London MCM Expo

Last weekend Sammy and I went to London MCM Expo. We had a great time! It was much busier than we expected (a lot of people in Comic Village were surprised by the number of guests) and we did very well for sales!

The downside is that we sold out of a lot of stock, which has never happened to us before. We need to get a move on making something new before our next event at Manchester MCM in July.

Sammy has put up a lot more pictures and some descriptions of everyone's work on the Inspired blog.

Inspired Anthology 2013 - The Music Cupboard

I've been working on two short comics for this year's inspired anthology. This is the second one, The Music Cupboard, featuring Poppet the House Hob. This time Poppet and her friends are infiltrating a human school, concealed in a cello case.

Poppet previously appeared in The Bad Fairy Bakery (which was also drawn for an Inspired anthology) and answers questions in What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?. The Bad Fairy Bakery is available to buy online, but you can also read it on this blog.

The finished anthology will be available at Bristol Comics Expo, London MCM Expo and Manchester MCM Expo this year.

Inspired Anthology 2013 - A Ghost Story

I've been working on two short comics for this year's Inspired anthology. It's themeless now, but originally it had a music theme, so both my comics are music-related. This is the first one I did, which is a simple ghost story. (My favourite kind of story!)

I've used this ink and water technique for a comic before, so I didn't need to do too many tests for this one. I think the floaty effect is nice for ghosts, but it's harder for the rest of the characters as I need to maintain a clear outline. I think I've improved since my last attempt though.

The finished anthology will be available at Bristol Comics Expo, London MCM Expo and Manchester MCM Expo this year.

Thought Bubble and a Dress!

Behold, what I've been doing for the past few weeks! I kind of burned myself out making new postcards for Thought Bubble (I'll post those later, for now there's a photo of them on the stand), so once they'd been sent to print I decided to do something entirely different. I transformed my computer desk into a sewing desk and set about making a dress from Josceline Fenton's lovely webcomic, Hemlock! It's the first one we see Lumi wearing. Eventually I'd like to make all of these four, but I think I've done enough dressmaking for the time being.

Here's a picture of the finished dress! Also of me awkwardly standing with Josceline trying not to seem creepy, which is hard when you just spent three weeks slavishly recreating someone's work in cotton form. She said it was very accurate, which makes me happy.

Here's the Inspired table, with Sammy behind it because we used my camera this time.

my postcards...

5 issues of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf...

My art cards, hanging out with some new ones by Sammy and Shaz...

a shot of my side of the table, complete with Patience, miniprints, Bad Fairy Bakery etc.

and a portrait commission I did! If you look really closely in the back you can see a little drawing of Patience that Sammy gave me. It's so cute! I seemed to do pretty well at Thought Bubble, and we certainly did well as a table. I also bought about £80 of comics, and John Allison said some very nice things about our work, so I'm very pleased with how it went. There'll be a write-up of Thought Bubble on the Inspired blog soon as well, now that I've got round to sending the photos to Sammy.

Broth Sea Peoples

These are four more art cards I whipped up for the farmer's market. If you got the Eat Me! anthology, you may recognise these as the leaders of the various Broth Sea tribes in my comic, The Mysterious Land of Under-Noodle. Going clockwise, these are the Wise Woman of the Noodle People, the Prime Minister of the Wonton Isles, the mightiest warrior from the Cliffs of Pork, and the Chieftain of the Lettuce Hunters.

You can tell they're the leaders because they wear the most clothes, haha.

Patience Mini-Mystery

This week Sammy was at Manchester MCM, and next Saturday (work shifts permitting) I'll have a little stall at Bristol Ferment Farmer's Market, so I made a mini-comic to give out instead of business cards. Sammy's been doing it that way for ages, and it works really well - people tend not to turn down a free comic. We also made a free mini-zine to promote What's the Time Mrs Woolf?

Anyway, I decided on a miniature Patience mystery, since I'm hoping to get the first full-length comic done before the spring cons next year.

Aside from the new issue of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf? (with a 'hairy' theme) the other things I'll be taking are all original paintings. I'll be posting some of those next week. I'll also have a few copies of Inspired's latest anthologies, and limited numbers of the mini-library Sammy tried at Manchester.

If any of you are near Bristol, I hope you'll stop by and see me!

The Bad Fairy Bakery

I wrote two comics for Inspired's newest anthology, Eat Me! (I was also very pleased to win the cover vote this time with my cheerful takoyaki.) The Mysterious Land of Under Noodle went into the anthology, so The Bad Fairy Bakery was printed alone and sold as a mini-comic at Bristol Expo. Since it's only 8 pages long, I thought I'd put up the whole thing for you all to read, like Patience is a Virtue. I hope you enjoy it!

Here's a little preview from the latest Inspired anthology, Eat Me! I was very pleased to win the cover vote this time as well.

I was also really pleased with how my comic came out, since it was the whole reason we had a food theme. Sammy and I were eating at a noodle bar and I started making up a story about my wonton noodle soup, so we decided to do a food anthology so I could turn it into a comic (the other members agreed of course). I really like my character designs for this comic.

Guess where I was last weekend! Inspired Comics (from whose blog I have stolen the photo) got a table at Birmingham MCM, so I went along to help and to monopolize almost a third of the table with all my junk. I think it looks sweet all together though, all muted colours and soft toy mascots. (Fox!) You can see the edge of our latest anthology in the corner there. Remember the new Inspired anthology will be debuting at Bristol Expo on the 12th-13th of May.

