2D Festival

Another fanastic year at the 2D Festival. Plenty of sketching, selling, drinking and even a little bit of dancing. I didn't brig my camera for fear of losing it, so all these photographs are lifted from the Facebook pages of Ciaran Flanaghan and Phil Friel.

 Sketching on the festival floor. Might be Hellboy for Ron.

 I think think was the busiest year of the 2D festival yet. 

 

More sketching. Looks like Venom.

 Tommie Kelley and I staring into Space.

 Being very professional and taking notes before the Sunnyside Comics presents: Piracy, Creator owned and digital comics.

 Slaughterman's Creed cover painter gets close and personal. No, we're not lovers and no it wasn't 'that big'.

Aimee and I enjoying drinks.

 Lily Daniels and Daniel Clifford flew over from England just for the dancing.

 And they took full advantage when they could.

Roll on 2D 2012.

One month later...

Haven't blogged in almost a month, been really busy with the Torchwood strip, which I've now finished, and had some sort of event almost every weekend. Here's a very quick summary of all the exciting happenings:


2D festival: 

It started so nicely...

Ended wildly...

Was fun meeting up with the just-beyond-local comics scene; Tommie Kelley, the Berserker folk, Sunnyside comics fellows, Longstone comics, Aidan Courtney of Ri Ra,  Bridgeen Gillespie, Ciaran Lucas, Will Simpson, Gary Leach, Paddy Brown and of course 2D organiser David Campbell.

Bon Jovi:

The weekend after was a trip to London for a long weekend to see the infamous Bon Jovi. Aimee is a big fan,  We'll say no more.

Q-con:


This past weekend was the Q-con in Belfast. Mostly a gaming convention, the comics section and artists alley grew a little this year and looks to continue to do so. PJ Holden, Paddy Brown and Ciaran Lucas were again in attendance. Cancertown continued to sell comparatively well considering the gaming/anime audience, and a nice amount of commissioned sketches were drawn as well.

Here's one such sketch of Mickey Rouke's Whiplash giving it to Iron Man:

(It's a photo taken from my phone, so excuse the quality)

Torchwood:

As I mentioned, the 11 page Torchwood strip is finished. I handled the pencils and inks on this one and its set to be published in the Titan Torchwood magazine on 19th August. I think there are plans to reprint it in the US comicbook version at some point as well.

Talesofthe.com:


Tales of the... is currently hosting a zombie collection of stories. A short Rhyme of mine is up there today inspired by a bloody fantastic Zombie portrait by Ryan Brown. Clickity here to read.


Future travels:


Myself and Aimee are heading off traveling this Summer around Belize, the West coast of America, then Thailand and a little stop-off in Dubai on the way home so I don't know how regular this blog will be. We're not heading off for a few weeks though and I've a few things to show, so I'll try to keep the weekly schedule until then...

Well the 2D fesitival went brilliantly at the weekend. Unfortunetely I'd forgotten to bring my digital camera but I'll post some pictures once I get them developed.

Anyway no rest for the wicked and I'm off to Dr. Sketchy's now. Its a caberet-life-drawing-in-a-pub event once a month and last month was my first. Because of the fun nature of the night you only get about 4 minutes (one song long) to do sketches so it took me a while to get used to it.

Anyway I'll late so here's a few from last month. The first one is Andrew Croskery, writer of Kronos City from Insomnia, the rest are the models.

2D festival

I'm heading up to the 2D festival in Derry/London Derry today. This was the first con I'd ever been to and sort of kick-started my committment to becoming a proper comic book artist. As I've mentioned elsewhere before, I'd always dreamed of becoming a comicbook artist when 'I grew up' but with music and studies had never quite made any real steps towards it.

I first heard about the Bristol and Birmingham cons through attending the panels (which in a good old Irish fashion are set in Sandinos Bar), which in turn led to hearing about the guys from Insomnia, which in turn led to Cancertown etc..

There are a great line up of guests including Rufus Dayglo; a great artist who has helped me a lot with my art, a bunch of the Eclectic Micks; Irish guys who draw comics professionally, Gary Leach; who gave me some great encouragement last year and Bryan Talbot; who of course wrote the foreward for Cancertown.

I'll be there both as a guest (which feels a little odd) and hosting the Insomnia table, along with Kronas City writer Andrew Croskery who will be showing off some character sketches for the upcoming Insomnia book. If you havn't got your copy of Cancertown I'll be bringing a few along to sell.

Have a look on the 2D website, for the full run down of events including workshops, panels, competitions, sketches and the comicbook open day. Every single one if the events is free of charge so if you like comics and aren't too far away you've absolutely no reason to not be there.

Blog-a-rama continues tomorrow after all, so come back tomorrow for something that isn't Cancertown or Insomnia related (for once).

Flat Fear

Only a few days to go until the local launch of Cancertown (reminder: this Sat 30th May, Forbidden Planet Belfast). It'll be my first proper signing session so hopefully a few people will show up :)

I've been getting my hand into sketch mode and here's a little Cancertown themed piece I pencilled a few days ago for the upcoming Fear anthology being produced by the folks at the 2D festival. I didn't bother inking this one and left it pretty loose, but its A3 size and still took about 3 hours.

No layouts or anything for this one. I had the image roughly in my head and just went staight to paper. I did look in the mirror on my table to get a decent expression though, so if you ever see me running scared from a barrage of Badmouths (I must mention to Cy that should be the group name; a litter of dogs, a pack of wolves, a barrage of Badmouths...) thats the exact face I'll be wearing.

Hopefully see a few of you on Saturday.