Ant's drawing blog

Storyboard panel.

2011-11-21T21:15:00.001-08:00

A nice panel from a storyboard for an animation project I've been working on. Spent a little too long on this particular shot, so thought she could do with being shown elsewhere. I don't know if the storyboards will ever see the light of day.

Odd things

2011-09-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

I normally just post drawings on the blog, but I had a chuckle this evening over a couple of pictures and stories that I saw on I09 featuring Nic Cage and John Travolta. One of the oddest-but-could-conceivably-be-true- stories I've seen since the Scarlett Johansson is a clone story broke. (see here for details on that one)

Start here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-1860s-AMBROTYPE-John-TRAVOLTA-Time-Traveler-/160614928241?pt=Art_Photo_Images&hash=item2565654f71#ht_1681wt_1123

Then go and read the article on I09 here: http://io9.com/5845103/

And finally http://io9.com/5841112/was-nicolas-cage-a-vampire-during-the-civil-war-this-1000000-photograph-holds-the-answers Which was a story I had missed, so I'd had a giggling fit when I saw the photo. Thing is, the more you look at it the more plausible it seems to be. In a more interesting world, that is.

.

An Angry Pig

2011-09-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Back&Beyond

2011-07-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

There's an event happening on 26th June at the Novel Cafe in Lancaster. A Story forum, organised by Back and Beyond's Moll Baxter as a fundraiser for printing costs. To quote Moll from her blog "Gorgeous venue, cracking line-up, worthy cause…"

Back and Beyond

2011-07-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

So hopefully people have seen, and hopefully picked up a copy from many different locations around Lancaster and Morecambe, but Back and Beyond, a new arts magazine for the area has come out over the last couple of weeks. I'm on the editorial team, along with Si Hawksworth and Phil McMillian (from Fold Design), Mollie Baxter and Mick Murphy, and after the best part of a year, issue one is out! And it looks the business as well. If you don't manage to get an actual real-life paper copy, there's another version that's made of 1's and 0's which doesn't exist; here: http://backandbeyond.org/index.html

I also had three illustrations featured in there:

The first as a general Lancaster themed illustration (featured here), the second and third to accompany a couple of poems from inside.

Back and Beyond around the web:

The main website: http://backandbeyond.org/index.html
Moll's blog: http://www.molliebaxter.com/backbeyond-issue-1-out-now
and the printers blog, http://blog.newspaperclub.com/ who will be featuring us at some point.

Twitter:

Phil McMillian: @folddesignuk
Mollie Baxter: @MollBaxter

Recent Commission

2011-07-21T08:50:00.000-07:00

Not posted much for a while but I've finished a few things off recently so I'll have to get them blogged very soon. Until then, here's an early sketch from a panel of a recent commission that went down very well with the client. (Note: it featured lots of dead frogs.)

The making of....Mr Myiagi

2011-03-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I won't go into it that much. Let's just say it took a while, there was lots to draw and even more to animate. And then there was the voice over (you should hear the outtakes!) not to mention the sound effects and the music - then the editing. Phewf. Plenty to do.

So I thought I'd have a muck about with all of the constituent bits and pieces, and there was LOADS done! All the backgrounds and shadows and lights and tables (and poo's) eyes and pupils and eylids - and all the bits that ended up edited out (it was originally about 5 minutes long! Even edited down to 3.00mins I think I'll suffer from tl;dr!) ... but you get the idea - lots of drawing, lots of lessons learned.

The main one being I'M NEVER GOING TO DO ANYTHING WITH FLIES AGAIN!

If you haven't seen it go here: http://merkerwork.co.uk/2011/03/mr-myiagi/ and have a look. Tell your friends, eh?

The french call him "Le Petite Mort"

2011-02-04T10:36:00.000-08:00

My final Judge Death drawing.

You wait 25 years for one, and three come along all at once (other two are here and here)

Though technically, it's been more like 2 and a half as this isn't quite the Alien Superfiend from everyone's nightmares. But in my tradition of spending time on what may well be a fairly weak gag - I started and couldn't stop.

It did occur to me that the "Little Death" gag may have been made before and knowing the astoundingly rapid turnover of ideas throughout 2000ad's history I bet it probably has.

