More Huzzah

Feeling bold I decided to do two 'plates' for my turn at Huzzah. An interesting one this time round, I made a lot of mistakes drawing these, but found it to be such a positive experience that I'm not sure 'mistakes' is fair. So, here they are - don't forget to look at the strip so far.

Groovy

My book project revealed, it's the UK edition of Bruce Campbell's autobiography 'If Chins Could Kill'! There's a new intro by Mr Campbell for this edition, and here's the full wraparound cover I drew for it.

Dumb luck that I got the chance to do this, and nothing like my original idea, but the chance to do it even if it was a very definite brief was too hard to pass up.
Art style was done as requested, the look is supposed to somehow be a cross between the classic EC sensibility and a more modern take a la Bryan Hitch.
The book is being published by Aurum and will be available fairly soon at Amazon, Waterstones and Bookdepository and loads of places, even ones on streets.
And for anyone interested, here's my first idea, it's rough, and based on a fairly recognisable Evil Dead still, but my take was to make the cover look like an issue of Famous Monsters.

Huzzah!

Just finished and posted my first contribution to Huzzah, if you want to see the story so far, and you really should, go here.
In the meantime here's the finished pencils and final colour version. I've been wanting to skip the inking stage for a while, as much as I like chunky fluid brush lines I've always felt my stuff loses something in the process.

Big Jobs!

and those jobs are......
1. Book cover. Pencils are finished. It's a very 'kewl' thing, I hope to share something soon..
2. Comic strip that I've sort of kept secret, well, ok, I blabbed whenever I could, but I didn't mention it on this blog. Ok, maybe once or twice. Pencils are waiting on approval and hopefully it'll be finished in the next few months.
3. I've also got a chance to do 2 short strips, I'll post the when and where as soon as I can.
4. Daversham Rex, written by David Hailwood. I've had the script for a while and the plan is to draw a few pages, do a few pin ups and see if we can drum up some interest. I posted some art for it here, I plan to get the pitch ready over the next few months.
5. Jellybean. Not the full title, another script from David. This one hasn't been stewing for as long as Daversham, but I'm really excited by the possibilities for it and have done some scribbling, I'll be posting some designs soon.
6. A few personal strips. I've got three ideas I'd like to get down on paper this year, no idea how long they'll be.
7. Late, and very welcome edition, is my inclusion in Huzzah!, the follow up to the frankly fantastic Who Killed Round Robin? I'm really chuffed to be part of this, and as soon as I get no 1 in the list done will be chipping in. Until then gaze upon it's wonderfulness here.... before I eff it up:)
8. Who knows what else, but definitely more.

Bye '08

Another weird old year. 2008 taught me a pretty harsh lesson, after a terrible 07 I thought I'd just walk into a wonderful year where I got everything I wanted. Turns out it's not that easy.
Not that it's been a gloomy year, my beautiful wife and incredible daughter made sure that was never going to be the case, and I've also had a few opportunities to draw come my way that I'm incredibly grateful for. But if I'm being honest, I should have made more time for my family and worked harder. It's crazy that I thought I could lounge around and take it easy, yet hold down a full time job, be a dad and a husband and still turn myself into a cartoonist.
So, '09 will be better not just cos I think I deserve it, but because I'm going to work at it.
All the best for the New Year to all of you!

Pressies

My list-
Creepy Archives Vol1
Strange & Stranger The World of Steve Ditko
Laurel & Hardy 'Way Out West'
Moonlighting Season 1&2
Housecoat
Chocs
oh, and I got 2 games for MY NEW Wii!!! result.
My inner balance was sore tested by this abundance of consumer goodness!
Hope Santa brought you all just what you wanted.

Christmas

I took the bold move of staying away from the computer to this year, so belated Merry Christmas to everyone!

Valhalla up to 11

Another lovely animated music video, except this time I even liked the music.

Turn the sound down, but do watch.

Ok, the song's rubbish, well, I think it's pretty lame anyway, but come on, Dave Cooper animation??!?!?!?! Oh why don't you draw more comics Mr Cooper?!

I'm not 2, my blog's not 2, so who was 2?

It was my daughter's second birthday a few weeks ago, and it was a fine old day, helping unwrap presents and generating the required vomit inducing level of excitement for such an occurance. Then it was off to Old Holly Farm, where calves, goats, chicks (they're the vaguely yellowish blur sunning themselves under a lightbulb), piglets, rabbits and a pot bellied pig had no privacy but did provide an awful lot of entertainment before we went to the 'play barn', which would have made Pat Sharpe jealous with it's amazing Fun House proportions.

Kids love Lovecraft

Back to the to the fun cartooning for a bit. This is a bit of art for a pitch, the scene doesn't appear in the comic but when I was told the idea, kid's perform cover-ups for weird going's on, I got this image of Lovecraftian horrors hidden in a phone-box.

