@OFFLIFE_comic's #QuickDraw

Here's a comic I drew the other week for @OFFLIFE_comic's #QuickDraw over on Twitter for the theme "Everyday Magic"...

Penguin Awareness Day 2014

So apparently, today is National Penguin Awareness Day, and I thought I'd celebrate the occasion by dropping in with a couple of old friends...

Ghosts of Drawings Past

Here's a comic strip I drew when I was 13!

Process: Optional Exercise #1 (Casablanca Comic)

I started going along to Process, a monthly comics workshop/discussion group set up by Steven Walsh and based at Gosh! Comics. It takes place on the first Wednesday of every month and prior to this month's meeting Steve posted an Optional Exercise online for people to have a go at: to adapt the following scene from Casablanca into a comic.



I wanted to give this a go, although because I didn't have much time to work on this before this month's meeting, I decided to focus on part of the scene (from 1.44 in the video). Because Process is partly about "How" people make comics, I thought that I would also include my step-by-step process here.

So after watching the scene and deciding that I wanted to do it as a one page comic, I found the script online and drew a rough thumbnail sketch...



Because that part is filmed from a fixed camera angle, I wanted to replicate this, with only changes in facial expression and some minor changes in the characters movement. So I drew a sketch of the panel and then copy and pasted it on the computer to set up the page before printing it out and drawing in the additional panels and writing in the dialogue...



I then drew over this on a lightbox and then scanned and coloured the final page in Photoshop, colouring in full colour and then converting the file to greyscale. And this is the final page:

Glasses Comics #1

The other week I went to have my eyes tested and had to get my first pair of glasses to wear when I'm working on the computer...which is quite often! Anyway, I made this comic (sort of) about it...

Here's (more than) one I prepared earlier...

I've been busy recently working on something which I can't reveal just yet, so haven't had time to blog a couple of other things which I've done in the meantime. So consider this a catch-up post to bring me up-to-date. So here we go...!

Firstly, it was my friend Chrys's birthday almost a month ago (which just shows how long it's been since I've done a proper blog post!). After our work Christmas party we went to this bar in Soho where they serve cocktails in teapots, so I drew this picture for her birthday. And as we work at the National Gallery, I also took some inspiration from Caravaggio's technique of chiaroscuro, using strong contrasts between light and dark, and used a dark(ish) colour for the background...



Speaking of the National Gallery, when I was working last week, I found myself in a room closed off to visitors while technicians worked on the lighting. With little to do while I was there, other than keeping an eye on the paintings, I found a scrap of paper and a pencil in my pocket and did a quick sketch of Andrea Previtali's Salvator Mundi (1519)...



Next up, Little White Lies ran an 8-bit Creative Brief to draw a Start Screen for a fictional Disney video game using MS Paint, with the chance to win an iPad mini. I designed a screen for an ice-skating game featuring Bambi, but sadly didn't win. Still it was fun doing some old school digital drawing!



Sometimes ideas pop into your head at the most unexpected moments, and while I was chatting online with my friend Janice the other week, I came out with an especially pointless bit of conversation which just seemed perfect to turn into a comic strip (and quoted word for word!)...



I've made no secret of the fact that I love penguins, and I really enjoyed the recent BBC television series Penguins – Spy in the Huddle, three episodes featuring footage of penguins filmed using spycams to capture never-before-seen moments. After watching the final episode I drew this drawing of an Emperor Penguin and a chick...



It was my friend Zarina's birthday last week, and to celebrate I drew a picture of one of her characters from her new webcomic The Higgs...



And finally, for now, it was my friend Ireeni's birthday on Friday. She's recently been posting a lot of photos on Facebook of various gastronomic delights that she's cooked at home, so I drew her this card...

Acoustic Guitar - a 69 Love Songs comic

69 Love Songs, Illustrated is an online project, curated by Julia Scheele, attempting to illustrate all of the songs from The Magnetic Fields' three-volume concept album 69 Love Songs.

I had previously discovered the project towards the end of last year, and after seeing a recent tweet from Julia asking for more contributors, I decided to attempt my own interpretation of the song Acoustic Guitar.



After listening to the song a few times I made some notes and thumbnail sketches...



...and then condensed my initial ideas into a 3 page comic offering a slightly sideways take on the original song...
(click on the pages to enlarge)



You can view all the contributions to the project so far here, and if you are interested in taking part, the list of songs still available can be found here.

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)

Creative Project #2: Lost & Found

The latest theme for the Creative Project group is Lost & Found, and I came up with the following comic...

