vs

Some immediate thoughts:

I’ve been thinking this for awhile, but the iPad is clearly designed to be used in a portrait orientation – the placement of the home key is a dead giveaway. It’s something that’s always baffled me – portrait seems to be the perfect orientation for documents/books and yet landscape seems to be perfect for film/computers. Why is that? Is it that at a certain distance some things are easier viewed in certain ways? If so, then it strikes me that going for a default portrait orientation on a device designed to be held in the same proximity as a magazine is a smart choice. One that I’m surprised very few tablet makers make.

The HP device looks clunky compared to Apple’s sleek lines (given how little there is on either device, it’s odd how obvious that difference is…)

And why does the HP ad bombard you with stuff so quickly that you don’t really get the chance to see how it works?

This other video, showing the HP Slate using flash is interesting for a couple of reasons:

(the iPad’s home page looks too roomy, like they haven’t quite finished it yet, the HPs home page looks like they’ve thrown everything in there – clutter city, and lots of tiny little places you may – or may not – be supposed to tap)
The Slate has scroll bars! Scroll bars! Haven’t they seen the iPhone? Yes, there’s more screen real estate on the Slate but why would you sacrifice any of it to scroll bars? (and photoshop.com has two massive scroll bars that don’t appear to be scrollable, taking up a big chunk of the screen.

Looking at that guys fingers – there’s no way he can hit some of those buttons. Plus, it does that horrible thing of displaying the mouse cursor when you tap something. It’s all so… so… ungraceful.

Anyways, I’m disappointed. I’m getting fed up with Apple’s way or the high way attitude to everything, but, on the other hand, if the Slate is the best we can hope for in terms of competition. Well, looks like it’s Apple’s way.

A cross section of my pencils / inks from the last few projects (ok, Fearless skips back a few years – and I recreated the pencils for the sake of the portfolio)
-pj

>>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>>>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>>

>

>>

>

>

>

>

Here’s some places you can read a couple of pages of Happy Valley #3 – if you haven’t bought the series as it’s come out – and shame on you, you tradewaiter! You can order the trade of Happy Valley from amazon here Battlefields Volume 4: Happy Valley (also, there may be a hardcover coming too, which includes everything from the second series of Battlefields, but I don’t have a link -sorry!)

http://comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=4466&disp=table
http://www.buzzcomics.net/showthread.php?p=1008837#post1008837
(and there’re others, but, let’s face it, it’s the same few pages anyways!)

Ok, should be at your local comic shop on the 17th or 18th of this month depending on whether you’re US or UK.
That’s it for me and Battlefields (so far as this series). It’d be nice to do more, but we’ll see. Don’t forget you can let Garth know what you thought of it, via the Battlefields email address (which Garth then answers in the letter column of the comic – a lettercolumn!)

And that email address is: letters@dynamiteentertainment.com

So, it’s here… Jobs! He saved everyone of us! (ironically without using flash…)

The iPad is 9.7″ of screen, capable of running all current iPhone apps – and, with a minor modification, those apps will run on both the iPhone and the iPad using the full size screen. In other words: buy a comic reader on your iPhone and it will gracefully scale up to the iPad.

You’ll be able to get one in 2 months, and, current reckoning is that it’ll cost about £399 in the UK for the 16Gb model. I’m thinking of the 32Gb. My first mac laptop had a 40Gb hard drive. I think it scores some major points over netbooks and laptops for reading comics, not least of which is that it’s pretty much all screen (bar the bevel that sits around it and helps you hold the thing without activating multitouch).

iVerse and Comixology will, I imagine, be available for the iPad as soon as you can buy the iPad – in fact, I’d guess they’re working on their apps right now – and are probably going to take a short time to adapt them. (And, with them comes Boom, IDW and lots of other mid tier publishers).
Similarly, Dark Horse will probably get something up and running for the iPad’s proper launch. I’m guessing that Mignola’s Hellboy will look gorgeous on the screen.
Marvel and DC, like all big companies, are tied up by red tape. I hope they can figure out a way to get stuff on there. I think once the standard monthly comics become available on the iPad, that alone will guarantee the success of it – lets face it, there’s many a fanboy that buys EVERYTHING marvel or dc publish – what’s $499 compared to that?

Digital comics are settling into price points around 99cents, or $1.99 for some of the bigger name titles – like walking dead. When I first talked about digital comics on the iPhone, I really wanted to set a price around $1.99 – but that included the comic, pencils and all sorts of extras that would’ve made it seem like a multi-disk dvd compared to the movie (and, in fact, I still think 99cents and $1.99 for a simple comic or comic with a bunch of extras is pretty viable…)

If I were a comic shop, I’d be setting up wifi and reading areas and helping this along – all to help sell graphic novels. Interested in buying hellboy? sure, sit down, download chapter one for free from the Dark Horse comic app, have a read and then buy the collection. Simples.

(Mind you, I live in a lovely fantasy land where everything is made of chocolate, so the realities of this would probably not quiet work out like that…)

I’d've loved it if the screen were a higher resolution – as it is, it’s slightly lower res than the iPhone screen (still higher than most computer monitors) and the question remains as to how readable comic lettering would be – especially some of the more elaborate ‘hand written’ fonts.

