October Runaround

I'll be popping my head up in a few different places in the next month, so here's a quick runaround:

24 Hour Comic event:  From 11am on Sat 9th to 11am 10th Oct I'll be taking part in Belfast's 24 hour comic event at the Catalyst arts. I've missed every other year, so this'll be my first time and it should prove a fun challenge. If you're interested there are still a couple of spaces left and you can get in touch with Paddy via the Belfast Comics Blog. 

Eggheads: This day next week (which will be Tues 12th Oct for those not reading in realtime) myself and the rest of the  'League of Just Us' will appear on the eggheads TV show on BBC2. The programme usually airs around 6pm and will probably be on the BBC iplayer later that day. We created a few drafts of a faux 2000AD cover to present to the Jeremy Vine, but ended up having to go with the version that only features PJ Holden's art (mixup with the egghead members). My unused contribution doodle of our team is to the right. 

BICS: I'm heading to the British International Comics Show for the weekend of Oct 15 -17. I don't have my own table, but I'll be helping out with the launch of The Sleepless Phoenix: Survival Stories anthology which prints myself, Andrew Croskery and Andy Brown's Welcome to Absolution. I'll also be bringing along some sketches and illustrations to sell such as the one's to the left and right. Hopefully I'll have more to post before I head over. If you want to order a custom illustration to collect at BICS just me an email in the next week or so. 

London MCM Expo: On 29 - 31st October I'll be at the MCMexpo. Again this is my first time attending after hearing good things for the last few years, so excited to be a first timer at what's being called the UKs biggest comic con. I booked this last minute, so again no table but I expect to be hanging around the Comic Village a lot. Again I'll be selling illustrations and sketches, so email me if you want something in particular in advance. 

Hopefully I'll be able to fit in some drawing between all these event!

Imagining things

The Belfast comics creators made an appearance in last month's issue of ImagineFX. One of the editors asked me to take a few photos and scans at our regular monthly drink 'n' draw/comic creators meetup.

Featured in the photos are Paddy Brown, Andy Luke, Ann Harrison, Andrew Croskery and myself (in the Batman T-shirt that I stole from my brother).

You can see my sketches of the Hulk and Wolverine on the night, as well as Mal Coney's Deadpool and Paddy's Judge Dredd.

I'm going to upload a few more sketches and photos from that night to the Belfast comics blog of and by the various creators. You'll also find links to their individual sites there as well.

But here's a closer look at my Hulk in the meantime:



Thanks to Ciaran Lucas for the article scan.

Tales of the Cthulhu Quarter..

Tales of The... has launched over at Talesofthe.com, which is starting with an anthology entitled 'Tales of the Cthulhu Quarter', a 6 week multimedia event which chronicles the arrival of H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic god in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter.

We wanted to include a video, but since we haven't the budget for tentacles and destruction, I wrote and directed (with lots of help) a short prelude to Cthulhu's arrival. Its under 4 minutes long and you can go via talesofthe.com or the direct link here to watch and see all who's involved.

Let me know what you think.

Fan Art

Cancertown got a full page write up/preview in this Months ImagineFX (issue 145 I believe). Cy has already posted a scan of the page over at his blog so i wont re-post it here, but I will draw your attention to the other article with which I was involved in the same issue.

The article was sbout Fan Art and its role in the industry. I've always had an eye on drawing something for Marvel or DC one day and so spoke a little about that (and I get the big quote of the page). It was also pretty crazy being on the same page as Adi Granov, artist of Iron Man and designer of the movie costume.

However having only actually published creator owned projects up until now, I thought I'd share a few interpretions of characters I'd created, drawn by other people.

The first person (artist?) to interpret my characters was actually my girlfriend Aimee who sketched them in my drawing book for a laugh. At first glance they look like the drawings of a 5 year old, but on further inspection I wouldn't be surprised if this comic style would be more popular in Europe than my more realisticaly proportioned characters.

I actually recieved my first proper 'fan art' from Andrew Croskery at the signing last Saturday. A weird twist considering I was the one meant to be drawing sketches for the attendees. Andrew is the writer of Kronas City currently in production from Insomnia publications and here he is holding his version of Morley, Crosshair and a Badmouth.

