Neill's blog

Meet The Pirates: Bosun William

2012-01-25T16:09:00.004Z

Here is the second in a regular series where I'll be offering a peek into my sketchbook at my designs for the stars of The Pirates of Pangaea (appearing weekly in The Phoenix, go subscribe kids! It is I-ain't-even-foolin' GREAT). This week we are saying a big Pangaean hello to Bosun William, or Master Bosun, or simply The Bosun to his friends. Rugged, stoical and heroic, he is Sophie's only protector amidst the dinosaur and pirate-infested scarinessfest that is Pangaea. So rugged, stoical and heroic in fact that he can wear a ponytail with a bow on it and still appear rugged, stoical and heroic.

More pirates next week!

Meet The Pirates: Sophie!

2012-01-15T14:00:00.004Z

Here are some development sketches of Sophie, our hero in The Pirates of Pangaea - a strip I am currently collaborating with my good friend Daniel Hartwell on for The Phoenix Comic.

Sophie is from a fairly wealthy English family but, following the death of her beloved parents, has been shipped off to the new world, to stay with her uncle Silas, governor of the British colony on the mysterious lost continent known as... Pangaea!

Anyway, we hope you enjoy her adventures. I won't say any more for fear of spoilers, but man, there is some stuff that happens. Some stuff.

More piratey sketches next week!

The Phoenix! It fliiiiiies!

2012-01-11T17:45:00.007Z

This weekend saw the launch of the first issue of brand new weekly comic The Phoenix! Which, uh, I may have mentioned already. The above is an early / alternate version of the issue one cover - in the end, we decided that it looked a little too 'apocalyptic' and went for the blue-sky background used on the final cover. I thought I'd post it here, not least so you can see the nice pterodactyls I went to all the trouble of drawing even though I knew perfectly well they'd be covered up by the (admittedly lovely) logo.

Anyway, Saturday was a preposterously lovely day from start to finish, beginning with the fact that I got to stroll up the corner shop and see my work featured on the cover of a well-known national newspaper.

AND have ginger beer, too.

Saturday was also, of course, the day of the launch party itself - a brilliant and hugely fun event held at the super-exciting new Story Museum in Oxford. (Can't wait for that place to open properly, it sounds like they've got such exciting things planned for it). I had a really lovely time and caught up with so many comics-creatin' (and comics-readin') friends old and new, that I couldn't remotely hope to cover it all here. M'colleague Sarah McIntyre posted lots of great photos and a write-up of the day over on her blog, so why not go read that and feel just like you were there? But without cake.

I have stolen this one photo of Sarah's to post here,
not least because it is the one photo taken of me in
like the last 2 or 3 years that I actually quite like.

If you haven't seen a copy of the Phoenix yet, you can read the preview Issue Zero IN FULL and FOR FREE over on the Phoenix website! And then go subscribe. C'mon, you can get five weeks' worth of awesome comics for a tenner. A TENNER. Give it a whirl!

Anyway, huge thanks to everyone who's said nice things already about both Pirates and How To Make (Awesome) Comics - seeing people's drawings and completed HTMAC 'exercises' start to flow into Phoenix HQ is already one of my favourite things about 2012. Not least this collaborative masterwork - script by my marvellous nephew Lex, art by his wastrel father:

That's pretty harsh, Superman.

Ready To Launch!

2012-01-06T14:26:00.005Z

I'm snatching a 5-minute-break from drawing rigging (OH MY GOD THE RIGGING) to wish you all a Happy Phoenixday Eve! Yes, tomorrow is Official Launch Day for the brand new weekly comic featuring pirates and dinosaurs and bunnies and monkeys and space aliens and robots and, oh, ALL KINDS OF GOOD THINGS. There's still time to subscribe in order to get the first issue, so head to the Phoenix website for a bunch of tasty subscription options, or you can pick up a copy from Waitroses nationwide and select independent children's bookshops. (Full details of where you can buy it coming soon to the Phoenix website! One would imagine.) But seriously, go subscribe.

ALSO: just announced is that you may wish to pick up a copy of The Times newspaper tomorrow, for a free 8-page Phoenix pull-out featuring, oh heck, all kinds of fun stuff - not least a special BONUS How To Make (Awesome) Comics strip! The Times is available, uh, pretty much everywhere. In shops and stuff?

Join me next week for the start of a regular series of blog posts featuring behind the scenes peeks at pirates and dinsoaurs AND helpful annotations for Professor Panels' illustrated lectures. Uh, if I get all this rigging finished.

