Big Blog: Slaughterman's Creed Bristol Panel, Order Cancertown, Jennifer Wilde, Kapow! etc.

Lots and lots happening recently so it's time for a big blog roundup!

Slaughterman's Creed panel at Bristol: I'm really excited that I'll be part of The Task of Blood: Creating Slaughterman's Creed panel at the Bristol Small Press Expo. It will be held at 12pm on Sunday 15th May at the Mercure Hotel and will be hosted by Scott Grandison of Comic Book Outsiders. It'll bascially be Cy, Vicky, Nic and myself chatting about making the book, showing some work in progress and I hear there may also be some Mr. Green facepainting and sweet. If you're a Facebook-er you can keep up to date on the events page.

Kapow! Con: I'll be attending the Kapow! Comic con this coming weekend 9th - 10th of April. I'll be at table 87 ("in the island beneath the Tardis and Darlek."). I'll be drawing custom £10 sketches and selling the prints that  you can see in the Shop section. I'll also have previews of Slaughterman's Creed, Jennifer Wilde and other stuff on display so if you're attending drop by for a chat. 


FanSciCon: Just a week later on the 15th April I'll be a guest at the free, one day FanSciCon in Dublin. It will be held at UCD Students Centre in Dunlin from 9am and promises to be good fun. It's in association with Rob Curley's Sub City so I'm sure we'll be showing off some Jennifer Wilde Stuff. Speaking off...


Jennifer Wilde: The Facebook group for my latest project Jennifer Wilde from Atomic Diner has just started up its Facebook page. If I haven't mention before it's written by Rob Curley and Maura McHugh with art by me. There's little a Preview of the #1 cover over there, which I'll post in a bigger format here once I get the logo added.  


Order Cancertown and Slaughterman's Creed: We had a little trouble with Amazon, but you can now pre-order both Slaughterman's Creed and the Cancertown re-release through both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. If you prefer to shop in a comic store, Cancertown is on Pg 218 of the latest Previews catalogue for shipping in June and available to order in-store now. Slaughterman's Creed was in last month's catalogue, but Forbidden Planet Belfast have ordered a few copies and are taking reservations for them at the minute. 


Digital Revolution: If you prefer to read your comics digitally on your iPad, laptop or even phone you can download all of Cancertown via Graphic.ly for under $6 here. I wish I had a tablet to see how it looked. 


Phew! All this stuff going on and I still have to get the actual art done.

Slaughterman's Coming, Cancertown's Back!

It's been a great few days for my creator-owned projects.

From yesterday all 6 chapters of Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth are back on the Playstation network as a digital comic, published through Markosia and complete with audio commentary from Cy Dethan and I. Well, Cy does most of the talking, clocking in a couple of hours of facinating insights spread over the chapters, while I chip in with a few art process snippets. The first chapter is free, so if you have a PSP why not check it out. Markosia have also announced that Cancertown will be coming back into print sometime later in 2011.

Look at that beautiful cover! Harry Markos at Markosia has also let us announce that Slaughterman's Creed will launch at Bristol International Comic Expo! Above is the all-but-finished graphic novel cover (pencils by myself with digital paints from Ryan Brown). Cancertown went down a storm 2 years ago at it's Bristol launch so we're hoping things will go as well for Slaughterman's Creed. It'll also be in stores some time after that. Must book some flights now...

Facing the end..

Been doing a lot of work on Slaughterman's Creed these past few weeks, but unfortunately as we get into the last chapters the pages, and even most panels, are all getting a little spoilery so I can't really post much here.

Speaking of Slaughterman's Creed, Ollie Masters, who gracefully posed for a couple of  Mr. Green reference shots at Bristol comic con last year, has his short story that he contributed to Bob Heske's 2012: A Final Prayer GN on show over at Wowio. The story acts as a preview for the GN (which features 8 pages of art from yours truely) that's now available to download at the Heske Horror Wowio page.

Panel progression. Loose pencils, tighter pencils, then grayscale rendering for panel featured in 2012: Final Prayer GN

I've booked tickets and flights again for this year's Bristol comic con, or rather the Bristol International Comic & small press expo to give it its full name, so I'll be hanging around the hall with my portfolio on May 22nd and 23rd. We'll also have a signing session for Cancertown which I should have times confirmed for soon.

Going Digital

The Playstation digital comics store has just gone live here, and Insomnia Publications are right there along with some big name publishers on day one. They have Cages, Burke & Hare and Cancertown right up there now (more details on the Playstation network's Insomnia blog here).

