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

Porcelain: "Goodbye so soon"

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Finally I've just this weekend wrapped on my end of Porcelain, that's it, vamos!

(Pictured above: all the Porcelain work, to the left the inks and pencils to the right.)

It goes without saying that most artists, especially the ones I follow and admire, pull off this amount of work with double the skill on a monthly basis, so in comparison it may seem like i'm making a big deal out of this, but for me, career-wise, this is a big deal. It's my first comic project that I have completed that has gone beyond the 27page mark. I have others of a similar size in the works but this is the first to be completed.

It is sad to see the end and to say I loved those characters is a massive understatement. Thinking about it, it reminded me of when I had the chance to meet Becky Cloonan very briefly at the last Kapow in London. I was eagerly buying her short story The Mire from her and straight after buying I sat in a quiet spot and read the whole thing, a beautiful story to say the least. One of many things that struck a chord with me in this book was her dedication at the beginning, it read: "Dedicated to those of you with crushes on your characters". After reading the book I went back to her table and asked her to sign it and gushed over how much I agreed with that statement. Here I am at the end of the book and it's great, but almost heart breakingly sad to have drawn these guys possibly for the last time. Maybe we'll re-visit them again or they will be seen somewhere in the distance of another book, who knows? If they do ever come a knocking I'll have tea and little cakes ready. …and spoons.

This week I'll not only be catching up on some much needed sleep and time with my lady (and of course my Xbox may be hard wired into me for a little while) I'll also be sorting out some back matter for the end of the book. I’m hoping to cram in lots of behind the scenes paraphernalia, character sketches that made it in, some that didn't etc... So do stay tuned for the full book. It’s due out in February and I’m always happy to hear any feedback :)

Before I go, I just wanted to express A LOT of love (and cheeseballs) for Ben, Matt and Andre. Thank’s for being the best kind of work buddies.

Thought Bubble 2012: Improper lowdown

Hello, Hello! just packing up our stuff for Thought Bubble convention this weekend so thought i'd just share the Improper Books rough plan of what we're up to. You can see our details HERE Anyway must dash, should hopefully have some pics and news to share up next week. if your going , don't be shy, come say hi and have a chat! I'll be sketching at the table probably doing a charge of £15 a sketch as usual but i wont be on the desk all day as we're doing a bit of a rotation of Improper Artists throughout the day. Hope to see you there!

Porcelain: the final stretch

Hey Guys just thought i'd post a little piece of Porcelain on here. were on the final stretch of the book now. this book has been too fun and had some big learning curves for me.

This here is a panel i had a lot of fun and stress over, thanks to Marc Laming for giving me some tips on how to attack those windows!

Action Short

Just wanted to get back into a bit of posting as it's been horribly quiet here. This here is a little action sample i did recently. I'd been guided towards an advert about an artist looking for someone who would like to submit for a Saturday morning cartoon style action comic. I honestly didn't think i was much good for such a thing but the guy took a shine to my work and asked me to do an action sample showing how i could deal with a Monster, Jet-pack and a grappling hook. being that i'm in the heat of Improper Books deadlines at the moment i tried to pull off something as quickly as possible. so i put together a little 3 page piece, i gave myself a day to do it all so i only managed to get two pages inked and quickly grey shaded.

I had a bunch fun doing it a but i think it's obvious i'm not very well versed in POW POW action scenes! I pretty well came up with the showdown on panel one of page two first and drew around that. I'd be the first to admit there is plenty wrong with this piece and was a bit reluctant to show it but here you go... Anyway i actually got the job on the short but instantly realized i would be biting off more than i could chew with everything i'm on at the moment so i had to back down which is a shame and the guy sounded like a lot of fun to work with and it was nice to get a thumbs up as the guy is a pretty big name in one of the big two so a nice bit of an ego boost. anywho, feel free to give me any pointers, as i say i know this is not the best actin sequence.