How To Make (Christmas Holiday) Comics

2011-12-23T13:24:00.005Z

Tell me about it.

As a special Christmas present to the world in general, the brand new issue of Waitrose Weekend magazine - available free by the tills in branches of Waitrose nationwide - features an exclusive brand-new page of How To Make (Awesome) Comics, by ME and featuring my colleagues Professor Panels and Art Monkey. In case you haven't met them before, they are...

The strip features a competition to design a character and get it printed in the Phoenix Comic, so - if you happen to find yourself or your family at a loose end at any point over the holidays, why not have a go? You can find all the details about the competition here:

https://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/awesome/

And here's a quick peek at the mag!

Waitrose Weekend magazine. Contributors: Heston, Delia, Neill.

May I just say, it is a profound honour and the realisation of a lifelong ambition to be sharing page space in a publication with a personal hero of mine: Gregg off Masterchef.

And if that doesn't keep you busy, remember you can always visit the Mo-Bot High Facebook Page and while away the hours thinking up ridiculous entries for my Giant Robot Competition!

Right, I think that's about it for me, this side of Christmas. Merry Christmas, Everyone! May you all Function With Relative Ease, and I - and indeed Prof P and Art Monkey - will be back very soon with the most preposterously exciting start to 2012 you could even imagine...

COMPETITION: Win the giant robot of your choice!

2011-12-20T12:57:00.008Z

I very much enjoyed drawing Giant Robot Judge Dredd and Giant Robot Harry Potter this week, so I thought it would be fun to do another in this little sort-of-series. But who to turn into a giant robot next?

YOU DECIDE!

Yes, I thought it might be fun to turn it into a little competition, and give you YES YOU the chance to win a piece of original, custom artwork depicting a Mo-Botized version of the comics / movie / pop culture character of your choice. The winner will get an A3 full-colour poster print of the finished piece, as well as the ORIGINAL pencil sketch / whatever scribbles and roughs I do to get started.

TO ENTER: all you have to do is go 'Like' the Mo-Bot High Facebook Page, then say who you would like a giant robot version of. THAT IS IT. Closing date of January 15th, 2012, at which point I will use a combination of random number generation and deciding which one I most want to draw to pick a winner. (i.e. if the suggestion 'Batman' wins, and there are 20 entries saying 'Batman', I will pick the winning entry using a random number generator).

PS I'm not saying 'Batman' is going to win, that was just an example. Although I DO totally want to draw Giant Robot Batman.

Go enter! It will be FUN.

(If you're not on Facebook - oh, go on, just leave a comment here on the blog. But Facebook entrues MUCH HANDIER FOR ME, so would be appreciated.)

Mo-Bot Week rolls on tomorrow with the funnest and - by far - most ridiculous entry yet!

Mo-Bot Hogwarts

2011-12-19T08:50:00.008Z

Because much as I love the work of J. K. Rowling, I can't help but feel it could
use more giant robots. Big Version of this pic right here.

The SECRET ORIGIN of today's entry in Mo-Bot Week*: so aaaages ago I made a Funny Joke on twitter, announcing my delight at the news that I'd landed the assignment of producing graphic novel adaptations of all seven Harry Potter novels... but that I would of course be making some changes.

This was essentially just an excuse for me to make up lots of silly titles: Harry Potter and the Unusually Large Baby, Harry Potter and the Drunk Jellyfish, that sort of thing. Anyway, comics writer, journalist and tweeter par excellence Chris Sims chimed in with "Harry Potter and The Hell With It, They All Have Giant Robots Now." And lo, my mind was blown.

I'm only sorry it's taken me this long to actually draw it.

Look, I even made 'character designs' for this one.

Harry

Hermione

Ron

In the unlikely event that they do ever license the Potter books for comics versions, I can only imagine the creative team would be like Neil Gaiman and Dave Gibbons, or generally the famousest and most expensive creators imaginable. But I'd just like to say: I WOULD DRAW THE HECK OUT OF THAT $#!£. Holla at me, Bloomsbury.

Cyber-Snape

Digi-Dumbledore

Gryffindor-Bot

And hey, if the idea of a school filled with plucky kids having adventures with cool magic giant robots appeals... well. Do I really need to spell it out?

More Mo-Bot Week* Fun-ness tomorrow!

*Yeah, yeah, so Mo-Bot Week kind of morphed into Mo-bot Fortnight - my son got chickenpox so schedules have taken a bit of a tumble all round. He's on the mend now, hooray!