I do like him dragging his Terrydactyl-toy behind him though.

New Judge Death Drawing....

2011-01-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

After posting last weeks Judge Death sketch, I finished off the original drawing that started it all. Think it turned out better than last weeks (here!) I'm happier with the pose in this one, seems a bit more fluid and a bit creepier.

It's good to clear some of these sketches and doodles out of the way and to continue the Death theme I've got a zombie sketch that's been creeping around my workspace for a while. I'll get that sorted next week I think.

Judge Death sketch

2011-01-17T06:25:00.000-08:00

It's been about 20 years since I last tried to draw Judge Death. Turned out OK I think.

I've had a sketch of Judge Death loitering around on my drawing board for a couple of weeks now, but I've not been able to complete because of a couple of other commitments. Strangely enough, the sketch on the drawing board isn't this one. So I might post another one next week.

Bulldog clips cover

2010-10-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

I've been busy trying to finish off an outstanding project over the last few days, which is finally done now - but it became fairly big as I kept adding bits and pieces in and took me ages. I'll post something over the next few days but it needs a bit of tinkering around with to make it fit on the blog and at the moment I'm sick of the sight of it. Anyway, whilst I was busy finishing that project off, another thing I finished a while ago had it's official release at BICS over the last weekend. BULLDOG CLIPS by Jason Cobley et al http://jasoncobley.blogspot.com/ came out. Read about it at Jason's website. My contribution was the cover colours which I'm pretty happy with. line artwork by Andrew Wildman (hhttp://andrewwildman.blogspot.com/)

Here's Andrews linework which is followed by a few colour variations that I gave to Jason to choose from.

Links:

Jason Cobley: @jasoncobley http://jasoncobley.blogspot.com/

Andrew Wildman: @apwildman http://wildwords.wordpress.com/

Who's this cheeky chappie

2010-10-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a few things that seem to be taking me ages and I've not posted anything in a while - so here's a preview of one of the projects in progress at the moment; an animation that'll be done fairly soon. To quote Rory Bremner (as Rolf,) can you tell who it is yet?

"You'd be amazed how many people who work in film and television want to be comic book writers." But don't they have jobs already? Shouldn't they concentrate on making better television programmes and films?

2010-08-11T03:52:00.000-07:00

So yeah, that line kind of annoyed me.

And I've been well behind “Clint.” Some people don't like anything about it. I've seen eyes roll at everything from the gag in the magazine name, the mention of Frankie Boyle and @wossy's contributions to the project. I think that because of services rendered to comics, film and Andrew Sachs over the decades @wossy is credible. Full support to the man. “Turf” on paper sounds like a massive genre crash, but from what I've read – it's solid, and we know the man's credentials - he's a proud knowledgable, enthused comic fan. Legit.

I start to worry, and my eyes began to roll, when Frankie Boyles name got dropped. Now, I desperately hope I am surprised when “Clint” comes out, but – even with the respect I have for his comedy – why is he dipping his toe into the world of comics? To my knowledge, the only comic work that he's got to his credit is on his website http://www.frankieboyle.com/index2.html

and, well – try getting a job in comics off the back of that, Frankie. It wouldn't happen.

I was pleased to see that on the Millarworld forums there was genuine attempt to get some indie creators contributing – and there was some brilliant stuff being submitted in amongst all the shite – and in all honesty Millar et al could fill the rest of “Clint” with the cream of what was submitted there. I hope that the winning artist is paid a decent rate – or Frankie Boyle (as first time writer) is paid peanuts. (chosen entry from Santolouco here, towards the bottom – about spaceships spacemen and wee http://forums.millarworld.tv/index.php?showtopic=93141&st=20 it's pretty good)

But that line that I read on the press release. “You'd be amazed how many people who work in film and television want to be comic book writers.” Hells teeth, that is painful to read.

Here's an example you may remember from a few months ago which perfectly illustrates what happens when you try and capitalise on “a name” to shift your product. Remember Danny Dyer and the Zoo debacle? For those who don't and were nowhere near Twitter when it exploded, in a column in Zoo magazine, he advised a heartbroken young idiot to “to cut your ex’s face, and then no one will want her.” Now, chances are it was some YTS schemer or drunken ghost writer who actually hammered that into a computer with his idiot fists, but if you paid a proper, experienced, talented journalist or columnist to fill those 3 inches in the magazine you might – just might have got something of worth.

