Here’s one of the pieces I have been colouring between writing as part of my thing a day. Saturday may suffer thing-a-day wise but I will be at Alt.fiction with loads of cool people so I think it’s justified.
Pencils and Inks : Jonboy Meyers ( HERE
Colours by ME
I’m late posting but yesterdays ‘thingaday’ was plotting and arranging scenes for a project I’m in the early stages of that will have the talented Valia Kapadai handling artchores.
We’re going to whip up some pages and such and try pitching them to a few publishers whom we have in mind so look for mor on that in the future.
Todays ‘thingaday’ will be writing some more of Shiver and I will only play on Red Dead Redemption when I have written at least 5 pages. Honest Injun!
So I haven’t posted for a while, it happens and I’m sorry.
This weekend I went to the Bristol Comic and Small Press Expo, it was a wonderful and really re-ignited my passion.
To that end I’m starting ‘thingaday’, where by I will aim to do at least one thing each day – writing/colours or letters – and will then post about it here.
It started today as I began colouring a Gears of War sequential and got all the flats laid so far.
I can now go to bed and then come back to that or some writing tomorrow.
I will also try and update about my other projects tomorrow, lots to report… *yawn*
One of the things that habitually destroys my writing flow is the the urge to change the formatting of my script, of having to devise a clever system if I want to write scenes out of order.
There’s nothing worse then going back to write in a scene and realising it needs more pages than you’ve allowed for it, being faced with having to go through the hold script renaming page page numbers can really halt any progress you are making.
I have in the past dabbled with a program called Celtx for writing screenplays and recently it has been updated to support comic scripts. I’m loving it it so far and will I think be using it for all my comic writing in future.
It does mean I need to work on getting my partially written projects into it but I think using Celtx will force me to write my scripts in a more simple straight style, to get the story and dialogue down and then I can worry about adding the extra useful details as a secondary pass as it should be.
In other news I am currently working on a few projects actively :
SHIVER – I’m trying to force myself to make a big push to get a lot of this written, hopefully regardless of what happens with my artist woes when they are sorted I hope to have everything done and ready.
Hometown Heroes – Assuming I can crank out some pages of this soon there may be a chance it gets printed this year. More about this when I know something.
MURKY DEPTHS – I am working on a Prose competition entry for the Mike Carey competition in Murky Depths, it’s difficult so wish me luck. I am also knocking up a few short scripts which I have approached an artist to draw one, when her schedule clears up in the next few months hopefully I’ll have another submission to make to Terry. *fingers crossed*
There are always others knocking about my head but for now those are my active projects, speaking of which, I should really get back to it.
I’ve never subscribed to this podcast before and it’s unlikely that I will in future as I pretty much fall on the side of scepticism in these matters, that being said this particular show was a good discussion about the 2012 phenomenon and the anthology I’m a part of.
Worth a listen.
Also just wanted to post another review of the anthology that has been posted at the Morbid Romantic blog :
I hope to have more news on new and existing projects in the New Year, I’m plugging away and have been putting the feelers out and will post here when things happen.
Last Saturday I attended the grand opening of my friends comic shop (Mondo Comico) in Nottingham and had the pleasure of meeting Ian Edginton and Ian Culbard who were there signing – among other things – their adaptation of the Conan Doyle classic ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’.
I got a few Edginton comics signed from my collection and being a sucker for anything Sherlock I bought the ‘Baskerviile’ book too. Now being an adaptation of a book the story is already on good ground and they’ve done nothing to compromise it. The thing that stood out about the book to me though was the work that went into it and the vision that seems to exist between Edginton and Culbard.
The lettering and art absolutely fit and in the cases of flashbacks they had found an excellent way of presenting the speech heavy flashbacks etc.
See in the panel above how the silhouette a character bookends the tale that is being told and the speech balloons join to the caption box. It may sound like a silly thing to pick out but it’s this kind of attention to detail that just made this book an absolute joy to read, despite already knowing the story.
It’s also that sort of thing that so often doesn’t factor when writing a script, in this book though I’m pretty sure there must have been some thought about it upfront. I guess this is part of the reason that I’ve dabbled in lettering and colouring, for a tighter control and influence on the end product, things like the above really amaze me when I see them. Small touches that are just out of the ordinary but serve the story rather than being done for the hell of it.
