I Have A Plan.

I have a nasty feeling I may have used that heading before but I’m to busy\lazy to go back through previous posts and check. It only a small shot this frame but for some reason I think it one of my favourites from my last story.
I got £7.99 or 3cd’s worth of ‘Trance Euphoria’ dance music through the post this morning. It all part of my plan to get more artwork done. It’s not uncommon for me to work late into the night as it a lot more quite and less things to distract me. I tend to be more of a nighttime person then a morning person anyway. Thanks to my wireless headphones I got a couple of weeks ago I can now also chill out and put some music on in the late hours. I can also walk down stairs to make a sandwich or have a pee while listening to music. They’re good for up to a hundred metres or so they say. Up till now the only thing I’ve had to listen to in the background at night is the TV so it’s nice to have music to listen to late at night without having headphone wire to get caught up in. I’ve had a big urge to listen to some more chilled out stuff when I’m working for a while now. Don’t get me wrong, having some good rock music going when I draw during the day or into the night is good, but for those early hours you don’t want someone screaming in your ears (unless your trying to stay awake.) I remember years ago when I was still a teenager and trying to get my head round the idea of inking my artwork, putting on OK Computer and chilling out and really for the first time enjoying inking. Probably why I also got a copy of Amnesiac through the post this morning in case the Euphoria stuff is a dud. I can’t really say I know that much about dance music so I had to go on other peoples reviews and comments. I can’t wait for the next time I get to stay up put on some Euphoria and really try and get some work done. Sadly not tonight though. I have to be up early in the morning for work.

I always like to hear what other people listen to when they draw or ink. Should try and put together the ultimate compilation CD to draw to at some point. Everybody gets to throw in a track.

Got your Watchmen graphic novel yet?

ZOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Coming to the last bit of this short story now, which means it harder to find shots to show that don’t give away too much. I’ll finish up by posting a couple of Spaceship shots this week I think. There’s something a bit Garry Anderson about the above shot. It does make me want to hum the theme tune to Sting Ray.

Something For The Weekend.

As I’m pretty sure I’ve said before, flicking ink is a fine art in itself. If (or rather When in my case) it does get a bit out of hand you can usually bring it back under control with a bit of white out. This shot just looked a mess before the white out. Now I think the splatter has a real force behind it.

The first part of this story will hopefully be a bit like if Sam Peckinpah directed Star Wars.

Say What? No… Really? No…

Pride And Predator. This feels like one of those bad April fools gags expect it’s only the end of February. I’ll believe it when I see it. Not that I probably will get to see it as my local cinema seems to go more for family friendly films not movies over a PG rating. I always miss out on the newest horror movies because my cinema would rather play animated movies about talking animals with celebrity voices. And even if they did by some luck show it most of my friends nowadays just watch new movies illegally online and don’t want to leave the house to see them on the big screen. Errrrr, anyway back to my original point. I’ll believe it when I’m sitting in the cinema (not my local cinema obviously. A cinema in a near by town which I’d have to make a big effort to get too) watching the film itself on the big screen (alone and friendless.)

I Fear Change.

It’s the end of an era… well no it’s not, they’ve just rejigged The Simpsons intro and made it in HD. Plus I live in the UK and don’t have Satellite TV so I’m not going to see this intro until about 2035AD and by then they’d probably have rejigged it again to make it in hologram vision or something.

Being Green-ish.

The gunfight rages on.


You notice how hard it is to be greener nowadays? We’re told to turn off any lights or gadgets not being used. Nothing should be left on stand by. Then some time before Xmas my freeview box on my TV started to have to take ages to scan for TV listing. Before the listing were just there when you turned the thing on and now you have to let it do this slow (it’s at least a couple of minutes) scan every time you switch on. Then it puts up a screen saying that if I leave my freeview box on stand by 24hours a day it’ll update itself so it won’t need to rescan every time I turn the TV on. Even though for months it didn’t need to rescan every time or be left on stand by. Plus this week I treated myself to a set of wireless headphones that say when you first take them out of the box, that you should charge them for SIXTEEN HOURS. That’s a long time to have to charge something. Must thing’s you can put on to charge before you go to sleep. Sixteen hours is nearly a whole day. I don’t know if every time after that you’ve got to charge them for sixteen hour or from the second charge on would it’ll be quicker. The manual that came with it is massive and yet only a tiny part of it is printed in English. It one of those ones that unfolds like a map rather then a booklet and the English section is tiny. Like some kind of bad joke after you’ve spent ages looking for the English section. On top of that my Mobile seems to need charging more and more now. But that could be that I’ve had it for a several years now and it’s on its way out. It so old it doesn’t even have a camera on it. Everybody’s phones got a camera on it.

