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Been doing some illustration work for a new table top game (with robots) called … Zeo Genisis, really great fun company to do work for and I started drawing in print for RPG fanzines, so it’s nice to go back and do some more of that.

This is the page where I think I finally broke my brain with digital drawing. It took no time at all to pencil and then ink digitally and I just thought “but actually, I’d like to have drawn that on paper”. So I printed the inks out and reinked it – on paper with a dip pen. Then scanned it and used the hand drawn. All in, inks took about 2-3 hours, which is no time, but absoloutely worth doing, because, gosh, it’s nice to be back on paper.

Plus, at some point, I’ll probably sell it, but it’s nice to be happy with a page and actually have the physical art of it too.

Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself at the stuff that looks good, and John and I were both really super happy at how Page one of this turned out. Just a nice market! No monsters, no spaceships, just a bunch of junk around a market place.

Anyway this is another where I pencilled and John inked, though there’s a few pages where John ended up not getting to and so inked a few of the pages.

Written by Greg Pak, this is one of the EC Jobs where I did roughs for John McCrea – these are largely about how detailed I pencil, though knowing John is gonna ink them up, I tend to not worry too much about the quality, John usually brings something killer to it (sometimes that killer thing is an eraser and he’ll rub it out and just redraw it, as he did with the main figure of the Headmistress on Page 2.

Anyway, intend to get more stuff going on the Patreon, since lots of people are still subscribed SURPRISE! I bet you forgot! I would’ve! – no harm no foul if you decide to just delete your subscription, but believe me that money has come in handy ! Usually I don’t even look at it unless my bank balance looks awful (usually every several months), by which time it’s usually wracked up a little bit of dosh, enough, at least, to make the month go a little easier – so thanks for that! (Even if you didn’t mean to!)

The reward will be, I’ll post more art stuff up here, I’ve a BIG backlog of stuff I’ve not posted anywhere, and you’ll get it – fair?

Was at Dublin City Comic Con this weekend, well, the Saturday (the Sunday was mother’s day and ended up staying home for that)

Was good to be at a con again, I suspect it’ll take me to go to a few to find my feet at the things again, covid having done a number on everything really. Met some new friends (hello Alan and Ellie) and to my suprise and delight, actual fans. (Not as suprising to me as it was to my son who was also there)

Anyway, did some portfolio reviews and gave some advice, so, to the best of my recall, here is some of that self same advice:

If you want a career in comics, make sure you have three months worth of living expenses in the bank at ALL times. Any less than that and you’re in trouble. Here’s why – if you’re looking for work, it could take month. If you get the work, could take a month to do it. Once you finish and invoice for it, could take a month to pay – simple. Three months. Though, to be perfectly honest, if you can, you owe it to yourself to bank six months at all times, this industry is HARD.

If you’re a writer with a submissions package, figure out what your end game is, I think some people see the submission’s package as some sort of “if I built it they will come” but it really helps to know what your goal is. A graphic novel with a publisher? Pitching short stories? Self publishing?

And honestly, in many many cases all you really need is a single page synopisis of the complete story (including any exciting twists and turns and plot twists it may contain – you want the reader to know it’s got twists, but you want the publisher to know what those twists are) and maybe six pages of written story comics. If you’re pitching to a publisher, some will also want six pages of the story drawn, but it will depend and you may find yourself with an accepted pitch where they love the story but want a different artist (surprise! this has happened to me more than once)

Some lettering no/nos – if you’re lettering yourself good lettering will rescue a comic and bad lettering will destroy it, if you’ve a budget pay a letterer and if you don’t then try and learn how to do it right – plenty of good resources (I’d avoid names like CLINT and words like FLICK – and the unfortunate sound effect UNTSS UNTSS UNTSS which went behind a moon and read like an entirely different word! make it UNZZZ UNZZZ UNZZZ)

If you’re starting out and you’ve a partner who has no real interest in comics but wants to support you, draw a comic and show them and ask them to describe what’s happening in the unlettered comic (and don’t give them any hints) where they get it right, you did a good job! well done! where they get lost it’s confusing and you need to fix that!

Black placement on a page – try and use blacks to help tell the story and direct the reader’s eye – sure, it’s important to get light sources right, but also you can make up light sources! comics are super flexible that way!

Establishing shots are important, in a scene where two characters interact you’ll need to show the reader at least ONE panel where we see them both together, without that it’s hard to know if we’re cutting between scenes or if there’s any connections between them at all.