....In Zoo.

But you see my point. A professional, with a wealth of experience and dedication to their task would not have suggested striping anyone up.

(I've just had a terrible thought. Does MM know DD? Please GOD no. Personal plea to MM – do NOT let Danny Dyer write anything for “Clint”. Please)

I hope “Clint” is a success, I really do. Comics, drawing and stories are so important and there is so much good work being done, both indie and mainstream but my concern is that filling a comic with Millar's mates will end up with “Clint” being a watered down version of what comics can be.

And as a final note. Do they think that writing comics is easy? And you don't see any of them wanting to DRAW the comics do you? Oh no! Why? Because it's fucking difficult, that's why. I takes hard work and takes years to get good at.

I shall test this theory by send Richard Madeley some scripts to draw, and see what he comes up with.

Unexplained dwawing.

2010-08-10T06:04:00.000-07:00

I shall leave this unexplained for now and probably come back and post an explanation when I have a free 10 seconds.

Weekend drawings

2010-07-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Weekend project:

Harvey..

2010-07-19T14:04:00.000-07:00

After the sad news of Harvey Pekars death last week, I did a drawing for Adam Cadwell's Draw Harvey group on Flicker. You can see the rest here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1f440756@N24/?added=1

I tried to do something a little different, I presumed that there was going to be a fair few sketches and drawings done from photos of Harvey and as I was rootling around online looking for some reference, someone posted a link to one of his Letterman appearances. Look it up on YouTube, 'cos it makes for such awkward, uncomfortable viewing, at several points it could go either way into amiable chatter or vicious onscreen mugging. Anyway, I waited for one of those moments when Harvey looked like he was going to chew Letterman's nose off and bang!: quick screen grab, and off drawing I went.

I had such fun doing the Nosferatu drawing last week that I did this Harvey one using the same process, and I enjoyed that so much, I'm going to be doing something else in the same way soon.

New Kinski work

2010-07-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

What a pleasant Sunday.

Completed stage two of the ongoing Kinski project started here..http://merkerwork.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-bits-and-pieces.html (with "Aguirre") followed by Nosferatu, which is second in the Herzog/Kinski box set. The main piece is a painting of Kinski which I really enjoyed doing and might do some more.

Thrown in for good measure is a prep sketch.

Next stop: Woyzeck.

Heroic efforts taking place in Lancaster

2010-04-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

I seem to have lost a week somewhere between last weekend and this one.

Why?

The Sci-Fi London 48hour Film challenge, that's why. An insane hurricane of creativity that seemed to begin innocuously enough when I saw a note on Facebook about the competition on Tuesday evening. I emailed it around to the group of local film-makers that I'm involved with. Next, we had a meeting (our monthly gathering of the Lancaster Film-makers group) on Wednesday night, and those who were up for it effectively kissed goodbye to sleep for a few days.

Cut to Saturday morning. The rules of the 48 hour sci-fi film making challenge are that your finished film has to contain three elements which are given to you on the Saturday morning. Sci-fi London gives you a Title, a line of dialogue and a prop which you must work in to your film. This is obviously to avoid people spending months and months making the perfect five minute science fiction film and claiming, “yeah, of course we made it in 48 hours”.

We were participating by text, and at precisely 11.11am on Saturday morning, we received our instructions.

Title: Minds Eye
Dialogue: “Those frightened eyes staring at us, and then we saw them too”
Prop: Three watches showing the same time.

..and so began in intense and brilliant couple of days.

We spent all of Saturday trying to sort our script out. Long story short, with ideas pouring in from members of our group we tried to knit our ideas into a script we could use.

It was equal parts brilliant fun and intense pain!

I left at about 9.30ish with a few ideas we'd managed to scribble down. I came home and tried to make a draft. I sent an awful version around (it turns out, I can't write dialogue under pressure) and around 1.00am a script came back in.