Watched the trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s new movie. Reminded me I really need to watch Death Proof soon. I always fall behind with Tarantino movies. I watched Kill Bill 1 at the cinema and didn’t see Kill Bill 2 until a few years later when it was on TV.

My Favourite New Urban Legend.

I like a good Urban Legend even if 99% of times they’re clearly bollocks. Here my favourite new one at the moment, Polybius. Hasn’t beaten my all time favourite about a woman who worked in a post room of a business who tongue suddenly started to swell up bigger every day until she had to go to a Doctor. They couldn’t work out what was wrong and so ran test but everything checked out while her tongue got bigger and bigger. In the end they sent her for an x-ray and when they got it back they had to rush the woman into the operating theatre and remove what turned out to be a live, giant Cockroach that had been growing in her tongue. No one could understand how it had got there until a few months later when another lady from the same office came in with the same problem. Swelling tongue with a giant Cockroach growing inside that had to be cut out. They started to figure out the problem when it turned out they both worked in the same post room. They’re little post room in the office was in the basement and Cockroaches were not uncommon. They worked out that the Cockroaches liked to eat the glue on the envelopes they kept in the post room. When the lady would send out letters they’d have to lick the sticky bits that the Cockroaches liked to eat and because the Roaches spent so long on those envelopes sometimes they’d lay they’re eggs there. While licking hundreds of envelopes over time they would often get paper cuts on they’re tongues from licking the envelopes without care. The Cockroaches eggs would get into these cuts and then the wound would heal and they’d grow inside these Lady’s tongues. And then you finish by pointing out that most envelopes are at some point kept in giant warehouses in bulk waiting to be packaged and at night Cockroaches crawl over them and try and eat the glue on the back.

Better Or Worse?

One of the things I’ve really been trying to push myself on lately is if I don’t think something working right that I should try and make sure it works more to how I had plan it. I know that at some point you’ve just got to be able to let a page go but sometimes just a quick touch up can help. But then saying that sometimes it can make things worse and sometimes it just doesn’t do anything at all.

At some point I’ve looked at this reworked panel and decided it was much better, then looked at it again and thought it was worse and then looked at it and thought “well there not that much different really”. At the moment looking at it again, one of the things I think is better is that with more texture\dirt in the background it has pushed the two figures more to the front of the image and helped them stand out. Also it just made the background a little more interesting visually. Plus these scenes are set on an alien world were I’ve drawn all the other shots to look grotty and filthy and maybe the first panel a little to clean to fit in with the other environments that are before this shot.

Dead Space.

It strange how you can do something over and over again for a long time and still once in a while make one of the must basic mistake. I’m more or less happy with the panel above but the problem is that it going to have a speech bubble in it and usually when your drawing and mapping out an image your be very aware of this and try and leave dead space for them. I didn’t really plan this shot well enough and now when I come to letter it shortly I’m going to be covering up part of the artwork that I like. I guess I won’t know how bad the problem is or even if they’re a chance I could sidestep the problem altogether until I get on the computer and play around with it.

Luckily it not usually a mistake I make a lot, as I’m pretty good at leaving room for dialog but from time to time on rare occasion my judgement will slip. I don’t really know many other comic book artist, so I don’t really know if it a common problem or not. I tend to find just because you do something again and again it doesn’t mean you’re ever above messing up on the basics…sadly. I guess that the good thing about having a blog. I can post it here in all it glory where as in print you’d be missing chunks of the image that the speech bubbles would be covering up. Which is pretty much true of must of the images I post. Even if it just a bit of background detail or something that you wouldn’t usually see, you do get to see it all here. I knew this blog had to be good for something.