I had to re-draw a panel today, twice, first I thought of a slightly better way of doing it, and it was quite an easy change to make. Then coming back from lunch I realised it would be much better if she wasn’t reacting to the sound of the kettle… she should be too engrossed to notice it at all. So I re-drew the whole panel. It feels good when you realise something like that before it’s too late. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of things I’ll want to change once the book is finished and in the shops, so it’s nice to know I at least caught one before it got away.

So this is my ‘deleted scene’ of the day.

Brandon Graham of King City fame started a new Moebius Meme in the same vein as Paul Pope’s ‘Apple Pie’ one. They’re all collected here. The Starwatcher picture is on the cover of my well worn copy of ‘The Art of Moebius’, I love that picture so much so I couldn’t resist having a stab at my own version featuring Nao.

Haven’t posted anything for a long time – sorry. Been really busy, still drawing Nao (only 60 pages left to draw!… But then I have to paint them all… 183 of them…)

Anyway, this post is about ‘Nelson’, which you can also read about here… A brilliantly conceived project by Rob Davis who is jointly editing it with Woodrow Phoenix, both of whom are very much contributing brilliant work to the book as well. There’s some great people involved and the contributors list reads like a who’s who of British comics. After originally saying yes, I then had to pull out because of my workload on Nao… Luckily Rob came back to me with an idea and we managed to sort something out. I’m very pleased and proud to be involved in such an excellent project and can’t wait to have a hard copy in my hands, hopefully some time around November… I’ve purposely kept myself from looking at the artwork that came after my year, so that it’ll be a surprise when I read it… but what I have seen looks amazing.

A few people have already asked me if I had a Grifter, I didn’t (although I desperately wanted one), I had a Strika for ages, then I think a second hand racer with cowhorn handle bars (I wanted one of these but we couldn’t afford it). Before finally graduating to the new found fad of BMXing.

In other news, I’ve got a top secret meeting tomorrow about something I’m very excited about. Wish me luck.

Been too busy drawing to post blogs… But here’s a little peep at part of panel two, page sixty nine.

In the last week I’ve had to explain to a few people (who’ve been interested) about my meditation practice. Having had to explain off the top of my head, I thought it might be interesting to write it down here and see how it comes out. Apologies in advance to those who come here for drawings, storyboards and stuff about drawing (but hopefully this rough panel sketch of Nao is enough… for now). Read more »

When I last drew comics, it was in a time before Photo Shop (at least, a time before I had Photoshop). Coming back after all these years, I’ve found the technical breakthroughs make quite a difference to me. These days I’m more than happy to abandon half a page here, large panels there… and not necessarily because the drawing’s bad, it can be like this one (above), which just didn’t feel right. I like the drawing… but it wasn’t the right one.

I’m sure, of course, that I could’ve done this before Photo Shop, plenty of artists would throw whole pages away, I’ve heard eye witness accounts of Mike McMahon throwing away beautiful finished pages because he wasn’t happy with them. And I know some artists would cut out and paste in new panels if necessary. But I don’t think I ever did that (although I’m sure I really should have).

But with Photo Shop a psychological barrier has been broken. The fact that I can draw separate segments if necessary and paste them together digitally… and the finished thing looks nice on the screen. Has left me feeling a new sense of gay abandon with regards each page… If it’s not right, I just re-draw it on a fresh piece of paper, getting bogged down, rubbing something out over and over, just gets depressing and rarely ends happily.

Of course it means that there isn’t always that ‘original artwork’ which is nice to have and re-sell. But if you’re too worried about that you’re not really paying attention to what the artwork is actually for. The book is the most important thing really and everything else should come second to that.

Having to move some stuff from one studio to another last week, I unearthed some VHS tapes and one of them was my old showreel from my short time as a director with RSA films. I got my Dad to transfer it on to a DVD for me (because I wouldn’t know where to begin). And I wasn’t too disappointed by what I found. I’d seen the Stina Nordenstam video not too long ago because I posted it up here a while back, but the other stuff I hadn’t seen in AGES.

There’s a short film/music video thing I did called ‘Learning How to Walk’, which was all shot by me on Super 8 and edited by the excellent Seb Monk. It was basically pieced together from a trip to New York in 1999 0r 2000, which coincided with The Yankees winning the World Series, hence the ticker tape parade.

Then there’s two versions of a title sequence I did for a BBC show called ‘The Fear’ which was a fifteen minute, Jackanory style format, with actors reading a story straight to camera. I remember Sean Pertwee did one and I think Sadie Frost did one too but I don’t remember any more and it’s internet presence is nonexistent. Seb edited one of them, but the one that ends with the zoom into the girl’s hand was edited by the wonderful Sophie Muller. I don’t remember why we did two versions with two different editors, but there y’go.

I thought finding this reel coincided nicely with my trip to the Thought Bubble Festival in Leeds this year. I’m going to be on the ‘From Panel to Film’ panel on Saturday (see post below for more details). I was a bit unsure at first, about being on the panel, especially because I haven’t had a film made from a comic or anything major like that… but I suppose I can say I’ve spent the last 17 years doing storyboards, mostly in the advertising world but a few films as well.

I left the comic world behind in about 1993-4 and held great ambitions to be a director and direct my own films. I thought storyboarding might be the perfect route into that exciting, exotic world… But this show reel and a first draft of my screenplay, called ‘Instructions How to Die’ was about as far as I got really. Oh, and this…

Then my interest in comics as a storytelling means was reawakened… specifically after seeing the film adaptation of Hellboy,  which, as adaptations go, wasn’t too bad… But when I saw it, I couldn’t help thinking how much I preferred the books… I mean really it’s no competition, gimme Mike Mignola’s beautiful artwork over Guillermo del Toro’s film any day of the week. Basically, with that little epiphany, I fell back in love with the idea of drawing comics (I’d never stopped being a fan of reading them) …but the possibilities of what one person can do, sitting alone at their desk, in their spare time, or full time if they’re lucky enough to get paid… that possibility excited me again… and the siren call of film no longer turned my head… she wasn’t ‘all that’ anyway .

So I’m glad to be back nestling in the big bosom of comics. And I feel very lucky that she even considered taking me back… Mind you I haven’t got my feet under the table just yet.

Today I booked a hotel and secured a pro pass for the Thought Bubble festival in Leeds. I’ll be taking along some photocopies of the work I’ve been doing, they’ll probably be all crumpled up in my pocket. If you can find me, please feel free to ask for a sneaky peak, I’ll be more than happy to oblige, as long as you keep mum. The picture above is the banner from the guests page of the festival website… There’s some great talent going, I feel very honoured to be included and I’m really looking forward to it.

*UPDATE* News just in, it seems now I will be taking part in the ‘From Panel to Film’ Panel on Saturday the 20th at the Royal Armouries Hall between 11:30-12:30, hosted by John Mosby. I’ll be up there with Andy Diggle, Richard Starkings and my buddy Adam Brockbank.

Here’s another little peak of what I’ve been up to… it’s difficult to choose anything that doesn’t give too much away at this point.

At the moment I’ve decided to draw it chronologically… When I last drew comics I’d jump about in order to retain some sort of consistency in the artwork and maybe to prevent boredom… but this time I thought it might be nice to see how both the characters and the artwork develops. Also in terms of discipline it will stop me avoiding difficult pages and possibly reward me with several easy ones in a row.

However, I must confess to already jumping forward for two pages, but one is a flashback, to before the current events and the other one is a dream sequence, which I’ve mentioned before (here) – so they shouldn’t really count.

Well, that’s the plan for now anyway, if I don’t stick to it I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile here’s a few boards I did a while back which I forgot to post (here)