Some personal projects run straight through, quick as a flash. Others get put on hiatus. Many sketches never get off the ground. Today’s post is about one particular illustration of mine; one that has made it through development hell to see the light of day.
After watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the dozenth time, and laughing at that brat Malfoy getting clawed after provoking dangerous animals, this doodle of a cheap pun landed in the sketchbook.
Timestamped – lawks! – March 1st 2008.
I sourced visual references of both the film and the board game referenced, and drew it out A4-sized while I was freelancing: I distinctly remember working on this while at the Saatchi & Saatchi offices. Scanned it in, did some digital colouring, applied filters and textures while playing around with the colour scheme…
The lower colour option being “contemporary video game”, apparently.
I told you last time that I had to prepare for Valentine’s Day… my friend’s birthday. As it was her 30th, there was actually a really good surprise party that weekend, but that’s beside the point.
I genuinely didn’t have anything planned for this year. About a week before the 14th, I decided to wear this felt badge/brooch from Made By Millie on the day itself (which was spent at work) – It’s like those stereotypical sailor tattoos, a heart with a banner across, only it says CAKE instead of MUM.
That’s where the idea came from: Rather than another round of cards like people got last year, this year the gifts would be a variant of that heart. So:
There was also DANGER, which didn’t make the photoshoot.
They say third time’s the charm – February 1st has been and gone again, bringing my third entry to Hourly Comic Day!
Still in the same employment and living space as last year’s edition, but it was a Friday, with a house party to liven things up.
Rough notes and scribbles were done in the hours themselves, and neater pictures over the weekend: That makes this more of a Diary Comic than an Hourly one. Some get their chronicle of the hour done at the end of each hour itself. Others do comics in bulk on the day, although this can lead to some of their panels being “drew some hourly comics”. The remainder use “my” method.
On Saturday I went to Thought Bubble 2012, the Leeds Comic Art Festival. First stop was the White Cloth Gallery, to see the beautiful Olly Moss posters made for Mondo (which only go on sale in terribly limited runs). While I did get to see Olly himself later, the door to the gallery was locked, with no-one in sight. Dang. The Mondo exhibition runs until December 2nd, so I may go back and try again.
After buying some snacks from the nearest supermarket (loaded into the bags I brought to fill with merch), it was off to the Royal Armouries hall for the main floor. Cosplayers were plentiful: Finn, Jake and Fionna from Adventure Time, a Silver Surfer, a blue Halo Spartan, several Loki’s (Lokii?) and numerous Harley Quinns. Burton-era Batman was also striding around.
After checking in with People I Know, I sidled up to Mookeo‘s table, where I chatted with a young guy over an awesome poster he’d just bought. After he wandered off, I was informed that the fellow was my buddy John “Final Boss Fight” Gotobed’s brother! Bear in mind that they both live in London…
…there was also a girl I hadn’t seen for about 6 years helping man the CraftJam stand, some guy from my work among the crowds, and one more friend recruiting for the Bruising Banditas Roller Derby team. Small world!
As planned in my last post, I got to meet Scott C.. His queue took a while to conquer, but was not as ridiculously lengthy as the one for Kate Beaton, who I only got to see from afar. Scott signed my book and said my Happy Couple fanart was “awesome”!
He had a whole bunch of limited run prints, and I only had enough money left for one – in the end I went for The Right Key (even if I did repeatedly call those rabbits “pigs” in front of him).
Print 68 of 100, now framed on my bedroom wall!
Robert Llewellyn was in attendance: While he was promoting his new science fiction novel News From Gardenia, he’s best known in the UK as Kryten from Red Dwarf. Got autographs for me and my Bandita pal!
I passed Lee Garbett‘s table a couple of times: A really nice guy, but no-one queuing to see him. All he had on the table were some comic pencils that i’m not sure were for sale. They were, however, pretty incredible, as he’s drawn for Marvel comics!
Everybody there was friendly, attendees and stand-runners alike. Everyone was “please”, “thank-you”, “‘scuse me”, forming and abiding by queues as British people are wont to do.
There’s several artists I haven’t mentioned above, but hear this: I’ve got just enough blue paint left for one last hyperlink. That leads to a Flickr image of the day’s haul, each piece tagged with who it came from!
Also, a friend got married last weekend – the same one that received the social butterfly, if you’re keeping track of such things.
The card I handed to the groom at their reception sports a cheery watercolour of the newlyweds in Scott’s style. I haven’t used watercolours in a long time, so it worked out nicely for a “first go”!
Groom, if you have lost the card, I will tell Liam Neeson that you took his daughter.
Scott’s gonna have a table at the Thought Bubble comics convention next week: I’ll get him to sign my copy of his new Great Showdowns book, and maybe get to show him the above!
So, “expansion”? Regular client and friend Final Boss Fight – The video game news site has grown into a whole network! I didn’t brand A to Play (playthrough videos), and Pixel Gaiden (editorials) was straight-foward, but AutoFire (news feed) had a little journey. Observe:
The joypad buttons say “FBFN”, as in “Final Boss Fight Network”.
The top one was pretty unintelligible at small sizes, while the second one (originally with a red backing) looked like it should be hung outside a fire station. To give each site different colours, blue and purple came into play. Then it moved into the same frame-size as the main site and editorial logos, and finally, by request, pixelated to match the existing hub logo.
A bunch of other assets were cooked up too – a couple of CRT TVs, favicons, and a few pics to replace the stock ones on the network hub, including a quick shot of my games shelf and a Store image.
Pixel Gaiden is a Phoenix Down quill and Minecraft paper, by the way.