Creative Project #1: Genesis

My friend Cathy recently restarted the Facebook group she set up a few years ago called Creative Project. Each month a word/phrase/quote/theme is posted online for members to submit a creative interpretation. It can be photography, drawing, sketches, videos, music... anything as long as it's creative!

The first monthly brief, rather appropriately, was Genesis...

(click on the comic to enlarge)

God Of Loneliness

A few months ago, I was contacted by Emmy The Great to ask if I wanted to collaborate on a project together. I'd previously done a couple of fan art drawings and produced a comic strip for an online advent calendar to promote the Christmas album by Emmy The Great and Tim Wheeler, and Emmy thought it'd be fun to work on something together for the release of her new single, God Of Loneliness.

A short film was being produced to accompany the single, directed by Chris Boyle and starring Isy Suttie (Peep Show) and Shazad Latif (Spooks), and Emmy's idea was to have four single-page comics which would be released online in the week's leading up to the release of the video, and act as a prelude to the events of the film.

We came up with the outline for the comics together, with the idea that each comic should take place at a different period in the life of the character played by Isy Suttie in the film, and then I developed those ideas into the finished comics. In the week's leading up to the release of the single and the debut of the short film, the comics were released individually online across different music blogs and websites, together with four remix tracks to download. Each comic would feature a guest appearance by the artists that provided the remixes (Banjo Or Freakout, Dems, Dan Le Sac and CSS).









All of which leads into the events of the short film released alongside the God Of Loneliness single...



I enjoyed working on this project and it made me more confident about working on a longer comics narrative, which is definitely something I want to develop.

Watch this space!

**BLU-RAY BONUS CONTENT**
This project made me develop my way of working, which was more involved than when I'm producing three panel comic strips. I did quite a lot of writing before I even started drawing, working out the narrative and where I could fit jokes within the story. Next I drew rough sketches of the comics to work out the layout of the page. I found it quite interesting to compare these sketches with the final comics, so thought I would include them here...

Originally I was envisaging working to a landscape format, hence the slightly different arrangement of these first two comics. After we decided upon a portrait format, I adjusted these strips accordingly, while still keeping the same idea in place...

The Amazing Adventures of Pussy Boy!

A few months ago I ended up having the following exchange on Twitter with my friend and awesome comic drawing person Rachael Smith...

Rachael then followed this up by drawing a picture of the aforementioned "kid with cat-like superpowers" ...

And then I came up with a series of comics featuring Pussy Boy... (click on the comics to enlarge)

If you're going to get superpowers based on the abilities of an animal, then a cat is probably not the first one that you'd choose!

The Amazing Spider-Garfield

The full trailer for The Amazing Spider-man went up online today, featuring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-man. After reading a number of comments talking about Garfield as Spider-man, I decided to draw this comic strip...

[click on strip to enlarge]

Emmy & Tim's Christmas Advent Calendar day 8

One of my favourite singers, Emmy The Great, has released a Christmas Album with Tim Wheeler called This Is Christmas. You should buy it!

I've been listening to it on my iPod for a while now, and was pleased to get an email last week asking if I wanted to draw a comic strip based on their song Jesus The Reindeer to be included as a festive treat as part of their christmas advent calendar on their facebook page!

My comic strip was featured today behind Day 8 of their advent calender!

**UPDATED 15/12/2011**

Tonight I went to Rough Trade East to see Emma & Tim perform an in-store gig as the last part of their This Is Christmas mini tour. It was of course a very Christmassy affair, and as well as the songs from their album they also played cover versions of Last Christmas and Fairy Tale of New York, as well as other Christmas songs. At the end of the gig the pair did a signing and signed a copy of my comic strip for me!

The Twilight Zone 2

I did another Twilight comic... if Twilight is about a vampire and a werewolf who live together. And if that's not what Twilight is about, then I don't want to know!

The Twilight Zone

I've never watched any of the Twilight movies, but the other day I saw an advert for the latest film on the side of a bus and had an idea to do a comic about a vampire and a werewolf...

The Apathetic Adventures of Bob The Great

Faster than a speeding lawsuit...

MARCH of the Penguins #31

Wow! I did it!

Although I didn't say anything officially when I started doing these March Of The Penguins comic strips, my plan was to see if I could do a daily comic strip for the whole month of March. And now I have! And I enjoyed it. So what now?

Well I kind of like these characters and have some more ideas in my head for them, so I think I'd like to carry on and see what happens. Although before I do that, I'm going to take a short break from them, if only for my own sanity. But they will be back very soon...!

TO BE CONTINUED...

MARCH of the Penguins #30