Pirate Ninja Mo-Bot Molly

2011-12-15T08:26:00.003Z

Ace comics reviewer for the Forbidden Planet International Blog Molly Bruton recently had a bit of a disagreement with a trampoline and by all accounts busted up her arm pretty good. Anyway, fine comics artist Adam Cadwell decided to #drawmolly to cheer her up, with this marvellous picture. And that seemed like such a good idea that I thought I'd join in, too.

Molly - and her Dad, Rchard - wrote some very nice words about Mo-Bot High back when it came out. I don't mean to set a precedent here, that I'll draw a picture for anyone who gives my comics a good review and then injures themselves in a trampolining accident.

Actually, you know what? I think I am okay with setting that precedent.

Get well soon, Molly!

A Child's First Guide To Giant Robot Construction and Repair

2011-12-14T15:41:00.006Z

Longtime readers of this blog may remember around this time last year when, for the Mo-Bot High Book One launch party I made up some cool little cardboard mo-bots. This is what they looked like back then:

Anyway, we discovered very quickly at the launch that they were not in fact going to be used so much for 'display purposes' as for 'my son playing with and having fights with and generally bashing into things' purposes. I was not about to object, because- well, because frankly there is not much in this world more heartwarming than watching one's son enthusiastically recreating scenes from one's own book with a homemade toy cardboard giant robot.

On the other hand, they are only made of cardboard. And after a year of such play, Logan's mo-bot looked more like this:

Clearly, it was time for some repairs. I actually had one cardbot kit spare from doing some school events, so we decided this morning to cannibalise it for parts.

Logan was very helpful, holding bits and generally offering useful direction and motivation. ("DADDY IS HE FIXED YET FIX HIM FASTER")

And before you knew it, Red Mo-Bot was as good as new, and ready to hang out with his best friend, "Other Red Mo-Bot".

It's funny to be doing this a year on; inadvertantly, getting scissors and glue out and making cardboard mo-bots seems to have become as much a part of my pre-christmas preparations as putting up the tree and re-watching Lord of the Rings for the bazillionth time.

Anyway, it was lots of fun and if you would like to build - or indeed repair - your OWN cardboard giant robot, handy kits to download and print off are available for the very reasonable price of FREE over on the Mo-Bot High website! And you can check out more pictures over on the (still brand new) Facebook page!

More Mo-botness tomorrow!

GIANT ROBOT JUDGE DREDD

2011-12-13T09:14:00.007Z

Judge Mo-Bot! You want a bigger version? HERE is your bigger version.

Here is today's drawing for Mo-Bot Blog Week! Enjoy!

The SECRET ORIGIN of today's drawing: I was at the 2D festival in Derry, and I remember a couple of fine comics artists - Rufus Dayglo and Rob Davis, if memory serves - saying that they'd never really found "their" Judge Dredds; that whenever they tried drawing him, Mike McMahon's version came out, so profound was the influence of that great artist and his defining work on that character.

Anyway, that resonated with me. I've tried drawing Judge Dredd a couple times but it's never really worked - largely, I think, because I've never found "my" version either. (Not due to McMahon-influence in my case; much as I love that guy's work, I was always more of a Bolland kid. Make of that what you will). So I started thinking: what would my Judge Dredd look like?

Well, obviously he'd be a massive neon giant robot. I can't believe I didn't see it right away.

More Mo-Botiness tomorrow! Follow along here or go like the brand new Mo-Bot High Facebook Page for more fun stuff!

Mo-Bot Santa Presents...

2011-12-12T12:41:00.009Z

I suddenly felt like it's way too long since I drew either of my two favourite things:
(1) Mo-Bots
(2)) stupid nonsense for my blog when I ought to be doing real work instead.

Anyway, as a bit of an early Christmas present to myself, I'm going to spend this week making up for it with Mo-Bot Blog Week, where I shall be posting all sorts of fun drawings and bits and bobs with a Digital Mobile Combatsuit-y flavour! Do stay tuned - hopefully there'll be at least one cool thing a day, and if I manage to get it all done, the thing I'm hoping to post for Friday should be a bit special.

While I'm here: question I've been asked a lot lately is "when's Mo-Bot High Book 2 coming out?" and, while I am unable to give you a concrete answer to that question (it's complicated, and I have rather a lot of pirates and dinosaurs to draw first), I thought I'd offer a list of things YOU can do to help it happen as soon as possible. Undertaking any one of these actions will qualify you for entry in Team Mo-Bot, and earn my eternal undying fondness.

