MOEBIUS

I was pretty gutted when I found out that Moebius had died.  I'd heard back in Angouleme at the beginning of the year that he was critically ill, but I don't think the possibility really hit me that he would ever actually go away!  It's pretty incredible that Moebius was so good, even when his comics didn't make any sense, you could still love them.  I think I read the Incal when I was about 16, but didn't really think about who made it until I went to uni, where me and Phandy would regularly gush over his work, and pretty much have done ever since.

I feel like if life was more like One Piece then Moebius was the King of the Pirates, and now there's an empty seat that everyone should fight to claim.  Moebius wasn't my favourite comic creator, but I feel that if I don't even try and get to his natural level of sincerity and creativity in my work, then I've got the wrong goals in mind!
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This piece was part of the Electric Ant Zine tribute to Moebius, where we each had a piece of art from a trading card set to base a piece on.  This was mine, and I just got a little carried away with it!  Design wise the ship is a little crude, but at the time I thought that it suited Moebius' design, where sometimes his perspective would be just a little off, or his designs deceptively simple.  This was another piece where the linework was relatively quick, but the colouring took ages!  Also, I've been told that it needs more rubble, which I agree with.  Still, I like it!

GLORY

Crap, it's been a while!  I've actually been arting in the meantime, but completely slipped in my blogging.  I actually feel pretty bad about that...

Anyway!  Here's some work based on Glory, the Image Comics revamp helmed by Ross Campbell and the indefatigable Joe Keatinge.  I haven't met Ross before, but Joe is one of the nicest guys you'll meet, and tries to give everyone a break.  Buy him a drink if you ever meet him!  Brandon Graham et al's Prophet rocks my world too, but Glory just somehow ticks my boxes as a damn good adventure comic.  Just a really violent one!  

On to the art:

I've been experimenting a little lately with some different techniques in photoshop- I think I spent a little too much time on the above piece  for it to be efficient, but I had damn good fun working on it.  As tends to be the case with me, the linework took no time at all, but the colouring took forever and an age.  This was actually made before the issue where Glory has crazy braids!  But hey, great minds think alike.

The rest of the sketches below were generally made before I'd actually read the comic, which I think you can sort of tell by the slightly different tone to em.  

[^ This one I actually really liked, but just couldn't get it to work in a finished piece.  And I just couldn't think of a decent creature design to fit it for the life of me!]

 

[^ While not intentional at the time, I'm 90% sure the blood on this was inspired by Cory Walker's early Invincible run.  I haven't read that in years, but used to be a fan in my teens]

I feel like there should be some kind of link at the end, so whilst we're on the theme of superhuman musclebound women, go see this.

See you next time!

Larger

It was my brother's birthday on Wednesday, so I drew him this guy. You're an old man now, Paul!

Neglected Guardian

[Larger]

Last year (not long after the picture in the last post was made), I planned to enter the Guardian/Observer's annual comic competition. I was moving house at the time, and didn't end up finishing it, so I'll post it here. Needless to say, it would have been existential (any angst was an added bonus) and I was looking forward to playing with sound and and panel layouts a little. Oh, and puns, too.

This is the rough for the second page. After this, the protagonist would have delved into his introverted/escapist worldview.

Oh, and have a look at this guy's 24 hour (or so) comic: http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/02/01/darkness/

It's been linked around a little bit, but the guy drew it at Angouleme BD festival in France, and it blows my mind to think he made something that incredible in such a short time. I was actually at the festival, but I don't think I was there when the 24hr comics event was going on! If you ever get the chance to go there, do it. I'll post a little more about it soon!

Hyrax in Arcadia

Slightly Larger

Wow, sorry for the radio silence! I've been absolutely swamped with a project over the past few months- hopefully I can show some of it in the future. In the meantime, here's an early concept piece for a comic I was writing a little while ago. I drew it last September (I think), and added some of the buildings recently. I'll try and post more often from now on!

ADVICE TO SINK IN SLOWLY

Advice to Sink in Slowly is a project to give illustrated posters of any kind of advice to first year students from former graduates. The lovely John Stanbury, organiser of AtSiS asked me to join in, and as someone who loved having one of these posters in my first year of uni, I was more than happy to join in.

[Full View]

The advice is pretty self explanatory! As much as I loved my course, it didn't teach much about my specific interests, and alongside that, I found it easy to get stressed out by my view of what was 'expected of me' by the course. Illlustration can so easily become obsessive, so I think this advice is still useful. For me at least!

I wanted the poster to be graphic in design, so even if you didn't like the artwork you'd still be happy to have the poster on your wall. Here's close ups of the art itself:

I generally went with the "Draw What You Want" part more than anything thematically close, but I guess from the top, each picture loosely represents knowledge/potential, adventure, and hope/peace and reflection.

I was going to do alternate versions with only one illustration in, but got lazy and didn't. Originally it was going to be a different poster altogether- a digital painting with lots of dismantled tech and machinery:

If you're a student in the UK you can request a poster for free here!

Burrrrfffdayyy

I've been busy! So here are some warm up sketches and quick pieces I've done recently.

It's straight up dawg time

This was going to be in colour, but I got carried away with a black and white experiment. Fun fun fun! Also, my first page drawn at A2, which makes things a bazillion times easier.

Noir

Here are some warm up pieces from a project that may now be on the backburner:

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