ID Pic.

I’m not one for flooding the internet with pictures of myself. There’s a couple of shots of me about online (including one to your right on this very blog), but in general, I keep a fairly low online presences when it comes to pictures of me. If people have an interests in you and your work, I don’t think it’s unusual or unreasonable for those people to want to know what you look like. But that said, I’m not one of those people taking daily selfies and online logging every step I take. The older I get, the more the idea of that creeps me out a little.

That’s all well and good, but it does kind of conflict with one of my modern pet hates, however. Like most people these days, I do a lot of corresponding over the internet, and I find it a tiny bit unnerving when you have no idea what the person you’re chatting to looks like. I know for some people, being anonymous is something they like when chatting online, but I find it a little off putting when you’re having a pretty deep exchange with someone over the internet, and all you’ve got looking back at you is a cartoon avatar or something. A photo of there cat or car maybe. I know I’m getting more and more in the minority on this one, but faceless correspondence is a bit of a bummer to me. How much can you really be bonding with someone, if they don’t want you to know something very basic like what they actually look like. So I thought I’d put my money where my mouth is and post an ID photo myself. Taken only yesterday, so this is what I looked like 24-hours ago. A face to put with the name, as it were.  

P.S. No judgement on anyone I have corresponded with over the net over the years who has\does  choose to go anonymous online, by the way. The internet feels like it is made up of two camps of people these days. Those who bring maybe a little too much of the real world online. Tweeting and Facebooking every little thing they do, eat, say (said the guy writing on his Blog…) And those who just want nothing more than a cartoon Avatar and to build a new persona for the online world. They want to keep their real life, and their online life separate. I’d like to think personally, I come down somewhere in the middle.

Future Plans.

The good news is there’ll be two pages posted tomorrow on Babayka-Lives. The bad news is one page is just solid black with ‘Chapter Three’ written on it. Oh well… P.S. thumbs up for all the smart folks who answered ‘tooth’ as what Kevin Moon found on the ground last week.

This being my first year web-publishing a comic, I notices that a lot of web-comics go on hiatus over the summer months. This may be something I do myself down-the-line in later years (if my web-comic’s lucky enough to have later years), as I guess it kind of makes sense. People want to be out enjoying the sun in the Summer months, not online reading scary web-comics. That’s more of a winter time pursuit, I guess. It’s something I’ll be thinking about for now, anyway. I should say though, there are no plans for any immediate hiatuses. The web-comics been going weekly since December last year, with no plans of letting up for a good while yet. In fact this week we’ve only just hit the halfway mark in the Brides Of Babayka storyline. Which should take up the rest of 2014, and go well into 2015 as well (unless you want to cheat and just buy the graphic-novel instead.)

Over on my deviantart profile this week, I’m asking readers who they would like to see as the star of my next pin-up? I.E. which Bride should be next to get their own pin-up? Check out my DA page for details.  

Second Animated Ad.

Web Ad spaces online are very weird shapes. I guess so they can kind of poke in around the sides, or underneath content on the web. They’re not the best sizes for trying to show off artwork in, though, sadly. Web Ads are too elongated and thin. Not big enough to do anything too grand in. Above is my attempt to try and do a leaderboard style Animated Ad. I think it came out ok. Like the first Ad, I used my recent Yana’s Crimson Smile pin-up for the artwork. With Babayka taking a backseat for most of this story, I’m more and more starting to think of Yana as my web-comic’s lead character. She’s fast becoming the poster child of this web-series.

Tune into Babayka-Lives tomorrow to see if you guessed right on what Kevin Moon just found underfoot in the hallway, as he walked back to his room (I’m almost tempted to give a prize to those that do guess it.) With page 50 going up tomorrow, we’re exactly halfway through Brides Of Babayka now. Tomorrow’s page will be the final page of Chapter 2. Each chapter is a little bit more messed up than the last, so expect very gruesome things from Chapter 3. No spoilers, but all I’ll say is this… knitting-needle.

Elf Abuse.

This might be the first non-horror related artwork I’ve done for a while. I kind of see this pin-up as the final result of spending the last three months nerding out on all things Fantasy related. The lead character is my Elf Maiden from a few weeks ago. Plus I also put in my Blue, Grey and Brown Trolls as well to round out the cast. I never actually thought I’d do anything with those characters designs, so it was nice to get a chance to flesh them out a bit. I’ve kind of got a basic concept of a story I’d like to do staring these characters, but very little time to develop it, and zero time to draw it. It might be something I come back to at a later date, maybe with another artist on art duty. That’s the only way I could see myself moving these characters and ideas forward.

This week on Babayka-Lives. You’ve got a whole seven days to try and work out what Mr Moon’s just found under foot in this week‘s instalment. Big respect to those who can figure it out before the final page of Chapter 2 goes up next weekend. Tune in then to see if your guess was right.

Spot The Fox.

Spotted this guy napping out in the sun over my back-fence the other day. I didn’t really wanna disturb him, so this was as close as I could get (because nobody likes being hassled during a midday summer nap.) Because I couldn’t get that close, this picture is a bit like Where’s Wally, but with a fox. But I assure you, if you keep looking, you’ll spot him. And once you spot him, you’ll wanna crawl into the photo and start spooning him… or is that just me?

P.S. That’s how stealthy and badass I am. I can take a picture of a napping fox in the daytime without him even noticing. I out fox a fox.

As a bonus, this week after heading over to Babayka-Lives and checking out this week’s page, you can then follow this link and check out an unlettered version if you’d like to see the artwork word-bubble free. I use the bottom panel from this page a lot in advertising and so on. It’s even on the back of the graphic-novel. I still think they’re the spookiest eyes I've ever drawn.