Month: February 2024

You might remember a strip I did a little while back called “One small step” about an astronaut left alone on the moon, nice short little horror. Anyway, I’ve never been happy with the name, which ordinarily would be ok – the title was both a homage too Neil Armstrongs “One Small Step” – and the idea in my head that the astronaut of the story took one small step backwards and fell down a massive hole.

Anyway, this strip was spotted by a guy called Krishna – who makes short films and he asked if he could take this strip and turn it into a short. Krishna is a professional filmmaker, albiet for corporate videos (with I think the odd music video) so he has assembled a team and they’re making it. Step one is gonna be a kickstarter (with a fairly modest and achievable target, I think). But in our first chat I told Krishna I wasn’t terribly happy with the title, but hadn’t needed to worry about it up til this point. Then, about a week ago it just occurred to me (and it’s so bloody obvious I’m annoyed it took that long).

It’s called ALONE. I’ve suggested to Krishna the name come up exactly like ALIEN does in Ridley Scott’s film (of er.. the same name) might happen, might not.

I also sent him this, a rough of what a movie poster would look like – though I’ve just realised this is the Gravity poster. Flip sake. Oh well, here’s the rough…

Webtooning out.

DC have recently launched a new Webtoons only comic strip (for those that don’t know webtoons is a ‘platform’ – which hosts comics, the comics are formatted as massively long vertical strips designed to be read on a phone (essentially Scott McCloud’s “infinite canvas” idea finally made real, and really popular). And as such it’s really the perfect format for comics on the phone. It’s odd that long horizontal strips never took off, but here we are. Webtoons boasts readerships in the hundreds of millions – an utterly headscratching figure.

Webtoons originated (so wikipedia tells me) in South Korea. So, of course, they tend to favour anime/manga style art and stories.

Marvel Unlimited -Marvel’s app and platform that lets you subscribe and read a massive amount of marvel comics – has realunched and has included marvels new “Marvel Infinitity” line – basically the webtoons format (Marvel’s infinity line is not to be confused with Marvel’s Infinite comics which where another internet only format that used the form really really well but we’re rather burdensome to produce   ) 

As it happens I quite like the Marvel Infinity comics, probably because stylistically they’re much more in line with the western art styles (plus I have pals who’ve drawn some). 

Some of it makes more use of the format than other and it’s interesting seeing the different approaches as people learn this new format. 

So, I thought I’d try my hand – purely as a way to test what the story telling can/can’t do and what I can/can’t do. The results (typo’s, crappy art, et all) is here it doesn’t look good on a big screen at all, optimised for phone really.

And I thought, well, if there’s an audience and money maybe I should think about doing something more than an experiment, so I went to my balcony and kicked around an idea and then wrote a script. It’s a fun little thing, I think. 

But I’m torn.

On the one hand, new platform, new audience. On the other hand – well, I’m gonna be a tiny dribble in that big ocean and before you can make any money on the webtoons platform you need to hit massive, massive numbers of readers (a doable figure if you invest a consequential amount of time and energy in to it)

And I just wanted to dip in, and dip out. So now I don’t know. I don’t know if this fun little strip should be a webtoon or should be just a traditional comic (though if it’s a traditional comic I’m not even sure what I’ll do with it, it’s too light and frothy for a 2000ad pitch and I’m not even sure where I’d pitch it to outside of that, short form scifi? who knows.)

 Anyway. decision making is hard.

The Sarge for an upcoming 2000ad/Battle special, all written by Garth. I drew an 8 page Sarge strip (ages ago now… in fact so long ago I forget how many pages it is… any was a lot of fun to do a short wwii story…)

When John McCrea (one of me best mates, and who’ve known since I was 18) asked if I wanted to help him finish up Yondu – he needed someone to read a few pages of the script and do some breakdowns. I leapt at it – well, you would!

Neither of us were sure how we’d jell, but it turns out when John draws over me you can see almost nothing of my art! It’s amazing. I mean, I know I did it – and if you do a side by side compare you can see I contributed … something… but honestly it’s just John’s work that shines through. (Granted I was do rough breakdowns so John had a LOT of leeway!)

Anyway, here’s a page of that!

Just between us…

Sold my first script to 2000ad. I’m not gonna say any more than that (who knows when it’ll see print!) when it does see print, you’ll be able to find the draft scripts here for you to peruse and read along with.

Now, I’m in danger of going SOLD A SCRIPT! WOO! and then never doing any more, but I’ve already done page breakdowns on two other solid stories (I think they’re solid – I think they’re SOLID – not sold, that’s a bit presumptuous…) and have a third I think has a shot at 2000ad (as well as about 9 other ideas that are sort of waiting to be developed up, all have something)

But, you know. I gots to draw some comics too…

More men in hats in planes in the jungle with mules. This book will kill me. This is from an upcoming unannounced book, so please keep it under your jungle hat.

