I've just finished my strip for the upcoming ABC Warriors Special issue of the Eagle Awards nominated fanzine Zarjaz.
The strip is another creative partnership with my good friend Rich Clements. I was really chuffed because Rich's script included a few panels with all the ABC warriors as they appeared in the Black Hole story line.
Pat Mills' original story, which marked the comics' debut of Simon Bisley, had a massive effect on me as a child - one of the major things that made me want to be a comic artist all those years ago!
I made the somewhat foolish decision to try to ape a little of the Biz's style - I can say now, that I didn't quite achieve the dynamism that he seemed to so effortlessly inject into his ABC Warriors pages - but I did learn some stuff as a result and it was a fun strip to do!
When the issue is out, I will share a bit more than this one panel... because I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise!
The public version of the Get Well Carlos Comic, aka Supersquirrel Undefeated aka The Secret Project is now available for download.
Two options for download, both are a 54Mb. These links will not work forever, so I would suggest you download sooner rather than later to avoid disappointment.
zshare
dropbox
I'd also like to suggest that you make a donation to a Cancer charity too, by way of payment for the comic.
To go along with the Lawmaster I made a while ago in Google Sketch-Up, I've built a section of Mega-City One. I've invested some time making vehicles and zooms and bits and pieces to help me frame my panels for a Judge Dredd strip by Lee Robson that I've blogged a little about before.
Click image for a huge, zoom-able versionThis is still a work in progress and I'll probably use different views than the one shown here, but that's the beauty of a simple 3D package, I make this once, then I can move things around for the best framing of each panel without having to reconstruct, redraw and redo all those little details again and again. Admittedly, I will to some extent, because I will only be using the exported images as under-lays for each of the panels.
Other resolutions:
700 x 3701600 x 846
Well this weekend was my second year at BICS. ( The Birmingham International Comics' Show, as previously linked to.)
FRIDAY:
We had decided to take the hassle out of the journey and went via train, by booking ages in advance, the good lady and I got there and back for the sum total of £32!
I arrived pretty relaxed and uncharacteristically chipper and confident. The Hotel, Holiday Inn (Queensway, City Centre) was brilliant and in that respect it was a nice contrast to The Britannia that we stayed in last year. The only other thing to say was that we were in what appeared to be a room equipped for disabled people and for the entirety of the stay I had this scene from the it crowd in my head!
The evening was spent in the fabulous Wellington pub - a real ale pub with a selection of 10 real ales on tap. Met up with Rich Clements, Vicky Stonebridge and Dave Evans (the FutureQuake gang) and also Duncan Nimmo, another contributor to the current issue Dogbreath. It was a fine evening with good people and lubricated with very good quality drink! I think the strong beer contributed to a weird dream about submitting my work to Tharg, in the dream he liked my samples, but I awoke from the dream feeling somewhat scuppered and a bit groggy. After an hour or so, I drifted back to sleep.
SATURDAY:
Headed over to the ThinkTank/Millenium Point. I had a quick chat to my good pals
PJ Holden and
Dylan Teague - and as always, they were generous and helpful in reviewing my porfolio. Then it was a quick stop over at the FutureQuake table to pick up my comp copies of Zarjaz & Dogbreath both of these are
still available to buy if you haven't already ordered your copies. I showed Dave and Rich the art for the strip I'd been working on for them too, I'm chuffed to say they were pleased with the pages.
There are a number of developments from Saturday that I'd like to keep under my hat for now, suffice to say I think I'm moving in the right direction...
I once again had the opportunity to show Tharg my samples - those very ones I was working on only last week. I still don't think I feel confident that I'm interpreting his comments correctly. Basically he said that there were some nice things going on in the pages and that I should send the samples in to the usual address and that he would put them on file and let me know if a suitable strip arose. I'm taking that with a pinch of salt as I don't want to go getting ahead of myself. (I did say I would rework a couple of panels before I submitted the samples, see below).
Over the course of the day, I met up with some cool people - Matt Soffe and his good friend Olly, Jim Campbell, Jim Boswell, Nic Wilkinson, Gary Erskine, Stacy Whittle, Ben Clark, Matt Banners and Paul Gravett amongst other exellent folk whose names I'm ashamed to say I have forgotten.
The evening was spent in the Briar Rose, the local Weatherspoon's pub just a few doors down from the Wellington. In short, great laughs, good people.
