Tuesday 31 July 2007

Zombie Lake.

After working for ages yesterday I thought I’d take the last couple of hours off and watch a film. I walk over to the small pile that sits on my scanner of unwatched DVD’s but I knew which one I was going to choose. Ever since I saw the you tube video trailer I’ve been wanting to see Zombie Lake (can’t be arsed to repost trailer so go back my post on June the 19th if you curious.) After reading on my blog about this film a friend said he’d seen it on ebay for cheap, so I thought I’d threat myself.

I can see why people wouldn’t like Zombie Lake. Green faced nazi undead isn’t for everybody (or anybody really) but I have to say I thought it was all right. It is what it is. Sure the effects are terrible with green make up that stop before the collar and the world first (and last) zombie on zombie knife fight (about as action packed as it sounds) but I enjoyed it. Any film were half way through a van full of female basketball players turn up to go skinny-dipping before being dragged off by lime coloured, dead nazis is worth a look.

Like most zombie movies there are some slow bits (weirdly this film has an all right plot) so I kept my sketch’s book next to me (something I should do more often when watching films) and to make up for the sloppy zombies I drew my own. I forgot how much fun it is to draw zombies. No wonder everybody’s doing it.


One thing I forgot to mention in my last post when I was summing up last week was the moment when I was walking pass the Job centre and spotted some guy picking fag butts out of the drain at the front and quickly pocketing them. That was a pretty weird and sad sight. Still now everybody has to smoke out side that guys probably never going have to buy a pack of fags again. The streets, drains and gutters are going to be choked with fag butts.

Saturday 28 July 2007

Saturday Sum Up.

Busy week with a lot of ups and downs this week. I posted off my submission on Tuesday, which was one day later, then I wanted to but one day earlier then I thought I would. I was working till three in the morning and then for some reason couldn’t get to sleep till after 6am and then had to wake up before 9am to walk in to town and post it. It was a weird experience walking around on a really hot sunny day without hardly any sleep the night before. Kind of dream like with both lack of sleep and the heat going on.

Some how through all the kids on holiday and all the student I managed to get tickets to see The Simpsons Movie. It was pretty rough sitting in a cinema full of annoying kids (especially some little fat girl who got bored and just went round trying to get all the boys attention by tapping them on the head and starting conversation when they clearly just wanted to watch the film.) Which is why I probably won’t see Transformers at the cinema. Life to short to spend it in a dark cinema with a load of podgy attention seeking kids and they’re lazy podgy discipline shy parents.

Also in brief this week. Renewing my website (or webs(H)ite as I call it when I’m in a bad mood with it.) Went to see another film at the small (well one small room) art house cinema called, the science of sleep. Went drinking with friends as one of them going on holiday. Vowed to cut down on my drinking when I got home and saw how bloodshot may eyes were. I just seem to spend the whole of Saturday these days in a state of being hung over.

Finally got back to page 13 of Dirge, which I started over a month ago. Apart from a couple things I got to do this weekend I’m hoping to get some serious inking done.

I might of seen The Simpsons film and a Michel Gondry film. But by far the funniest thing I’ve seen this week is this Youtube Vid. Who ever said two wrongs don’t make a right had clearly never seen this.

Monday 23 July 2007

Ta-Da.

My plans to have my submission ready for tomorrow are no more and pretty much as I thought its looking a lot more likely mid-week. This isn’t the worst thing in the world and hopefully the extra time will pay off. One of the reason for the delay was I wanted to redo the title on one of the pages. This took way more time then I thought but was worth the effort I feel. I have the first page more-or-less finished but they’re a few tricky bits on the second page and lettering takes it time. The problem is just as your finishing up your notice something else wrong. It like that scene it cool hand luke when they keep making him dig and then filling in a hole. Cleaning up and lettering is differently my least favourite part of being a comic book artist. Anyway here a lettered panel to give you an idea of how its looking.

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Titleless.

Today (well tonight really) I thought I’d post the first two panels of the second page of an upcoming submission I’m working on at the moment. They look a little bare without type and the first panel still needs to have a title drawn on but you get the idea. Hopefully they should be finished by the end of the weekend, ready for posting on Monday. I’ve got some tricky bits ink wise coming up on the second page, so if all goes well Monday if not mid-week next week.




In the post today I got a letter in regards to my taxes this year. I was pretty sure I got a similar one at the end of last week so I scan through it once and then throw it on my desk never to be looked at again. I’m pretty sure it a plot by the government to throw so much information at you that you can’t take it all in. Not to mention the waste of paper they use just to tell you the same thing over and over again. As I said this letter was looked over once then left on my messy desk to fend for itself and just be forgotten. Never to be reopened and looked at again, but in a quiet moment of later on I figured I’d better give it another scan just to make sure there nothing I had to do or they were asking me for. I scanned over it again and towards the end saw a figure. “Oh shit,” I thought, “don’t tell me I got to pay that?” and read on only to find that I’d been repaid back some money and at the bottom of the page was a cheque. Don’t get me wrong it was a nice surprise but I shudder when I think how close I came to throwing that letter away and if it hadn’t been a slow day today I probably wouldn’t of looked twice at that letter and would never of found that cheque. The cheque would of expired and my money (which I didn’t even know I had coming) would be gone. The envelope it came in looked so cheap and junk mail like, I had no sign that this was an important letter. It was just a bit of good luck I looked twice but it freaked me out to think if this had ever happened before. Maybe really I’m a millionaire and the cheque on my messy desk or rotting in my desk draw and I’d never know.

I’m feeling very paranoid today but slightly richer.

