Mind the Gap!

Work in progress on page one of The Inverted Coma

Every freelancer's nightmare is approaching me - a gap in the schedule!! Best way to deal with this is to panic, start digging up old science fiction stories and draw frantically. Well, that's my way of coping. Since I found out I had a dreaded 'gap' approaching I've been drawing this page above in my spare time, if all else fails I'll send the finished story to people and hope to get some work. In the meantime I'm sending out old stuff like this:

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.

The Inverted Coma

This is another project that needs finishing. I intended it as a sample strip for 2000ad in an attempt to get some comic strip work last year. This is one of the few finished panels (yes, the people in the bar are supposed to be all in black and white). It needs a few changes before I'm totally happy with it.

I've been so busy since I started on it that I never got round to finishing it. I work full time as an illustrator and writer, but I usually still make time to work on my own projects. This year I've been doing some comic strip work, writing and illustrating Doctor Who strips, (more of that in a moment) and it's taken so much of my time that I've let a lot of my own projects slip.