Manga School

Last night I went along to "Manga School" at Birkbeck College for a series of talks by researchers and professionals visiting from Japan MANGA STUDIES: From Architecture to Female Otaku. It was an interesting evening and I left wanting to read more Manga titles.

During the day I'd posted about the event on Facebook and one of my friends commented on the fact that "Manga School" made them think of Battle Royale - a Japanese film/novel/manga series about a group of high school students who are forced by the government to compete in a deadly game where the students must kill each other in order to win (and is "entirely different" to The Hunger Games...).

Anyway, after being inspired by the evening's discussion, I ended up drawing a picture of myself and my friend Karrie in a Battle Royale style face off...



(PS. I would like to point out that "Manga School" was in no way actually like Battle Royale...)

Happy Birthday Karen!

It was my friend Karen's birthday today. She went for drinks on Saturday and ended up with balloons tied around her leg, which made me think about what would happen if they'd been filled with Helium. Maybe this...

Congratulations Celine and Henry

My friends Celine and Henry got married recently in Macau and I wanted to send them something special, so I drew a picture for them. In November they travelled over to London for a few days to take some pre-wedding photos. Although the final photos looked really nice, the weather at that time wasn't perhaps the best...

Happy Birthday Ni!

It was my friend Ni's birthday last week. Lately, Ni's been posting photos of her cats on Facebook nearly every day, so I decided that I'd follow the trend for her birthday card and draw a picture of her cats using a brush pen to try and get the right look for their fur...

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Maybe it's because of the cold weather and all the talk of snow in the UK, but I just did this quick drawing based on the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back and playing around with brush pens and Photoshop...

Birthday Bonanza 2: The Sequel!

So it seems that January is quite a busy month for birthdays, and I have a few more birthday cards and drawings that I've done recently...

First up, it was my friend Arina's birthday the other week. She's been a bit obsessed by Grumpy Cat which has been a thing on the internet, and drew a brilliant xmas card with the Grumpy Cat on, so I thought I would draw her an equally grumpy birthday card...



On a similar animal-related theme, it was my friend Nanae's birthday this week, and she LOVES dogs. Since she moved back to Japan from London last year, I thought I'd send her a special birthday greeting from the UK featuring a british birthday bulldog...



And finally (for now!), it was my friend Jo's birthday the other day, and being that she's a big fan of cartoons from the 80s I decided to draw her this picture of He-Man...

Enter Stranger!

After watching a bunch of old children's tv shows over the weekend as part of CITV's 30th birthday celebrations, I had some ideas for a couple of drawings based on some of the shows I grew up with.

Another show I really liked was Knightmare – an early attempt at virtual reality gaming, where a kid with a helmet on his head restricting his vision was guided around various dungeons by his three friends, until they inevitably told him to go left instead of right and he fell off a cliff and died. Except not really, because it was all pretend! It was amazing, and I remember really wanting to go on to the show with my friends. Although every single show would include the following exchange...



No shit, Sherlock!

Go and search for "Knightmare" on YouTube. Now!

Gangster Squad #sketchathon

I was doing some work this afternoon with my laptop on in the background, when I saw a tweet about the latest Sketchathon brief from Little White Lies magazine (@LWLies) - to draw any character from the upcoming film Gangster Squad, with the winning sketch receiving two tickets to see the film. As I hadn't properly started what I was already working on, I decided to drop what I was doing and give it a go!

I decided to draw Grace Faraday (played by Emma Stone, who was also Gwen Stacy in the recent Amazing Spider-man reboot). After a few failed attempts which didn't quite capture her look, I was finally happy with this attempt which I drew using a brush pen and then scanned and added some limited colour in Photoshop, and finished just a few minutes before the deadline!



The winner will be announced tomorrow. Let's see... But I enjoyed it as a drawing exercise, whatever the result. I was quite pleased with the results I achieved by drawing with the brush pen, which I've struggled with in the past.

Button Moon Episode IV: A New Hope

This weekend children's television channel CITV celebrated it's 30th birthday by broadcasting a selection of shows from its archives. I use to really love watching CITV when I was a kid, and it was fun rewatching shows like Dangermouse, Art Attack, Knightmare, Count Duckula, Fun House and more.

One of my favourite shows when I was little was Button Moon, which featured Mr Spoon and his family going up to Button Moon and having adventures. After watching an episode earlier today, I had the idea for this drawing, based on the poster for the 1977 film Star Wars...



You should definitely go and search for "Button Moon" on YouTube...

Birthday Bonanza!

So Christmas is over and it's a New Year. I've been getting back into drawing after taking a bit of a break during December, and this week I have mostly been drawing birthday cards...

Yesterday it was my friend Cathy's birthday, and I drew this picture of Cathy along with a scan of some letterpress typography that I produced back when I was doing my MA course...



Yesterday it was also my cousin William's birthday. He recently got a phone for Christmas and when I saw him on Boxing Day he was dressed up as a rabbit (I'm not sure why. Maybe he got mixed up with Easter?)...



My friend Richy's birthday was actually on New Year's Day, but he went out for drinks last night, and I made him this card splicing together two of his favourite tv shows: Blossom and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Happy New Year!

So it's 2013. A new year and time to being making plans for the year ahead. I've been a bit quiet on the illustration front for the past month (partly because I slightly exhausted myself with my daily Movillustraion project during November), but now I feel (slightly) refreshed and ready to get back to my scribbling!

So to kick the year off, here's a silly comic idea that's been knocking around in my head for the past few days... (click to enlarge)