6.45am Sunday morning. I hurriedly filled a box with wire/tape/pliers and bits and pieces to take round to Ray's basement where we were going to be filming. I cleaned my basement of old broken computers and monitors with the intention of hurriedly creating a set. Our actors arrived at about 10.00am (I think) and whilst I was in the basement smashing bits of computers up, they disappeared upstairs for some character work and to work through the script.

At some point, we began filming.

We filmed through to 11.45pm.

Adam and I arrived at his house to begin editing at about 12.30am and worked through until about 11.00am the next morning editing, putting SFX on, dialogue, audio, titles etc. etc. - everything to get it finished by 1.00pm on Monday, which was the deadline.

And, fuck, we did it.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcx3jf_minds-eye_creation

For me, that has been the biggest surprise about the whole endeavour, just how quickly things got underway. I generally sit around and think. Then think a bit more, but the deadline focused all the energy into completion, which is a good thing for me. In fact, if Nike hadn't already taken it, I'd like my new motto to be “just do it”.

Kudos to all involved, Terry, Louise, Ray, Mark, Adam, Bryan and Rosie (and look at me pretending in that film – I'm terrifyingly in character!) and everyone who supported us. I think we did a cracking job, and it was great fun, and in fact the subsequent couple of days delirium I went through was good fun as well.

It's not a challenge for the feint hearted and I wonder how many teams around the country were unable to complete.

And I hope that we have another crack next year.

Malcolm Tucker - The Comic

2010-01-04T11:32:00.000-08:00

All that faff at the end of Doctor Who, with the Return of the King unending ending and the tears etc.etc. and all the twittering that happened for the rest of the night that I was part of to some extent almost made me forget one of the high points of the TV year - Malcolm Tucker and his (sort of) exit in the penultimate episode of The Thick of It. Superb clever TV. Battle lines have been drawn for a hellish 2010.

Talk about hellish. You wouldn't believe if I told youse.

New bits and pieces

2009-12-18T04:50:00.000-08:00

It's probably a sign how busy I am at the moment that a fine box set of Werner Herzog films that I got courtesy of my folks for my birthday back in October (two box sets of Werner Herzog films to be precise) that I have only just found the time to watch one of them. "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." I saw that awfully titled, yet brilliant documentary "My Best Fiend" a while ago and thought that Kinski was absolutely brilliant. Screamy and shouty and a proper pain in the arse, but when you watch the films and particularly Aguirre you can not take your eyes off him.

So I did a picture of him. Sketched and then painted up in Photoshop.

As soon as I find the time to watch the others in the set, I'll do a pic from each. Next stop NOSFERATU.

Incidentally: new comics here http://antmercer.wordpress.com/ and here http://thebravebraveidiots.blogspot.com/

So, I did it then.

2009-11-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

Probably looks a little better like this as well eh?

Old work rediscovered

2009-11-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

I just found some old work, hidden away in folders, within folders in folders.

Heh, it was fun to do though.

If I remember, I drew it, then painted it and then finally photoshopped thebejesus out of it.

Last I saw of it was when I gave a bookmark version of it to some kid at a Lancaster Comics workshop. Heh. I wonder what his Dad thought of that. It would probably work better as a stripe anyway. I think the bookmark had the top half with Flyboy and whatisname on one side, and old Spluutch on the other.

LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeDDDS!

2009-11-22T15:12:00.001-08:00

Thought Bubble was fun.

I am tired - I am sleepy. My hangover is gone and I'm looking forward to getting to sleep and not waking up feeling like I spent a fortune on booze, comics and slept on the floor of a hotel!

I came back with:

5 copies of Sgt. Mike Battle by the genuine gentleman Graham Pearce. Good egg that man, and apparently #14 is so sad at the end, he was giving tissues away with it. I got a tissue signed by him for some reason. So I might get it framed to keep safe next time I have a cold.

"There's no time like the present" number 10. By the superb Paul Rainey. Looking forward to the next free couple of hours when I can hole up with a brew and re-read the entire series.

DBH gave me a free copy of "TWID" which was nice, and good to see the final version. It was good to catch up with Robo-Jacko as well (by that I mean Rob Jackson) Apparently, he even did some dancing at some point...

