Lone Ted.

I said a couple of times that I wasn’t gonna post anything from Issue #4 on my blog, as every panel was pretty much a massive spoiler. But while trying to put together the final version of my book this week, I did come across one (if somewhat cropped) frame I think it would be ok to post. Just because out of the several shots I had to do of these sinister teddies, this one is by far my favourite. It’s the closes I think I’ve ever come to drawing something that’s adorable. His little hat makes me smile.

I’ve been working out the page count of my book recently, and I think I need a couple more pin-ups to fill up some spare pages. I was wondering if I should maybe do an afterword or brief commentary on the story, but figured people would probably just prefer more artwork in the end. I’m open to suggestions if there is anything anybody would like to see in the extras? The extras section is looking like it’s gonna be at least 10-pages long. I always knew I wanted to do an extras section, so I’ve been saving up artwork for it. I finished the book’s cover jacket this week, too. Hopefully won’t be that much longer before I can finally reveal the title of this graphic-novel. Been a long time coming, I know.

Where Ideas Go To Die.

I talk about thumb-nails nearly every other post, but as far as I can remember have never actually posted any. So here’s something a bit special this week. I have a kind of sketchbook that’s only for thumb-nails (both sequential and pin-ups) which I doodle in relentlessly to draw and come up with new ideas. I know a lot of artist don’t thumb-nail, but I’m a big believer in it. I honestly think you need to try and sketch an idea in 10-seconds, before you spend 10-hours trying to draw it. Just get the barebones of the concept and design down, before the idea goes. I can’t remember who I heard say it, but I remember someone saying something like “you can draw in 30-seconds, something you couldn’t in 30-hours.”, which is very true. Thumb-nails ain’t pretty and mine are very rough-and-ready. They were never really meant to be seen, just used to work off of, but I’m a fan of them. So with that in mind, I scanned a page from my most recent thumb-nail sketchbook. If you go zooming in, you can probably see the thumb-nail sketch for Dracula Descending in there some where. As well as many ideas that just didn’t make the cut. Those ideas are for alternative-dimension Andrew, as he flies around in his space-car with lots of money in his pockets and hot chicks sitting on his lap (God, I hate that guy.)

I’ve been putting it off for a while now, but this week I started on the internal pages of my Graphic-Novel. I.e. all those pages in a book that aren’t sequential or pin-up artwork. There’s usually a handful in every Graphic-Novel, but people rarely pay any attention to them or notice them. That said, I still want mine to look awesome, even if no one reads them. In other words, I’ve been wearing my graphic-design hat this week. Designing the book-jacket will be the big battle I’m building up to.

Buckle Up.

Here’s my reading material to get me through this Bank holiday weekend. Bank holidays are awesome, but if they’re wet ones, they’re a bit like long haul plane flights or something. Saying\typing that, I’m now wishing I’d stocked up on peanuts too… damn.

Kilroy Was Here.

So here’s a gag from the pages of my sketchbook. Not sure how funny it really is, but it made me laugh. Though upon posting this, I am very aware that Kilroy Was Here (maybe the worlds first MEME?) is kind of out of fashion now. Has been for a while. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever drawn a Kilroy until I did this sketch. I remember my brother went through a brief period growing up where he’d draw this little guy on any scrap of paper laying around. I always thought they were a little bit creepy. Some cartoon guy with a phallic nose spying on you. He deserves to be zombie-bait. If he spent more time watching his back for walkers, and less time spying on people…

I plan to bust out my markers and do some serious doodling in the coming weeks.

Another Movie Round Up.

A bit of a shorter one this time, on account of I’ve been a little more proactive of late.

The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue: So this is a 70’s Spanish\Italian zombie movie, set and made in England, and I bought the American Blu-ray. So everybody chip in on this flick. It’s weird watching good looking Italian actors\actresses with dub on cockney accents. It’s actually pretty gory considering it came before the original Dawn Of The Dead or the Fulci late 70’s\early 80’s Zombie pics. This film being made before the big boom in the 80’s makes this a pretty unique movie. All the Zombies look like they’ve just jumped out of a Caravaggio painting or something. Since most modern zombie films are now painful zom-rom-coms with no bite, I would recommend hunting down this flick if you haven’t seen it before.

