Trapped.

There’s something a bit Sergio Leone about this shot, I think. All those teenage years of watching westerns are finally starting to pay off.

I was thinking of posting something else this week. To have a break from all the sequential work I’ve been doing of late, I decided to have a crack at doing a cover for Issue #3. It’s all scanned and ready to go, it’s just I’m not sure how I feel about that particular image yet. I can’t decide if it’s good enough to be a cover for a start. I’ll leave it for a few days and see how I feel about it then. I’m sure I’ll post it at some point even if I don’t end up using it. I just want to come to a decision on if it’s cover worthy or not. The jury’s still out. I’d also post the page from last year I ended up redrawing, but sadly that page gives too much of the plot away, and would be a bit of a spoiler… actually it would be a massive spoiler.

Big thanks also for all the birthday wishes from the last couple of days. Turning 30 sucks, but sitting around eating birthday-cake, and having a Dexter season 5 DVD marathon, while drinking leftover vodka from Xmas has been very enjoyable.

I Agree With The Internet.

The ‘6’ in Resident Evil 6 does look like a Giraffe getting a blow-job. See…?

Watching this after giving up on video-games a few years back is painful. Right now, the way I’m feeling, I could happily snap all my pencils in half (which would be a lot as I bought a 10-pack just before Xmas), blow what money I’ve got saved up on an X-box 360, and just spend the rest of my days slaying the un-dead. Buy copies of games I had to miss out on like Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising or Dead Island. Maybe buy one of those little fridges to keep cold cans of coke in. I can’t remember the last time a shot a digital Zombie in the face… sigh… Plus Gamers are very in these days. I know Gamers. I could be in the in-crowd, for once. No one likes guys who draw horror-comics.

Bit the bullet this week and bought a book I’ve been kind of wanting to read, and yet avoiding for a while now. Dracula: The Undead is the ‘official sequel’ to Dracula, written by Bram Stoker’s great grand-nephew Dacre Stoker. The book didn’t get very good reviews form Amazon, where I bought it, but I have been wanting to read it since it was released. I probably wouldn’t have “bit the bullet” if I had noticed this book was 413 pages long, however. That’s a big book to get through for something that so many people think is terrible. I’m only twelve pages into it and not hating it yet. Much like Anno Dracula, I’m getting the feeling there’ll probably won’t be much Dracula actually in it. I like stories done in the Dracula Universe, so I’ll give it a shot. That said, it does say only on the second page that when hit by sun-light, Dracula turns to ash… you sure this guy’s related to Bram Stoker? I want an DNA test… that's film Dracula.

Cry Baby.

It all ends in tears in this latest shot. I’ve tried to make every issue a little darker then the one before it, so this being issue #3, I’m currently setting up the really dark stuff for the forth and final issue and getting to draw some pretty gruesome stuff.

I really wanna see The Theatre Bizarre. I love a good horror-anthology (be it books, films or comics.) They’ve been out of vogue for a while now, but I can see them making a come back. What with a new Stephen King anthology in the works, I think their time is due. This is probably the one I most want to see at the moment.



I’d love to put together, or at least be part of a comic-book horror-anthology one day. I keep meaning to get around to doing something digital on the side. Something as either a PDF or print-on-demand comic, that I can put together with other fellow horror artists\writers. Maybe get some short-stories, pin-ups and photos in there, too. At moment though, however, sadly I don’t think I have the contacts or my fingers in the right horror-community pies to make that happen. I need to make some new morbid friends. Maybe think up a theme and good title for it.

Soulless Voodoo Guy Sketch.

It was a nice treat when an old college friend got in contact a year or two back and it turned out we were both just starting out on doing an original graphic-novel each. Mine a 96-page modern horror story. His a 100-page story based on a character he had created during college. It was nice to know someone else was in the same (or at least very similar) boat. It’s been nice swapping pages back-and-forth and checking in to see how it was going since then. Chatting about how far we’d each got and the different processes we were both using. At one point during one of these chats, I said if his book was going to have a pin-up section (I love a good pin-up section in a graphic-novel) then I’d happily do a page for it. I’ve not really had any free time this year just gone to follow up on that offer. These pass several months have been spent doing Issue #3 (or pages 48-72 if we’re sticking with the idea of a 96-page graphic-novel.) Also my friend’s style is very unique, and I did start to wonder more and more if I could pull off drawing his character in my art-style. It’s something that’s been dogging me for a few months now. When I found I had a bit of free time this weekend, and an urge to do a bit of sketching in my sketch-book, I came to the decision that rather then jump right into doing a big pin-up, I’d maybe test the waters first by doing a sketch, to see if it could be done. I have to say I was pretty pleased with the result. It came out a lot better then I thought it was going to. It’s only a head-shot, but it did clear up in my mind how his character worked drawn in my style. I found doing this sketch a big help. It was a big relief to know I could do a take on his work. It was also nice to draw someone else’s character, something I rarely do and wish I had the chance to do more.

I hope to get a proper pin-up done at some point during 2012, but for now here’s a tastier. My friend’s (Dave A.K.A Otis P Jive Funk) deviant-art page can be found HERE. Why not check it out for some of his great artwork, and to see how good or bad you think my take on his character (who’s called Soulless Voodoo Guy) is. Dave’s style is coming from a lot of different places. There’s a bit of Dave Cooper in there. Bit of Matt Groening. Bit of Tim Burton. His art also reminds me of LEGO at times for some reason. It’s great stuff and worth a look.

Thanks For The Nightmares, Internet.

Wow… Beavis And Butt-head ‘untooned’ is freaky. Don’t get me wrong, they look great… but just a tad creepy.

Audio-Squatters.

Remember when approaching birthdays were met with excitement and joy? Now I’m turning 30... it’s all dread from here on. At least a forthcoming birthday will be a good excuse to order the latest box-set of Dexter. God, I love that show. I hope they do turn it into a movie.

I’ll take my mind off my impending birthday by posting this latest panel. If you do horror comics, doing people with frighten faces is kind of a big deal. Personally, I think it’s as important as how big and scary your monster are. I think readers channel any emotion (hopefully, that emotion being fear) through the reaction of the character it’s happening to. Here’s my latest stab at trying to do a good fright shot. I hope it hits the mark (or at least dents the mark.)

The bad news is I still can’t get the theme from Tenebre out of my head. In fact it gets worse, as now this theme has also claimed audio-squatter’s-rights in my brain and keeps going around, constantly playing in the back of my head.



The good news is I’ve downloaded them off iTunes and plan to play them both into submission over the weekend. I find the only way to get a tune out of your head is to play it until your brain gets bored of it and moves on to something else.

Disco Of The Dead.

Lately I just can’t get the theme from Tenebre out of my head. It’s strange that Disco music could have made such a good soundtrack to a horror movie. They’re two things you wouldn’t think would mix, but they totally do. It’s fast becoming one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. I need to get round to checking out more music from Goblin. The DVD to Tenebre has as a nice extra of Goblin doing a live performance of this song.