I’m not a big fan of drawing traditional horror themes. Partly because I like to try and push things forward, or at least in different directions in my horror work (I’ll let you be the judge of how well I achieve that…) But also partly because there’s so many artist out there who do those kinds of things better than me. However, since I had a stab at Dracula earlier in the year, I’ve been harbouring a secret desire to do a Werewolf pic. A pin-up I did a few months ago called Godless, was meant to be my first go at doing one, but at that time I also had a massive body-horror itch, too, which won out in the end. I didn’t leave much room for the monster in that shot, so I went deformity, not hairy, swearing one day I’d do my take on Werewolves. Well… it’s Halloween, and today is that day. If you’ve ever wonder what my take on Werewolves, in my style, would look like… Pop them peepers skyward and enjoy. I don’t get much time to do Halloween Ecards (hence, why over six-years, there’s only been three. It’s an every other year kind of deal.), but I do enjoy doing them. I throw in a bikini goth-babe with pigtails this year, just to sweeten the pot, too. Your welcome. Deviantart copy here.
Anyway, hope you’re having an awesome Halloween and don’t eat too many sweets this year (this advice coming from the man who’s all ready eaten half his stash.)
P.S. Here’s an interesting fact. As you can see from my web-cam shot, this year’s Halloween Ecard is a actually a self-portrait. Yeah, I’m really a Were-wolf, so what? get over it. Hope this still means we can be friends? Unless you’re a little pig, or little red riding hood… in which case… I’ve been having this terrible toothache recently, and… I wondered if you’d do me a massive favour and just… that’s it… climb in… it’s the tooth right at the back, there… keep going… all the way in… ha, ha, ha, SUCKER!
Is this the longest gap in cinematic history between the first and second trailer being released? Pretty sure it’s been over a year since that first trailer. Anyhoo… it’s still the film I most want to see in 2013. Just finished reading This Book Is Full Of Spiders over the weekend. I gotta say I was expecting less from this book, but in many ways, I enjoyed it more than the first. It’s more of a story you can get a hold on, although I do get a kick out of the trippy nature of the first novel. It’s strange (in a good way), to live in an era where horror writers are as much inspired by video-games of the last twenty-years, as by books and films. There’s one scene where it all goes very Left-4-Dead meets REC. I guess one drawback to this book is that you really need to read the first, to get a lot of the stuff going on in the second. But then… why wouldn’t you want to read the first novel, anyway? It’s awesome.
I’m pretty much in Halloween mode at the moment. I’m gonna watch Horror Europa tonight with Mark Gatiss. Than maybe stick on a horror flick or two. Maybe tonight, is the night, I finally man-up and watch Teeth? … I doubt it.
Say what you like about Tumblr, one thing it does have on it side, is it’s great for looking up obscure comic-book artists. I’m a massive Guido Crepax fan, but it’s so hard to get a hold of his work. I currently only own two of his books, and getting a hold of them was a nightmare (although I see they’ve just put out a new Crepax book this very month, bringing my grand total now to three.) I’ve recently been taking a look at art of his that has been posted up on Tumblr. I still think his mark-making skills are second-to-none. Plus, no one draws sexy women like Crepax. I’d kill to see a piece of his original art. I hear they have museums of his work in Europe which I’d love to visit someday.
Might not look like it, but this frame actually has a couple of Easter eggs in it, if you know where to look. Regular readers of this blog may spot one right off.
I know all I do is sit around watching horror movies and eating junk food anyway, so Halloween should really just be another day, but I do like to try and celebrate this holiday. Being British, maybe it’s the repressed druid in me. Where once we would have put someone in a Wicker-man and burnt them, now it’s a good horror movie on Blu-ray\DVD and a packet of Haribo Horror Mix. I think that’s the dark reason why we’re so fond of our bonfires down here in the south east. Centuries on, we’ve got human sacrifice withdrawal.
I think this year, my horror movie on the day will be I Saw The Devil, as I’ve been wanting to see this flick for ages. Last year I had to work on Halloween, so didn’t get in till late, then being very unoriginal, just throw on my copy of Halloween to watch. This year I can try and make more of a night of it. Wonder what other people are doing for this Halloween… if anything?