From Beyond: This movie has been a bit like an urban legend to me for a while now. It wasn’t really widely available here in the UK. Plus any VHS copies that did make it over here were heavily cut. I’ve been waiting a long time to see this flick, and it was a blast to see it uncut and with such good picture quality. I like the Stuart Gordon formula of taking a Lovecraft story and then adding the perverse. Lovecraft’s work is amazing, but very buttoned up. I always enjoy seeing people do unbuttoned takes on his stories. I don’t rate it as highly as Re-Animator, but it’s not far off. It’s differently a lost body-horror masterpiece from the 1980s. Just hoping someone puts an all-singing, all-dancing copy of Society out on Blu-ray very soon, too.

I’m trying to get more into three-panel funnies lately. With everyone on the internet now, it seems like a new golden-age for the gag strip. My favourite at the moment is Sex And Monsters (how could you not wanna read a strip with a name like that?) It’s monthly(ish) and utterly hilarious.

Attack Of The Nearly People.

I guess it’s no secret that I’ve been going through a bit of a dry patch creatively, lately. I always fall into this trap that when I’m drawing sequential pages for long periods, I miss doing pin-ups. Then I get some free time to do them, and my mind goes blank. This seems to happen to me a lot for some reason. I’ve got artist friends who go for months sometimes without drawing. If I go longer than two weeks, I start to freak out. I always like to be working on something. My brain has been a little more forthcoming with ideas and designs in recent days (thank god), so I do have a couple of ideas to be getting on with. The first of which is above.

I like group monsters (or what I would call cannon-fodder baddies) like Zombies and Cybermen, and have always wanted to do my own take on them. So this is mine. I’ve been calling them Nearly People. They’re like walking, evil, full-size human-anatomy toys. Doing this pin-up was mainly about nailing down their look. How they come across on the page and so on. Their innards are a bit fiddly to draw, and for some reason I always see them fighting grotty, sexy punk\biker chicks in my head, when I picture them. It’s an idea I differently wanna flesh out in coming months. People like their baddies en masse these days. I blame video-games.

I was talking to a friend recently about character designs and posting them online. He had a character he’d drawn recently that he was very pleased with. He was very cagey about details like the name and nature of this character he was working on, only that he thought it could be a really cool idea and he was worried if he posted anything online, someone could nick it (I wasn’t sure if he meant he was scared someone would download and repost the actual artwork as their own, or if he was scared someone would just copy his character idea?) I kind of know what he meant, as sadly some people wouldn’t even think twice about taking someone else’s idea (hence why I nearly didn’t posted the above bit of art today, as it‘s a concept I‘ve been working on for a while now.) The nice thing about posting artwork publicly is that you get feedback, and can test ideas out in a public-forum. The downside is you’re never sure when some slimy gobshite’s gonna swim out of the murky depths and see something he likes and try and take it. However, here’s my counterpoint to that. As someone who has just spent three-and-a-half years putting together his own graphic-novel, I will just say this… getting a project off the ground is hard. I mean SUPER hard. This world is full of people who have the world’s greatest idea for a graphic-novel in their head, and they tell themselves one day they’re gonna do it. Maybe they even draw a few pages before telling themselves they’ll finish it later, but they know deep down later will never come. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure arseholes steal ideas all the time (Gentlemen Broncos style), but stealing an idea is only half the battle. You have to be more worried as to whether they’re disciplined enough to actually work hard and do anything with it. If they are… then you’ve got real problems. A good idea on its own isn’t enough. Any success would also have to come from the work-and-effort you put behind this idea. Not that I think anybody’s gonna steal my above idea (or that it’s even worth stealing, for that matter), and all-in-all, I am a fan of publicly posting art. I guess it’s a risk all creative people take these days, sadly, as many of you probably know. Personally, it’s always an ongoing battle as to what you hold back, and what you put out there.

On a completely different note… I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of psyched they’re showing reruns of Knightmare on TV tonight. In many ways, Knightmare was the Game Of Thrones of the 80s. Minus the rutting.

Last Look.

Since my brain has been a barren land of late, I’ll use this week to post what will probably be the final image from Project B.O.B. on this blog. I’m not saying I kept the best till last, but I do think this is one of my better panels from this graphic-novel. I even left the word balloon on to give a bit of a hint as to what is happening in this scene. This guy has just made a nasty discovery, that’s all I’ll say.

I love a good horror mash-up. I’ve recently been rereading Fiends Of The Eastern Front. I think a criminally underrated horror mini-series. I even like the 2006 sequel (any story with an arse-kicking Golem in it is a winner with me.) It always feels like a very complete concept when I read it, I’m surprised no one ever made a film out of the first one, or more follow up comics. The artwork is amazing in both stories, too. It’s hard to think of a horror comic-book mash-up that comes close to this book.