Monday 7 December 2009

Calendar Continued

We're a few days in now to the nonsense that is our Christmas calendar. Here are a few more illustrations from Dave that I coloured. Remember to check out the live thread at Something Awful.











And then the return of the Christmas Ninjas who look a bit different this year. Drawn by me, inked by Dave, then coloured by me again. JA-PAN!

Tuesday 1 December 2009

It's December the first!

...which means it's time for Dave's Advent Calendar again! Once again he's been going mad this year drawing cartoon after cartoon for his Christmas adventure. I've been helping out a bit with colouring again like last year, here's a little peep at today's part.



Of course if you want the full effect of the calendar you really need to head over to the Something Awful forums. They're all just as confused as you are, don't worry!

Wednesday 18 November 2009

Thought Bubble

Although I won't be at Leeds this weekend myself Dave will be there representing the both of us. He'll have issues one and two of his Demon Tomato comic for sale and lots of prints of our artwork. With Christmas on the way we decided to get some prints made from our last Advent Calendar in particular. So, if you're like us and tend to get the Christmas Sillies, you might enjoy some of this nonsense:









I'll make Dave put up some of his calendar prints on his blog later, his Christmassy cartoons are hysterical! Look for our table on Saturday then: Dumpy Little Robot.

Leigh Gallagher very kindly gave me a shout out over on his blog and posted some snippets of artwork from his fantastic Judge Dredd story. It's my second colouring job for 2000AD and it's been brilliant fun so far! It'll be in the Megazine at some point soon...whoo!

Wednesday 4 November 2009

Kingdom Colouring Samples.

Well I'm busy yet again with more colouring work at the moment so no new sketches just yet. But here are a few samples from my work on Kingdom with the marvelous Richard Elson. There are pages where Richard did some tweaks on the colours so my pages kept consistent with his, he also did the markings on Gene. It was an awesome job, I feel that I've learned so much from working with him.









Story by Dan Abnett, pencils by Richard Elson, colours by me. Dan Abnett is also brilliant and if you haven't read any of his novels or comics you should go out looking for them right now. It's his bloody fault I've got a box full of Warhammer 40k models waiting for me to finish my colouring work! Stupid massively entertaining Horus Heresy...

Kingdom © 2009 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved. www.2000adonline.com

Friday 2 October 2009

Harrods Toy Catalogue

Hey everyone! Cor, that's a few new people isn't it. Hello there! It's been an enjoyably busy few months here but I'm determined to make more drawing time for myself. So there should be some regular updates again around here.

Since I last posted I've finished my colouring work on Kingdom for 2000AD, coloured some Tom and Jerry magazines and ventured out to the Birmingham Comics Show with the Manchester Comix Collective. Had a fantastic time meeting everyone and I'll be doing a little report on all the lovely people I met, along with all their fantastic comics too. Although I didn't have Imaginary Gumbo finished in time I took some prints and preview pages and was really touched by the response it got. People seemed to really take to our big stompy knight and his battle with the bears. Rockin!



One of the other projects I've been busy with recently was this cover to the new Harrods toy catalogue. This was so much fun to do despite some technical problems. When I went to London to take photos in the store my camera chose that day to give up on life. While I was colouring the piece my external hard drive waved a white flag in defeat. The catalogue should be available now and nothing makes me happier at this time of year than a big book full of pictures of toys. Mmm. Toys. I'm still waiting for those last few Transformers Animated toys to come out...

Wednesday 9 September 2009

2000 AD Hijinks.

So I can't apologise enough for the lack of updates here recently. I hope I have a good enough reason for my absence, a nice big stack of work to get through! Sadly this has meant I won't have Imaginary Gumbo printed for BICS in October, but I'll still be there with the MCC and my portfolio, looking forward to meeting everyone. On the other hand my bloke Dave has issue 2 of The Demon Tomato whizzing off to the printers right now, fingers crossed that we will have it here in time!

I've been working on a few exciting things but first I'll tell you about my 2000AD work. It's my first time doing anything for Tharg and co and I'm massively excited about it! Not only is it colouring work for 2000AD but I'm colouring for my hero and friend Richard Elson, on a story written by (cor!) Dan Abnett. I feel extremely lucky and hope I do justice to Richard's lovely line work. What he's sent me so far is yummyscrumptious...have I embarrassed him enough yet? ;)

I'm colouring the last six parts of the twelve-part story, which has already started running in the comic. You can see Rich's own gorgeous colours right now in the current issue, but you should also pick up the previous Kingdom trade:



It's bad ass and has giant nasty lookin bug things and dog soldiers and fabulous puns from Mr Abnett. Awesome! Now, back to sketching and colouring I go.

Thursday 6 August 2009

Haunted sketchbook day four: Boos!



Boos! Biddley boos. I was at my shop until about 10 this evening, and now my mac keeps crashing. I think it's time to go to bed.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Haunted sketchbook day three: Obi-Wan



Next time I draw anything Star Wars related, I promise it will be cool and have fighting and wooshing lightsabers and everything. And not just ghostie old Obi-Wan standing around.



Extra! This is cheating, it's a character from one of my comic projects who I haven't drawn in a while and seeing as Tass here is a ghost it seemed like a decent excuse to draw her. Dave and I will get back to working on Nemesis Fleet again, but the story needed a lot of fixing and developing Imaginary Gumbo has been a lot smoother. Still lots of hard work, but I have had lots of hang ups about Nemesis Fleet. I've been trying to make it for so long. Getting a bit of distance from our last try at writing issue one has been good for us.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

Haunted sketchbook day two: Gentleman Ghost.