I hope one day one of my books will make someone else feel the same.
So, ThoughtBubble has come and gone and once again stated it’s case for being the best UK Comic Convention/Festival there is.
Whereas last year I was caught up in trying to get ‘Shiver’ officially accepted, wandering the aisles looking for anthologies to submit something to and didn’t actually get much time to taste the convention proper. This year I decided to go prepared with books to get signed by some of the confirmed guests and made three of the panels and having a thoroughly great time in the process.
I managed to meet some folks I’ve been speaking to online, but unfortunately missed some of the people I had wanted to catch up with due to having to head for the train home at 5pm.
Firstly the Insomnia stand was there in full force and frequently was a source of bodies jamming together as people stopped and gawped at the wares on show.
During a period of being stranded down one of the narrow aisles I got talking to Matthew Craig and impressed by how easy he was to talk to I bought a few of his Hondle mini-comics. If you see Matthew at any future cons please stop by and give his stuff a look, he’s a super nice guy.
I stopped by and spoke to Terry Martin from Murky Depths, excited to find out when Mike Carey would be along to sign on their table. On my way up to Leeds to the train I had chance to read the latest Murky Depths (#10) which contains a writing competition where the challenge is to finish a story that Mike Carey started. It’s a difficult one but I think I’m going to give it a go.
I got comics signed by Andi Watson, Mike Carey and Sean Phillips but avoided the other larger lines that clogged up the end of the hall.
Panel wise I hit the following :
‘FROM PAPER TO DIGITAL’, ‘DO ZOMBIES READ COMIC BOOKS’ and ‘MARVEL COMICS, HOW TO WORK FOR US MASTECLASS’. I won’t review these panels there are plenty of blogs already posted about most of them, I will say that I really enjoyed the ‘How to break into marvel’ style panel that was hosted by Stephen Wacker (Spiderman Editor). I wasn’t expecting any secret backdoor or such and rather than being a master class it was just and opportunity for aspiring creators to ask him questions about working for Marvel. The takeaway for it from the writing side is that they only look at published worked, if they like what you’ve done then they may approach you to pitch them. Till then it’s just about busting your ass and getting your work seen.
Good panel none-the-less though.
I can’t end this bit on ThoughtBubble without mentioning Sam Johnson (Geek Girl Creator and former SPI competitor) who I spent a lot of time chatting too at the convention. He has a desire and eagerness that I need to try and get myself. A discipline to sitting down and making the story happen.
This regular, longer, more precise blog posting is a first step to that. *FINGERS CROSSED*
So it’s Friday, another week another blog post. I have made a pact with Steve Stone to hopefully encourage and remind each other to post something at least once a week. He has just posted his and so I thought I should pull my thumb out.
THE OBLIGATORY ‘2012:FINAL PRAYER’ PIMPAGE
Friday the Thirteenth is traditionally a day of bad portents and poor luck, fitting then that it should be the date that the ‘2012:Final Prayer’ anthology is released.
You can also pre-order at Amazon (a small shipment of books have been shipped); and the book (both US and UK variant) will soon be available from Haven Distributors.
There has also been some further reviews/press with more expected in the coming few days.
Tomorrow I will be waking up at some ungodly hour to head to the train station and head to Leeds for this years ThoughtBubble comics festival.
ThoughtBubble last year was amazing and by all indications this years is going to be even better, following from this years B.I.C.S there are a few people who I need to say hello to again and some I need to meet for the first time.
I don’t know when conventions became more about meeting up with mates and fellow creators more than getting sketches and signatures. Strange how things happen however that brings me on to…
COMICS GLORIOUS COMICS
The last two days I have finally had a chance to begin to sort out the many A4 printer boxes full of comics scattered around my flat. I am about 6 boxes down, the comics have been sorted and placed into nice comic long boxes. I have started with all the comics that are mine. The ones from 2001 onwards as opposed to the earlier ones I have inherited from my father.
Again it’s strange to realise just how my comic reading habits and tastes have changed over the years, I used to be a Marvel/TopCow nut and by the looks of it I had far too much money to spend on comics. I did find a nice stash of comics that I bought but have still not read yet.
For any nosey folks out there, here is a link to my ComicBookDB profile, as I say there’s still a lot more comics to add :