This means Cancertown will be easily available all over the world to PSP owners without having to pay any sort of delivery costs (the irony of course is that it will not be available in  Ireland, well the South anyway, for another few days.) The first chapter is even free, so if you own a PSP you have absolutely NO reason not to check it out, even just to see how the reading experience differs from thee aul paper version, and of course please encourage your friends to do the same. Here's a direct link to help you out.

If you browse their catalogue you may even find some other popular comics, some of which may feature this guy:

(That's meant to be Wolverine by the way.)

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.

Sunnyside bring the Bees out

The Red Bee (and Michael the bee)! Re-imagined for a modern audience with an exciting noir twist, coming to a comic store the 1st of Never!
If you want to hear the inspiration behind this quick digital sketch you can download or listen online to the latest Sunnyside comics podcast.

Andrew Croskery and I were the first ever 'guests' on episode 7 and talked a bit about Cancertown, Kronos City, our Publishers Insomnia Publications, and the Belfast comics meet up.

You can hear me um, ah, mmm and babble my way through the podcast, but I did manage to finish a few points (mostly got distracted though), forget how to pronounce Cy's Dethan's name and take part in the hilarious 'Superpower or subpower' quiz (which I'd like someone to count up as I'm sure I got more points :P)

Enjoy

Little preview image from a short project I'm hoping to get finished today. Still a good bit to do, so it'll be a quick blog...

Got home late last night from recording a podcast with the guys at Sunnyside comics, so missed my Wednesday blog again! Myself and Andrew Croskery managed to squeeze in a few words about Insomnia, Cancertown, Kronos city and the Belfast comics meetup before losing the Superpower or subpower comics quiz.

Very enjoyable time with PJ, Ron and Scott. There's a few photos up on their site now and hopefully the podcast will be up on Sunday night and I'll stick up a link to it.

In other comic related news, Bob heske is showing off the really spooky front cover for the upcoming 2012: Final Prayer anthology for which I've drawn an 8 page story (you can see the front cover by Preston Asevedo below). If you look here, you'll also find a full list of contributers, including details of the foreword, foreboding and afterword by a few 2012 research experts.

The book also features artwork from Cancertown colourist Mel Cook, who is providing the whole art this time for a story called "2012: APOCALYPSE IN FIVE PARTS", and will sport a variant cover by Cancertown cover artist Paul Cartwright.

Speaking of Cancertown collaborators, Cy Dethan is showing off some new pages of my Slaughterman's Creed artwork on his blog as well as some art from his other projects; The Indifference Engine and The case files of Harlan Faulk.

I knew it was a matter of time before we took over the comicbook world :D

Quicky..

Only a quick blog today, just back from surfing up in Donegal over the weekend and tired. Great fun, although Aimee almost caught pneumonia in the cold sea and I may have lost a few brain cells from catching a couple surfboards to the head.

I came back to find some nice suprises in my RSS feeds anyway:

• I've been following Ferret's virtual tour of her quilt gallery at the 2009 Festival of Quilts, and eagerly awaiting more pictures of the Bad Rain piece on display. They were finally posted yesterday and you can see the Cancertown inspirded quilt in all its glory on Ferret's blog. You'll also find a quilt potrait on writer Cy Dethan, amoung other fantastic quilts such as Phoenix Rising and Heat.


• I also found to my complete surpise some Cancertown sketches from Northern Irish artist Darren Reynolds on his blog. I love his interpretations and really hope to see them in person if he brings them along to the next Belfast comics creators meetup. I only really know Darren's art through his blog, but I love his style and really want to see more.

Anyway, here is a full panel of Slaughterman's Creed art (that I've cropped and been using for my twitter profile) in colour. This is Sidney, the Slaughterman, he's meant to be quite pale, but I think I might increase the contrast a little, just to make sure the colour definiton isn't lost when going to print.

Yes, you're next.

Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah Nah

Batman!

It was brother's birthday last week (almost an 'adult' at 17). I painted this Batman (watercolour pencils and black ink) for him last year as part of his birthday present and got round round to buying him a frame for it this year (amoungst other things, I'm not that cheap :)

I didn't want to go too grim, gritty and black and was more inspired by the use of blue on Dustin Nguyen's Detective Comics watercolour covers.

It was too big to scan but here's a photo of the framed piece.

On another note, I've just realised I've yet to mention the newly confirmed 'Insomniacs guide to Cancertown' that was announced on Insomnia's Red Eye blog a week or so ago. There's a lot of idea's flying around but I think I'll wait until we have a better idea of what's definetely going to be included before I talk about them.

