Cons, Creations and Kronos City

Had a brilliant time at #BICS this weekend, which saw the launch of the Sleepless Phoenix: Suvival anthology that holds Andrew Croskery, Andy Brown and myself's 'Welcome to Absolution'. The book marks Andrew's first printed work, but it won't be long before you see more as he signed up his, Alex Wilmore and Lauren Ann Sharp's 'Kronos City' graphic novel with TimeBomb over the weekend.

The anthology sold so well (on top of a ton of preorders) that Lauren and co. are going to continue publishing and hopefully bring out another anthology next year.

It was brilliant meeting up with everyone, and a couple of comicbook opportunities may have presented themselves. Bring on MCM next week. Here's a Hellboy sketch I'll be bringing with me:

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!

Photogenic Fiends

It was a lot easier getting photo reference for Cancertown, considering that Morley was one of the few humans in the story and I could base him on myself. There's a much bigger cast for Slaughterman's Creed, so I had the idea of doing lots and lots of layouts, then having one big photoshoot. I've had two so far, and basically just had a few friends round, with a few drinks, a BBQ and some silly posing.

Here's Andrew Croskery, writer of kronos city with Aidan Largey, who wrote a neat crime story for Insomnia's Layer Zero: Choices anthology, acting out a quick scene and the resulting panels. This is from the first photoshoot, but when I get a chance I'll show a longer video, maybe a whole page worth and the resulting panels.

Its not that I'm atrocious at holding a camera, I was just explaining the next shot to the guys and kept the camera rolling. At least if I ever need a good crotch shot I can always use Andrew as reference.



Looking forward to BICS next weekend and sorting out my portfolio. I'll think I'll be bringing the cover I did for an upcoming project that I'll reveal on wednesday before I head off...

Mr. Green

Mr. Green is another twisted character from the warped mind of Cy Dethan. He's covered head to toe in leaf tatoos to resemble the Mr. Green force of nature from English legend and will be appearing in our upcoming Markosia comic Slaughterman's Creed

Sounded like fun to draw. Here's my initial character design:

I can be a stickler for panel continuity so I wanted to layout Green's tatoos before I got to drawing him in the actual comic pages and keep it as consistent as possible.I drew the above intricate image with the idea of scanning it at a high resolution and simply using photoshop to place it over the inked drawings of Green. I gave it a try once, but the warping/shaping and cutting it took to make it fit from various angles was more effort than it was worth and I ended up losing time.
Since I would be drawing each tatoo by hand, I wanted a simpler but still detailed tatoo layout; both because I would be drawing it over and over again and because I didn't want the face looking too cluttered when rendering the tatoo in ink. The above version has less leaves but, I think, a bolder design overall. Most of the leaves and sections divided into prongs of 3, so it should be easier to draw without having to count how many prongs were on each leaf every time.

I ended up adding more leaves surrounding the face/design, but the main structure is still there on the page. You can see I done something similar with the chest/arms to give the tatoo a consistent focal point and the 'in-between' parts will be filled with leaves. Now that it scanned, and in my Slaughterman's Creed 'tools' folder, I just open the file for reference when drawing Mr. Green.

If anyone is going to BICS next week, I'll be carrying about a few pages of Slaughterman's Creed if you'd like a closer inspection.