28 Comics Later... Day Thirteen

I did today's comic quite quickly, so it's a bit sparse on any background details, but wanted to get the idea down when I thought of it (...plus I'm off out in a bit for my brother's birthday).

28 Comics Later... Day Twelve

Sometime ideas just present themselves in the most unexpected places. I was travelling on a bus today when I overheard two girls talking...



...The idea of someone being "scared of 3-D" when we view the world around us in 3-dimensions just struck me as amusing. I sketched out a few ideas of how to present this comic, finally deciding that it worked best by focusing on my reaction, and keeping the girls unseen. I found it interesting telling a story with minimum changes between each frame. I was also trying to convey the loudness of their voices by making their words fill the speech bubbles, although I'm not sure how successful that particular idea was...

28 Comics Later... Day Eleven

While it might surprise some of you, I don't always like to draw myself! Today's comic features my friend Priscilla, and the idea came to me after she was complaining on Facebook about how difficult it was to install her new digital set-top box...



...it also gave me the chance to draw her new cool haircut!

28 Comics Later... Day Ten

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programme...

So as some of you may have noticed (and a few people have actually pointed out to me when I've seen them), I haven't posted anything on my blog for the past week or so, which also means I've neglected my 28 Comics Later... project. Well, now I'm back and my first new comics offering also acts as a sort of summary of what I've been up to during my leave of absence...

Happy Brithday Ni!

Today is my friend Ni's birthday. She really likes pheasants and 3D glasses, so I made this card for her...

Happy Birthday Elli!

Yesterday was my friend Elli's birthday. Here's the card I made, with her photographing an unsuspecting squirrel...

3D or not 3D? That is the question...

So, after spending a long time on yesterday's comic, I decided to take a break today and finally went to see Avatar.

I was really impressed with the animation and the CGI characters, and the use of 3D technology was very impressive... but as far as the film itself goes, it was all fairly predictable and I never really found myself that interested in the actual story. To be honest, I had gone expecting as much, but was hoping that maybe it would surprise me...but it didn't.

Still, beautiful to look at!

Anyway, while I haven't done a comic today, I did do a quick drawing after watching the film... Isn't 3D amazing!!!

28 Comics Later... Day Nine

...I'm sure a Psychiatrist would have a lot to say about today's comic!

Thanks to Paul Giles for his comments to one of my previous comics, which served as my inspiration. From there the idea sort of developed and what started out as a 3-panel comic, expanded to first six and eventually nine panels. I'm happy with the final work and think that it benefits from the slightly slower pace the extra panels creates.

28 Comics Later... Day Eight

...Uff! I hope I can sleep tonight and that I get some motivation for tomorrow...

28 Comics Later... Day Seven

So the snow has melted quite a bit, but with news of more snow on the way before the weekend, I was feeling a bit fed up today. And that got me thinking about my 4-year-old self that loved the snow and got so excited when it did snow...

28 Comics Later... Day Six

So, today I got an email from my friend Julia to say that she'd arrived in Barcelona okay, except for a slight problem at one of the security checks because she had a spray for her dance shoes in her luggage, and that one of the security guys said she should dance to prove it was really hers. I didn't find out what happened then, but I like to think that it went something like this...

Buenas Suerte Julia!

My friend Julia left London today to go back to Barcelona.
Here's a card I made for her...

28 Comics Later... Day Five

So, I sort of missed uploading a comic yesterday – I was out all day and by I got home I was just too tired to draw – but I did make a sketch for an idea I had earlier in the day, and used that for drawing today's comic, which is still quite relavent today, perhaps even more so!

I'll make up the day I missed somewhere along the way and do a double post...

28 Comics Later... Day Four

Okay, so it's all gone a bit bloody meta... I blame the snow!

I've been inside all day, updating my CV, filling out a few job applications, and scribbling ideas for today's comic. I had quite a few different thoughts, and they all seemed to revolve around the snow, but nothing that really formed into a complete idea. My final comic was a reaction to some of my more abstract concepts...



I'm rather pleased with how this comic turned out. And it was also rather fortunate that my recent experiments with using a more monotone colour palette for my comics enabled me to visually differentiate between fiction and "reality".

I really will go out tomorrow, regardless of the snow!

28 Comics Later... Day Three

...but it is now! Okay, so this morning when I woke up and saw the distinct lack of snow outside, it gave me the idea for this comic. But then while I was drawing it, it did actually start to pick up a bit, to the point where it was like a mini-blizzard outside at one point. Typical!

Happy Birthday Cathy!

Yesterday was my friend Cathy's birthday. Cathy lives in Melbourne where it currently isn't snowing (hey, everywhere you look somebody's mentioning the snow, so I thought I should be doing the same...), and she loves Polaroid photos...

28 Comics Later... Day Two

Today was my little cousin's seventh birthday, so I went over to see him after he finished school, and he wanted me to play with some of his new toys...

Happy Birthday Arina!

A new year means new birthdays. Didn't you just have one exactly a year ago??

Kicking the year off, yesterday was my friend Arina's birthday. Here's a card I made for her. Arina is very interested in statistics. This one might not actually be true...

28 Comics Later... Day One

Happy New Year!

So it's 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and I have been making a lot of plans for the year ahead. One thing I want to do is to work on my comics more, and be a bit more experimental.

I got a few new comics for Christmas, including Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli and It's A Good Life If You Don't Weaken by Seth, which both use a limited colour palette, which got me thinking about how I could employ a similar technique in my own work. Today's comic is my first attempt at using a limited colour scheme and I'm quite pleased with the results.

As the title of this post suggests, I intend to produce a new comic every day for the next 28 days (I was originally going to do it for 30 days, but then I realised that 28 days would take me to exactly the end of the month, plus allow me to make a tenuous riff on the title of the British zombie film, 28 Days Later). Hopefully it'll be a good exercise for me, and maybe it'll even teach me some shit about something or other. Either way, I hope it will be a bit of a laugh. And in the end, isn't that the point? ...I don't know.