Got the Basket Case trilogy Blu-ray this week. Worth getting just for the short-film on Graham Humphreys. God, I love those 80’s horror posters he did for palace pictures. Some publisher really needs to put out an art-book of those.
I think I’ve got pretty good at drawing sinister girls by doing this book. If you can’t draw sexy, go with sinister, that’s what I always say (even though I only just this second made that up… ok, well, I’ll start saying it from now on.)
I don’t want to give too much away, but I feel very confident that I’ll have a Halloween Ecard ready for this year (Hint, Hint, I’ve all ready done it.) Drew it at the start of the month. Did the font and computer re-jigging around the middle. Now just waiting for the end of the month to roll around so I can post it.
This short animation is amazing. It just reminds you why 3D can be awesome. Plus it's got Zombies in bumper-cars. I’d love to see this on a giant cinema-screen or something.
That said, if you’re one of those people that get a headache watching 3D, you may wanna give this vid a miss. If you’re someone that also gets shaky-cam sickness, you may also not wanna press play. I guess to sum up… just eat a load of ginger before watching (ironically, I hate the taste of ginger so much, it makes me a little sick when of think about it.)
New panel time, and I’m saying nothing about this shot. For such a small panel, I had a big debate in my head on if I should post it or not.
Can’t believe the movie adaptation of John Dies At The End has finally got a release date. Been a long, long time coming. Not sure if I’ll watch it VOD or just wait for the Blu-ray. I kind of hate watching movies online. No buffering on my dime, thank you. At least it gives me time to read the follow up novel, first.
So I’m gonna post a finished lettered page fast, before I forget again. Let start with one of my favourites from the very first issue. Ok, there’s only a few speech-bubbles on this page, but the good thing about this page is it works pretty well on it’s own as a one-page story. So I thought it would be a good place to start. Plus, like I say, I think it’s one of my best pages, even if it is from late 2009. This short scene is from very early on in the book. It’s drawing this scene that really made me feel like I was doing a horror comic. I always think of this scene as a little nod to a certain famous scene out of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As horror omens go, ownerless teeth appearing out-of-nowhere is usually a sign that things are about to turn very unpleasant. Plus it’s really fun drawing teeth.
I will try and post a wordier page or two in the coming future. I’m trying to find the perfect page that gives away a little, but not too much. But anyway, that’s how a finished lettered page of this graphic novel looks. That’s my attempt at comic-book lettering. Hope you enjoy. More to come.
I’ve posted this image before as part of my ID montage on Deviantart, but here it is officially. I’ve also left the speech-bubble on, as I think it looks cool. I have a nasty feeling, previously, I’ve said I’d posted more artwork complete with lettering, so people can see the finished artwork… and then forgot I’d made this promise and never did. Whoops! What I may do in the coming weeks (if I don’t forget I’ve said this, too) is maybe post some fully lettered finished page at some point. I have unlettered ones up on my Deviantart page, considering I’m in the final stages of this mini-series, maybe it’s about time I started to leak more details about this book. I will try and keep this in mind as we plough through what’s left of 2012.
I do like this above panel. Not being able to post any gory (or just scenes of a macabre nature) spoiler heavy panels, it’s maybe sometimes hard to set the tone of this mini-series without giving too much away. But I’m hoping panels like the above one do set some kind of sinister atmosphere. The day when I can stop being all tease, no show, is happily not too far off in the distant now. This ain’t gonna be the sequential counterpart of the Blair Witch Project, there will be payoffs (although I do remember some publisher did a really good one-off Blair Witch comic back in the 90’s drawn by Guy Davis, which was actually very good. Way better than the awful studio sequel, that’s for sure.)
I have no idea how I’m gonna handle posting panels from Issue #4 yet. I think it’s fair to say I’ll be posting considerably less on account of every panel is pretty much a massive spoiler.
Does the world really need an Evil Dead porn parody? All I know is my heart says… maybe.
Don’t get me wrong, I love drawing horror comics, but I’m very jealous of people who get to work in special-effects. That just looks like such a cool job.
