The Brush Tool

Baron Kazam returns!

Fitted in a new HUZZAH!!, you can go and see it here. One of the things that I gain from doing HUZZAH!! is that it gives me chance to experiment. On this occasion I decided to do the whole thing using the brush tool in Manga Studio on a light setting. Not an ideal drawing tool really and I wasn't happy with the finished page. I quite like these close up screen shots of the work in progress though. In a sense looking at these images at this size (click on them for full size!) it's like removing the illusion that these marks are real brush marks and instead showing the digital nature of the marks.

General Kvar

Durante

We need to fix a name for this giant blue baby of indeterminate sex. We can't keep calling him/her the Gestalt Heir.

Vengeance of Voldar

And HUZZAH!! book two The Vengeance of Voldar is under way! Read the intro page for a summary of what went before or better still click on 'The Story So Far" and read the whole of 2009's HUZZAH.

These two creatures above are Ambulas, sort of giant frog-like modes of transport, poised to dive into the depths of Voldar in search of treasure. They've been 'borrowed' from a museum by a couple of Belamite Treasure Hunters eager to explore the newly uncovered Voldar. Along for the ride (kidnapped?) is the museum's curator, an elderly Bhahiri woman. I designed these ambulas during an experiment whereby I attempted to sit and draw whilst child minding. these are a couple of the sketches I produced. One just got lifted wholesale to the final art.I actually wrote two pages, but didn't have time to draw both. That's probably a good thing as it leaves what happens next more open for the next contributor.

And talking of contributors, we have a stella list this year. On top the usual crowd, Ian Culbard, Dave Taylor, Faz Choudhury, Colin Fawcett, Paul Harrison Davis, D'Israeli and me, there's PJ Holden, Si Fraser, Warwick Johnson Cadwell, Geraint Ford and Sean Longcroft.

A few new HUZZAHers there. My advice from doing it last year would be - don't think about it, just jump in early, panic for a while and then work out what you will do. The longer it goes on the harder it gets to do your first HUZZAH. The most important thing about HUZZAH though is that the only person who knows what will happen is the artist who is doing the current HUZZAH, soon as it leaves their hand the next person to HUZZAH takes control.

Devil or Angel

Happy new year! And happy new HUZZAH!! Just put two new pages up on HUZZAH!!NOIR. It's been crawling along through the second half of 2009 but hopefully the next four months will see the story build at pace.

With Sleepy Jackson already established it's now the turn of his lost wife Rosalie (or is that Véronique). The best Noir Femme Fatales often have a checkered past and the same is true of Rosalie. I like the idea of her as being a total enigma - she could be either devil or angel. This is epitomised by mine and Ian's pictures of her from Chapter Two. In one she is a killer in the dark, in the other she is a nurse, a saviour in the light. We don't know which is the real Rosalie. We don't know who she is or why she's doing what she's doing. That makes her all the more interesting for me.

What a helmet!

Here's the other panel from my last Huzzah featuring the Baron. I've often wondered how my flat colour with no black keyline style might work for a comic strip and this worked out ok. With the aging and texture added these Baron images remind me a bit of Peter Blake paintings. Perhaps the answer to making this style work for comics is to ensure my characters all have plenty of targets and lightning flashes - maybe a strip about wrestlers is in order.

Is that...?

Yes it is. It's a new HUZZAH!! page! Well, I say new... it's an ancient looking page in keeping with the dust that's been collecting on HUZZAH in recent months.

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!

NOIR... HUZZAH!! NOIR!

HUZZAH!! now has a little sibling - HUZZAH!! NOIR. I just managed to do two pages to take us up to page four. Some of the same comic creators from the other HUZZAH feature in this one - Ian Culbard, Dave Taylor, Colin Fawcett, Faz Choudhury, Paul Harrison Davies and me, plus we have  been joined by the very talented Shane Oakley, Sean Longcroft and Dave Shelton. Hopefully we'll add one or two more to the list before the end of the month.

