like a few days away. I was in the middle of drawing Cancertown at the same time so unfortunetely it wasn't doable, but I had managed to work up some character sketches based on Andrew's script.

But never fear, I know by now you are virtually begging to see more of these characters, and you are in luck! We've reworked the script as a four page story and found a home for it in an anthology coming up next year. Andy Brown of Berserker comics will be painting over my pencils and it should make make for a nice collaboration.

Andrew also has some character designs (he's a bit of an artist as well you see) for a few of the characters so if you go over to his blog and ask him nicely he might show them to you.

Speaking of Andrew and Kronos City, if you havn't checked out the multitude of artist interpretations of Karl, the anorexic vampire, over on the Kronos City blog then you are missing out on some lovely art. Here's my own version (there are 13 more on the blog):

'Til next time.

Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding into town...

Been drawing a couple of horses for a couple of different projects this week. Above was my first ever attempt at sketching one out, and I think it's recognisable, which is what counts.

Apparently the comicbook reading firmware update for the PSP is now available according to the Playstation comics official twitter page. Although I believe the digital comics won't be available until December, they've just launched a new website http://www.playstationdigitalcomics.com/ with some trailers and info. We've also been sent some screenshots of how Insomnia books will look on the device.

You can see more screenshots from Cages and Burke & Hare over at Insomnia's Red Eye Blog.

..and finally, "2012: A final prayer' Anthology (in which I've drawn an eight page story by Bob Heske) is available to buy via Amazon, Zaldiva and as a digital download via Drive Thru Comics. The book has been getting glowing reviews from sites such as Bookgasm (where you can also win a copy by entering their competition... but only if you're from America or Canada). What I've seen of the final collection looks fantastic so pick one up.

This past week my main task has been finishing off the colours for Slaughterman's Creed chapter 1 (now that the inks are finished for chapter 2).

This is the first major project I've coloured as well as pencilled and inked, so I'm still experimenting with what works. I posted these on Twitter as I was working on the panel but here's some progress work:

I've taken to photographing alleyways lately and the window/speed blur one such photo, taken on my phone, filtered with a motion blur in photoshop:

Still another page to finish tonight, but at least I can colour in bed under the blankets to protect me from the cold winter nights...

I usually dont do these 'warm up' sketches that so many artists talk about, but I was feeling it hard to wake up this morning after not getting back from a gig until about 2 pm and getting woken at 7 am this morning. I thought I'd have another go at the Faber-Castell shades of grey pens with a little straight-on Dredd head shot:

The brushes were a little softer this time, after their initial use, and it was easier to get a broader stroke. I think a water colour-like technique is better with these brush pens; starting with a layer of lighter colour and building up with darker shades (after first inking the pure blacks with the Kuretake brush pen and bigger brush/ink pot.). The white highlights are just the white of the paper that I left black while drawing.

Still a bit of practice needed (both for shades of grey and drawing Dredd) but I like the texture thats starting to come from these pens.