Thinking of debuts, issue 3 of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf? was on sale, and is now available in our online shop. You can find information on our features and contributors this time on the zine blog, and you can buy it at Comiket later this month if you'll be in London. If you want issue 1 you'll have to be quick - sales were good at Birmingham, so there's only two left in the shop.

And thinking of shops, I now have an Etsy shop, how exciting! You can buy my postcards and miniprints there so far, I hope to have new products up soon, including some original paintings. This picture is the header, before I cropped it. Isn't Tabitha cute?

A Thousand Empty Heavens

I've finished my comic for this year's Inspired anthology, Science Fiction Octuple Feature. I posted a 2-page preview for Disposable People, so I thought I'd do the same again. A Thousand Empty Heavens is a pair of contrasting vignettes, so I've used the first page of each. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, although I did realise I've done a depressing sci-fi story twice in a row for Inspired. I'll have to do something cute and cheerful for the next one.

We're taking this to Thought Bubble, and you can also buy it online HERE.

church doodles

I swear I have been doing something these past few weeks!

It's all very exciting, the Inspired crew have finished our new anthology, Science Fiction Octuple Feature, (which Sammy is taking to various comic shops and will also be available at Thought Bubble this November) and within a week of finishing my comic for that I got two very interesting commissions from people I don't know personally (and one from my Mum, which doesn't really count). The downside is that with all this group work and paid work, I've not got much that I'm at liberty to post online until later this year.

To prevent my blog being totally dormant, here are a couple of pages I doodled up during church. I wouldn't feel right doing paid work in church, so it's the only time I've been free to draw whatever I feel like.

Even if it sometimes turns out a bit weird because I forgot to bring a pencil and had to do it in gel pen.

I hope I'll be able to show you some of the paid work soon, it's very exciting for me to be getting work from strangers for the first time, instead of from friends or family members. (Or more often, friends of family members.)

Inspired Cover 2

I did two covers for the Inspired cover competition, the one I posted a few days ago drew quite heavily on the comic I'm submitting, so I also did this one as a more general sci-fi cover. I like them both, but I think I'm being biased towards this one by all the drawing for the internal comic. Anyone would get sick of beautiful, delicate robots after several weeks of drawing them.

Inspired Anthology

I thought you might like to see my cover design for the sci-fi anthology Inspired is putting out later this year. You can see a few more on the Inspired blog, as well as a lot of development work from the other members. I'm working on a second one, but it's turning into a lesson in why I should always scan my lineart before I paint anything, as I'm now having to go through the laborious process of tracing all the lines on Photoshop, printing a blue-line, re-inking it by hand and scanning it in again to colour digitally. If anyone knows a faster way PLEASE tell me.

Obviously that's taking forever, so here's some of the development work and the world's most basic page sketch to tide you over:

If you're interested in some of Inspired's older anthologies (I've got a comic in Pick & Mix 2, hint hint) we now have an online shop that you can find HERE.

journal pictures from spring term

I haven't had much to update this blog with in a while, but there's always more journal pictures. These are really quite old, I forgot I hadn't uploaded the last batch until I scanned the latest ones. You can find the new ones on flickr.

I should have some new pictures soon, I've just been busy doing my anthology submission for Inspired Comics. I never feel comfortable putting up too much information on it ahead of it being printed, since it's a group project and all. You can see some of the character designs and stuff over on the Inspired blog though (not just mine, Gem's are up too).

Thinking of Gem, I don't suppose any of you are in need of commissions? She needs a bit of extra money fairly urgently and is offering them at very reasonable prices, so it'd be great if some of you have the money to buy one. I can recommend her environment work, she's amazing at backgrounds and environment concepts. You can find all the information on her blog, as well as examples of her work.

Journal Pictures and Degree Show madness

I finally got round to scanning some more of the pictures from my journal, so mooch on over to flickr to take a look at strange scenes from my life.

In other news, my degree show is going well so far.  It all looks really good up on the walls and I think we've got a lot of good work in our class this year.  Sammy's put up some nice photos of work by the Inspired crew, which includes me, or you can find out more on the university website.

It's weird to think that we're almost done after three years of work, work, work.  It seems to have gone really quickly, but at the same time 1st year feels like a lifetime ago.  I've enjoyed the course a lot and I finally feel like I wouldn't be ripping people off if I charge them for my work, which is a big milestone.  I can't quite believe how much my work has improved since we started.  (Of course then I look at other people's work from my class like Sammy, Jamie, Nathan and Rob and think 'Waargh they're all so much better than me! Panic panic flail flail' but I'm told that's normal and healthy in a creative field.)

I hope some of you can make it down to the show!

Disposable People

This year I joined my friend Sammy Borras' comic collective, Inspired Comics, and did a 7-page sci-fi comic for the new anthology.  I'm pretty pleased with how it came out, so here's the cover and one page.

We took these (and numerous others made before I joined) to BICS this year, where they sold quite well.  We'll be selling them at other events next year too, so keep your eyes peeled.

(Yuck, where does that expression come from?   Makes me imagine peeling an eyeball like a grape or something.)