Go 'Like' the new Mo-Bot High page on Facebook! Just set this up; I'll be posting all sorts of stuff here, and thought it'd be a good place to try out some fun ideas I have for the future - go along and Like the heck out of it now to get on board early!
Write a review on Amazon! I mean, assuming you liked the book. If you hated it: well, it's a free world I suppose, buddy.
Tell your friends! Your actual real-life friends. Hey, you could even give them a copy for Christmas, right?
Develop the technology to actually create real digital giant robots that launch out of mobile phones, and then lead an army of them marching through central London, waving 'Mo-Bot High' banners.

Extra points if you manage that last one!

Anyway, check back tomorrow for our first bit of Fun Stupid Giant Robot Nonsense!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Some Christmas Shopping Ideas That You May Wish To Consider

2011-12-05T07:37:00.011Z

Many people, myself included, find this a very difficult time of year, as we are supposed to not only PART WITH MONEY to buy things for our "loved ones", we are expected to actually "think" about what they might "like". Exhausting.

Anyway, I am here to help any other lost souls stuck in this terrible predicament by offering the following suggestions for AWESOME THINGS that would make EXCELLENT CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!

1) A subscription to THE PHOENIX

The big one, the greatest, the gift that keeps on giving. Head over to the Phoenix site to check out subscriptions ranging from a £10 'taster' to a full year's worth of issues - £99 for a years' worth of fantastic comics!

And hey, every week you'll be getting a double-dose of my own work, with weekly instalments of The Pirates of Pangaea and How To Make (Awesome) Comics! If you happen to like that sort of thing.

2) Mo-Bot High: BOOK ONE

So maybe you want something to actually open and read on Christmas morning? Why not buy this rather excellent graphic novel - "a fantastic, uncontrollable riot of a story, absolutely brilliant fun", in fact*.

Pick it up for a snip on Amazon, or better ask your local bookshop or comics shop. Or you can always get a copy direct from the author who might even draw a nice little picture in it for you.

* review by Richard Bruton, Forbidden Planet.

3) Christmas Cards

Okay, you'd better be quick, but there's still just about time to order a few of these delightful, if nerdy, Christmas Cards of Awesomeness! Perfect for the Giant Robot / Gorilla / Batman / Cthulhu / Kierkegaard / Kitten fan in your life.

4) ORIGINAL ART!

Look, I have Christmas presents to buy too, so while I probably shouldn't, I'm opening up a couple of slots for commissions. Say perhaps you, or someone you know, enjoyed my A-Z of Awesomeness series, and would like your very own bit of original art of your favourite comics character doing something ridiculous. Well sir / madam, I can make that happen for you.

This week only, and they'll be drawn and posted by the weekend, so get in quick!

How To Make (Awesome) Comics: The Comic!

2011-11-23T19:51:00.004Z

The good professor here and his associate are the stars of my *other* new strip that will be appearing weekly in The Phoenix - How To Make (Awesome) Comics! Every week's strip will feature a little lesson from the Prof about some aspect of the writing or drawing or how-comics-work type hoo-hah, followed by a Monkey Masterclass giving the readers the chance to dive in and get involved with all sorts of fun comics-making games and exercises.

The general idea is something that's part Scott McCloud, part Robert McKee, and part "lots of stupid jokes about farting and bananas". It's a little hard to explain in the abstract, but honestly - I'm a good few strips in now, and I'm enjoying this as much as anything I've ever worked on. It's really fun as well, because I get to try out ideas and jokes and stuff when I'm out on the road doing workshops, and then feed them back into the strip, which is rather nice. As a cartoonist there's something rather lovely about being able to try out new material in front of a live audience, and actually *know* what gets a big laugh.

So go subscribe to the Phoenix and you will be getting - apart from all the other cool comics and stories and such - a weekly part-work course in (awesome) comics creation! Including many diverse and profound theoretical insights. Such as, for example, THIS:

Pirates of Pangaea - issue Zero Sneak Peek!

2011-11-22T10:37:00.003Z

The Pirates of Pangaea ©2011 Daniel Hartwell & Neill Cameron.
Check out more info on the Phoenix website, and a larger version here!

Hey, have you been over to the Phoenix website to grab your copy of Issue Zero of the super-exciting new weekly comic yet? There's lots of cool stuff in it, including a 4-page prologue to The Pirates of Pangaea, me n' Dan's new strip, from which I present an exclusive preview HERE!

..or HAS he? Go grab a copy of Issue Zero to find out!

