Thursday 30 April 2009

Big Mecha Action.

New panel from my big robot story I’m working on. Nothing says Mecha action like a giant robot kicking a car in the air like it was a tin can. I’m a good couple of pages into this story now so it seems like a good time to start posting new artwork from it in the coming weeks.

Keep talking about big robots but there is another element in this short story that I keep forgetting to mention. I’ll come back to it in later posts but here a clue.

Sunday 26 April 2009

Terminated.

Word on the net is they already cancelled The Sarah Conner Chronicles, which I think is a shame. Both seasons suffered from a bit of a lag midseason but on the whole I thought it was a great show. I wouldn’t mind so much if there weren’t so much other crap on TV that should really be axed instead. Sci-Fi shows always tend to have a short screen life unless your Star Trek or Dr Who. I guess it the budget that usually comes with doing Science Fiction, which makes me think hopes of it being picked up else where are slim. Link HERE.

Friday 24 April 2009

Been A Rough Few Years.

Sad to think that Hunter S Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and J G Ballard all died within the last four years. Three such great writers gone.

Thursday 16 April 2009

Japanese, Kung Fu Schoolgirl Vs Ninja.

I use time between drawing different story’s to try and fatten up my portfolio and here my latest image. At some point I’d love to have a go at doing a short Kung Fu comic strip. Something a bit Kill Bill-ish. I’d also like to have a stab at doing a horror story at some point as well. But for the moment I can only really play around with these ideas as pin ups.

Just to hopefully add to the effect have the theme from Shogun Assassin playing when you’re checking out the above image. I’ve started to hook my wireless headphones up to my laptop so I can listen to stuff on Youtube while going about my business. You never had a good pee until you’ve had a pee at 2am with this theme song blaring in your ears. Hell I even found the theme tune to Zombie Flesh Eaters on there. It like youtube my own personal jukebox. Only downside is the headphones are so big. They make me look like a funky Cyberman or something.

Monday 13 April 2009

They’re Just Like Giant Teddy’s.

Who would have thought jumping into a Polar bear enclosure at a zoo would have been a bad idea? Link HERE. Also here a funky T-shirt which made my day. HERE.

Friday 10 April 2009

Home.

Not sure how some people can only post around ten minutes of film on Youtube while others can stick up over an hour. I think it has something to do with the quality of the footage or something. But anyway I was pleased to see they had up a BBC film called Home based on the J G Ballard story The Enormous Space. It was first shown in 2003 and they repeat it sometimes on BBC4 and I’ve been waiting for the BBC to put it out on DVD for years.

Probably one of the best bits of British television ever. Don’t follow the Wikipedia link before watching, as it’ll pretty much gives away the plot. Just wait until you’ve got an hour to spare and fancy watching something a bit different. It got that slightly off centre, sleep deprived feeling going for it like Deliverance, The Shinning or a good David Lynch movie so it makes a good late night movie. In fact it probably reminds me more of Jam by Chris Morris. Which is also better when you watch it in the early hours.

If I ever get stuck indoors working without leaving the house for to long I always seem to think back to this show. Time to leave the house before I start to look at local wildlife in a different light.

Thursday 9 April 2009

Rate My Robot.

I was going to call this post ‘I (drew a) Robot’ but I just couldn’t bring myself to make a pun so bad.

I said a couple of posts back about having to draw something that I’d never really been called on to draw before. Which (as seen above) is a giant robot. And I mean giant. Think Mechagodzilla size wise. The last couple of weeks I’ve just been trying to do my research on all things robotic as I felt I could pull it off as long as the effort was there. I’ve got a couple of ‘big robot comics’, Patlabor probably being the best but not many. So I went into town on the hunt for more and quickly realized it was slim pickings. I found a Transformers graphic novel but sadly they were all the CGI movie version design and after a quick flick through I wasn’t really seeing many great giant robot shots I was after. I headed to the Manga section figuring they’d be my best shot and couldn’t find even one. I was going more for a big Japanese robot look so this was a big disappointment. At home I figured I could just order one online. Let the big robots come to me. I ordered a copy of Robotech which when it turned up was pretty much like the Transformers book, a lot more lacking in big robot shots then you’d think. Plus it was just a load of American artist trying to do Manga looking art in the late 80’s. Another swing and a miss. I mean I had a small amount to be getting on with but not nearly as much as I would have liked. My Patlabor comic was the only real good bit of reference I had. So I went with my back up plan. Like most artist looking for reference they don’t have I turned to the net. I hate to draw from a computer screen but I really wanted to get started by now and I felt it would help if I knew what this giant robot look liked in my head. The net is both great and terrible for looking up certain things and over the next couple of days I pretty much found what was missing so I could start on my design. I also came across such websites as Erotic Transformers and Dinosaurs Fucking Robots.com You have to wonder what else is out there. It’s one of the good things about doing research. It gives you a chance to come across all this weird, funky stuff.

So by this point I’ve done all this research but I still hadn’t been brave enough to put pencil to paper yet. I started small just doodling in a pad. Playing with the couple of ideas I’d already had. I kind of liked the way these small doodles were going but I was still a bit nervous about having a proper go until looking over my rough thumbnails of the story itself when it occurred to me that I was doing a lot of research and sketching considering how little screen time (or whatever the comics version of screen time would be… ‘page time’ I guess) this giant robot had. A lot of artist would just try and blag it and to be honest a lot of artist would probably get away with it to. I had a few tricks to fall back on thanks to all the research I had done in prepping for this story so I worked my sketches up in to the above character sheet. It’ll be good fun hopefully to draw this guy moving about on a page. It both scary and exciting times trying new things. I’m hoping when it all done it’ll come off looking a bit like this> But knowing my luck it’ll probably look more like this>

Friday 3 April 2009

Quick Colour Job.

Had another go at colouring an image recently. Again just something fairly simple. I’m getting a lot happier with my colour blending or shading I guess you’d call it. Went about it in pretty much the same fashion as I did with War Tongue. I’m ashamed to say it but before I’d never really colour my work using layers. In the old days I’d just make a copy of the image and put it under the original. I’d turn the original to multiply (see through) and just paint over the bottom image. No wonder all my old colour work looks so bad now when I look back at them.

I’m not sure if that’s it for this image or if I’ll have another play around with it at some point. I’d like to but I’ve got so much I need to be getting on with finding the time would be difficult. I think it looks better without a background but then I never really tried putting anything in the background when I had it up on the computer so who knows? Still no background really makes the blue baby carrier stand out nicely. Hhmmm maybe I’ll leave the background blank. I can’t make up my mind.

Been feeling a bit guilty lately. A couple of weeks ago I realized I couldn’t move for all the piles of DVD I’ve got. “Better not buy any more for a while” I thought “I’m running out of space.” Then a couple of days later found out a new HMV had opened up in my town and ended up buying seven new DVD over a two week period (to be fair they were all pretty cheap as there was a sale on.) Then online this week I got a Planet of the apes box set and a Dr Who DVD. So all together that another small pile to find room for. I have the buyers remorse something rotten at the moment… or maybe I’m just doing my bit to keep the economy rolling at this dangerous time like some kind of saint… at least that what I tell myself when I’m standing at the check out.

I’ve got so many DVD’s I could probably build a small fort out of them. And by “I could probably build a small fort out of them” I mean I already have and I’m sitting in it now typing this…never felt so safe and warm before.