As the title suggests this HUZZAH is set in the world of Film Noir and hard-boiled fiction. This may not immediately seem as well suited to the round robin format as the way-out world of the space epic, but I have high hopes that this may work even better. For a start the setting is more limited and the black and white look more uniform. That's already evident if you compare the first 4 pages of this HUZZAH with the other. By page 4 of HUZZAH we'd already met a whole host of characters and settings with more random ideas than you could shake a science fiction stick at. The Noir version focusses on just one man and his thoughts.

In the two pages I've just done the man is revealed to be Sleepy Jackson, a sauntering ex-boxer searching for his wife/girlfriend. He first appears on Ian's page one, we hear his narrative thoughts - he was once fearless, now all that has changed, now he has reason to fear. Paul took it on and revealed that someone had been taken from him, someone he cared about. 

The thing that struck me about him was that he looked like a real bruiser and yet appeared to have an office desk, kind of a private eye set up, so I stitched the two contradictory elements together to make Sleepy Jackson. Still waters run deep with this fella.

Jackson's search for his gal has led him into some dodgy company, can't wait to see where Faz takes us next...

(and, yeah I got the name from the Aussie band.)

The Dead

Here's my latest HUZZAH page. This is a new beginning in the story, after Ian Culbard blew up Voldar it gave us the opportunity to start a new thread (he was only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!!). Mindful that most of my HUZZAHs have been about piling on tons of exposition to keep the thing making sense, I enjoyed doing something willfully oblique (even I don't know who these people are or what they're talking about). It'll be up to the HUZZAHs that follow this to make sense of it.

Still trying to get to grips with Manga Studio, but I'm having fun along the way and I'm enjoying what it's doing to my comic drawing.

In these two panels without the colour you can see the Manga Studio inks clearer. These are done with the brush setting in the pen tool. I have it set to a large nib and make the big marks first. Anything that gets obliterated as I slodge about with the black can be picked out with white afterwards. 

Lost Count

A Voldarian comes to Count Khadari's rescue

I haven't quite lost count of how many HUZZAHs I've done, but I find it hard to resist when the opportunity arrives. It has to fit in between work and fortunately yesterday I was waiting for approval on some illustrations and so had the chance. 

For anyone who's following the story (God bless you!) it seems like we're approaching the end to many of the storylines that we set out with on Voldar. The first chapter established a prison planet, Voldar, with no visible prisoners, a Galaxy ruled by a mysterious Glass Tsar, a terrible infant monster kept in the prison and crashed ship containing a warrior, Zhadira, and a thief, Pample. 

We got our first glimpse of the space witch (AKA The Hexen Definitive) in chapter one and in chapter two we saw the witch possess a rebellious sightseer, Durante and direct her to Voldar.

Chapter 3 introduces the Baron, an ancient space knight on an ancient quest. His quest we discover is to find the true heir to the Glass Tsar's empire. The infant was hidden in the stomach of a monster called Xog by a secret sect know as the Sisters. The child is preserved inside a remote womb, this device instantly transports the Baron to Voldar.

So what's happening on Voldar? Zhadira is there to rescue her father, Count Khadari (who is imprisoned there) Durante is being guided by the Hexen Definitive to search for the baby she thought dead (she is the mother of the true heir to the Glass Tsar's empire) and below the surface a monstrous heir has been created. 

Into this comes the Baron with the true heir under his arm.

Which brings us up to date - the Baron, in the clutches of the monstrous heir, drops the true heir into its mouth. The two become one Gestalt heir and its evil noise rips the surface of the planet apart. 

And here's where the true nature of the Prison planet is revealed - Voldar is an entire planet imprisoned beneath a vast crust and a network of restraining bolts. As the bolts lose their hold and the surface breaks apart it releases the real prisoners...

RAAAAHH!!

Finished my latest HUZZAH this morning, here's a panel from it. Inked in Manga Studio. Like many comic artists I'm never content with my inks so I was eager to try out this software. Gave me the opportunity to try some wild brushwork on this strip which suits the action sequences. looking forward to using it on Dinlos in the coming weeks as it should speed up the pages and stop me fiddling endlessly in photoshop. Watch this space.

