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So, here’s something I’ve literally just finished – it should be spoiler free, you’ll see it in 2000AD eventually.

Page 1, panel 1 (I’ll paraphrase the script here) Opening page. Establishing shot of the exterior of a large refinery (smoking chimneys, filthy) in the middle of a snowy landscape , bad guys 1 have breached a wall in the side of the factory, they have a pair of giant ballistas (for hurling massive sticks like crossbows) Gunfire from inside the refinery as they engage in battle.

All comic drawing is about problem solving. Some writers will have a very clear vision of what they’ve written, some will just know they have stuff they want happening. Sometimes the writers with a clear vision are actually harder – because they’re describing what they see  and you’re reconstructing that picture for them (like those puzzles you get where you have to describe the shape you’ve just made to someone who has the same pieces but no idea what you’re looking for).

Breaking this down: 

1. 2 x Ballistas (important)

2. Exterior of the filthy refinery, with wall removed.

3. Armies engage.

4. Wall removed.

First thing is, the best way to show this ALL is to get some distance, but with distance it can be hard to show armies (you just can’t draw physically distinct little soldier men) luckily gunfire, s/fx and a general melieu will probably do this job for us.

We want the readers to focus on the battle, while noticing everything around them, and suddenly a solution seems obvious. Sketching it out as a thumb it looks like this:

We’ll put the ballistas either side, drop low to the ground (making it feel like we’re involved, despite the fact the action is happening in the distance) and centre all the action.

Pencils look like this

(digital pencils, thank god for Clip Studio’s perspective rulers, too!)

Inks look like this…

And the draw over (for fans of that kind of thing) looks like this:

The ballistas – at the script reading stage – were a headache, but suddenly they’re doing the job of directing attention in to the battle scene. 

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing today. Hope you like it! (and I remind you: shhh! secret!)

(Looking at this again, I suspect the skys behind the mountains really need to be black to help pop focus, but hey ho!)

Page 1! This strip has only appeared in the irish language, despite the fact it was written in English and stuffed to the gills with puns.

In about a year I think I get the rights back and I can do an english translation. This was cowritten by my sometimes co-writer Scott Ferguson, hopefully the visuals carried enough of an idea that the dialogue didn’t need all the puns.

Page 1: , yo yo and kid yoyo are here to see the man frozen in a block of ice. YoYo demonstrates how stupid the frozen man is, and how much superior he is with his yoyos.

Page 2 Professor time and his time-lards (they’re made of lard!) turn up, they intend to steal the frozen man’s dna to create an army of cavemen! 

YoYo isn’t going to let that happen!

Page 3-yoyo and kid yoyo defeat the various timelards (who are all historically accurate recreations of histories greatest warriors … and Albert Enstien) BUT! Prof Time zaps Yoyo back in time! OH NOES!

Page 4: Back in the past, Yoyo is confronted by the ICE AGE! (it’s freezing everything in it’s past) and he finds himself frozen solid, we cut back to Prof Time cutting into the block of ice, ONLY TO DISCOVER THE ICE MAN WAS YOYO the entire time! HURRAH!

And we all agree, that yoyos are the very pinnacle of human civilisation!

Hope you enjoyed that!

More tanks.

Books like this are probably better for writers than artists though. I have a couple of big difficulties with drawing tanks (beyond all the normal difficulties of actually drawing). They are:

How big are people in relation to the tank (3d tank reference objects are brilliantly useful for what the vehicles look like, but useless at giving you a sense of scale) and what the hell is going on inside the tank. As it happens there are some pretty good videos of people exploring the inside of (some) tanks – some of the more well known vehicles have videos touring the crew components. But give me a well drawn diagram everytime.

Anyway, this is gonna take up a fair bit of the next six months… hope you like tanks!

Ah, my dudes, been so busy – three different projects have accidentally collided – it’s a pain when two do, I actually have four but managed to push one back a week or so. All TV storyboarding today (it’s a very weird job).

Again, nothing I can show, so instead, here’s some storyboards for a short film I did a while ago, the film never got funded, but I think the director’s still hoping to go ahead and make it from his own funds. (local amateur film group, nothing big time for me!)

(I hate that I’m sort of half boasting about being busy. I promise, my favourite kind of busy is a single job that lasts for decades, this three jobs nonsense is just awful. Tomorrow the storyboarding is done though – until they last minute rush me. Monday I start teaching in dublin, expect updates about that!)

Comics on hold for today as I ended up doing some TV storyboarding, more of that maybe in my future. Quite enjoy the process of sitting down and figuring out story telling, rather than the usual thing of receiving a script and just going from there. Sadly can’t show you any of it!

Is having nothing to do.

This weekend finished part four of the Dredd story I’m doing (it’s six parts – two more to go! Always excited to finish something, a final sprint towards the end) it started with me determined to do the entire thing with a brush, but, frankly, my hands and eyes and possibly glasses aren’t really up to it. It went to half brush/half pen, and finally all digital.

I think everything is now likely to be digital (though I’m aware, I’ve been here before).

Managed to wrangle it back on deadline too.