There’s one more logo, but the site’s not live yet so it’s still under wraps. It’s not pixular, I promise.
Random ending: I updated the mobile phone icon on my Contact page, because I haven’t used a phone with those things called “buttons” since 2010. The old one was a Nokia 3110c – It’s now an Orange San Francisco II.
This month, the time rolled around again to get my eyes tested, find out how short-sighted I am now, and consequently purchase a new pair of glasses. There were a few days of mis-judging distances and staring at the rims, but now they’re being cool. This was a big enough change to do an update of my self-portrait, which was last altered in 2010 (when I previously bought new eyewear). Behold!
One of the places this guy lives is up in my site header, giving you a bit of a DreamWorks Face every time you come here. Here’s a comparison with the previous version:
Sadly, I had to delete some hair. Still being a little generous here.
I’ll have to update the photo on my Contact page too, as it’s showing it’s age (ironically by not showing mine).
So, around confronting my own mortality (well, inching closer to 30), more contributions are underway for friend and regular subject Final Boss Fight. In their 48th podcast, they discussed how Super Mario Bros. has such a bonkers premise. They started throwing words together to highlight this: What about a monobrowed pig with laser eye powers, saving his friends (magically transformed into Bonsai trees) from an evil Architect?
Hey look, it’s come to life as boxart!
I had a Master System myself. Pro Wrestling, Olympic Gold, Rampage… ah, memories.
Try as I might, it still looks better than the official cover Alex Kidd in Miracle World had. If you click the above image it’ll take you to the DeviantArt page, where you can download it in various wallpaper sizes (with an FBF logo replacing Sega’s).
To keep to the rule of three, I have one or two sketches that could expand into a project. Tease!
Final thought: I live in the UK, and it’s a Bank Holiday (3-day) weekend. Of course, after a working week of clear skies, it’s rained every day.
A recent discovery: Since moving house, I now live near several print shops.
Hee.
My first print-off was to make a present for a best bud leaving work… for a mid-term secondment, not too far away. And still around most weekends. Still, reasonably out of sight for long enough to gift a Social Butterfly. It was drawn in Illustrator, then made into a delicious double-sided paper-cardboard-paper sandwich. Most of the shapes on it are based around things that she’s done or known for. It was welcomed.
I got a few items from the printers, not just the butterfly. The next build? My Cubivore papercraft, having lain dormant for a year or two, has been adjusted and released. Niche to say the least, Cubivore is a strange GameCube game from 2002, and (whisper it) dated with bad controls, but it is unique, charming, and quite rare.
1-limb variety, either a PaleDark Purpial or Dark Greyodon. Thankfully, I had to look that up.
Things generally come in threes, so here’s your third. Delving further back into time, I made a die based on the ones in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Various things happened, and I never made the second die… Until now!
The left one is the new one. Both dice 1.5cm.
This didn’t require a walk to the print shop. A chunk of the weekend was spent cutting out cardboard shapes, boring holes in them, attaching them to the second die and painting them with acrylics. Allons-y!
I mentioned previously that I met some lovely people at a comic book convention. Well there’s been a couple of milestone community events that I joined in on!
Around mid-April, My Cardboard Life threw a celebratory “700 comics made” week, asking for people to create something and send it in. For my comic (traditionally drawn, digitally coloured & post-processed), I wondered “what was Cardboard Carl like when he was young?”. Considering he irons his jeans with volcanic rocks and uses wild animals as towels, the answer had to be “still awesome”. Philippa (she who runs the site) loved it, especially the pig, and I made it to day three. Click the pic for all six panels!
Fast forward a month, and People I Know‘s500th comic celebrations show up! Another call for incoming artwork was raised, with the submission theme of potential boyfriends for Toby, a unlucky in love dinosaur who adores cake. I sketched out a whole bunch of boyfriends, then brightened this one up with crayons:
For some reason his hair makes me think of Quavers.
I called him Pin, and he is a psychic. He would know just what kind of cake Toby wants without him even asking! I sent him off, and a short time later he took up residence on day four.
Just to round this out to the trilogy of web-famous people, here is the guest comic I did for Moo & Keo waaay back in 2008. While it was the first (possibly only) guest comic, it was sadly wiped away in one of his site updates. Anywho, something to tell you is that he got published (it’s in Waterstones and everything), and just finished working on book #2!
As evidenced by the above, the time came for my second entry to Hourly Comic Day! Since last year’s edition I’ve gained employment and moved house, so it took a few days to finish the sketches. More time passed before a scanner was obtained, but I uploaded rough camera pics for the interim. This link or the above image lead to this year’s submission.
Insider bonus: Panel 2 is basically People I Know fan art.
Boohoo. Left is mine, Right is Timothy Winchesters.
Last month I went to a comic book convention, meeting several nice folk and purchasing merch. Just opposite from Matt Dyson of Mookeo fame (who I knew a little before his success), and down from the smiley Philippa Rice of My Cardboard Life, stood Timothy Winchester from People I Know.
I’ve only met him twice, but he’s such a lovely person we’re like friends. After buying some badges (sadly lost on the train ride home), he extolled the virtues of Angela Lansbury, an actress remembered for Murder, She Wrote but star of many more works. He asked for my help on something.
For a couple of years, Tim has dedicated a whole week to this woman, with various guest artists providing drawings to his blog. That week is now, and today my entry landed – The pirate maid Ruth from the Pirates of Penzance movie!
There’s been a whole bunch of fine drawings through the week, from various talented and/or enthusiastic people. This link will line up all the days on one page for ya!