Robots, witches and babies

Two more Huzzah pages done since I returned from holiday - this orange page was done whilst still suffering nausea from a stomach bug, which I think helped the look of the page. The idea was to do something tormented and over powering as the grief-stricken Hexen Definitive* realises her baby that she thought was dead is in fact alive and has been hidden from her all this time. 

With all that emotion in mind I left the page looking rough as hell to give it that cry-your-heart-out look. Feeling nauseous helped me realise how such news would knock her world spinning into the void. I guess the spiral staircase is a classic surrealistic device for achieving a sense of vertigo and disorientation, and the fellow with crescent-shaped head also seems to belong in some surreal nightmare/nursery rhyme. I'd love to say that I planned all this, but the truth is I just spent a few feverish hours scrawling away in photoshop and ended up with the whole thing virtually finished.

By contrast this second page shows a clearer head. I've simplified the colour again - I like to use colour for atmosphere and emotional impact rather than use it for 'realistic' description or decorative effect. At least that's how I feel at the moment. Here the whole thing's meant to look subterranean and unnatural. I ended up with a kind of formaldehyde-tank-in-the-night-museum look. 

This page was also a case of going back and reintroducing ideas from the very beginning of the story. The infant first mentioned on Page 2 is revealed. It appears that the Glass Tsar has two heirs - a natural heir and a very unnatural heir that lurks in a pit deep below the surface of Voldar.

I knew I was going to do a reveal of the infant on this page and went through numerous monstrous variations on the Glamis Castle Monster theme. In the end I decided it would be scariest if the creature that lurks in the dark, eating people, actually looked like a... baby.

*At least that's what I'm calling her. Name borrowed from Mark E Smith.

Baron Kazam takes off

Here's my latest HUZZAH!! (above and below). It's really rattling along now. Faz Choudhury is next up, can't wait to see how he follows this! I'll be away for a week, so it'll be fascinating to see where HUZZAH!! is by the time I get back. 

As requested by Paul Harrison Davies  here's a 'how it's done in 3 easy steps' thing. Prior to the first stage I would have done a thumbnail on a piece of paper - no idea where that went, I'm surrounded by mountains of paper as I'm in the middle of a couple of projects.

I always paste the plate that proceeds mine onto my page (in this case Dave Taylor's revelation of a baby in a sphere inside Xog)) so I'm working as if it is part of the same page.

Until I come up with a better solution I'm inking in Photoshop. My Huzzah plate on page 7 was done with pen and paper, but all the rest have been done like this. It's handy when you change your mind as often as I do

I wanted to use limited flat colours but also wanted to stick to Dave's palette to keep the continuity on the page, so I stopped the line work and messed about until I came up with this Mondrian looking colour layout. Also the muted colour and the dreamy motion of the page worked as a great contrast to the dazzling colours in the next panel (top of this post) where the Baron hurtles in the air clinging to the remote womb. Actually I did that big magenta flying baron image first and tried to work towards it. I'm really not the most methodical of people.

The Old Man's Back Again

Baron Kazam

The Old Man's Back Again has become a sort of theme tune for Baron Kazam, I end up humming it every time I see him. It's one of those booming, mythic, Sergio Leone landscape sounding Scott Walker songs (I could just have easily chosen The Seventh Seal by Scott Walker, I guess. That one even features a knight). 

From page one of The Inverted Coma

Always annoying when folk don't update their blogs and I'm getting a bit slack myself just now thanks to my mountainous workload. So, with that in mind, and the fact I'm going to be flat out busy for another fortnight before I go on holiday, I thought I'd do some bumper blogging! The indian pic is a panel from the Future Shock type thing that I've been kicking around for the past couple of years. Thought I ought to finish it and send it over to Tharg really. 

Below is one of those "how to in 3 quick easy steps" things. I couldn't resist jumping in and nudging the HUZZAH story on the other day and managed to knock out three panels in double quick time.

Here comes the knight

Have no fear, Zhadira, back up is on its way! Or not. 

