Picked my son up from work the other day. Let me tell you about my eldest son, N. He is very smart – three A-stars-at-A-Level smart, on-track-for-a-first-in-Computer-Science-at-Queens smart, wanting-to-do-a-masters-in-philosophy-and-more-than-capable smart. He’s clever. Unsure where he gets it from.
He’s working for a fintech (financial technology) company as part of his computer placement year doing his degree.
Picked him up in the car and says “Dad, someone tried to phish me today and I can’t believe I let them” (phishing is the attempt to gather personal information about you in order to, say, gain control of your bank details by pretending to be from an institution you would use).
“Tell me more, son.”
“They said they were from Boots Opticians and phoned from a Belfast number, and I thought it was ok because I’m due a boots opticians appointment”
“Ok.”
“They set an appointment for me for 4:45 and then said they just wanted to confirm some details, so they asked my date of birth and my address and then they hung up – I CAN’T BELIEVE I JUST TOLD THEM THIS”
“so … wait… maybe it was just boots phoning to confirm an appointment?”
“NO! It was phishing! I can’t believe it, I’m so wary of stuff like this, normally I’d’ve just hung up straight away but because I was expecting a call from boots, I just… ugh!”
“Again, maybe it was actually boots phoning to confirm an appointment?”
“NO! It was phishing – I looked up the number and all the numbers for Boots were english numbers”
“I know Boots will phone you from a local number but if you want to phone them then they’ll have on central number that…”
“PHISHING! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT”
“Well, ok, but it seems like they didn’t get that much information from you?”
“I KNOW, I WAS LUCKY.”
Anyway, the next day I got a text from him:
“By the way, I actually wasn’t phished and I have an appointment at 4:45”
I laughed and laughed and laughed.
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the difference between smart and wisdom.
I bet you thought I forgot about you, and, well, youâll be right.
Pretty eventful day, I mean it started stupid early when my ibs flared up with stomach pain at 3:30 am, finally got a sleep at around 6, but then had to take wife to work at 8. After that came home, went back to bed, and then was up again for 11 and a zoom conferance call on screen writing for film and tv (this was useful, and happily well timed). Then a did some thinking on doing a kickstarter to terran omega (result: Iâm doing a kickstarter for terran omega) then did a food shop, then got an indian then sat down and realised itâs 8pm and Iâm exhausted.
Sometimes the day just gets away from you.
Oh update on the printed comic – itâs due for arrival here on MONDAY!
Some other thoughts:
Iâm coming around to a manifesto of sorts for where I want to be in the next few years ahead. Creating one book a year for me and trying to find a publisher as well as writing up a pitch for film and tv. Iâve lacked ambition for a long time now (A LONG LONG time), because itâs largely felt like my main ambition in comics was Draw Judge Dredd for 2000ad and when that happened Iâve largely been floating along on that and just stumbling into one comic book project then another (and I have been lucky, theyâve all been projects Iâve enjoyed and that were well written)
I mean nothing will change for me and what Iâm doing day in day out, but focusing on one new project a year, like Terran Omega, which can be developed means even if NONE of them get beyond their initial story at least Iâll have a bunch of different creator owned projects that I own forever each with a foundation that can be built on if I ever want to.
Anyway thatâs whatâs what. If you want to find out when the kickstarter starts Iâll be letting people know on my email list first! SO SIGN UP NOW!
Make a business card (last time I did this was 15 years ago and honestly, I overprinted by a few hundred and gave away ⊠like six⊠comics as an industry doesnât bother itself too much with business cards) Print Business card (online service of some sort) Finish page 24 (colours) and 25 (inks and colours) of Terran Omega. Edit Terran Omega issue 1 for typos Send it to Mixam for print. (why mixam? Iâve used it before and know how it works and time is a big factor)
Typo edits! Ugh. Well, first I fixed all the stuff Ron and Scott pointed out (friends I used to do a podcast with, smart guys working in media in different ways)
Then I couldn’t decide on cross bar Is for small words (“IS”, “IT”) I’d make the case that for you could use them for two letter words, but the consensus is ONLY a crossbar I on first person single (or initial letters in an abbreviation).
Which makes sense, I guess. So I decided I’d go with the consensus, but it turns out I had, like a rank amateur, also included crossbar Is and non cross bar Is.
For those not in the know, Blambot explains it thusly:
Having done that, I then had to wrestle with bloody colour profiles.
