Friday 29 May 2009

One man HUZZAH!!

Bennett the bleeder

Here's a bit more from The Man Out Of Time. It's a web comic for an American web comic site, hopefully they'll like it and I'll get to do it as an ongoing strip. What? Another webcomic? I hear you say. Well, yeah, and this is a kind of one-man HUZZAH!! I have a clear idea about what's going on, but I'm trying use the good things from the HUZZAH!! process to give this one a spontaneity. Yeah, making it up as I go along would be a fair description. I'll make time to finish the pitch and send it over next month. 

This is the front piece, sets out the 60s TV retro style and limited palette 

Wednesday 27 May 2009

Mother and child


Aww, a tender moment from HUZZAH!! Who could fail to be touched by the sight of an eyeless witch who inhabits a young girl's eyes finally being reunited with her 20 foot tall, blue, glowing, male daughter? 

Does the child recognise the presence of its mother? Does Baron Kazam suspect? The Baron's mission was to bring mother and daughter together, I wonder if this is how he imagined it? Maybe all the Baron's adventures are as twisted as this.

I had sworn to stay clear of HUZZAHs until I'd finished my current workload, then convinced myself I could take a few hours out to add this to the story. Bit of a late night, but the story must be told!

Tuesday 26 May 2009

HUSSAR!!


Here's this month's Doctor Who magazine illo, third in the series of McCoy pics. I know I put this up before, but I was a bit premature as the issue wasn't out yet. Anyway, here it is back again with the 'how to do it in three easy stages' bit below.



Stage one was my first scribble which in a break from tradition actually worked and seemed to fit the brief. I was asked to include Sylvester McCoy's Doctor and the charge of light brigade, not something that immediately seemed suitable to my simplified vector style.

Stage two was another more detailed rough which I submitted for approval. I scanned this rough at 400 dpi and brought into photoshop.

Stage three - I did some tighter drawing in photoshop, resolving figure drawing and gestures then began clicking away with vectors making these cut-out shapes. Afterwards I added a little texture with a brush tool.

Monday 25 May 2009

Draw Serge


This was a very quick sketch I did this morning for Draw Serge, a blog started by Jonathan Edwards where the idea is that artists... erm... draw Serge. The great Serge Gainsbourg that is.

After I spent the weekend putting up stud walls and plastering I found that my hands were really clumsy this morning, I felt like a gorilla threading a needle when I started trying to draw, and - given that Serge looks like his face was drawn with clumsy hand - I thought doing a sketch of him would be a great way to start the day. I found some photo ref and then gave myself half an hour to do it.

Great idea for a blog, I look forward to seeing what everyone else does. And if you haven't ever bothered to explore the wonder of Serge Gainsbroug's music then do yourself a favour let this be where you start.

Friday 22 May 2009

Bloody Work

This my new job, it's series of historical style comic strips for a company who are new to graphic novels. I'm writing and drawing these. There will be a series of different topics aimed at kids, but hopefully they'll have a bit of emotional and graphic punch. This is like the flipside to the Horrible Histories approach - HH set out to make you laugh this will (hopefully) make your hair stand on end and your eyes pop out. 


This first strip (Caesar in case you hadn't guessed) has ended up sandwiched between two Doctor Who strips I'm drawing (although I have a little help on one of those - more on that later) and I still have a children's book to illustrate, a Horrible Histories cover to colour and two stud walls to put up, so I better be getting on.

Thursday 21 May 2009

Sontaran!



Aw, bless, it's one of those cuddly, potato-headed, jellyfish bothering dwarves. The full illustration features in this weeks Doctor Who Adventures. I'm sure eagle-eyed who fans will have already spotted who else features. Quick rush out and buy it!

This is the latest in the Terror from Time series, where the chaps at BBC magazines blow up tiny little drawings I did to an enormous scale to scare the kiddies. The magazine is still the best thing your newsagent has to offer for kids. 

Sunday 17 May 2009

The Man Out of Time


Here's a peek at one of the 'other projects' I'm working on. Probably best I don't go into too much detail about it just yet, but when it's finished I'll let you know where it'll appear. 

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Where have all the Dinlos gone?



I keep promising that I'll get back to Dinlos, but I just seem to be swimming against a tide of my own ambition. I have so many projects either up and running, with publishers, in development or just rattling around in my head that Dinlos has slipped down the pecking order this year. 

However it is still inching along. After doing that bunch of pages last year I realised that the heavily textured style was far too time consuming for an entire novel, so I'm going to keep that style just for Kackernory and instead I'll be using a flatter two colour process for the rest - more in keeping with the 1970s annuals that the book aims to imitate really. Above is an early experiment in redoing H.G.Smells. 

How much I get done this year will depend on the success of my other projects, so if you see a lot of Dinlos suddenly appear on here you can safely assume that the other projects have all gone tits.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Franny and the Daleks


Sounds like a decent name for a band. Actually Franny is the hatcheck and gossip girl from the Snake Pit in my latest HUZZAH!!NOIR page. I've written her as a girl who likes the sound of her own voice and thinks aloud, which makes her a fun narrator to write. I tried to set up the next page(s) as open as possible. We're about to hear Franny tell us (and Sleepy) the story of Joel Zieger. Who is he? I haven't a clue. That's the fun of HUZZAH, whoever HUZZAHs next gets to decide.

This page was a bit of a rush job because I have a lot of comic strips to write and draw over the next couple of months and so couldn't give the art the time I wanted. I'm happier with the writing than the art on this page I think.

And the Daleks. Had to take this pic down because it hadn't been published yet. Well, now it has! It's in the latest Doctor Who Magazine and the designer has done a great job of putting the page together (in fact DWM is an incredibly well designed mag, and features some great illustration). As I've probably said many times, the idea behind this style was to make something that sat nicely on magazine pages with bold and fine type. It hasn't always been 100% successful, but this latest one actually looks ok to me.
 
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