This was drawn for a digital comic movie thing, for Dan Whitehead. They sent me tickets and I forgot to watch the movies. Because I’m stupid.

Now, I come not to bury the art on this strip, it’s possible you, dear reader, like it, and for that I’m grateful. But it’s a monumental failure – on the primary basis that … well, it’s not what I was going for.

I wanted the heavy black inks of Kevin Nowlan, instead I got the heavy black inks of me trying to ape Kevin Nowlan using a mop from a distance of 10 yards away from the page.

I like the face on Panel 2, but that’s really all I like.

I’m attempting (as of this writing) to go back to do some traditional inks, but I really feel I’m gonna have to relearn from the ground up. My eyes are not what they were (god, I’ve got two strengths of reading glasses now, one of which is good for drawing but everything at the boundaries of my vision looks like it was shot by sam raimi in over the top mode) and my fingers/hands lack the control of my youth – I’d like to blame that on the arthritis (which I’ve had for over a decade) but the reality is I’ve just lost my touch.

My inking tool of choice in the old days was a Daler Rowney Sapphire 10/0 rigging brush a super fine, super small brush that I could make dance all over the page. I was pretty good with it, but it got harder and harder to get a decent quality brush (they were so small and delicate that one stray hair could ruin the brush) so I shifted up to thicker brushes (as my eyesight got worse) until I was at a size 2.

I used a brush like a pen, drawing freely – when I had a thicker Sable brush I’d find the lines just turned out horribly thick and unsubtle. I couldn’t use it right.

Anyway, that’s all to say – there’s some art work. 

Ok. Two days is a pretty respectable time period for a response. 

I can’t share it all (not yet anyway) but the gist is: “It has potential, but feels a bit underdeveloped at the moment”

I think the synopsis was stronger than the script, to be honest – certainly the synopsis honed in on certain elements and ignored others that were in the script- and the script added characters that weren’t important enough to fit in the synopsis. I think in my gut I knew they were superfluous but I couldn’t see how to get from A to D without these guys distracting you with a little dance in B and C – and Matt spotted that sharpish.

So, I’m doing a rewrite. Or really, I’ve rethought it, dropped those characters and refocused on the core emotion of the story (I’m not really sure I’d grasped the core emotion until I’d written it twice).

In order to amuse myself and keep track of them, I named the two unimportant characters Bert and Ernie – names the readers would never have seen. Not named after the Sesame Street Bert and Ernie, but after the Bert and Ernie from It’s A Wonderful Life  who were also the template for their characters.

(I should have called then Rosencratz and Guildenstern)

Here is the entirety of their scene (now excised):

Panel 1

We’re at the opening to a room past the greenhouse, if we can see anything inside it’s shadowy (but it’s Bert and Ernie going through valuables).

Dialogue (from room): ’Ere, what do you fink this is worth?

Panel 2

Inside the room. Bert and Ernie are talking – they both have holdall bags Ernie has a torch, Bert is holding up a small ornament of a plant. Ernie is looking at another ornament of a small dog.

Ernie: I dunno, do I?

Ernie: Just stick it in the bag.

Panel 3

There’s a noise from the direction of the greenhouse. Ernie is startled, Bert ignoring it, has picked up another worthless ornament.

Ernie: Wait… you hear that?

Ernie (link): I think it came from the green house…

Bert:  Oh this is nice.

Panel 4

It’s silent. Ernie is looking suspiciously towards the out-of-frame greenhouse.

Ernie: if he’s done the old bird in…

[ENDS]

Anyway, away they go. I’m not as disheartened as I thought I would be – a two day response is good. Matt read the script from the synopsis- I buried enough caveats in the opening email he could easily just replied “thanks giving it a miss” and promising is pretty good start for any script. I’m also pretty confident I can address the suggestions easy enough to make a stronger more emotional story. But I’ll sit on it a few more days before sending a revised version on the Monday.

Farewell Bert and Ernie, we hardly knew ye…

Drinking. from a bonkers Garth Ennis script, my first official DC work (not my last, but you’ll hear about that soon enough…) You can tell I was trying to impress an editor given how I went all out with greyscale and everything…

Things I ‘ave been drawing … BOOTS!

Start with super roughs, basically zooming in to the layouts I did. Then I tighten them up a little. Just to build on in the next rough pencil stage. Then a final pencil stage tightens it up (and ..er.. if necessary I trace any photo reference i need)

Pencils partially complete at time of posting (I’m literally in the middle of them as I post this, but the whole page should be finished by the time you see it!)