Walk without rhythm.

Here a shot of Kim that I’ve only finshed inking last night. I was really tired from a weekend of “real life” i.e. looking for important forms that are hiding from me and sorting out all those annoying details that make up your life in the digital age (is it wrong that I envy cavemen and they’re life style?) but I forced myself to do some work and I’m glad I did.
To keep me going I stuck on a copy of Dune which has been sitting in a pile of unwatched dvd’s for about 3 months. It’s a pretty good film but much like The Birth of a Nation is racist and The Passion takes a cheap shot at Jews, the overall point of Dune is that all ginger people are sick, backwards, psycho's or worst Sting. Anyway that what I thought the film was about. Hmmmmm maybe I should of payed more attention.

Anatomy of a Kebab shop.

The problem is the further I get into Dirge 2, the less I’m sure what to show and what to hold back. I don’t want to give away too much to those who bought a copy. But to be fair I don’t think it would ruin anybody day to show this scene of a Police van driving by a Kebab shop window.

Panel 1 is the thumbnail. I can’t remember who said it or if I read it somewhere but it was something like “ Sometimes you can draw in five seconds what you can’t in five hours.” Which is true as when you don’t have to worry about all the little things and have a much faster mind to pen relationship you can get real energy in to a thumbnail. Often thumbnails can have something to them that the finished drawing doesn’t. But saying all that I’m pretty happy how this panel turned out (hence why I used it as an example). My thumbnails do tend to be very rough, as I don’t like to over work a scene before I get to the actual drawing.

Panel 2. Sadly my pencil artwork is always too faint to scan and doesn’t really come up so the next panel is the inked version. I try and keep as close to the thumbnail as I can. I’ve had this thing lately about extras in scenes. Rather then just drawing in some random guy\girl that vaguely looks human, I really wanted to have people that looked interesting and might catch the readers’ eye for a second. Takes a little bit more effort but I think it adds to the story.

Panel 3 is the finished frame. The thing I was happiest about with Dirge is how the tone\texture played out. I knew I wanted to do something different with them and I think its one of the strongest points in the comic. Its hard to build an atmosphere within a comic and sometimes its even harder for a comic to have a look of it’s own.

This scene was inspired but late nights waiting for your order in a Kebab shop and just drunkenly looking out the window at the nightlife going on. Although it’s a pretty small frame and doesn’t take up much room on the final page, its still one of my favourite images so far.

From news page to blog.

With the fact that (A) those little blogs I’d write on my myspace got more hits then I was expecting (meaning somebody was reading them) and (B) I could up date on news straight away instead of waiting around like I had to with my old news page, I’ve decided to start up a blog.

I’m not really sure if what the internet really needs now is another bloody comic book artist going on about what movies his seen and how rough life is on those who us in the sequential industry (but they should of thought of that before inviting blogging.)

Anyway I picked a real bad week to start up a blog as my weekend is packed, but I should be posting up new things in the next couple of days, including work from Dirge 2 for the first time. (I know I keep saying I’ll post some stuff from Dirge 2 and haven’t yet, but I’ll quit being a tease and do so in the coming days as it seems like a good way to start off this blog).