From the get go I started colouring the comic with a CMYK profile, but just using one that clip studio had. In the past when I’ve done colours, I’ve done that an exported to rgb or cmyk and sent it to publishers and found that… well, they know what they’re doing and it usually turns out ok. But dealing with colours is a headache. I mean look at these two IDENTICAL covers:
CMYK Export with CMYK ProfileRGB Export with RGB Profile
You see the weirdness. Those pages are the same. It just comes down to how they were exported. Colouring in cmyk tends to make colours more muted, because print is more muted, but to compensate, you tend to sue brighter colours, more vivd colours – these come from using Cyan Magenta Yellow or Black since they’re purer. Green is a mix, on the computer RGB – RED GREEN BLUE – green is a pure colour. So you end up with here where the cmyk green is a nice muted green and the rgb green is a weird mutant green.
Anyway, I had to faff around with colour profiles and hopefully I got it right. Certainly the proofs looked good (but I’m looking at proofs for a CMYK printer on a RGB screen)
Then I discovered one of the golden rules of print (well, RE-discovered because I did know this) is that print books have page counts that are always multiples of four.
I’d figured this out ages ago, and then set my page count to 32. (25 pages for this strip plus four for cover – front and back – brought me to 29, next multiple of 4 is 32).
Then… started putting the document together and by the time I did that I was staring at three blank pages and thinking “why do I need those two blank pages” and deleted them.
This was, of course, stupid.
Mixam’s very impressive auto set up didn’t like it at all, and it took me a good few minutes to figure out why, and once I did I smacked myself in the head, called myself an idiot and inserted two new pages.
Mixam tells me the printed comics will arrive tomorrow – I remain skeptical but we’ll see.
What’s interesting is this feels like a real objective of the whole process. I wanted a print comic, and now I’m getting one. Done it!
I haven’t lost any money (assuming you ignore the time and effort to make the comic, which I don’t) and the cost of printing was easily covered by the relatively small patreon income.
Post Rendr I’ll have a think but I’m nearly tempted to not bother doing a kickstarter for the issue, because… we’ll … I’ve already printed it. But then a kickstarter would be so easy, but it would also be an insane amount of work for something that will not really earn a lot of money.
These books cost ÂŁ2 to print, assuming I sell for ÂŁ6 per copy, that means I’m making ÂŁ4 profit per copy. So I need to sell 50 to cover the costs of printing 100.
If I sell 100 of them then I’ll have spent ÂŁ200 to make ÂŁ600 – which gives me a staggering ÂŁ200 profit. (But now I’ve got to spend four days packaging and posting things and figuring out kickstarter – what a nightmare)
And actually you take something like 10% off for costs for kickstarter and it quickly looks like a lot of effort for not much reward.
I suspect the best bet is to skip that format for kickstarter and go to the graphic novel format where the profit makes more sense.
Anyway, look, I’m not making decisions right now. Post Rendr I’ll see how many copies I’ve got left, they’ll go to my patreon follower first. Could be this 100 copies might be the only print of this run that will ever exist.
Make a business card (last time I did this was 15 years ago and honestly, I overprinted by a few hundred and gave away ⊠like six⊠comics as an industry doesnât bother itself too much with business cards) Print Business card (online service of some sort) Finish page 24 (colours) and 25 (inks and colours) of Terran Omega. Edit Terran Omega issue 1 for typos Send it to Mixam for print. (why mixam? Iâve used it before and know how it works and time is a big factor)
Right now largely going through the final version of Terran Omega and correcting/editing. Thanks to Scott Ferguson and Ron Abernathy for editorial notes.
Should get this to mixam this afternoon.
I went with Vistaprint for business cards which somehow will arrive after my comic will. Weird eh.
250 cards. I’ll need 20. But they shouldn’t change much in next 20 years so maybe I’ll keep using them for ever.
Here’s the introduction text for this issue of Terran Omega
Terran Omega is the last human in the galaxy.
Given godlike powers to fight in mankind’s battle against an alien universe, she was placed in suspended animation to be woken when humanity needed her most.
The call never came.
Ten millennia later, mankind has vanished.
She is alone.
Faced with the existential crises of being a weapon built for a long forgotten war, she makes a different choice:
She chooses life.
Now she travels the galaxy trying to right mankind’s wrongs, collecting the destructive remnants humanity’s final war. A war that, like her, has passed from history into myth.
At the edge of the galaxy, she is about to encounter one such relic.
A weapon abandoned for ten thousand years, left to fester, grow stranger, and become far more powerful than ever intended.
Now I’ve gotta go, still got a lot of editing/exporting to do!
