Febuary Updates.

Thanks by the way to everyone who has been watching or leaving comments! I do enjoy them, but often I find myself a bit struck by some weird shy awkwardness. I don't always reply to everyone and I'm a bit ashamed of that. So I hope to work a little on such things.

Dave was busy on an inking job through January and now he's got a break I intend to steal his skills and get him to work on some of my recent sketches. Although knowing the usual timing of the jobs we get we'll end up having a commission minutes after starting work on our own projects! Still I managed to knock out some Nemesis Fleet images between my colouring work that weren't just characters standing on a blank background.



Then a bit of Battle Angel Alita doodling. The original 9 volumes of this are one of the few manga series I still enjoy. There are some amazing fight sequences although I'm not sure the story would hold up to me reading it fully again. I think it's something that was better when I was a teenager. But it's much better than the new series. When I saw the main character wearing cat ears and a tail on an upcoming cover I can't say I was exactly thrilled.



And then because yes, I am still working on portfolio things. I have all these Transformers pages that Paul gave me ages ago flat coloured and often half shaded, but I have to keep stopping for Tom and Jerry. It's a lot of fun working on these. Personally I prefer the style of the new cartoon to the movie designs but that's why I like doing these so much. It's more of a challenge and I feel like I'm learning something new.

Delivery Day Doodles

Thursday in the UK is our comics delivery day, which means being in early to meet the TNT van and staying until late to run our comics and gaming night. Phew! So it's a little tricky to set Thursday on my new artsy timetable. Let's take Thursday as a day for random doodles. Afterall I sketch while I do the brews (need plenty of those for delivery day). And today I spent my lunch break at the Nexus art cafe near my shop, snuggled into one of their big comfy chairs with a hot chocolate and my sketchbook. Plenty of time for drawing there!

Some wise dudes said FOCUS.

I admit I am a little topsy turvy at the start of this new year. I'd love to be doing more proffessional work, colouring or drawing and I'd love to be working on my own comic ideas. I really need to sort out my portfolio too. But I always end up getting a bit lost and frustrated over what should be my priority. Before work I always have a mild panic. "I have an hour to work on something, BUT WHAT?!"

I've decided to plan my weeks between any art jobs I get. Each day I'll focus on one project. Today Dave and I started reworking some character designs for one of our comic book ideas. Here's one of them!

Final Christmas Sillies

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year! We ended up spending a little too much of it having to do artwork but heck, it was fun.

These are the last main images I did for the Advent Calendar, and only Dave can really do justice to explaining the damn thing at all. It seemed to go down pretty well, with lots of jolly sorts joining in with the fun. Read Dave's post on http://demontomato.blogspot.com/ to get all the details. Although it won't quite explain the Christmas Power Rangers or robots or anything. Just, uhhh, best to just go with the flow and read the thread!

Santa Vs King-Emperor Chicken!

I am really looking forward to seeing a proper new Wallace and Gromit animation on Christmas day.

Calendar: CANDRAKE MASTER LORD

What present will tame this mighty olde beast?

Painty Painty Paint.

Well digital painting anyway. I haven't done this sort of thing in a while and now I have to do lots of it very quickly for our advent calender. I have finished this piece but I took the, ahh, characters off. I will post the final soon but I don't want to spoil the story for everyone reading along on Something Awful. :)