One month later...

Haven't blogged in almost a month, been really busy with the Torchwood strip, which I've now finished, and had some sort of event almost every weekend. Here's a very quick summary of all the exciting happenings:


2D festival: 

It started so nicely...

Ended wildly...

Was fun meeting up with the just-beyond-local comics scene; Tommie Kelley, the Berserker folk, Sunnyside comics fellows, Longstone comics, Aidan Courtney of Ri Ra,  Bridgeen Gillespie, Ciaran Lucas, Will Simpson, Gary Leach, Paddy Brown and of course 2D organiser David Campbell.

Bon Jovi:

The weekend after was a trip to London for a long weekend to see the infamous Bon Jovi. Aimee is a big fan,  We'll say no more.

Q-con:


This past weekend was the Q-con in Belfast. Mostly a gaming convention, the comics section and artists alley grew a little this year and looks to continue to do so. PJ Holden, Paddy Brown and Ciaran Lucas were again in attendance. Cancertown continued to sell comparatively well considering the gaming/anime audience, and a nice amount of commissioned sketches were drawn as well.

Here's one such sketch of Mickey Rouke's Whiplash giving it to Iron Man:

(It's a photo taken from my phone, so excuse the quality)

Torchwood:

As I mentioned, the 11 page Torchwood strip is finished. I handled the pencils and inks on this one and its set to be published in the Titan Torchwood magazine on 19th August. I think there are plans to reprint it in the US comicbook version at some point as well.

Talesofthe.com:


Tales of the... is currently hosting a zombie collection of stories. A short Rhyme of mine is up there today inspired by a bloody fantastic Zombie portrait by Ryan Brown. Clickity here to read.


Future travels:


Myself and Aimee are heading off traveling this Summer around Belize, the West coast of America, then Thailand and a little stop-off in Dubai on the way home so I don't know how regular this blog will be. We're not heading off for a few weeks though and I've a few things to show, so I'll try to keep the weekly schedule until then...

Badmouthed at Bristol

So I was over at the Bristol comic expo this past weekend...

It was a lovely Sunny weekend, scotching hot, not a cloud in the sky and not an air conditioner in site.

I'm still exhausted, not having had a decent nights sleep in a week, so I'm going to have to write in bullet points:

• Met up with frequent collaborators Cy and Nic as per usual, but also got to meet and talk to Vicky Stonebridge properly for the first time. With Andy Brown also making an appearance, it marked the first time the Slaughterman's Creed team were all together in the same room. 
• Was given the brilliant Badmotuth bust by Simon Wyatt as a very generous present. Some people think that Cancertown's Morley was based on me, but you can see  below I actually used myself as a base for the badmouth: 

• Flew in late-ish on the Friday, so only had time for a quick pint in the bar before retiring. I made up for it on Saturday night when I got very drunk with Aimee, my Torchwood editor Martin Eden, the Brown brothers and a few other comic creators. I ended up staying up while the staff tried to hoover around myself and Martin Conaghan's feet at 5am. I remember slurring out a conversation with Mark Buckingham about comic art, but for some reason can't remember a word of it. 
• Picked up Com.X's 45, Valia Kapadai's Twisted Visions, the latest issue of Dogbreath (mostly due to the fantastic looking strip by Rich Clements, kev Levell and Vicky Stonebridge) and Martin Eden's Spandex. I've only read parts of each, but thoroughly enjoying each one so far!

Really Wish the event was longer than a weekend, so many people I only got to say a few words to that I'd like to have spent more time with. Roll on Derry and the 2D fesitval next weekend!

I'm drawing a Torchwood comic..

As the title quite plainly states I've been asked to draw a Torchwood comic. Its an 11 page story that will be published within the Torchwood Magazine that's available not only in comic stores, but Easons, WHSmiths and all good newsagents nationwide! Quite excited about this one as I'm a fan of the show, not to mention it'll be my first real foray into licenced characters.

Unfortunately I can't mention anything about the story, other than the fact it involves Torchwood and aliens, or even show any art as everything needs to be approved by the BBC. The strip should be great fun to draw though, with great action sequences, set pieces and some nice character work.

It all came about after I went for a Titan portfolio review with Martin Eden, the Torchwood comics editor at BICS last October. If you're a creator and needed a reason to go to a comic con, apart from the great geek drink-a-thon, there's one right there. Martin will be at Bristol this year again launching issue two of Spandex, so you should stop by his table and check it out.

I'll be at the Bristol International Comics and Small Press Expo myself this weekend coming (ash cloud permitting), doing sketches, having a nosy, a drink and there's a Cancertown signing scheduled at the Mercure for 2:30pm of the Saturday and midday on Sunday.

Hopefully see a few of you there and more details on the Torchwood project as it develops...

Tales of the Drawing Board.

I've been doing a few illustrations for some of the Tales of the.. projects. I hope everyone's been checking out the multimedia art showcase for Northern Irish creators, and now that our first theme; "Tales of the Cthulhu Quarter" has just wrapped up, I thought I'd show some of the work in progress over here.

