DeadMoth Comic

This is title page for my comic strip  that came about from a previous illustration course. It's planned for an anthology of comic strips by different artist/ writers local to oxford that should come out soon... hopefully.

Contributors are:
Charles Cutting& Richard Hayes
Matt Lewis
Andrew Stillborn (Stilly)
Mark Fox
and me

Two of the comic strips ( mine and Matt's) came about from the comic book course I attended in late 2014 run by Charles Cutting.

It was started purely as an exercise to include specific elements that were discussed that would make a comic strip interesting and lead the reader on.
Some of those elements were setting the mood and changing it, how to convey characters when in dialogue,  introducing new characters, both supportive and antagonistic, while adding various twists and turns and a cliff hanger ending.

From the discussions and results of the exercises Charles came up with three basic storyline ideas. From this we picked one and developed it  further with the plan of keeping it between 6 to 8 pages.
Since finishing the strip there's been ideas of concluding the story and as I had never intended to do so I needed to put thinking cap on. After working out the conclusion I decided to add two more pages to the first part. The first is to give it a title/ splash page because I felt it needed it and a second page I inserted when there was a lull in action, to help with continuing the next part of the story ( not shown).
So this title page is one of 9 completed pages for the first part of my contribution. The second part should be about 8 pages and will conclude the story. I've pencilled four of these pages and after finishing them will move on to the rest.

festive fun

 

Happy Christmas

 

 

 

Karate Santa

Ragtag

I can't believe how quickly the years have gone by. I drew this motley crew, must be around 2007/2008 in black line with the notion of adding colours digitally not too far in the distant future.... oops, that didn't work out

Then I had to redo one of the caricatures as it was originally drawn standing not sitting and that kind of put me off finishing it as I hate redoing work.... Bah!    (though I find it less of a chore now compared to a few years ago).

Then eventually everything else got in the way..... Gah!

But now... with a bit of down time....It's done!  :)

Hope you guys at Ragtag Developments Ltd like it.

A quick Friday afternoon sketch of nostalgia

The Writer and Me

Having drawn caricatures of a lot of politicians I think it's only fair I subject myself and the writer to this process of shrinking bodies and enlarging heads. Though it's more fun from our perspectives.

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

 

 

Some competition work

With "The Fat boy with the bomb" book drawing to a close and with it being the half term, now is a good time for a short break and maybe get myself a bit more organised.

Just prior to the "Fat boy" book I had this plan to concentrate on re-vamping some work, but due to time, that that fell by the way side. The other thing to do was to enter a couple of competitions.

I did manage to do the competitions... well one of them as it was finished and sent not long after I met Brian OConnell (writer of Fat Boy with the Bomb).

The competition was set by Titan Comics Teams Up with LICAF for Undiscovered Talent Search.
http://www.comicartfestival.com/2014/05/titan-comics-teams-licaf-undiscovered-talent-search/

My submission piece was about a monkey sent into space (attached is pages 2and 3).

 

Even though I didn't win I've been informed that my work has been selected  and will be published in the anthology. This in itself is quite a big thing for me and I look forward to seeing it published.

The second competition http://www.theguardian.com/books/series/observer-graphic-short-story-prize
I'm not sure if I managed to get the submission in on time but the Fat boy book was the priority. The work was heavily constrained due to time so I can only hope. Attached is one of the pages.

 

Regardless I hope these two submissions will lead me on to some new work prospects.

 

Now my current focus is to get a bit organised and contend with some existing projects one of which is Deadmoth.

 

Deadmoth is kind of an anthology though some of the stories are completed and some, like mine are not. My strip for it was illustrated earlier this year but due to some hiccups the publishing of Deadmoth stalled for a bit.

 

This is a page from the first part of my story and I have 2 more instalments roughed out to finish it. Next to it is the cover art for Deadmoth (Still to be coloured). I drew this with the purpose of  featuring a main character from each strip. As they are all stylistically different and would look out of place with each other I had them gather round a common focal point.

 

With any luck Deadmoth this will be out by early 2015