Slaughterman's Creed FP Belfast Signing

To celebrate the launch of Slaughterman's Creed I'll be signing copies at Forbidden Planet Belfast on the 11th of June. Slaughterman's Creed inker Andy Brown and cover painter Ryan Brown will be there also.

If you come along there's a free sketch with every copy bought on the day and Andy Luke will be signing and giving out FREE print copies of our Absence comic.

Hopefully see a few of you there and spread the word if you can.

Cover Story

You may have seen one of the Work-in-Progress Slaughterman's Creed cover's slip out on the net this weekend while I was prancing around the MCMexpo. I finally have the chance to share the cover here along with the slightly unusual process behind it.

I had worked on another cover before with Ryan Brown and after seeing his digitally painted work over Simon Bisley's 13 coins comic pages, asked him if he would paint over my pencils/layout for the Slaughterman's Creed covers (Ryan's brother Andy is the co-founder of Beserker Comics, and inked the interior latter chapters of SC).

I had a rough idea for the cover and sketched out a quick layout (which I can't find at the minute, but I'll have found it by the time the cover is finished and post it then), set up my studio lights and took a few reference photos. Here's the one for Sidney himself:

Using the reference photos I sketched out the graphic novel cover layout below.

At this point (as those who were following my blog last year will know), I had planned to spend my Summer in Canada and continue drawing. Things fell through at the last minute and although we had a brilliant month in Belize instead, we did a lot more traveling and A3 scanners are few and far between. 

Each digital chapter will feature an individual characters so I had to draw each one separately and Ryan agreed to paint and compose them together for the GN. I had to wait to get to Seattle four weeks later to print out five blue lines copies of the sketch and pencil out the individual characters over it. Since Sidney was already in the foreground he needed the least done, but I did tidy him up a little. 

By the time I'd finished drawing the characters we were on a plane to Las Vegas. I thought it would be easy to find a scanner there, but all I could find was slot machines and wedding chapels. I was sending my laptop back home the next day, so all I could do was take photos of the pencils on my camera (see above), load them into my dropbox, along with the original reference photos and some interior character shots and upload via the hotel wireless. 

Yip, that WIP cover painting was actually painted over a photo sent from Las Vegas. I reckon Ryan did a bloody awesome job! 

Expect another update, with more sketches and ref material when the cover is finished. 

Covering new ground

New comic project:

I'm drawing a comic for the boys at Beserker Comics, publishers of The Dead, among other fine comics. They're a relatively small comic company based in Belfast, but the talent working with them (Alan Grant, Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry etc) is HUGE. Its fantastic just to be able to say I share a publisher with those guys.

We're not 100% sure what the comic itself will be called (it might be a 'Beserker presents:' sort of title) but the story I'm working on is called 'My New Best Friend' and is written by Micheal Baxter. The above image is the cover to the comic, pencilled by myself, inked by Andy Brown and coloured by Ryan Brown. Those guys really know how to do a good job, and we'll be working on the interiors together.

The story will be 24 pages but we're taking this at a slow pace, as the Beserker boys are busy with their publishing business and I've still a good bit of work to do on Slaughterman's Creed. It may even be Halloween 2010 before the comic hits shelves, but I'll update as we make progress.

You will actually hear the Beserker Crew talk on the Sunnyside comics Podcast next week, which is now back on Itunes. (Which also means you've no excuse if you havn't heard Andrew Croskery and myself's so called 'interview' on Ep. 7)

Speaking of Podcasts, Cancertown writer Cy Dethan has been interviewed by the Comicbook Outsiders. This is another one of my regular podcasts and I'm away now to listen to what Cy has to say...