If you’re a comic artist, you’d be mad not to get it. I’ll be bunching all of reference photos and the kids dvds on to it. It’s a bright future, and it’s coming in two months…

Dredd is a character that I’ve loved since I was seven – and, one of the dangers with drawing dredd is you can become a slave to how others draw him. I don’t think I’ve quiet found my voice with Dredd yet – and, hopefully, The Mighty Tharg will keep giving me the chance to get it right.Judge Dredd: Sino-Town, 2000AD Prog 1233 (4 March 2001) by Gordon Rennie

Pics one and two are from the Dredd strip Sino-City, my first pro Dredd work – so, lots of pressure. Oddly, the second Dredd head here, which was used on the 2000AD index page (where they show a tiny pic of the face) really does have a John McCrea look to it – I’ve known John years, but was surprised to find one of his faces peeping out at me in 2000AD…

(Trivia fans note: this strip was a redraw of the original first – which if I can find it I’ll scan in for comparison’s sake, it was also the first time I ever used a brush to ink with)

Judge Dredd : Unnatural Selection, prog 1278 (13 Feb, 2002) by Alan Grant

No scans available. Thank goodness, not particularly happy with how this turned out.

Judge Dredd : Meet the Flooks prog 1359 (24 Sep, 2003) by Gordon Rennie

This is when I started playing around with how I felt I should be drawing Dredd. Had no idea how to approach it, so I started faffing around with slightly different helmet designs – except… well… every variation has already been done, hasn’t it?

Anyhue, on this, I made the red bad around the outside of the helmet run close to the eyes and gave a big thick band at the bottom. Looked alright, then the colourist ignored it and coloured it normally (making some of it look really weird…)

Judge Dredd : Waiting prog 1312 (09 Oct, 2002) by Gordon

Another in Gordon series of Goofy Mega City 1 Characters – I’ve done a few of these kind of things with Gordon, hopefully, we’ll do a bunch more and get a collection, I think it might be a lot of fun…

Hmm… frustratingly, I don’t have a scan of this strip…

Judge Dredd : The Magnificent Umbersons meg 235 (23 Aug, 2005) by Gordon Rennie

Not sure if I started adding the little inline bit to Dredd’s helmet in this strip or the last, but it was a lift from the movie helmet, which I quiet liked and I don’t remember seeing any other artists use it (aside from those doing I AM THE LAW, the Dredd comic spin out of the movie). Also, that’s one impressive chin, innit. (No greater a Dredd artist than Jock once told me he thought I might be the only person to draw bigger chins on Dredd… though, to be fair, it’s not that big of a chin, but it IS a massive underbite)

Also of note: I draw little Judge Badges on the collar – again something I picked up from the movie…

Judge Dredd : Warzone (4 Episodes) meg 243 (04 Apr, 2006) meg 242 (07 Mar, 2006) meg 241 (07 Feb, 2006) meg 240 (10 Jan, 2006) by John Wagner
No big changes here, though, notably, I think my drawing got worse as this series progressed, early episodes had some cracking inking on it, then they started to really suck by the end. Also, I thought drawing Dredd in his big shiny uniform while all about him where in camo would be really funny. Which was, in hindsight, misjudged.
(Above and below you’ll see that the eagle has massive end gubbins, I think I’ve toned those way done, also, there way I draw the eagle is that it’s sitting on top of the actual shoulder pad and is, therefore, free to move. It’s rarely coloured that way though – my fault – colourists aren’t psychic, and they’ve no idea of my intentions… I should really email them…)

Judge Dredd : House of Pain prog 1489 (24 May, 2006) prog 1488 (17 May, 2006) by Gordon Rennie
A quickie fill in, two issue strips. I think I had a week to draw the second episode as a comic con was coming up (I hesitate to add, that I was asked to fill in for someone else) so, not the best Dredd. On the plus side, Colin McNeil drew a cracking cover for one of the issues, which, while probably not based on this pic, certainly was the same scene. (His staging of this was MUCH better than mine… but then I had to do it in one panel… still, that’s a good hand on Dredd…)

Judge Dredd : Sanctuary prog 1495 (05 Jul, 2006)

Lots of heavy shadows on this strip, quiet like that…

Judge Dredd : On Campus prog 1522 (31 Jan, 2007) by John Wagner

Great, fun Dredd, this time by the Mighty Wag. But with some shockingly badly drawn judges in it. Still, this foreground background character was a goofy drawing…

Judge Dredd : It came from Bea Arthur Block (3 Episodes) prog 1639 (10 Jun, 2009) prog 1638 (03 Jun, 2009) prog 1637 (27 May, 2009) by Gordon Rennie

Ah! The ultimate goofy citizens vs Dredd story… I’ve started refining everything, on the uniform, having run out of weird things to do with it…

Judge Dredd : The Lost Cases: A Contract On Grud (1 Episodes) meg 293 (06 Jan, 2010)
Lost cases are set back in time, during pre-existing Dredd stories, so, for this, I flared the helmets and went a little retro (not that retro though, aside from inking… still, good fun, and, easily, the best Dredd I’ve ever done – at least until I get another crack at him…