I approve of any character that has a floating monacle. Dapper villains are the best.

Monday 3 August 2009

Haunted sketchbook day one: Hitchhiking Ghosts.



When the crypt goes creak,
And the tombstones quake.
Spooks come out for a swinging wake.
Happy haunts materialize,
And begin to vocalize.
Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize!

Friday 17 July 2009

Ninja Invasion Day Five: Toyota!



Y: The Last Man has to be my favourite series from Vertigo, so I can't believe I forgot about Toyota until my friend Olly mentioned her today. Yes, yes indeed I had to attempt to draw her. I've decided to ink up Dr McNinja and a few of the other pictures from the last few days and colour them fully, they should end up pretty nifty!

I need to draw Agent 355 at some point!

Thursday 16 July 2009

Ninja Invasion Day Four: Dr McNinja!




A quick one, I have not long been home from my shop and need bed very much. Looong delivery day! Had to run comics night at the end too! Here's a quick Dr McNinja for you, I've got a day off from the shop tomorrow so when I've finished my current bit of Tom and Jerry colouring I think I'll update the good Doctor here with a lovely colour version.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

Ninja Invasion Day Three: Snake-Eyes and Guest...



Yes! Two today, as I was extremely disappointed with ole Elektra down there. Snake-Eyes from GI Joe and, er, Nemesis the Warlock dressed like a ninja, as requested by my buddy Den at http://likealittlekidwithabeard.blogspot.com/ I had so much fun with these two!

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Ninja Invasion Day Two: Elektra



Sorry all! Day two and already my ninja powers are weak and feeble. This Elektra could probably get trounced by a half dead budgie, it's rubbish!

Monday 13 July 2009

Ninja Invasion Day One: Zool!



I wanted to kick my blog back into regular updates so I'm thinking about giving myself a theme each week. This week I'll draw a ninja every day up to the weekend. I decided to start silly, anyone else fancy a Chupa Chup now?

Friday 19 June 2009

Transformers Sequentials.

This is something I did a little while back to work on my sequentials a bit and also to try something very much outside my comfort zone. Attempting to draw the live action movie Transformer designs! I'm not really sure how successful an experiment this has been but I did enjoy it a lot. I'm inking these now and intend to colour them too just for my portfolio.

These are based on a script from the UK Titan Transformers magazine, the latest issue is a great hopping on point for newcomers!











I'm going to keep working on my sequentials, I'd like to get a lot better at my story telling. And backgrounds. I'm off work for a week now and intend to do a lot of practising...

Friday 12 June 2009

Doodle day!

Still colouring, still work I can't post! So I've been sketching on the bus going to work lately, just to practise my posing.





This is the nonsense I spout when I plan pictures and layouts. I'm thinking about the cover for my Princess Deedot comic.



And at Travelling Man comics night last night I was mainly working on some portfolio pages but managed to fit in more superhero doodling. Mister Miracle and Big Barda! When I've finished reading olde 2000 AD comics I'm thinking of picking up those lovely Fourth World Omnibus hardcovers. I love Kirby designs but have never read Fourth World. Madness!



Dave asked why Mister Miracle was wearing a mermaids bra. :(

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Mild progress!

Just a quickie, and fellow Twitterers have seen these I think, but I'm a bit swamped by colouring work! I inked Death's Head, and picked a happy Gumbo preview panel.



Wednesday 3 June 2009

Gumbo plus some MANLY BLOKE STUFF.

Well as much as I do manly. Which is not very manly, though I try my best! Firstly here is that Gumbo page completed:



And then some MANLY SPACE MARINES. WUUURGH!



And now Kirby's Machine Man. I guess it's kinda manly, ROBOTS. WHUURRRGH!



And finally Deaths Head. HURRR! MANLY ROBOT BOUNTY HUNTER oh wait he's all cartoony looking...



Ian requested those last two characters. Deaths Head was suggested a while back, and specifically in a Transformers Animated sort of style. I don't know if Mr Wyatt would have done a Deaths Head like this though, this is just a basic 'make Deaths Head sortof bendy' thing. I wonder if he has this dude hidden in his sketchbook somewhere?

Thursday 28 May 2009

Gumbo WIP and retro doodles.



So Andy of Kapow Toys added to my list of sketchbook subjects last week, asking me if I remembered the Toxic Crusaders cartoon. Boy howdy I did! So here's Toxie in all his mutated glory. Also fabulous Space Jesu- I mean Ulysses. Who doesn't have a lightsaber at all. I swear.

And Gumbo's progress. I have more to do on the colouring and there's more rain to add, but I thought I'd throw it up for c&c. It's developing okay so far! More dramatic than I expected.



And yes I have finally watched the end of Transformers Animated. Mannnn. :(

Monday 18 May 2009

Gumbo's progress (and more Tom and Jerry!)

Today I figured I would show you all what Dave has been doing for me lately. He's inking the Gumbo comic at the moment and I've picked out a panel from the first page for you to see.



Loverly jubberly, thanks for inking my rough as hell pencils dear! I can't wait to start colouring these pages. It's going to be a very fun little comic. Imaginary Gumbo #0! Don't forget that name! And while we're on the subject of Dave he has also been working hard on issue 2 of The Demon Tomato. You can see a few preview images on his blog here. Issue 1 is still on sale here, or at my shop Travelling Man in Manchester, or you could pick one up with a beer at Sandbar!

Here's another issue of Tom and jerry too that I coloured a few months back. Pencilled of course by Lee Carey and inked by Bambos Georgiou.