Got an email yesterday with a ticket to the Rendr festival in Belfast. This is a big cgi animation festival, pulling together film, tv and games. It’s a surprisingly big event for Belfast, and is largely about networking.
So that has necessitated and all hands on the deck approach to this week, out goes the old plan, in comes the new one, by the end of the week I want to have a print ready version of Terran Omega issue 1 ready to go to mixam for printing.
So blogging this week will also be curtailed (takes about an hour every day!)
Will keep you in the loop, but you can expect it to be short and sharp!
You can read more details about the Terran Omega issue 1 stuff over on my patreon
Big shout out to my chums Ron and Scott from the days of Sunnyside Comics podcast who are helping me proof this thing in quicktime!
So my to do list this week looks like:
Make a business card (last time I did this was 15 years ago and honestly, I overprinted by a few hundred and gave away … like six… comics as an industry doesn’t bother itself too much with business cards) Print Business card (online service of some sort) Finish page 24 (colours) and 25 (inks and colours) of Terran Omega. Edit Terran Omega issue 1 for typos Send it to Mixam for print. (why mixam? I’ve used it before and know how it works and time is a big factor)
Well, I did it. I finished page 24 of Terran Omega. Scripted as a single 48 page story, I spotted early that there’s a good halfway plot point – albeit on page 25 – so I’m largely finished with issue 1 of a two issue series.
Things I’ve learned: colouring is time consuming. But worth it. Sometimes I rely on the art to do the heavy lifting of the script (bad writer!)
It’s totally worth writing and drawing something of your own. Nothing feels better than knowing this is mine from soup to nuts.
Clip Studio isn’t perfect, especially for things like logo design, so I’ve been chipping away at affinity for that. And actually I may switch to affinity for lettering too (once I figure it out)
And that’s it. Small well done to me.
PJ’s Progress and Start the Week
Ok, last week –
Planed on inking 8 pages and doing two pages of Terran Omega. Well, got 5 inked and did two pages of Terran Omega. So Ok.
This week
Mon – Three Inks (F&McB 6,7,8) Tue – Run Inks (F&McB 9,10) Wed – Ink Covers (war story 5 & 6) Thur – Pencils (F&McB 1,2) Fri – Pencils (F&McB 3,4) Sat – Terran Omega Page 25 Sun – Put together pdf of Terran Omega issue 1
Weekends never work out for getting the amount of work done I’d like, so instead I’m focusing on creator owned work at the weekend. But that means doing a certain amount of paid work through the week.
This month
F&McB ep4, Start #5 of War thing (get it pencilled at least)
And let’s see…
Yesterday In Social Media
There’s a lot to great in this, so I’m only go do some highlights today…
My guilty secret is I quite enjoy Fesshole – where people leave anonymous confessions (that aren’t ALL about sex stuff, many oft hem are in fact about one person in a couple clearly hating the other one). Anyway this was posted
Each night I bid my daughters (5 and 8) goodnight with "goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the rats eat the skin off your face". In my mind I'm being a silly "fun dad", but part of me wonders if I might actually be a daft cunt who shouldn't have been allowed to raise children.
Once told my youngest - who loved wheetos - they he ate so many wheetos that he could turn in to one. Anyway a decade later found out this was a source of genuine fear for him.
Tread carefully.
This link will take you to that bluesky post and you’ll see people who’ve replied to me with their own little stories on that front.
I love RPGs1, I love making stuff, and I love weird constraits that force creativity, which brings me to …
I haven’t looked, but I just love the conceit, and you might too.
Went to the game of thrones experience. Way better than I was expecting. Though it has a slight whiff of âoh please god this place better make money soon or weâre in troubleâ
Actually, it was pretty impressive. Bloody massive. Maybe a bit smaller than similar sized experiences like Harry Potter World (yes, I know, but she hadn’t gone fully terf at the time)
Here’s me and Wun Wun – you know I can’t resist a photo beside a giant.
You wanna see the next faceless Doctor Who monster freak?
Robots are roaming around the Main Media Centre here in Milan.Organizers continue to finish construction â and program the robots â ahead of the throng of media expected throughout the Olympics.
If you’re interested in making comics, and they pay (not a lot, but if this is the beginning of your comic making journey this is a great way to get published)
Submissions for BOXES Comic Magazine Vol. 5 are now OPEN!We are looking for short comics and articles about comics from a diverse range of UK based creators.Have a read of the submission guidelines here for more details: thirdbearpress.com/submissionsIf you have any questions, please ask!