So much other excitement to find on the site, including the mind-bogglingly exciting revelation that Ben "Mezolith" Haggarty and Garen "Rainbow Orchid" Ewing, two of my favourite creators in the universe, are collaborating on a strip! Not to mention new strips from (deep breath, and in no particular order): Jamie Smart, Kate Brown, Paul Duffield, Jamie Littler, Rob Deas, Faz Choudhury, Gary Northfield, Dave Shelton, James Turner, The Etherington Brothers, Patrice Aggs, John Welding, Adam Murphy. If you look for it you can even find a sneak peek at my OTHER new strip, about which I shall blog more information here ooh, any day now...

Go have a browse around it all. And then, of course:

Hey Kids, FREE COMICS!

2011-11-18T08:25:00.004Z

Well there I was shopping for organic hand-picked artisan Green tea and what did I see by the till? Why, only the Future of British Comics, that's all.

Yes, the super-exciting BIG NEWS (from yesterday, which it you are reading this you probably already know) is that a special FREE Issue Zero of The Phoenix Comic is available now through Waitrose supermarkets! To get your FREE copy, here's all you have to do:

grab a copy of Waitrose Weekend magazine. It contains a CODE.
go on the Phoenix website and ENTER that code
get a FREE COMIC.

If you don't live near a Waitrose, don't worry - plans are afoot to make sure no-one misses out on their Phoenixy goodness. And look, if you know anyone who *does* live near one, or if you have access to the Internet and a bit of initiative, I dare say you'll be able to get ahold of the code. But if you can, you really should try and grab hold of a copy of the mag, as it's got a great-looking pullout section about the Phoenix, a glorious double page spread by Patrice Aggs, as well as such esoteric delights as Today presenter James Naughtie talking about comics, and the revelation that Olly Smith off Saturday Kitchen used to write for Pingu.

I'm so excited about Issue Zero - I was lucky enough to get a peek at a copy the other day and it really is something a bit special. It's not just recycled content or the first few pages of stuff that was going to appear anyway ("preprints", I guess), as you'd often get in these kind of things - we all went to a lot of effort to create new stuff specially for the occasion - prologues, teasers and standalone episodes, as well as some other very exciting bonus treats.

I'll try and blog more tomorrow with a sneak peek at my contribution(s) to the issue, but till then- seriously, go and grab a copy, while stocks last. Order one on behalf of a son/ daughter/ niece/ nephew/ class/ local neighbourhood street gang of your acquaintance, and be the gnarliest* grown-up on the block. Or heck, just order one for YOU. And then read it while you sip your organic artisan hand-picked green tea.

*What, you didn't hear? 'Gnarly' is totally back.

ComICA this Saturday!

2011-11-08T08:36:00.005Z

Just a quick note to say I'll be at ComICA Comiket this Saturday, mooching around, chatting to fine comics creators and selling and signing books at the DFC Library table. Come by, there'll be all sorts of fun stuff happening, to wit:

1.30-2pm: Sarah McIntyre: the fabulous creator of Vern & Lettuce and illustrator of Morris The Mankiest Monster and many more! Sarah will be signing and sketching and comics-jamming and well frankly WHO KNOWS what comics-related mayhem may ensue.
2.30-3pm: Adam Brockbank: the preposterously talented comic artist and film concept art designer extraodinaire (Harry Potter, Captain America, and those are just the ones he's casually, off-handedly mentioned, doubtless many more) will be signing copies of the extraordinary MeZolith.
3.30-4pm: Neill Cameron - that's me - will be signing & sketching copies of Mo-Bot High, drawing robots on any available surface, and... well, who knows? I'm going to bring my trusty cardboard mo-bot along and take pictures of him meeting various Interesting People, I think. And Hipsters.Hipsters and cardboard robots, it should be a fun afternoon!

Anyway, I'm not actually too sure what else is happening on the day - as previously discussed, I currently have an embarrassingly limited brain capacity for any matters not directly relating to Pirates and Dinosaurs - but I know there's going to be loads of amazing cartoonists drawing live on a big screen and stuff, so I'm pretty excited to be going along. I'm mostly just hoping to meet and hang out with some interesting comics people, and maybe snag a copy of Blank Slate Books' utterly great-sounding Nelson, which I think is out now? I think?

Anyway, do come along and say hi. And on that note, I hear the call of Pirates and Dinsoaurs. Till Saturday!

The GIGANTOSAURUS Sale is on!