What else.... oh yeah - couple of new things, "House of the Holy Flesheaters" by Chris Doherty , a webcomic that apparently never ends (ie never finished, I think some paid work came up) but it looks good.

Necessary Monsters by Daniel Goodbrey and Sean Azzopardi (Sean is one of those creators that I've heard a lot about, but this is the first I've bought by him - if it works out, I'll be back to buy "12 hour shift".

And finally, a couple by Dan Lester "..Mysteries" and "the guest artist issue". Looking forward to those, although he doesn't seem to be doing much drawing recently.

So that's about it. A few other bits and pieces, a couple of mainstream comics as well. But all in all, a good enjoyable weekend.

Highlights: Hobo-Flash, Drinking, seeing some old faces and meeting some new folk. Seeing a picture of Jimmy Saville and Elvis (!)

Lowlights: My wallet, and I'm starting to feel bad about back boobs. But it did give me something to tweet about.

Pictures from the day:

Hobo-Flash so fast that he's a blur. (note a more extreme version of Silent Bob, dubbed "Aspergers Bob" always in close proximity. Also note: Death in the back ground. I think I tried to flirt with her)

Another Hobo- Flash - hero pose this time, and you can tell that that chin beard makes him about 40% more aerodynamic.

My booty (?)

..and oh, yeah. My doppelganger - according to DBhughes. Not convinced he is my clone. But we may have a boosh/Paul/Barry Chuckle partnership if the comics doesn't work out.

"To me, Gareth.." Gareth is on the left. Or is it the right…? I can’t tell us apart.

Also got my project underway – the work anthology, now with a title:

“The Brave, Brave Idiots” you can see how things are shaping up with this project over at http://thebravebraveidiots.blogspot.com and follow progress on twitter @bravebraveidiot

Toodles

finally….

2009-09-14T06:49:00.001-07:00

Well, I've finally finished something off. How's about that then.

..and once I get this post done, and email the work to old Gio Spinella, I can liberate my hard drive of all the jpegs, psd's and various other stuff that has been cluttering it up for ages.

It's been quite useful to examine exactly why it has taken me so long to get it finished - sure, there has been that constant distraction of having to go to work and that, and true that as I've been on leave for the last couple of weeks I have managed to get the thing finished. But the question that I'm asking myself is "why has it taken so long?".

There are a few answers. The main one being stuff like this.....

Which is a selection of some of the many many many attempts to try and get sorted out a space ship which featured in the strip. As seen in panels 5, 7 and 8 (from page 1) and 2,3 and 5 (from page 3)

I had reams and reams of scribbles and designs at various stages of completion for those damned ships – why? Don’t know is the answer, just one of those cul-de-sacs that I find myself in quite a lot, constantly beggaring around.

Contrasted to this one….

Which is the opening panel from page one, which is supposed to be this cargo ship thing, that I just drew. Yes, no design sheets for this one – just straight onto the board and think that it came out much better (and easier) than the design of the other one.

So all in all – lesson learnt, just do it. Rather than buggering around – just get it done.

Hell, may as well post everything else hadn’t I? Here’s page one, and a character sheet for the professor character.

"Art Intervention" excerpt from Wikipedia

2009-08-05T15:28:00.001-07:00

Detroit MONA goes kaBOOM!, 2002
The extreme to which an authorised intervention can go and yet still meet with institutional approval was shown in 2002, when the Detroit Museum of New Art staged a show kaBoom!, with the announcement, "Over the course of the exhibition, museum visitors will be invited to smash, drop, throw and slash artworks..."[2] The show was scheduled for two months, but by the end of the first night had been totally destroyed by visitors:
"They even destroyed the pedestals and wall shelves," one museum staffer shrugged in disbelief. Fires were set in isolated galleries and a wrecking ball for one display had been removed from its chain and used instead as a bowling ball, taking out an installation as well as the corner of one wall. "In a twisted way, it was a wild success," MONA?s director Jef Bourgeau says the morning after, on a surprisingly bright note as he wades through the carnage and debris.[3] This follows the precedent of the Dadaists. At one of their shows, visitors were invited to smash the exhibits with an axe.