Itâs odd that some things lock memories in your head, unexpected things, small things. Every day things.
I have two very distinct memories of drinking water, once when I was 11 years old and was on a school trip to Europe – my parents had gone from having no money to suddenly have little bit of money after selling our house (facts Iâd find out much later) and thought the best way to integrate me into my new school was to send me on the schoolâs european school trip.
It was an all boys school (and in fact itâs a school that doesnât exist any more) and it was hellish. I hated the school. I hated most of the people in it, I didnât enjoy travelling (Iâd get travel sick) and we travelled everywhere by coach. I had no friends on that trip – it was a fortnight long (maybe it was a week? it turns out I have a terrible sense of time when it comes to holidays, every week feels like two) – stopping for a day in various european countries. Paris, Amsterdam and Switzerland where the three I have distinct memories of, Paris because we drove through the red light area (with a bus full of hormone raged teenagers, though I was 11 so it was all just very confusing), Amsterdam I remember people buying clogs for souvenirs and Switzerland for the water.
We had stopped in some sort of camping site in Switzerland which had a communal entertainment room, and me and a bunch of us where in there, they had a pinball machine (I canât remember what the theme of it was) I do remember someone convincing me if the ball was stuck you could just lift it up a bit to free it – which, of course, wasnât true. But Iâd gotten thirsty, and asked someone in charge (a local) where I could get a drink of water.
âIn the toiletsâ âThe toilets? Is there a water fountain?â âNo – just from the tapâ âThe TAP??â âYeah⊠itâs piped in from the mountainsâ
And it turns out the best water Iâve ever tasted in my life was from a toilet block in a camp site in the Swiss mountains.
It was crystal clear, cold and refreshing. Never had water like it since.
My second strong memory of drinking water is so intrinsically linked to my mum and this house it both makes me sad and makes me warm inside. Iâd walked home from work, to the family home (which this was) had gone in to the kitchen and poured a pint glass of tap water and just necked it in one.
My mum watching this just said âYouâre just like me, I love water tooâ.
I think I would have been 19, my mum 36. I think now I have adult kids of my own I understand that moment better.
You spend all your time raising kids and when theyâre little their language, their habits and their interests are a reflection of yours.
As they get older and exposed to more people in school who they are encompasses more, things youâve never seen or heard before (I remember the first time my eldest said something and I thought âoh thatâs weird, I donât remember me or my wife saying thatâ)
Then eventually theyâre fully formed humans, independent in thought and deed, and so you start noticing where they have commonolity with you or your wife or their grandparents or cousins, and itâs a moment of wonder. A moment where you go âoh wow, youâre just like meâ.
Anyway, those are my memories of water.
PJâs Progress
Weekends are turning out to be NOT great for getting work done. I gave up improv this year thinking it would return my weekends to me, but thatâs not how itâs gone. I did get most of one page inked yesterday, but today Iâm off to the Game Of Thrones exhibit and wonât get much done today either.
Yesterday In Social Media
Over on reddit in the r/scifi forum I posted the latest Terran Omega page. Iâve somewhat steadily been building upvotes up there, couple of weeks ago asking my bluesky audience to go upvote and it really boosted the numbers. Yesterday though, wow. Not sure what happened. I SUSPECT it was far more to do with the fact the page was practically a single illustration with a very high scifi concept on it, and thus catnip for the r/scifi audience. But the upvotes hit a high of 57 (doesnât sound like a lot, but honestly previous pages where hitting 2-3) and 17k views.
Will this translate into patreon subscribers? I have no idea. I think it might translate, eventually into a tiny bump in kickstarter numbers, but still, a pleasing result.
Read this delightful review of the new muppets tv show episode. Worth the read if only for the last line.
The Muppet Show: this thrilling return is so great I canât even count how many times I laughed
A thing called Moltbook burst into existence yesterday. A social network like reddit for Ai agentic chatbots (I promise those are real things) I have no idea what to make of it. Itâs very easy to see it and think âOh wow, this is it, this is the start of the singularity – the beginning of skynet – itâs the tronverse – the matrix – the endâ and also to look at it and think âwait⊠is this like looking at static and seeing gods face?â
I have no answer. I guess weâll wait and see, and maybe, hopefully, itâll turn out to be the face of jesus in some toast.
All the gen alpha are confusing the crap out of the bar staff
âItâs ridiculousâ: publicans bemused by rise of single-file queues to get served
Bar owners say they struggle to dissuade people from forming a line as behavioural experts point to post-pandemic ânew normsâ