SUNDAY:
My head was a little swimmy, but I was buoyed up by the developments of the previous day. All I really had time for was a quick chat and cheerio before my portfolio review with Michael Wright - a DC commissioning editor. He said he thought I had some drawing chops - I took this as a compliment, ultimately I don't think he thought I was up to the required standard for DC or Marvel but he said I might make it as a penciller at somepoint... ahh well, whatever will be will be. I made a quick dash out of there thinking I had only a narrow window in which to catch my train out of Birmingham... we ended up at Birminham New street station about an hour early - but that was good as it gave me a chance to take stock of events and have a good chat with my better half about what it meant for us going forward.
Of all the pieces in my portfolio, there must be something about
this piece, because it caused for the second year running, by far and away the most comment. I guess it says something about the comic reading demographic - worth pursuing in more pin-up pieces I reckon then.
Sorry for the wordy post - normal service will resume in due course.
This is another panel from the strip I'm doing for Dogbreath... and, from the end of the week, you'll be able to pre-order both Dogbreath and the issue of Zarjaz containing the strips I did previously... exciting isn't it!
There's cause for celebration again, as I had a very encouraging e-mail from
Paul Gravett on Sunday. For those of you who haven't heard of him, Paul is a tireless supporter of the comics medium, through his own works, journalism and the organisation of the
Comica festival.
Pat Mills had suggested (at the signing) that I contact Paul and I'm chuffed I did because this is what he had to say:
...I've taken a look at your site and blog - Pat's got a good eye, and he's right, you're talented and just need that good story to work on.
You're on my radar now...
I know it's not an offer of work. But I do feel that I am close to making that leap from
amateur to
professional paid work. With the pot emptying faster that I can fill it, that would be no bad thing.
I'm hoping that this new fangled "extra section thing" will take the weightier text away from my postings - streamlining my blog for those people who're only interested in the pictures. If it works, it's something that I'm hoping to use regularly and you'll have to hit 'read more' for
most of my driveling from now on. Another advantage will be if the content isn't 100% suitable for all the family, that too can be hidden away here!
The massive news that I've been sitting on for a couple of weeks is that I have designed a new logo for the 2000AD fanzine Zarjaz. Please do check out the home of the Fanzine at The Quaequam Blog.
Yes, it's another one of those ambigram things. I'm really pretty chuffed about this, and for another scoop here how it's going to look on the cover of issue 08!
I also have a strip in this issue as previously blogged about. Copies will be ready for BICS on 3rd October and will be available there, via The Quaequam Blog or the FutureQuake shop. There will also be new issues of Dogbreath (with another strip by me) and Future Quake available too.
Awesome Rogue Trooper artwork courtesy of the ever brilliant PJHolden and Steve Denton (colours).
Gonna have to go before I start giggling like a little girl - I'm so excited!
I've been doing some fanzine work for the splendid chaps at FutureQuake Press. I've already done a six page story for the next issue of Zarjaz and I've just finished a three page Gronk story for the next issue of Dogbreath... I'm pretty chuffed as I lettered this strip too. I've got another strip for Dogbreath in the works as well that should be pretty cool too...
Find out more about these two brilliant publications at The Quaequam blog. If you need some reading material until your next Prog or Meg arrives, swing by their shop and order yourself some of the finest small press sci-fi you're likely to read.
This panel is from the six pager, I won't say which 2000AD 'parent' story it's from as I don't want to give too much away until the strip is printed. I felt that I should use a hatching style on this for a number of reasons, evoke part of what the original strip had and also because this is set in the 60s, I wanted a traditional 'older' look to the work - on reflection I'm not sure my hatching is up to the standard I wanted.
This panel is from the Gronk strip. I've used a home-made digital tone as I wanted to control how the 'grey' areas would appear in the final print. I also wanted to test-drive something I'd experimented with before. The other thing to mention for those of you are just along for the ride is that this panel has my depictions of Johnny Alpha and Wulf Sternhammer from Strontium Dog.
I'll submit these (and the Dredd Pin-up) to Tharg, and hopefully share his feedback as soon as I have it!
I do have some more, enormous, headline grabbing news that I can't blog about yet, but when the next issue of Zarjaz comes out... you'll know about it!
looking forward to reading it Kev!
Really looking forward to seeing this, Kev. It's weird, following in the (artistic) footsteps of someone you've admired, isn't it? I found myself unable to attempt anything other than Ezquerra-vision when I had a bash at that Strontium Dog story!