2011-11-06T16:59:00.003Z

Yes, it's true - for the first week in November, (and in an attempt to clear a bit of space in my studio) I'm running a GIGANTOSAURUS-sized sale in my online shop, offering a whopping 20% off EVERYTHING. To take advantage of this senses-staggering salestravaganza, just enter the offer code GIGANTOSAURUS when ordering. Once again, that offer code:

GIGANTOSAURUS

But what can you buy? Why, here are a couple of options:

Mo-Bot High BOOK ONE - signed copy with ORIGINAL SKETCH of your choice! Whatever the heck kind of giant robot you want, drawn in the front of this VERY GOOD GRAPHIC NOVEL. Check out more details HERE: http://neillcameron.bigcartel.com/product/mo-bot-high-book-one

Or how about, just in time for Chrismas, the return of:

...Neill's Christmas Cards of Awesomeness! Five designs, featuring Father Christmas mish-mashed with everything from Cthulhu to Batman to (naturally) Giant Robots.

More details HERE: http://neillcameron.bigcartel.com/product/christmas-cards-of-awesomeness

Commissions are currently SOLD OUT due to workload pressures, but I might put a couple of pieces of original art up in the shop in the next couple weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Now: please go and buy things so that I can move in my studio and afford to buy Christmas presents and stuff! Thank you.

COMPETITION! Design A Fantastic Creature! And Win Fabulous Prizes!

2011-10-19T09:01:00.001+01:00

Those fine people over at Devon Libraries are having a competition as part of The Big Draw in October to design fantastic, weird and wonderful creatures! The most fantastic, weird and wonderful will win prizes! There's some signed copies of Mo-Bot High in it for the lucky winners, for starters! And I will be helping to judge the entries. I promise to be fair, impartial, and completely immune to bribery. Unless anyone has any peanut butter m&m's. You DIDN'T HEAR ME SAY THAT.

Full info over on the Devon Libraries site! And in case you were wondering about the singularly weird and wonderful creature at the top of this post, she/he (?) is the result of a game-of-consequences-type collaboration between myself and the ludicrously talented and famous cartoonists Sarah McIntyre (head) and Garen Ewing (body). I drew the feet. Looking at it now, I think maybe we each modelled our sections after ourselves. Appropriated / recycled from the Super Comics Adventure Squad blog, lo these many years ago.

Upcoming Awesomeness, plus A Brief Explanation of Invisibility

2011-10-18T13:43:00.005+01:00

Hello! I'm doing a couple of workshops and stuff next week, and Lo Here Are The Details:

Tues 25th October: Luton Central Library - How To Make (Awesome) Comics Workshops - sessions at 10:30am and 2:00pm! Details here!

Friday 28th October: Haverfordwest Library, 10:30am - one-hour illustrated talk and live interactive drawing shenanigans!

If you're in the area, or know anyone with kids who might fancy diverting them for an hour or two with robots and monsters and kung-fu zebras and such, do let them know! I will of course be selling and signing copies of Mo-Bot High at all events!

Other than THAT - look, I know I've been nigh-invisible in terms of blogging and tweeting and facebooking and g+ing and such lately - god, I'm exhausted just listing it all. This invisibility has extended to going along to comics conventions and events etc. What can I say, it's always the case as a freelancer that when one is the busiest, that's when one can kind of disappear from the face of the earth a bit. Just last week I was really sorry to miss the launch party in London for the Etherington Bros' Baggage, the brand new release from the DFC Library that looks absolutely fantastic and is just about the most exciting and positive thing one could hope for in British comics. Anyway, m'colleague Sarah McIntyre went and wrote a great report of the night on her blog, so go read that!

Essentially, I'm just flat-out, nose-to-the-wacom on all manner of exciting, awesome, fantastically superlicious stuff for The Phoenix, and between that and, y'know, parenting, that's pretty much all 28 hours in the day accounted for. But hey, it's not long now till January 7, 2012, when you'll get to see all the fruits of this uncommunicative busy-ness for yourself!

Till then:

PS Not really "till then". I will totally be blogging between now and then.

Uh, hopefully.

Be What You Want

2011-09-27T11:44:00.002+01:00

I recently did a bunch of illustrations, comic strips and posters for the Be What You Want Campaign, organised by Close The Gap. The campaign is intended to support young people in being what they want to be, and help tackle gender stereotyping and occupational segregation.

It's always nice to have a job where you're drawing fun things and working for a cause you can believe in, so this was a really satisfying project to be involved with. Occupational segregation now joins the ever-growing list of Social Problems I Have Bravely Fought Through The Medium of Comics, along with traffic safety, adult innumeracy and chronic disease in indigenous populations. Oh yeah, and racism. Obviously.