Did a couple of pages of a pitch series too – three pages of that to go.

And just started a new thing. Five issues, 20 pages per issue.

There’s an unfortunate bit of overlap, but hopefully it won’t be too bad – now kids are back in school and my wife’s arm is healing enough to get some work done.

Tomorrow I head off to a local TV company to do some story boarding, tbh I could do without it – but it’s hard – impossible even – to turn down work, especially when I came into this year with nothing at all lined up, except bills.

The five issue series should see me through to the new year with work (sept/oct/nov/dec/jan) and after that, who knows? 

Hopefully one of the random pitches will find a home. I’d like more american work, this five issue is with a US company but I struggle to get US work (I want to say I’m a poor networker, but I’m good at meeting people I’m just horrendous at follow up, and it’s follow up that gets the work – there’s a part of my brain that just doesn’t do well at contacting people after a few months and saying “Oh hey! Remember me!” but we all gotta do it.).

And that’s the news…

Everything has to be designed. EVERYTHING.

Here’s an attic sketch. It starts with a quick google sketch and then picking some elements of an attic I think will quickly distil the essence so we can see it’s an attic from multiple views. It also needs to break a couple of rules (gotta be taller to fit in what I need to fit in). Then you play a game of “how many things can I think of that will fit in here” (and you amaze yourself with how limited your imagination is). Try it!

Attic: boxes. Big bags filled with stuff. Old mirror. Bird cage. Rolled up carpet. Stacked newspapers of a specific date. Brush. Light bulb hanging from ceiling (which means you need to figure out where the electric is coming from, so probably visible cable of light bulb tracing down to either a wall socket (unlikely) or a cable trailing behind a bolstered wall), a entrance (is it a side entrance? unlikely, from below? probably, trap door like thing) more boxes and er… oh god.. 

And then you try and not draw all of that stuff because the story isn’t about that (unless there’s a specific prop you’ll need later)

I can’t remember when or where I first read this little bit of writing wisdom, certainly it was a long time ago and it’s stuck with me, though not for writing. It’s from the book “100 ways to improve your writing” by Gary Provost, I’ve since ordered the book up (it’s a fun little collection of snippets like this that I’m sure can help any writer). I’ll let you read it and tell you what I think…

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t just write words. Write music. 

Ok. Now, as this applies to comics – writing comics isn’t writing. Your reader will only ever read the words you’ve written if they’re included in dialogue or captions (or any other narrative tricks you’ve picked up), for the most part you’re writing for an artist and there it’s about clarity and being succinct. (Five words sentences? Great as long as it’s of the line “Dredd stands firm, looking grim.”)

But what is important is that the lessons within this little gem be applied across the board to your comics. Instead of “five word sentences” think “small identical sized panels” – a few? ok, But then let them explode! Build up energy with a bunch of panels, burst out with a splash. Make the panels interesting to look at and it will be interesting. Humans are easily bored, it’s a genetic thing (I once saw an experiment with a sea cucumber showing how even something with barely a brain can be bored) it’s why flashing lights attract us, why sitting still can make things invisible and why the coctail party phenomena works.

Your comics can be guilty of many crimes, but boring should never be one of them.

If you’re a reader of my old blog, you’ll have read periodic updates on how I work – primarily because like me in a party, the moment I feel like I’m comfortable I have to upended a table and jump out a window (or find a tiny kitchen corner to hide in).

The current process goes like this:

Read script.

Create a multi page document of the length of the script + a few pages at the back for layouts/designs.

Use a page at the back, creating a page frame (a specific layer in clip studio paint) and divide it so it’s exactly nine frames, which I’ll use as my guideline for thumbs.

Digital thumbs, I find drawn this way are actually more detailed than my normal pencilled thumbs, and can sometimes double as pencils.

Happy with thumbs, I’ll cut the thumb out for the first page, then paste that into the first document, scaling it up to fill the page.

I’ll create a “pencils” folder (setting it to draft – again a Clip Studio Paint specific thing) and make it a pale blue colour, dropping the enlarged thumb in. I’ll create a new pencil layer within that folder, and trace/finish the rough thumbs into useable pencils.

Once I’ve got my pencils, I’ll create an inks layer, and just ink the damn thing.

That’s it.

I’ve a couple of rules of thumbs for making the digital work go smoother, but you’ll have to be a backstage patreon for that!

Sometimes I get a big chunk of a page done on one day, but don’t count it as a finished page, then count it the next day when finished. On that basis, I finished two pages today and, I think, two yesterday? Can’t remember. Sometimes you work so fast you lose track.

Luckily it’s all digital so I don’t have to keep piles of paper beside me. (That’s a nightmare, three pages a day of paper printout, sounds great but try managing all those sheets of paper coming off your drawing board like you’re a printer with the output tray disconnected)

Anyway here’s a dredd head I’m happy with (Dredd in winter gear)

I’ve never drawn this many Dredd’s in one strip before. It’s funny how your strength can suddenly become a weakness – I had a great dredd chin down pat, but suddenly I’ve got to draw lots of Dredd’s and you’re desperate not to repeat the same old face/expression.