Writers: for the love of god, start small! Write one page complete stories, get an artist. “I’d like this to be an eight page miniseries” – ME TOO! But realistically, big names can’t get eight issues of a miniseries out there, it’s a hard market. You’ll have more luck with a graphic novel, and even better luck with short stories. You cut your teeth on short stories, those are the things that build your craft muscles up quick (to mix some metaphors)

Finally, if you’re after advice and that advice takes a long long time, because you’re not really clear about what you’re trying to do and then after 45 minutes say “well, I’m really trying to make a six issue miniseries about an NFT character” do not be surprised if whoever you’re talking to folds their arms, gives you a stern look and tells you they’re not that interested.

From my new weekly web comic series “Null Space” – you can keep up with it over at www.pauljholden.com/series/null-space  

(I’ll try and put them here too, but if you wanna cancel your patreon, that’s cool – on the other hand, it’d be really cool if you didn’t then I could passivily collect some dosh for just doing silly comic book stuff without worrying about it!_

I’ve barely tracked what I’ve done and it felt like I did nothing. Partly just down to me not being abkle to keep the workload straight in my head, but it turns out I did more this month than I expected (with the caveat that I can only invoice for completed pages (pencils and inks) and I need to do about 18 to make enough money to pay the bills and service debts and pay the tax man every mont).

So the top level how much work is pencils: 24 pages, Inks 14.

I finished inking Wormy and Me – a 10 page short for Ahoy comics.

Then I pencilled and inked 12 pages of Dredd – two episodes (I though I was running late, but two in a month is ok)

And finally, pencils on a Medal of Honor story (true stories of American soldiers who’ve won the medal of honor which pay ok(ish) and require an insane amount of research not to mention the moral headache I have every time I do one – so this is the last one)

And, upon discovering that I’m due to have a leopard from Lime street finished, I ended up pencilling a chunk of that over the weekend. It’ll be late, but the editor tells me I’ve plenty of time.

Didn’t enjoy not tracking it all, week by week I like knowing if I’ve done enough, this month I felt like I hadn’t (and really I sort of haven’t)

Outside of that, we filmed part of the short film we’re doing as the final poart of this short film course for making short films I was on. So that was a fun non-comic day.

(Yesterday was the 28th year of me meeting my wife, so I didn’t do much work then. just lots of emails first thing in the morning)

Coming up this next month:

Dredd ep4 and ep5 and finishing leopard (6 pages of inks) and inking the Medal of Honor stuff (maybe – we’ll see)

No time for fiddling in the world of the 64 page digest, nor even for doing this other creator owned pitch. I need to have a 48 page month before I can bank the time to do anything else…

Anyway, new month, let’s go

I have spent yesterday and today making a fun little zine. I tend to do a small print run and drop them off to some local comic shops and see what happens (what’s the worse that could happen, right?)

It started with the idea of using an A4 sheet to produce something, I thought “micro-fiction!” that’ll do! So I took an A4 sheet and did exactly that, I fancied the logo being right in the centre with stories wrapping round it, and it looked like the above image (you’re getting a bit of dredd in there too!)…

Then I tidied it up a bit and typed it up and dropped it in to Affinity Designer (which I’m not terrible comfortable with but figured this isn’t THAT complicated) then it hit me, I could fold the comic around the central logo 

And it worked surprisingly well! In fact if you fold it right it’s sort of self standing, making it it’s own little presentation thing too.

Anyway, some hand drawn images and now we have this…

And you can have it too…

(The trick to folding it is fold the left side behind the logo, then the right side then do the bottom and then do the top and boom, a freestanding ‘zine)

Thought you’d like to see the cover… it’s gonna be a gorgeous looking book. 56 comic pages, linked to essays, each essay has been individually hand designed to integrate with the art, it’s properly lovely looking and I’ve seen and felt the quality of Liminal 11’s other books, and they are incredible. Very excited for this.

So, the 64 page graphic novella has a title: Witness.

It’s a fun thing to write stuff. I frequently forget because I do it so little. For me it’s all a puzzle box, how can I tell the plot in the pages I have, lets split them up in to sections, how to get from that section to this section. Eventually you get it all vomited up and then you start looking for what your story is about, early doors I introduced one new guy into this band of fierce soldiers and it was gonna follow him, from the kickoff I had him as the toughest dude around, he proves himself by beating the crap out of everyone else in the room. Then I wrote the whole thing and realised, no, this makes a lot more sense if this guy is unsure of himself, and they don’t trust him – so he went from someone who introduces himself by telling everyone how great he is at combat, and flying (which sets up the fact that later he’ll be the only one capable of flying a ship) to him becoming someone whose great at combat and flying – as per simulations and written exams, so entirely unproven.

Anyway, I’m gonna give you the prologue – right from the start I wanted to show a team and then for them to lose one person so our hero can step in. 

