BICS 2010

Oh dear. I don't think we were very popular at BICS this year...



JUST KIDDING! This is what our spot actually looked like:









Hurrah! We had a fantastic time at BICS this year and Hall 2 felt just right. We had great company with us, our friend Tom joined us as part of team Dumpy Little Robot and took us down. Helped us with boxes, watched our table, found amazing food places and was his usual fantastic self. He's on Twitter as @ThermobaricTom and you should all go and say hi!

We also met up with Lydia of Genki-Gear, the best and coolest indie T-shirt business in the UK I'll have you darn well know. Check out the site. It's full of fantastic geek and anime inspired designs!

We were also lucky enough to have great company around our table. Jenna Whyte next to us with her buddy, selling some beautiful prints:



On our other side, Scott Stanford and Catherine with his novel Dorothy, The Darker Side of Oz. Again, the loveliest people:



Opposite us were Jason Cobley (DFC, Captain Winston Bulldog) and Neill Cameron (also of the DFC!). We ended up chatting about all ages comics and I left with a lovely selection of books from them both. Here's Jason and his table:



And not forgetting all the other great tables in hall 2, I sadly didn't get enough time to go around to see everyone but Jess Bradley, Josh, Louise Ho, Will Kirkby, and Nigel Dobbyn I'd like to give a shout out to. Plus of course the Etherington bros, Cinebooks and Fetishman in Hall 1 who I briefly got to visit!

We also had visits from the lovely Lizz Lunney, Den Patrick and Lew Stringer, and a whole host of friendly sorts who really seemed to enjoy our work! Dave did well with The Demon Tomato and we got a lot of good reactions to Imaginary Gumbo. I also ended up doing a lot more sketch commissions than I'd expected, here are the ones I managed to take pictures of.

Power Girl!





Simon of Legacy Comics in Halifax, long-time fan of the Gumbo idea, asked for a sketch of Gumbo. :)



On Saturday I drew Deadpool riding a pot-bellied pig. It sold pretty quickly so had to think of something funnier than a pig to follow up with:



After the reception of Deadpool on a pig/Deadpool on a tortoise, I decided to ruin Batman:



But Batman approves!!!



Awww Batman! :3



And then he was snapped up by the lovely Britt here!



Her lovely bloke Paul then wanted a sketch too. He thought Emma Frost having a nice cup of tea would be just right. I felt that the lady might also enjoy some half-coated chocolate digestive biscuits.



And a close-up:



Leather jackets, hell yea!



I don't think nice Batman would like this one. :(



And Adam here asked Dave and myself to do portraits to add to his collection:



There were some people and sketches I have probably missed, it was all a bit of a whirl but I hope everyone who came by over the weekend knows that we had a smashing time and loved meeting all of you! And if I got someone's name wrong feel free to tell me off. :)

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!

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.

Nativity! Sort of.

Drawn, inked and mainly coloured by Dave. I did the shading, coloured some lineart and added the Christmassy glow! Dave is the only one who can possibly describe any of this quite mental annual Christmas event:

"The traditional Snatavity scene, showing baby SNatter in the slé where him born. People in the stable: mummy & daddy Snatter, the Herald of Christmas Noddy Holder (it isn't christmas until noddy say it's christmas), the actor Burgess Meredith with his little beard butterflies, he is the oldest grandest oldy elf in all North Pole, and Dooley, the unofficial head of the Grotto when he is old."

There you go! It all makes sense now.