Packs of the posters and comic strips were sent out to every primary and secondary school in Scotland, which is kind of mind-blowingly awesome to think about, too. Anyway, I've put a few sample pieces over on my website, and you can check out and download the full set of resources over on the Be What You Want website.

Amusing Tales and Scribbles and Such: the DFB Storyblog!

2011-09-20T17:58:00.004+01:00

I've recently joined in blogging over at the DFB Storyblog, where lots of David Fickling books' fine writers and illustrators (and me) are sharing tall tales, amusing anecdotes, and whatever other assorted nonsense takes our fancy. The general theme to start with was 'coincidences and misunderstandings and what have you', to tie in with the recent launch of Andrew Norris' I Don't Believe It, Archie!

I joined in with a nerve-shredding tale of terror which, as well as being senses-shatteringly exciting, features such eye-poppingly gorgeous artwork as the following:

Intriguing, no?

Read the full story here! I'll be contributing fairly regularly to the blog, so brace yourselves for further tales from the foothills of the mountains of madness.

Do go and have a read, there's tons of fun stuff on there already, with posts from my fellow DFC Library peeps Dave Shelton (Good Dog, Bad Dog) and Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce) as well as such luminaries as Candy Gourlay and Tony Mitton. Enjoy!

Pirates of Pangaea: First Teaser Poster!

2011-07-28T14:01:00.007+01:00

I am delighted to be able to share with you this first bit of previewy teasery postery art from Dan Hartwell and I's upcoming swashbuckling dinosaurical magnum opus, The Pirates of Pangaea. Coming in The Phoenix Comic, a brand new story comic for children launching in January 2012!

I'm having so much fun drawing this thing already, and I absolutely can't wait to set it loose upon the world. (I know that January seems like a long time to wait, but believe me from the point of view of me having to draw it all, it is NO TIME AT ALL.)

Make sure you sign up to the Phoenix newsletter to get the early scoop on all the exciting stuff that's coming up soon - and believe me, there is some genuinely tingle-inducingly exciting stuff in the works...

Will blog lots more about this as we get nearer the time. And there'll be another teaser image coming soon which I'm really excited about - something I was in fact so pleased with that I think it joins page 62 of MoBot High in the rather exclusive 'Things I Have Drawn That I'm Actually Reasonably Happy With' club.

Pirates! And Dinosaurs! Come on.

On Small Press Comics

2011-07-18T17:40:00.012+01:00

A while back I answered a few interview questions for Matt Badham for an article about small press comics that, for whatever reason, ended up never being used. Probably because I was SO BORING. Anyway, I thought I might as well stick it up here, in case anyone is interested in hearing my misty-eyed reminiscences of the UK small press comics scene in the 1990s. It is a fun excuse to post a bit of old Dumbass Comics and Bulldog art, at least. Nostalgia-sense: tingling!

How did you get into small press comics?

I'd been drawing comics since I could draw, pretty much. When I was 6 or 7 my brother and I would make our own little handmade comics in the style of the Beano and Oink and present them to our parents for approval. When I got a bit older I started making comics at school, weird nonsense narratives drawn in spare exercise books, the plots based on jokes and suggestions from my friends as I went along. Eventually, I'd say about age 14, I discovered the magic of photocopiers and took the bold step into making comics with a print run higher than one. Slightly higher, at least.

I think I discovered the wider world of small press comics through a little piece of comics history that may not be particularly well known or remembered these days but which was enormously personally influential for me and, I'd suspect, for many of my friends - the 'Announcements' section of the classified ads in the back of Comics International. That tiny little column on grainy newsprint stuck at the back of the magazine was kind of my window out into a world where people created their own comics and via the magic of cheque, postal order and Self-Addressed Envelope, actually sent them to other people to read.

Why did you get into small press comics?

Like I say, there's really no point in my life past the age of about 5 where I wasn't making comics one way or another, and I guess a big part of the appeal was making people laugh, giving people enjoyment, and getting some kind of response back. Once I discovered that such things as small press comics existed - that I could draw something and have it read by people outside my immediate family and my class at school - it seemed incredibly exciting, and there was no stopping me really.

What was the best part of being part of the small press comics ‘scene’?

I think the best thing for me was the support and encouragement - and helpful criticism - from other artists, writers and creative types. When I was first making small press comics, in the early 1990s, I really didn't know anybody in real life who read comics. (Apart from my little brother, and he just stole mine). Given that this was back before we all had that there new-fangled internet, the small press was really the only way I had of communicating with other people who were into comics - through letters and photocopied comics traded via the Comics International small-ads column. Getting told "that's great, you can draw" by someone who wasn't my Mum, and working with people of shared sensibilities to make comics together really was a profoundly wonderful experience.

