Month: February 2024

I thought I already uploaded this, but somehow it’s not there. So apologies if you get this twice.

Think the background, ground needs more of something, but I dunno what. On the other hand the book is gonna be … book sized? I dunno, anyway it’s likely you’ll miss anything too detailed.

Update : I will never be finished. I’ve added woad, which I think works better. 

This is a WIP (foreground mostly done and background I’m working on) I like the textural nature of it (which is probably ruined in this image) and I lioke the colours, so far… 

 I think I like it… 

(But I’ll probably change my mind…)

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? A reasonable part of my career, it turns out.

Anyway, 2000Ad have announced the new Battle Action specials (five issues!), and just for you, here’s some art from it.

True story, I completed this entire story (which is not about Tanks, but does have them in the background) and got an note (not from the editor nor the writer) about the tanks being the wrong ones. So I redrew them all…

I suspect you know who it is.

Anyway, just wanna reiterate, all this stuff is between us – art and inside stories, I like sharing this stuff, but can only do it if I know it’s not going anywhere!

https://comicbook.com/comics/news/battle-action-garth-ennis-2023-rebellion/ 

Ok, the headlines, I suppose… 

Inked pages this week to date: 19 – pencilled pages this week: 1

To be honest, there’s an hour to go of this week, and I’ve got half a page to go and there’s a chance I’ll get it finished around 12:45-1am, so I’m calling that this week. That’ll  bring me up to … 20 – all of it Chapter 5 of Skullduggery Pleasant.

Tomorrow off for the day with my wife, won’t be leaving home til around 11:30 so there’s a chance (a slim one) I’ll get a last page of inks done then, but otherwise it’ll be Tuesday.

Generally 3 pages of inks per day. Frustratingly slow (which is stupid because ask any artist – 3 pages of inks today? brilliant amount of work)

I am starting to feel like my brain needs new nurishment though, maybe one day in a spa will do it (that’s where we’re off to)

If things go according to plan, I should have wrapped up 21 pages of comics in about 13 days. Final chapter still to go, and then on to … we’ll I’ve got some more Leopard of Lime Street and then, fingers crossed, some Dredd.

I’d quite like to get back to some paper and ink for some of what’s coming up, but  I suspect I’ll chicken out at the last moment when I can’t make the drawing tools do what I want them to.

TV diet this week, man, I watched a lot of tv. Perks of inking – not a lot of thinking. So I get to watch telly. 

On the Beeb, watched Ancient Civilisations (6 part doc though only five parts on tv right now, last part on tuesday) 

On netflix, I sporadically watched Lockwood & Co (which is great, but I keep thinking “I’m so old” when I watch it. I feel more sympathy for the old ghosts)

Also watched Girls5Eva. I’m not proud.

Oh, on sky, I watched Midwhich Cuckoos, which was pretty good, I thought. Love me some John Wyndham.

On radio I generally listen to Radcliffe and Maconie on radio 6 (I don’t listen to a lot of radio, and they only do two shows a week so that suits me)

I’ll try posting more art next week. Toodles.

I found this skull for £12 on amazon, I was about fifty pages in to the book (where the main character is a living skeleton) and wish I’d bought it sooner. Super useful.

Where is the time going? a flurry of pages and other stuff. Here’s how my week squared off:

Monday – Yay! Completed chapter 4 of Bad Magic, only two more to go. And completed it in record time. 5 pages of inks.

Tuesday – usually I’ll try and celebrate the completion of a job by taking a day off. I hate it. So I wrote a short (3-4 min) film and touched up and submitted a terror tale to 2000ad. (It was turned down, but Matt invited a rewrite for the end, so once I get that done…) – no art drawn.

Wednesday – had a guy round putting shelves up and doing general odd job stuff, kept me out of the studio. No real excuse for only putting away two pages, but they were the first two pages and I did need to do layouts before that, and that is exhausting!

Thursday. Just a drawing day. Good day. Five pages pencilled.

Friday – forgot I was meeting a guy about a thing (that may not happen – this sort of thing that leads nowhere happens a lot in comics) but four pages pencilled.

Saturday – minor miracle of five pages pencilled, but wife and youngestson went to the cinema so that left me free for a bit. Five pages pencilled.

Sunday – went off for a walk about 45 minutes drive away (bonkers, I know) and then started removing stuff from the garden (such as it is) and got two pages pencilled, but hoping for another tonight. 

So, in total, 18 pages pencilled (with another possible tonight) and five pages inked.

