Happy Halloween.

Well… well… well… look who got their arse in gear in time for Halloween.

Truth be told, I probably spent way longer on this then I was hoping to. Sod’s law that the only decent idea I could come up with was a biggie. But rather then leave it till the last minute, I did this earlier in the month and so could give it some extra time. I hate drawing crowd scenes. Doing this pic gave me a new found respect for artist having to do Zombie comics. Just drawing one Zombie after another. Must be really frustrating. I call this shot Night Of The Pumpkin-Head Dead.

DeviantArt copy HERE.

Happy Halloween. Hope you have a good one.

Fear The Bears.

Why is it every time I hear or read a story involving Bears, they just get worse and worse, and more gruesome. And now comes the story that they’re feeding on the dead and teaching each other how to open coffins. Vampires and Zombies are old news now, and Bears are the next big thing in horror, I predict. Their time has come.

This Halloween, why not dress up as a corpse munching bear? Or spend hours online looking for cheap Bear-mace… even though you live in a country that doesn’t even have Bears.

Coming Up The Stairs.

Two panels for the price of one today.

I’m currently getting into the Halloween spirit. I’ve been getting hooked on Jelly Beans lately, and I’m slowly working my way through A Nightmare On Elm Street boxset. I’d probably be doing these things anyway, but at Halloween it all kind of feels more official.

Repaneled.

My new favourite blog at the moment is Repaneled. It’s along the same lines as Covered, a blog where comic book artist recreate classic comic covers in their own style. But Repaneled is where they’re recreating just a single panel. Both blogs are well worth keeping an eye on. Every once in a while you’ll spot one that just makes you laugh or blows your mind. I think I may have mentioned about the Covered blog before on here a couple of years ago? But I’m far too lazy to check.

Knock, Knock.

If last weeks shot was all about the facial expressions, then this shot is about the body language. I think body language is maybe a bit hardier to master, as people are just wired to relate more to the look on someone face more then maybe their body language. But I think you can say just as much in your artwork with body language. You kind of have to on those longer shots, when you can’t really make out any of the characters faces.

Also, I’ve drawn a lot of hallway shots over the last year (with many, many more still to do.) But I think this is my favourite one to date. This is the shot to beat, so far.

Man Vs Pop-Up Ad.

It’s not often something will annoy the hell out of me and give me a cheap laugh at the same time. But this certain pop-up ad I’ve been seeing more and more lately does. Most pop-up ads, you just click the red cross in the corner of the page and send them hurtling back into the cyberspace void they came from. But these ones are trickier… once you try and close them, a little window pops up stopping you leaving or worse, telling you it’s your own computer scanning for viruses when really it’s installing something nasty on your computer. So you quickly try and shut the page down only to get given another pop-up and an option that can only be described as bullshit. “Press OK to continue, or cancel to stay on current page.” Confusing, patronizing and outrageous all at the same time. Someone is not only trying to mess up your computer, but also has now insulted your intelligence. If you’re lucky you’ll be able to quickly navigate away by hitting the back button. Or failing that, just close down the whole page.

The next ad should simply read: “If you would NOT like us to empty your bank account, please fill in your bank account details below. Failure to do so will result in us withdrawing all of your money.”

I read on Wiki (and therefore it must be true) that if you hold down the ‘Ctrl’ key, it stops pop-ups. If this turns out to be a fact then I might buy a tiny G-Clamp and have my Ctrl button permanently pressed down when I’m browsing from now on. That’s how a real man would deal with this situation. There isn’t many problems in life that can’t be solved by a tiny G-Clamp.

Mr Grumpy Face.

I think I got the look on this guy’s face just about right. I don’t shy away from doing facial expressions in my work. In fact I try and embrace it. I don’t always get the shot I’m after as faces tend to be the thing that goes very wrong, very fast, when drawing. But when it does work out I find it very rewarding. I’m a big believer that if you can do decent facial emotions on characters, the reader is more likely to relate and care about them and the story. That’s my angel on it anyway.

Info Dump.

Read a lot of interesting stuff online over the weekend and last couple of days. So I thought I’d throw some links at you today, since the internet has been in full-interestingness-bloom lately.

First up, this short article on how Stephen King would make Vampires scary again. Saw this on the Guardian website at the weekend. A good, short read.

Next up is another great Cracked.com list. This time ‘nine video game easter eggs that took years to find.’ It’s bottom of the page, number 5 that caught my eye. Wesker’s desk in Resident Evil 2. Who checks an empty desk fifty-times? I had to look this one up on Youtube to make sure it was for real. I’m just picturing all those gamers now going back through all the old Resident Evil games and clicking on everything fifty-times.

And finally, I’ve just been checking out these first shots form The Thing prequel. I’m glad they went prequel instead of reboot or remake. I think prequels are the lesser of the three evils. They fill me with slightly less dread when I hear them announced.

Potty Mouth.

Wow, last week smut, this week, bad language.

I do like this shot. I also decided to leave the word balloon on this one, just to give a flavour of the scene. It’s not really an overly swear filled comic, to be honest. Sure… there’s violence and mutilation and stuff to turn your stomach… But swearing wise, this is probably as bad as it gets.

Speaking of violence, mutilation and stomach turning. It’s Halloween soon and I’m starting to doubt I’ll have a Halloween Ecard ready this year. Partly because I’m making good time on issue #2 and I went to keep that up. Partly because if I’m honest, I haven’t had a decent Halloween idea since my 2008 one. Depressing thought, I know. I’m starting to think I only had one good Halloween idea in me. I’ll just have to wait and see if I can get on top of this problem in the next couple of weeks before it’s too late for another year.

Why have you forsaken me, Halloween mojo?