Warts and all, is what you’re gonna get, so here’s my prologue notes:

Prologue, we establish how tough these guys are and what a formidible team they make. They are introduced to the new guy, “Green” – the new guy’s father is a well known politician, and they don’t understand why he’s with a bug hunting crew. Green, determined to show he’s committed tells them he’s trained in close combat, alien biology, explosives and is a grade 2 pilot “holy shit, that’s more than you captain!”

Because this was a draft, I hadn’t really realised the prologue was really that first sentence – everything after that is part of act 1. Prologue then became a seven page section. Nice big intro page, then trying to make use of the fact odd numbers are page turns, I set to work with the bullet points:

Prologue

1. Opening scene, epic battle, troops vs alien creatures, on an unknown planet, the sergeant turns to us and screams “Vasquez!”
2. Vasquez, chewing a cigar, hears the sarge shout “Light em up” we pull out, Vasquez Vasquez, “With Pleasure, Sarge!”
3. We see aliens, burn, we watch as the troopers lay fire in to them.
4. One of the troopers looks happy as a clam, firing into the monsters, We see behind him a creature has escaped the fires.
5. Cut to another trooper, he’s shouting over “DeMarco!”. Demarco turns, but is gutted by the creature from behind.
6. The original trooper blasts the creature to kingdom come. And runs over to DeMarco, who’s essentially cut in two.
7. Demarco, close up “It’s getting dark” trooper, “Man, you good, you good, stick with me Demarco, we’ll get you home”. Pull out to reveal DeMarco is missing most of his insides.

I thought that was a fun little seven pages – couple of good big actiony splashes and a neat little twist trying to give a reason to go from page to page and especially get you turning the page.

Next, scripting this (I’ve literally just scripted this first seven pages, we’ll see how it goes when I get a full draft of the script done)

Tried to stict religiously to the bullet points (and for clarity, this is digest – about A5 size, so I can’t really do too much in one page)

Page 1

Full splash, a team of eight soldiers (though incl Sarge we’ll only see seven here), being led by the Sarge are attacking some sort of weird bug like alien which , there are hundreds of bugs clambering over some sort of civilian transport. The sarge has turned to us and is shouting at us…

CAPTION I dropped into these men’s lives in the middle of tragedy.

SARGE VASQUEZ!

Page 2

Panel 1

Vasquez, heavily armed (maybe a mech suit?) chewing a cigar, cocking a fire arm.

SARGE (OFF) Light ’em up!

Panel 2

Close up of Vasquez, smiling.

VASQUEZ With pleasure Sarge!

Panel 3

Close up of Vasquez’s weaponary unleashing hell.

SFX BUDDABUDDABUDDABUBDDABUDDABUDDA

Page 3

Panel 1

Bugs are being blow apart

Panel 2

Close up of Demarco, watching the carnage, he’s no longer firing his gun.

DEMARCO Hahah, lookit them!

Panel 3

He takes aim at one lone critter, smiling as he does so.

DEMARCO Now, where do you think you’re off to you,

PAGE 4

PANEL 1

He fires, behind him something larger lurks. (maybe a bigger bug like creature, or some sort of assemblage of them)

DEMARCO HAHAHAHA! GOTCHA!

PANEL 2

Rodriquez, aiming at the creatures, spots tthe thing behind demarco

Rodriquez DEMARCO!

Page 5

Splash, Demarco gutted by the bug monster/thing

SFX SPLEURCHHHH!

Page 6

Panel 1

Close up of Rodriquez as he sees Demarco

Rodriquez SUNOFA…

Panel 2

Rodriquez splays the demarco gutting creature with gunfire

Panel 3

We see the creature get blow away, Demarco is on the ground.

Page 7

Panel 1

Rodrueqiz is nursing the head of Demarco

Demarco It’s… It’s getting … dark.

Rodruqeiz Naw man, stick with me soldier. You’re good…

Panel 2

Demarco, essentially missing the lower half of his body (maybe it’s around somewhere), Roriquez nursing him (upset, knows it’s a lie)

Rodriquez You’ll make it…

And… that’s it for the first bit. The caption at the start is because after I’d laid out the bullet points, I decided I’d add narration from our new guys POV throughout, something that’ll add just a little layer about who he his and his self doubt and his rising to the challenge.

Anyway, it’s aliens and I don’t care…

If I allowed myself any self doubt on this I will not do it, but by making a conscious decision to go “doesn’t matter if this is bad, it’s mine. I’m doing this for me” it’s been easier to get this far. 

Now I’m gonna do some character design and maybe see if I can draw a page or two of this silly thing… (before attempting more script!)