What was the worst?

I think the worst thing for me was the realisation that, no matter how small, obscure or universally ignored a 'scene' may be, you are still virtually guaranteed to get some kind of lame internal divisions, politics, fallings-out and so on. This always seemed deeply pointless and disheartening to me - you're talking about comics with print runs in the tens, and you're going to waste time bickering amongst yourselves? (I don't think this is a phenomenom exclusive to comics, I should hardly need add.)

I would hope things are much healthier these days. Making your own comics seems to be much more of a cool thing to do, so hopefully people nowadays are above such petty squabbles. Or if they're not, at least I'm sufficiently out of touch to not hear about it.

What do you think the thriving nature of the scene says about the state of the comics industry in this country?

Getting a break in the UK comics industry can be pretty tough - I'm trying not to sound negative, but I think that's fair to say. What opportunities there are tend to be working on licensed / established properties; there simply aren't many publishers providing a platform for writers and artists - particularly new or unpublished writers and artists - to just come up with their own ideas and stories and see what happens. Which is a shame, as that of course is the funnest part of the whole 'creating comics' thing. As such, I think it's entirely understandable, appropriate and awesome that people just go ahead and publish their work themselves. It's how you learn your craft, it's how you find your style, and it's how you connect with people who share your sensibilities. And it is fun. That, too.

I think that increasingly it's going to be an appealing option for people to just stay in the small press, but to actually make a living doing so - or to go back and forth between professional work and their own small press stuff. When I was first making small press comics, like I say, they were photocopied and sent out in the mail, and I'd literally sell like 50 copies if I was lucky. I recently did a series of drawings for fun on my blog, and for whatever reason they just got picked up and linked to all over the internet like crazy, and at the height of it I was getting hundreds of thousands of readers every day - many of whom were genuinely eager to buy stuff from me, and seemed confused that I didn't really have anything to sell them. The fact that the potential audience is so much bigger these days, and so much esier to connect to, is to me an absolutely marvelous thing, and creates all sorts of interesting possibilities for creatively-minded people.

I don't know what you call it if you're in the small press but you're making a living at it, I don't know if we have a word for that yet...

Do you think that the body of work you produced for the small press helped you to get professionally published?

Absolutely, yes. When I was doing small-press stuff I was always dreaming on some level of being a professional artist and drawing comics for a living, even though for a long time it seemed like an idle daydream rather than something that was actually remotely possible or achievable. It was when I had a mild quarter-life crisis, decided to get serious about comics and knuckled down to produce a couple of decent-sized works (the sci-fi miniseries Bulldog: Empire with Jason Cobley and my own martial arts rom-com webcomic Thumpculture) that things started to happen, and my first professional works can be traced pretty directly to coming out of those projects. If you do good work, and put it out there - well, it can't hurt, it can only help.

Holy Something Something, Batman

2011-07-15T15:47:00.006+01:00

What if Batman, Scott Pilgrim, a basketball player and a bear started a band? THIS IS WHAT.

This is a commission I drew a little while ago - see, the "draw whatever you want" offer wasn't just talk! Huge thanks to Tim Sismey who commissioned this and gave me the opportunity to draw such a randomly awesome thing, and for giving me permission to repost it here. And a belated happy birthday to Tim's friend Chris, the b-ballin' recipient/star of this piece himself.

I think I might take the commission offer down from my shop soon, as I've got a ton of work on at the moment and am pretty much at full capacity. Aargh, but on the other hand, I do like getting paid money to draw stupid awesome things. Tell you what, I'll leave it up there for another week or two, and then that's that. Get in quick if you want one!

/shill

Admission

2011-07-13T16:26:00.006+01:00

New on my website today is 'Admission', a short comic that I drew and which you can read for free here.

Brief context: I drew this last year. I don't usually do autobiographical comics, but this one was kind of stuck in my head after the events it depicts, so I gave it a go. Once I finished it, I then kind of lost the nerve to actually post it or show it to people, so it sat on my hard drive for the last year, unloved.

Anyway, I was prompted to dig it out this week by reading about Better, Drawn, a fantastic new blog featuring "comics drawn by people with a story to tell about living with long-term mental and physical illnesses."

Which, y'know. Is what this is.

I hope you like the comic.

There will be more giant robots soon, don't worry.