Porcelain: Indie Launch! Buy it! Buy it!

Very Happy to announce the release date information on my first long form comic Porcelain: A Gothic Fairy Tale


On Wednesday February 27th, 2013 we are releasing a limited print of the book will be available from Page 45 (Nottingham), Travelling Man (Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and York), Gosh! (London) and Orbital Comics (London), and is currently available to pre-orderfrom said shops.

If you're interested in the book or just want to know more here's a little outline of the story.

'Porcelain is set within a world that’s a darkly magical echo of our own. It follows the story of a street urchin, known as Child, who leaves the cold streets of a snowy city behind when she climbs the high wall into the Porcelain Maker’s secret garden in a bid to steal whatever she can.'

You can download a PDF preview of the book HERE

Porcelain: Keeping It In The Family

Here's an interesting peek behind the scenes of Porcelain.
One of my elder brothers is a bit of a dab hand at...well probably everything but more recently he's become quite a mind blower with Google Sketch Up.
Working on a project like Porcelain Continuity an be a bitch, so to help with the reference i often make a Sketch up of certain rooms so I can keep my bearings and remember where i left say a globe in a room or how many shelves i had on a book shelf.
It's also pretty handy when working out where to place a vanishing point and helps me figure out a new way to approach and angle of a room.
One main help it can give is with complicated props. i'm quite rubbish on Sketch Up when it comes to individual props or something more complicated than a vase or window. This is where my brother Tim came in to help and helped me with some of the grander and more complicated set pieces.

I was going to write up a post myself about his help but he went and did it for his own blog. so i'll let him do the rest of the talking. You can read that HERE

Super 8: The Involvement!

When reading my bio, I’m pretty sure a lot of people have scratched their heads and thought: Wait a minute… Super 8?  If you’re new to my work then it’s likely the Super 8 connection seems unlikely or you remember the DC short by Peter Tomasi and Tommy Lee Edwards. But yes, my partner in comic crime Benjamin Read and I teamed up for the UK promotion of the film, we worked on a promotional website that had a bundle of Super 8 goodies.

The set up was to have an interactive desk of our hero Joe. On said desk is a comic entitled Monsters From The Morgue! Throughout the film the kids are making a horror movie and the comic is one inspiration for the kids when making their film.

We had a lot of fun working on this as we got to take it back to the 70’s and make a completely zany B movie short. So we were quite in our Sci-Fi element.

I have to say out of the whole project, the most fun I had was on the cover.

This had to look as authentic as possible. So we went for the heroic detective shielding the screaming dame. (Although this isn’t exactly how the interiors plot turns out) for reference we looked heavily at the covers from ‘Tales Of The Zombie’. Those covers often had a very beautiful painted style. I didn’t quite get the subtle beauty of those classics but it was a fun attempt. The cover lettering was custom made by Laura Trinder. She also worked on the fake retro advertisements and other bits outside of the website.

In the early stages of development we played with a few different ideas for the comic. One such route we tried, but sadly didn’t continue, was a sort of prequel short based around Charles himself.  Here are a couple of sketches done for that.

 

I’d also tried out my hand at some other bits for the desk interactions if you look through the desk you’ll find a storyboard sketchbook. This again was intended to be an item to back up the film the kids are making in the film. The intention was that one of the kids drew these rough storyboards. I think it’s plain to see from my version that I had a bit of trouble adapting my art style to look more like a youngster with not much art training. 

So again sadly these weren’t used but to be fair I hadn’t really met the authentic look!

People who will have watched the film will notice the story of these isn’t strictly what happens in the kid’s film. We were doing this purely from what we knew from the teaser trailer.

You can find the full website this work is on HERE