Thursday 12 July 2007

A Coat From Another Blog.

A while ago on my Myspace blog a few months back I was going on about a coat I had my eye on but was to expensive. The plan was to save up slowly until I could afford it. I kept my eye on it and was sure somebody would buy it as it was such a good coat but for some reason no one did. I went in on my weekly check this week hoping it hasn’t been sold or taken off the shelf only to find they’d cut £20 off the price. To be honest there probably wasn’t that many coats in store as its summer (apparently) so I thought I’d better capitalize on this bit of good luck and bought it. I know I’ve been complaining about this poor British summer but now I’m kind of hoping for a bit of rain so I can wear my new coat.

Today I also meet up with friends for a couple of drinks and to kill some time. Part of this time killing was spent checking out the local Pier, which has kind of been reopened after being closed for being unsafe. It basically at the moment just a bar and bingo hall and a few of those claw games. Since we were there and I wasn’t really up for playing bingo (things haven’t got that bad yet) I thought I’d try my luck on one of the claw games. I’d been wanting to win a Homer Simpson for ages when I spotted a machine with the Simpson in it. I had a couple of goes and notice the claw wasn’t bad for once, it had a pretty good grip for a claw game so I had another go. It wasn’t helping that one friend kept repeating “it rigged” and started walking away, but on my last go after a couple of near misses I got my second bit of good luck today and bagged me a Homer who now sitting on my shelf.

Pretty good day apart from the fact I’m now feeling a little sick from eating to many oaty Hobnobs biscuits.

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Anatomy Of A {Part 2}

While not spending my time watching Midget fights online or scaring sexy middle class women into thinking I’m the antichrist I do actually find some time to draw. Last time in ‘Anatomy Of A’ I went through a scene in Dirge where a Police van is driving pass a Kebab shop window. This time I thought I’d go over a scene I’ve mention before in my blog. The image of a young man having to have a traffic cone pulled off that his got stuck on his head while drunk (if any of this stuff starts to turn up in Superman comics I’m suing.) This is how I thought the scene should look when I thumb nailed it.


I wasn’t sure how it would look when I wrote it and was probably the hardest panel on the page to thumbnail but once I had it down on the page I was happy with the rough. When it came time to draw it I knew it was going to be a tough panel. A lot to fit into such a small frame for a start. I was hoping to prove myself wrong and get it down first time, but after a couple of hours I wasn’t happy with what I ended up with. Most of the figures looked awkward, the faces were appalling and the foreshortening on the guys head\traffic cone hadn’t worked or looked half as good as it did in the thumbnail. As I’ve pointed out before my pencil work is usually too faint to scan so I took this picture and brought up the contrast. Hopefully you should be able to make it out. Then again hopefully not. Note the big cross through it. Nothing says wrong like a big angry cross.

I moved on with the page figuring I’d come back to it and try and figure something out. Once I’d had another couple of panels done, I decided to have another go. I had the idea of scanning the tiny thumbnail and blowing it up to the size of the frame. It seemed a bit desperate and I’d never done it before but I thought I’d give it a shot. The thumbnail looked great blown up but lacked slight details that had to be sketched in. All in all it was a lot smoother to draw in then the first time but still a bit of a battle. I think the second frame is a massive improvement on the first and I’m glad I redrew it. It also felt pretty weird working from a blown up thumbnail but I feel it worked out well and might try it again at some point.

Friday 6 July 2007

Life Made Easy.

Like most people I hate having to get up in the morning. But sadly some times you just have too (funerals, House is on fire, Etc.) But I’ve been working on a move that makes it a lot easier when you just don’t have the strength to sit up first thing in the morning. First remove any covers then roll on your back and pull your knees up into your chest you should be holding the underside of your thighs just above the back of your knees. Then let your legs go limp but keep your hold tight and as your legs give in to gravity and fall back to earth if you’ve done it right you should now be sitting up right feeling slightly daze and confused. I can’t think of any easy way to get your dressing gown on and get to the bathroom (unless you sleep in your dressing gown in the bath) but I find mumbling and swearing helps the process along.

Next week I’ll teach you how to defend yourself and family from man-eating bears using only a used yoghurt pot, dental floss, and a cardboard cut out of Noel Edmonds.

Sunday 1 July 2007

Crunchy Summer.

One of the major down sides of this muggy excuse for a summer is that there been a lot less flesh on show. Usually the summer turns every one into horny dogs, but this summer nearly everyone turned into confused, muggy puddles. Which is why it caught me by surprise the other day when I was standing in the queue and realized I was surrounded by three women, all hopefully feeling the summer vibe. Ahead of me in the queue was this posh looking blonde buying a bottle of what looked like Champaign and a Giraffe made out of wire which was carefully being put in bubble wrap. There was also the young check out girl and a woman behind me with fuzzy hair buying chocolate and gossip mags. In the middle of them all it suddenly hit me what a let down this summer had been women wise and could this be the start of a more exciting summer? All three girls were nice (especially the posh blonde with the wire Giraffe). The checkout girl started scanning my stuff while smiling up at me. I start bagging my stuff while looking back and forth between the girls, and then the checkout girl had to ruin it all by going “that’s six pounds sixty-six pence” as she said it you could see it dawn on her and they all suddenly started to look genuinely uncomfortable and I thought I’d better get out of there before they started shaving my head looking for a tiny flower head looking mark of three sixes all meeting up at the tip. So I held back the urge to scream, “I’m not the antichrist, I’m a nice guy” and left before they brought out the overpriced holy water.


Everything’s against me this summer. Even God. “Sob”