This is my latest HUZZAH!! page. I wanted to introduce Baron Kazam at some point and this seemed like a good place for us to find him. The Baron leapt into my mind as soon as we started HUZZAH, he seems very familiar. I like that, he triggers all sorts of associations in my head - Don Quixote, Flash Gordon, Arzach, Dan Dare, Baron Munchausen etc etc - a kind of conglomeration of 30's sci fi, 70s fantasy and chivalric romance. I can't say too much in case I bias my fellow HUZZAHers, because who he is and what he does will be as much down to them as it is to me. He seems to be light years away from Zhadira and her problems at the moment, I quite like that.

I went for a bright, flat coloured look, something with a pulp sci fi comic feel. Even the aliens look a bit 1950s in places. The fight booth is based on Ron Taylor's Boxing Booth that appears at the Dorset Steam Fair every year. 

A New Dredd Movie?!

My first 'proper' Dredd done in 1992

Yes, that's right folks they're planning another one! I remember the last one only too well (I wish I didn't!). In those days I knew Jock (who's designing the new movie) as a wee laddie who used to hang around the comic shop in Salisbury (Floppy Tongue) - I had recently lost my job after Roy of the Rovers collapsed (suspected hamstring). 

I worked on the comic spin-off from the movie - Judge Dredd Lawman of The Future. The idea was to make it more kid-friendly, something I was all in favour of (in fact, I still think it's a shame that when 2000ad drifted so far towards adult comics there was nothing to fill the void - the first 400 issues are still my 2000ad era), sadly Lawman of the Future became an attempt to make a non-violent Judge Dredd comic - which is like having non-wet water.

Another early sample (With Judge Death) and some

Lawman of the Future art - note Dredd's redesigned uniform (Gah!)

On the whole my artwork for the project was ropey as hell and heavily influenced my my hero Mick (in those days Mike) McMahon. Many of the artists and writers moved on to work for the megazine and 2000ad, I decided I wasn't good enough, or perhaps more to the point I just didn't have the will to make myself good enough for that kind of work. 2000ad itself had became very painterly and self indulgent in those days (like an acrylic convention for fans of Frank Frazetta fans) and so I went off to do 'funny' comics instead. It's interesting to note that 2000ad reverted to more traditional virtues like storytelling, and recent stories like Stickleback are every bit as good the stories from its heyday.

Last time they made a movie of Dredd I came out of it feeling like I just sat and watched someone giving my granny a kicking for two hours. This time around Dredd is more like a distant Uncle so I probably won't be so mortified even if they do give him another seeing to. Mind you, I'd rather they just let him keep his helmet on this time and made mega city look like the spaghetti street, pepper pot land that Mick McMahon drew, where people wore giant rabbit shoes and mushroom hats. Maybe that's just me showing my age.

Mick McMahon shows how it's done!

This is how Mega City will always look to me

Having said that, Jock is a sickeningly talented young fellow with a wonderful grasp of Dredd and his world so I reckon he'll make sure we get the real deal this time. Best of luck, Jock.

(Actually I must also give a mention to my fellow HUZZAHer, Dave Taylor, who is already well known to people who haven't had their heads in the sand like me, but whose work I'm just discovering. And he has a fantastical take on Mega City that avoids the predictable dark and indiscernible, Bladerunner-in-the-fog look that saves the artist time but makes Mega City seem like any other futropolis. Dave's is a beautiful Mega City that people live in.  I never understood the desire to have gothic shadowy cities that look nice in pictures or on film, but don't look like anyone would ever live in. What's a city without people?)

HUZZAH!!

HUZZAH!! is a turn based sequential art game (a what?). It's like a comic strip game of consequences: each artist draws a page or section of a page and then the next artist takes over and continues the story and leaves it for the next artist... and so on. The previous version of this game Who Killed Round Robin ran from January 1st 2008 to December 31st 2008, Huzzah will run until December 31st 2009 and can be found here.

So far there are 8 of us on board for HUZZAH!: Ian Culbard, Dave Taylor, Colin Fawcett, Chris Rodenhurst (Sketchybeast), Faz Choudhury, Matt Brooker (D'Israeli), Paul Harrison-Davies and me. A great collection of artists with a mind-boggling variety of styles.

I've just done my first plate which was fun/hair raising and I'm hooked already.