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.)

New ways to play(Station)

I was going to blog something else today, but at exactly the right time I got the OK to reveal some exciting news: Cancertown is coming to the PSP (PlayStation®portable) as a digital comic!

All of Insomnia Publications' graphic novels will be released as monthly digital chapters from the Digital Comics Store on the PlayStation®Network starting this December when the service launches. Dont take my word for it though, check out the official press release on Insomnia's Red Eye blog for more details including the launch titles that will be available.

The PSP digital comics store is being supported by big comic companys like Marvel and IDW so looks like this thing could catch on. It may even grap some new comic readers as well.

In other Insomnia news that I forgot to mention, Temple APA, the downloadable comics showcase magazine has done a huge piece on Insomnia is their latest issue that can be found here. They've featured a good bit of my art in there too.

It's a good time to be an Insomniac :)

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.

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.

Hair today... slightly more detailed tomorrow.

I've made a conscious effort to improve my hair drawing skills while drawing Slaughterman's Creed.

The above is a panel featuring Morley from Cancertown. I used to like the minimal hair drawing and let Mel do most of the hard work, but recently I've went for the full ink render so that it looks bettter in black and white and so the high contrast will there in the final version. Here's an example of The more 'fuller' head of hair. Although this guy does look a little like Morley he's actually a small character from Slaughterman's Creed, I was just looking in the Mirror for the expression so he ended up looking a bit like Morley (with longer hair, thinner facer and a different nose... well his stubble looks like Morley's anyway.)

This was my first time inking a woman's hair but in this case I got it a little wrong and the shape of the parting doesn't quite trace her head.

A little photoshoppery later and the line's a bit better. I . I didn't want it to be too tidy to show a bit of a wild, sultry side to the character, so I added in a bit more detail and shape to it while I was there. I'm happy enough with how it turned out.

No sleep for Insomnia:

The buzz on Cancertown continues. Cy and Nic had a great time over by all accounts at the whatever comics signing this past weekend (and great sales too, so I'm starting to think if you want your hands on a first print you should order it before its too late). If you want to actually see what my co-conspirators look like, have a look here.

I was also featured in a huge centrefold in the Irish News last week. Here's a scan for those who havn't seen it. I have to thank David Roy for the excellent interview and very well written article.

I was also interviewed by the Jen over at the Pulse. This was a particular pleasure for me as the Pulse has been one of my favourite comics sites for as long as I can remember and one of the first few I ever found (and kept up with). Here's a link to the interview itself and there's plenty Cancertown art there as well.

As ever, our publisher Insomnia continues to expand. Take a look at Ryan hugh's gorgeous cover to Burke & Hare.

The book is the first from Insomnia's new Vigil Imprint which publishes the comicbook version of Biopics. Its a really interesting story by Martin Conaghan and Will Pickering and you can find out a lot more about it at Insomnia's Blog

Also check out kronoscity.co.uk and my good friend Andrew Croskery's blog to keep up with his Insomnia project and the other random nonsense (and art) he's sure to share.

Here are the pencils for the first page of the graphic novel. Can't wait to see it :)

I still havn't got the photos back from the 2D festival (Aimee has the film and she's very lazy :P) but I expect I'll have some pictures soon.

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.

The infection has reached these shores...

... No not swine Flu, but a much more deadly killer has reached these shores. That's right, Cancertown is here!

Just look at that thick spine. A lot of work was involved in the 150+ pages and its really good to hold the result in my hand. As I've mentioned before, the official UK launch will be at the Small Press Expo, the sister event of the Bristol comic con next weekend (Wow, so close!). We're also in the the planning stages of organising the Northern Irish/Irish launch at Forbidden Planets stores over here, which should happen a few weeks after.

The RRP on the back is £14.99, but if you want to cut out the middle man and order one directly from Insomnia you can get a fantastic deal by emailing Nic or if you prefer your Amazon-ness you can pre-order it from there.

Here's a little glance at the insides, I've only read a few pages in its printed form and even though I've been with the story from concept to digital lettered pages, its a different experience on paper. Can't wait to curl up tonight and revisit the world I'm already missing.

I gots some compliments

"the visceral, hallucinogenic art of Stephen Downey working in tandem with the hard-bitten script"


Thats what the legendary Bryan Tablot wrote about my contribution to Cancertown: An inconvenient Tooth. He wrote a very complimentary foreword for the graphic novel, but since I'm selfish and promotarious* I've only cut and pasted the sentence about me.

You can however read the whole thing over at Cancertown writer Cy's Dethan's blog or indeed Insomnia Publications Blog where the contributions of all Team Cancertown get their mention and there are also details on how you can get your hands on the trade for cheap.




If you're too lazy to do that, you can always pre-order straight from Amazon!




*Yes I did make that word up . Its an adjective describing one who is 'self-promoting'. Its not neccessarily a negative trait, but a too much of it can be bloody annoying!

Plan, plan, plan! Busy, busy, busy!

So I'm trying to finish the layouts for the first issue of Slaughterman's Creed. I've been so busy with workshops/teaching/mentoring for the last few days I've barely had to time to put pencil to paper. However, I will be cramming tonight to get them finished so I can start the actual pages asap!

Anyway this has reminded me of one of the first things I learned while drawing Cancertown; don't do layouts one page at a time (or at least read and re-read the script)! In the first few pages of the graphic novel, Morley falls out a window and finds his way up and back into the apartment again. Now I'd read the script a few times, but didn't think the type of window was important to any future panels. Turns out that it was meant to be a foldy-outy type window so that Morley could lean out by holding onto it later, while I'd drawn a slidey-upy type window.

Whats that you're thinking? "Thats the most trivial mistake an artist could ever make!" Yeah, I just drew him leaning out a little less, but considering this was the first 5 pages I'd ever handed into a publisher it annoyed me that I'd already made a little error. So i made sure from then on I'd do rough layouts for a bunch of pages at a time. I try to do whole issues, but sometimes I just get itching to start on the actual pages. I do make little notes though as I read the script, jotting down what props I need for earlier pages (which often changes the layouts).

It's come to be a good practice this week. One example; the opening scene and the 3rd scene of Slaughtermans Creed are set in the same place, but when we return to it, the slaughterman is washing his tools (don't be crude!) and in order to use the angle I wanted, I had to go back and make sure the sink was in the earlier panels/pages. I've had a reread of chapter 1s script again (terrible memory) and drawn a little layout of the abatoir that will help me keep things right.

See we artists are more than just character illustrators... we're fashion gurus, interior designers, and architects (just don't try to build anything I draw, it probably wont stay up!) :P

So yeah I guess the lesson was really just to plan in advance, its a whole world we're creating after all, not just seperate drawing on a page :)

Thats a little character sketch of the Slaughterman above. I've done another little prototype piece in colour that hopefully I'll be able to share soon.

Interview

I'll have a proper update soon, I promise. Teaching started back a week earlier than I thought, but I have the bones of something I want to talk about swimming round my head somewhere, the skeleton's trying to form, but it doesn't know its arse from its elbow. Non-coincidently, its broadly about just how much time creating comics takes up for me.

As soon as I get a few free minutes (Ha!) I'll sort it out and write it up, but for now you can read this interview with me over at Insomnia Publication's Blog