Now it can be told

A few months ago I promised a sneak peak of a comic I was working on before finding out sneak peaks were not allowed. Well, the comic's out so I guess I can talk about it. The story is called 'Etc' and it's in Boom Studio's Zombie Tales no. 7. The script was written by Shane Oakley and I was happy to find Shane's scripts have the same dark over the top humour as his awesome artwork.
I made a bit of a mistake and missed something from the script, so I've added it in for this post, sorry Shane, hope this makes up for it a bit.

Hoo boy

Bit of a shocker art wise this time round. This piece is for the fine chaps at Massacre For Boys, and I decided to be obvious and go for the whole expoitation route. Have to say my initial idea stuck me as all jolly nasty fun, but drawing it became increasingly uncomfortable - but I guess that's the point. The original art minus the book cover style additions feels even more tough to look at, the schlock title and lurid tag-line actually manages to tame it a little by making it look campy and silly I think..... but then I think I've just shown how questionable my taste is.

Ooooh

This is just astonishing.

Western

Here's the final black & white version of my contribution to AccentUK's upcoming Western anthology. Compare it to the different colour version and you'll see that, apart from the horse, I've not really changed anything, mainly just a simplification of the rendering . I'm not sure about the soundfx, Dave, the author, was happy for me to drop them, but I decided they added to the timing and tone of the story. Luckily I think it works fine in B&W, maybe even better than the colour version. I've even added pages 2 and 3 for you, but you'll have to wait until the comic comes out to see the final 3.

BICS

Due to last minute bad luck, a bit of poor planning and a whole lot of 'out side' influences, I couldn't make it to the Birmingham comic convention this weekend. I'm more than a little annoyed as I had hoped to put faces to a couple of internet names. Still, it, and a few other things this last week, has been a valuable lesson, and one one I intend to act upon for the scarily near new year. In my home life I'm not terribly well organized and can lack focus, I've also let various events of the last couple of years weigh far too heavily, and have seen getting over them as a huge obstacle instead of simply putting it all aside and moving on.
Aaaaanyway, pretty pictures to resume soon, the new version of my cowboy comic is coming along and I'll post some of that soon.

Life, lots of it

Well, it's been a sucky time of late with the day job getting strange and unhelpful, so yesterday's drama was wonderfully timed. My little girl took a tumble and managed to bit through her lip, which was bad enough, but having to hold her down whilst she got stitches was just horrible, being the 'having to deal with it' parent is not pleasant. Luckily it was only a couple of stitches and my daughter's Wolverine like resilience and recuperative powers apart from a bit of a trout pout every thing's back to normal, and the sedative kids get also means they don't remember things like needles and thread in their lips.
On the more pleasant side of things I got my advance copy of Best New Manga 3, and it's a cracking looking book, the best volume by far, and gets a big thumbs up for it's beautiful colour reprint of a Skeleton Key one off. It's weird seeing a piece of work I did almost a year ago, luckily the other work in the book makes up my short comings, so you've all got no excuse, go out and buy a copy!

Western

So, after the Eastwood pic, I moved onto the Western comic, and yesterday decided to start again. Bit of a pain, but hopefully for the best, I'm happy enough with the results, but it's a bit too far removed from my normal style and I'm wishing I'd stuck closer to my usual 'look'. It's fun drawing in different ways, but it's important to stick with what you like. Anyway, it's unfinished (there's an element missing from all 3 panels, even if it's not noticable), but I thought I might as well show some of my first crack at it. I''ve done it in colour despite it being for a b&w book (AccentUK's Western, go see Dribb's blog for some ace upcoming work from it), more work for me but nice to have a swanky version.

Eastwood

Ages ago, back when I had more pin up drawing time, I promised I'd draw a Clint Eastwood pic. I still don't have time, but I do have to draw a western comic strip and I fancied doing it in digital paints, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. It's a bit of a mixed bag I'm afraid, the sketch was a quickie as it was the paints I wanted to spend time figuring out, so the basic drawing's off, but what the hell, it's ages since I posted artwork regular like. Sorry it's a pretty obvious Clint ref too, but it's such a cool still I had to go with it.
I did enjoy this technique, it's an extention of my Daversham Rex style, and throws in some other influences, such as animator production art, and vintage covers by the likes of McGinnis and Bonfils - I love Robert Bonfils, the Sin-A-Rama chock full of great work by him and others..... and a lotta skin:)

Bunkmate, the sequel

For those with long memories you might recal I posted something called Bunkmates which is due to appear in issue 2 of Bulletproof - available in time for BICS. I've just finished the artwork for another Bunkmates ready for issue 3, so here's a dialogue free sneak peak, in, unusual, colour this time.