Apparently Andrew was the first Insomnia creator was was able to send rough sketches of his character along with his pitch. He told me that if only he could draw environments, perspective, full figures and tell a story he would have considering drawing the book himself. Being the awkward man that he is, he requested "a badmouth talking to a tooth" sketch. Here it is below. I've left the balloon empty as since he's apparrently a writer he can fill it in himself.

I did get two fan art requests of the day from Jennifer and her sister, who came along with their dad to the signing and asked me to draw a couple of manga characters. I forget the names of these characters (one may be called 'L') but you can see my very bad first manga attempt at Jennifers Deviant Art site.

And of course I can't go without mentioning the ultimate portrayal of my characters by another artist, in the form of paul Cartwrights incredible Cancertown cover.

Check back tomorrow for part 3 my daily blog-a-thon.

Sketch-a-thon!

Had a brilliant Irish launch/signing yesterday in Forbidden Planet Belfast. It was planned for 2 - 4pm but the response was so great that I was sitting sketching and signing until closer to 5 o clock.

I had promised a sketch to everyone who turned up so my hand was aching by the end but it was well worth it :) I even had to ask a few of the people I knew personally if they wouldn't mind waiting until later that night for their sketch (at the post signing drinks) otherwise I would have been there until after closing time :)

There were a couple of challenging requests; from manga characters to self portraits. I drew my very first manga character for a budding artist Jennifer, who came along with her dad and asked me to draw 'L'. I think her manga is a lot better than mine (you can view her gallery here) but she appreciated the attempt as she writes in her short report on the event.

I'll have proper photos and more detail of the event with maybe a bit of video up by my Wednesday post, but for now here are a few of the sketches I drew later for the people I knew (and was able to scan).

Thanks again to everyone who turned up and hope you all had a good time :)

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.

Forbidden Planet cancertown signing

Mark it in your diaries:

Saturday 30th May

2PM - 4PM

Forbidden Planet Belfast

(Ann street, just off Corn Market)

It's not only an artist/graphic novel signing with your's truly, but it also marks the Irish/N.Irish launch of Cancertown.

If my handsome face wasn't enough to get you down, the kind folks at FP Belfast are doing a special launch price of £12.99 during signing hours (£14.99 normally) and there'll be a unique sketch card with every copy bought. Thats right, you get a little piece of original art and the 'sold-out-every-day-on-Amazon' first print of Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth, for less than the normal RRP of the book alone! How could you refuse?

Ok, enough hyberbole, my Stan Lee voice is safely back in its box, but if anyone is around Belfast on the day come along and say hi, and it is a pretty good deal if you want a copy of Cancertown.

Onwards to the art... Aimee was digging through boxes today (looking for her medical card), which we havn't bothered to unpack since we moved, and threw me a little sketch pad. Inside were some of the early layouts I'd done for Cancertown (before I had a notion of organising projects) so I thought I'd throw them up on the blog for all to see, along with the pencilled and finished pages:

I ended up staying pretty tight to the layout on the left (ch.2 pg.9) but decided to redo the second layout (ch.2 pg.10) again. I think this was probably because the story flow was too odd (The action in panel 2 was happening both to the right and below panel 1 simulationously) so I rejigged it as the layout below.

The numbers and sizes scribbled at the top right is something I sometimes do when I'm trying to set the pace/mood. They refer to the panel number and comparitive size of the panels on the page. I jot them down as I read the script so I can arrange the panels according when I layout the page properly. This particular set either refers to a different page or were just completely ignored/changed for this one.

Here are the finished pages with my contribution in b/w, next to the finished versions with Mel's colours and Nics Letters added in (with, of course, Cy's words in the captions):

You'll see that I almost always sketch in little word balloons just to make sure I've left some room. They're nowhere near exact, and Nic's flow is much better than mine but it saves me from accidently zooming right in with a close up and leaving no room for dialouge at all. I don't send these layouts on to the rest of the crew, and now that I see them against the final pages it's strange and cool how some of them match up really close to Nic's even though she hadn't even seen my layouts. The second page in particular is a good example.

I've said this before, but Team Cancertown is definetly becoming some sort of symbiotic creature :P

Next Blog: It'll probably either be some sketches from the recent 'life drawing cabaret' or the many variations/redraws of a Slaughtermans Creed panel, so check back on wednesday.