Which is ok… (that’s worth approx … 11.5/12 full finished pages this week)

Will try and make some time this week for some behind the scenes posting on this here patreon, if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see, let me know (caveat, I’m pretty limited in what I can show from Bad Magic – the Skulduggery Pleasant book) scripts, layouts, pencils? what else…?

EDIT TO ADD: I did two more pages of pencils since posting this.

The process of creating a cover for a book is pretty different to comics. In comics, you do some roughs, send to an editor, get an approval and boom! cover done! In books… horrifically more complicated. Graphic designers get involved and the, ultimately, decided to take some art from inside the pages I’d drawn and use that. So, here’s one of the cover roughs I sent before I knew that was the process. Slightly cliched, but that’s fine. Coulda worked.

There’s something a bit odd how I frequently find myself landing gigs I’d wanted, but only after three other people (or two in this case) had already had a go. Anyways, this is a fun/ easy gig so should be no problem doing this until they kick me off the gig, which I hope they never will.

This is the entire first episode, I hear it printed horribly – the colours so dark a lot of the line art got lost, so I have no qualms popping this up here. Shame though, hopefully we’ll get it right next time!

Here’s my computer setup for work.

Acer Asus 4k 27″ Monitor (which I can show 3 roughly print sized pages on across ways) cost: £179 (I think I picked this up as a bargain, it was the last of two of these in curry’s and they were discontinued, the newer one I think was about £230 or something)

Huion 16″ I picked that up for around £300 (Actually it might’ve been £269?) absoloute bargain at either price. I’d buy another of these in a heartbeat. 

Even when I had the massive 27″ Cintiq, I’d usually split the screen in two, in the left I’d show the full sized page and on the right I’d show a zoomed in area I was working on. The Huion is capable of the same but there’s not enough real estate there realistically, so instead this double screen set up is perfect.

Both powered by a Mac M1 Mini, the new M2 Mac Mini starts around £649 (8Gb RAm, 256Gb HD) – I’d probably go to the £1049 model (16Gb Ram, 512Gb HD) the mac isn’t upgradeable, and while my current setup is 8Gb/512Gb I do slightly regret not getting more ram (not that it’s ever hampered me, mind you, it runs fast enough for everything I do)

Updated to add: I forgot, the mac doesn’t come with keyboard or mouse, so I’ve a logitech wireless mouse (about £20?) and a really lovely, took-me-ages-to-finally-pull-the-trigger keychron keyboard, that was about £69(!) yes, I know. But it’s super small footprint, the keys are bright white (though it has an irratatingly large selection of how the keyboard lights work – I mean keyboard lights that dance around while you’re using it, I just want them on or off!) and they have a chunky nice feel when you use them. Plus it’s wired OR wireless, I use it wired just to keep the lights on all the time. (And you have three bluetooth connections you can choose from if you like).

Connected to all of that is a Brother DCP6690CW – which I think I bought 10-15 years ago? An A3 scanner/inkjet printer. Anwyay, it was around £260 and I use whatever rubbish ink cartridges I can find cheap and it works great for everything I do – scanning lineart, and printing blueline for inking. (though a more modern one would work a bit nicer on the network and I could print/scan to an iphone) That said I don’t actually ink this way anymore, so I’ve got it on hand JUST IN CASE.

Second printer is a Brother HL2350DCP laser printer, I use this for printing scripts and the odd comic, it’s A4 and can print double sided so good for silly fun projects.

Software wise: Clip Studio Pro Ex ver 1.13 (Latest version 1). There’s a version 2 coming soon, I’m not sure it has any features I want/need, but my old computer head will kick in and I’ll probably upgrade. 

For scripts/editing, I’ll usually turn to Pages – which is Apple’s word processor and free with the mac. Word compatible so good enough for most things. Though I am tempted to get Scrivener for comic scripting, which is about £50.

Phew, whatta week. Pencilled 1 page, inked 24. Good week. Good week. Bad Magic was announced, so you know, that’s good. I’m about 44 pages behind the ball on finishing it, if I have a month next month like this then I’ll have squared it away nicely. 

I’ve pencilled 47 pages this month, and I’ve got five pages of the current chapter of Bad Magic to ink, which COULD be done on Monday (I mean why not???)

Which will leave me with nothing left to do, until I get the next chapter and start some pencils, but it does mean I might have saved my reputation for delivering on time, since I;’d sort of blown it a bit on this book on account of life chucking massive great obstacles in my way…