Just posted this week was a very funny and romantic serenade to Cthulhu. After I'd heard Andrew Croskery's draft of the song I thought it would be nice to include a faux single cover to go along with the finished recording by The Party Band (Reggie Chamberlain King and Malachy Costello)

Here's the visual thought process from doodle to finished piece:

Check out the song here here

A couple of weeks previously I illustrated a frame for a Lovecraftian themed verse by Craig Smith. I took a little shortcut on this one and just drew half the frame. It just took a few lines in the middle to join up the copied and flipped halves to make one symmetrical piece.

Check out the full size readable image here

On the site there's also a Cthulhu comic from a few weeks ago and another unrelated comic coming up this Sunday that I didn't really have much of a creative hand in, so if you have an interest in comics you should keep up with the site, or subscribe to the RSS feed. I'm hoping to do a strip for the site eventually myself...

Done!

I wrapped up the bulk of my work for Slaughterman's Creed last week. That's another book, another pile of pages, and another year down.

All together for the project I pencilled 110 pages, 46 of which I inked and coloured 44, as well as the usual redraws and recolours of course.

Bringing on Andy Brown as inker and Vicky Stonebridge as colourist from ch. 3 onwards has been a godsend, as I fear I'd still be halfway there without them, and of course the book looks all the better for having them on board. Nic Wilkinson is sending me a PDF of the lettered book so far tonight and I cant wait to see what she's done with it. Cy Dethan is hoping to print out a copy to preview around at Bristol, so if anyone is heading over, you should be able to check out a good chunk of the book in progress.

I've still a couple of covers to do for the series, but the story is completely told and for the most part my job is done. Should have more details on a release schedule after Bristol, so keep your eyes on the blog.

Here's a little sketch of the slaughterman himself, I doodled post completion of the project.

Multilingual comic creation

My comp copies of Ri Ra #2, the Irish language kid's comicbook, just arrived in the post the other day and looks great. I have a 3 page story inside and with not speaking enough Gaelige to write the script myself, I had an odd process with this one.

I started off with the basic idea for a story, following on from the same theme and characters from #1, based on a young boys first year at school. I broke the idea into panels and scribbled the layout down on paper.

Then I sent Desy Downey, a fiddle playing, Irish language teacher of mine, the layouts with a brief description of what was happening in the story/panels and the kind of thing that the character would be thinking.


For example:

PG1


Ttitle
1/ Close up on Boy, wearing hurling helmet
2/ Grumpy PE teacher is telling the boys about team spirit. The boy is the smallest in the line and is not looking forward to the match because in his old school he was really bad at sports.
3/ The teacher goes into a rant about how winning is more important than playing. 
4/ The boy is picked last (as usual)


Then Desy came back with a poem that would be laid over/incorporated into the art, with a rough translation of what he was writing. The verse obviously reads a lot better in Irish than it does in English, but the English text doesn't appear in the comic at all.


PAGE 1


1 NARR (Ar ais ar scoil agus anois corpoiliúint, (back to school and now PE)
 agus tá a fhios ag cách go mbeidh muid ag fulaingt! (and everyone knows we’ll all be suffering)
2 Múinteoir ;  anois a dhálta, an rud is fearr ná comh-oibriú (Now students, the best thing is team work)
Buachaill ; Tá sé cosúil le seanscoil s’agamsa, b’éigean dom éalú !(IT’s like my old school, I have to escape!)
3 Múinteoir ; agus rud is measa ná ag cáiliú an clúiche (and the worst thing is losing the game)
Buachaill, is fuath liom spóirt níor mhaith liom é chóiche! (I hate sport, I’ve never liked it)
4 Múinteoir: Tá mé dul a roghnú na foirne anois, seas suas go modhúil (I’m gonna pick the teams now stand up orderly)
Buachaill:  Mise an duine is lú, beidh mé ag fánacht go dtí an deireadh! (I’m the smallest person, I’ll be waiting untill the end)


After sending the text and layouts of for approval to Aidan Courtney for approval, I drew the finished art; Linework on paper, colours in photoshop then letters with Adobe Illustrator.

For example. page 1:

You can see I'm drawing in a more cartoony style for this comic as its aimed for ages 8-14 year olds. If you want to get a copy you can order both issues online here and its available in a lot of Irish comic stores as well.
If you know of any Gaelige speaking schools as well, you should let them know this is available as it works as a really great teaching aid.

Horsing around

I posted the loose pencils of a horse from a panel in Insomnia Publication's upcoming Layer Zero: Survival (written by Andrew Croskery) a while back. Andy Brown from Berserker comics is grayscale painting over them for the anthology and I got the last bit of art from him the other day, just before he headed off to Wizard World Anaheim.

  

Was messing around and here's a little animated GIF showing the progress from my doodle, to tighter pencils, to Andy's inks/wash.

And another panel crop (don't want too many spoilers) just for show:

Its being lettered by David Withers at the moment, who I met through the Belfast comic creators meetup. I'll post more details when I have a release date.