BOO!

BOO! is a comic Andy Waugh and myself came up with as we wanted to make a horror comic for kids. It somehow grew to include 6 other brilliant creators (Warwick Johnson Cadwell, Rob Davis, Jonathan Edwards, James Howard, Gary Northfield and Jamie Smart) that I feel privileged to be working with and Andy does a great job of outlining the, uh, 'organic' development here.
I won't be starting my strip for a few months, however I'm using the time to indulge my finger painting obsession and mess around with ideas. The following pictures are not really roughs or thumbnails for my strip, these scenes may never appear, but they're to get me in the mood and inspire me.

 

Here's the BOO! tumblr page, and you can follow us on twitter at BOOcomic

Educating Marmalade

Slaine finger painting

Some PaintGirl

I'm not quite ready to start my PaintGirl comic but I decided to ease into it by practicing drawing her. These are not meant to be studies of the character and her proportions, they are just playful doodles to help me get comfortable drawing her and trying to capture a mood.
Of course I've ended up liking them more than any 'finished' work, they're not slaves to things like perspective or reference, they just exist and make no apologies for it. I'm hoping that this attitude and approach will bleed over into my non-finger-painted work, and I'll take steps to support that.

IIIIIT's CHRIIIIIISTMAS!!!!!

Been neglecting to post work lately. Sorry about that. As an apology please accept these fine faces not so finely finger painted. And have a Very Merry Christmas everyone!

ABC Warriors

The ABC Warriors are the creation of Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill, supported by the excellent, Mick McMahon, Brendan McCarthy and many others.I've stuck pretty much to O'Neill's original designs rather than the 'muscular' look of later incarnations as, despite some great work, that's my preference.
These have been put through an Instagram filter, mainly so they come out smaller than the set size Finngr does them which is pretty big.
I've decided to make prints of some of the finger paintings, I've done 4 portraits for this, but I'll not post anything until I've arranged printing as the internet is notoriously fickle and I think a gap between posting and selling would hurt.
I've not sold anything before as I find it hard to gauge interest for the kind of print run these things seem to need. But you have to take the plunge some time.

Rough and ready Monkey gif

This is the small version of a gif I made to use in a smart notebook resource for teaching children about books from other cultures, in this case 'Journey to the West', for my primary teacher degree. All the drawing took me about 5 or 10 minutes, putting it together took a hours, because I'm an idiot :)

Don Siegel finger painting process

Here's a process gif of the Don Siegal finger painting.

It doesn't seem to show up the solid black on my computer, but clicking on the pic seems to work... and will probably make it bigger.

Don Siegel finger painting

One of my favourite directors, with an impressive list of film to his name, including Riot in Cell Block 11, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Killing, Coogan's Bluff, The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick and Escape From Alcatraz, all on my 'best film' ever list.
No matter what the subject matter Siegel's films were tightly told with a minimum of fuss and flair, yet were far more than just service, the lack of fuss gave them a muscular leanness and the lack of flair was more to do with not getting in the way of  the story rather than lacking in visual style.
Siegel's raw stripped down style, with great silent moments and direct, almost terse at times, dialogue found a great match in Clint Eastwood, who featured in many of Siegel's films.

Because I'm a fan I'm slightly disappointed by not doing a better job at capturing his likeness. In many ways he should be a perfect fit for my slightly Muppet-y cartoony style, but I didn't capture the twinkle in his eye. Still, it's not a bad likeness.

The Shining finger painting

I opted to draw Shelly Duvall rather than Jack, because he get's more  airtime, and persoanlly I think she sells the fear and edginess that makes The Shining work.
I decided to save as many stages as I could remember when I did this one and have a go at making my first Gif - I'm afraid I have no idea why it isn't showing the solid black... anyone else? Hopefully this gives a little insight into how the process works. As you can see I start of with a rough shape and placement and then add and refine from there. As Finngr has no erase function you can see that the only way to correct is to paint over what doesn't work - this is also how I refine bits, by carving away what doesn't work by painting over with whatever the base colour is.