One thing that the project, which will be a behind the scenes/artbook/process type of book, has confirmed is a 12 page Cancertown prequel. I just got to read the script this week and although I wont get to it for a few months I can already see some of the great creep imagery in my head. A few familiar characters crop up and I'm really looking forward to drawing them again. In fact if you want a complete spoiler of the plot, check outs Cy's blog and scroll down to the comments section. You have been warned though!

And yes, that is the correct number of 'Nah's.

Goosebumps...

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from Bob Heske, screenwriter and publisher of Heske's Horrors' Cold Blooded Chillers, the horror anthology which won an award at last years 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards for its collection Bone Chillers. Bob had seen my work in Cancertown and commissioned me to draw one of his scripts for his next anthology 2012: Final Prayer

The book features stories from various creators that centre around what could happen on the 21st of December 2012, the end of the Mayan Long Count Calender and reportedly the start of the end of the world. I know a few other Insomniacs, such as Martin Hayes, Ollie Masters and Dino Caruso have strips in the anthology as well as so it looks like its going to be an awesome little project.

The anthology should be available sometime in late Autumn, but I'm wrapping up my eight page contribution at the start of this week. The story I'm drawing is called 'Demented' and this is the first concept sketch of one of the characters 'Aida'. She changed a bit by the time I got to the actual drawing boards, but this was my first doodle attempt.

It wasn't me I swear... I've been framed!

Just a few photos of Cancertown art at the Feile art exhibition, Westcourt Centre , 8-30 Barrack Street, Belfast running from now until 14th August 10am - 4:30pm:
Having artwork framed and hung on the wall at the exhibition makes you feel like a proper artist :)

Above is the first page I drew for Cancertown, back when having a full comic page completely finished was a big achievement. Because I'm a big sentimentalist (it could be a real word..), this one's not for sale.

Some of my art hung next to Sharon Morgan's (on the wall) and Kevin Quinn's ceramic celtic art (on the shelf). Ourselves along with Donal Daly are the four featured artists on display.

The top piece in this photo was always intended to be viewed vertically, (I thought Grey fighting against gravity after being knocked to the ground would convey a lot of energy and power to the blow) but since everyone else thinks its a horizontal piece, and I've been told it look better rotated 90 degress, I decided to hang it on its side. The bottom page is just a print of Bad Rain, one of the Cancertown double page spreads and the inspiration behind the Cancertown quilt, but I thought a bit of colour (by Mel Cook) would add to the exhibition and be a better representation of what's in the graphic novel.

I should have a bit of info on another project I'm involved with on Sunday so come back then...

I'm an exhibitionist..

I'm taking part in an art exhibition thats starting tomorrow in Belfast. It's in association with the Belfast Feile and I'll be showing off a few pages of Cancertown.

It runs from 3rd to the 14th of August at Westcourt Centre , 8-30 Barrack Street from 10am to 4:30pm and I'll at least be in attendance on Saturday 8th as I'm doing some Traditional irish music workshops in the same building. There are a a select few pages up for sale (7 pages in all, and a couple I'm not selling)

There will also be a copy of Cancertown on display and you can order it anytime during the week if you havn't got a copy.

The listing for the event is only available on PDF form (or there are brochure books floating around Belfast) but its available on pg 92 of this PDF booklet if you don't trust me :)

Here's one of the pages that will be on display. Since i'm so nice, I'd thought I'd show you the pencils, inks and finished coloured and lettered page. Naturally the original art is only in ink so that's the version that will be at the exhibition.
Colours by Mel Cook and Letters by Nic Wilkinson on the above version. And I have to give Cy a credit too as he actually wrote the scene :)

I've had to name the pieces that I have on display so those who have read the book can play the fun game of guessing which pages are on display. if you think you know or want to hazard a guess leave and comment below and the grand winner will recieve... uh ...pride?:

1/Introducing Morley

2/ Corpsegrinders Grasp

3/ Crosshair's Gaze

4/ Evil twin

5/ Attack of the Strawmen

6/ Piecemaker

7/ Flashback

8/ Smash!

9/ The End

Hopefully have some photos of the gallery on Wednesday.

Roar!

Way too tired from teaching and drawing all day to find something interesting to say (and I know technically its Thursday here, but it's still Wednesday somewhere in the world so I'm still on schedule) so here's a non comicbook related pencil sketch of a lion I drew a few years ago.

Come to think of it, this may have some revelance to a future project according to what the writer has been telling me in snippets.

Before I fall asleep, I hope anyon reading last week has been following Ferret's Blog.
The final version of the Bad Rain quilt is over there (as well as on Cy's Blog, Insomnia's Blog and Forbidden Planet's Blog; its going on a little Cancertown tour itself).

Changing media...

Remember this double page spread from Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth?*

(Pencils and inks by me, Colours my Melanie Cook)

Well its currently undergoing one of the least expected interpretations anyone could think of. Its being made into a quilt.

Yes I too once thought of quilts as something you wrap around yourself, but after being introduced to their friend Ferret by my Cancertown collaborators Cy Dethan and Nic Wilkinson, I've been intoduced to this new media of art. I've still seen very little, only really what Ferret posts on her blog but its really fasinating stuff and can produce gorgeous results. Ferret's an award winning quilter and seems to be pushing the boundries of the media and in her biggest attempt yet (literally) she's re-creating the above spread in material form.

Here's an in progress photo that I stole from Ferret's blog (hope you don't mind) where you can follow its progress. Can't wait to see it finished!

Ferret's also got her own quilting book coming out that you can see a bit of information on her website here.


*If you don't, it means you probably havn't bought it yet. So get on over to Forbidden planet, Amazon, Waterstones, Whatever comics or order it through your comic stores with Diamond code JUL091827 (Phew!)

Until Wednesday...

Slaughtered in bits...

Since Cy's posted the black and white art for the first two pages of Slaughterman's Creed over at his blog I thought I show a breakdown of the first splash page.

Layout:

Loose pencils:

Inks (with a subtle bit of pencil shading):

I'm sure I added a good bit more pencilling after the rough second stage but I cant find a scan of it on my computer. The above version was designed to be cropped and you can see the final over at Cy's blog.

On another note, I'm not sure if I've mentioned before but Cancertown is now available to order through your local comic store in the UK via Diamond. So if you prefer to purchase your graphic novels that way you can let your retailer know the Previews code is JUL091827.

My girlfriend is a model..

...well for me anyway. Poor Aimee gets tortured so much.
One such instance while drawing Cancertown:

Words by Cy Dethan, colours by Mel Cook, Lettering by Nic Wilkinson, with pencils by me.

Aimee actually appears at the back of Cancertown: An Inconvenient tooth in the 'Making off' section. A good selling point apparently when she's helping me sell books at a convention (and she's a mightly persuasive saleswoman).

So I suppose this is a bit of a thank you for all your time and patience :)

Strange Q-con sketches

Couple more Q-con photos and Sketches:

Andrew Croskery at the Insomnia table.

A samuri committing Seppuku. This piece was comissioned as the nice loser price for an upcoming card tournament. Drew in the card details after the photo.

A con-goer drawn Arnie-from-Predator style. I added in some camouflage and detail after I took this photo.

Probably my strangest, challenging, yet most fun 'sketch' was the following two page custom Elmo story:

The fellow below wanted the strip drawn for his friend who couldn't make the con, and asked for it to be drawn in her own style of drawing (hence the manga-esch look). We met him on the Friday and he came back Saturday morning with a story. I had to cut it down a bit (the first version had something like 12 panels over two pages) but I think I managed to get everything he wanted in there in some form and I hope his friend enjoys it :)

Here are a few random photographs and sketches from the Q-con on Friday night. Had a really good time and I'll definitely be back next year.

I'll post another few photos on Wednesday when I'm home from Manchester and get them uploaded.

World domination...

In a bid for World Domination, Insomnia are hosting 3 simultanious Cancertown related events in 3 different countries this Saturday 27th June!

I'll tell you briefly about them here, but head over to Insomnia's blog, the red eye, for more details.

• In England Cy and Nic will be selling and signing copies in Waterstones, Chemsford, England between 11am and 1pm.


• Over in Scotland Crawford Coutts will be speaking at the Dundee Literary Festival and will be selling copies of Cancertown at the Insomnia Booth on Sunday as well.


• And over here, Andrew Croskery and I will be hosting Insomnia's Stand at the Q-con, at Queens University Belfast, from 6pm this Friday night and all day Saturday.

The Q-con started off primarily as a gamers convention, with most of the crowd being Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, and console fans. Over the years they've expanded and they now have an artists alley, a comics section and a 24/7 Anime film theatre, but check out their site for more details.

Insomnia being the nice people they are have offered a triple prize of Cancertown, Layer Zero and Cages graphic novels to be won at some stage throughout the weekend. Somehow Glenn Davidson, one of the Q-con orgainisers, convinced me to do an A3 sized drawing to include as part of the prize also while he was picking up his book at the Belfast signing, so here's a look at it below.

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).