PJ Holden's Blog

Hey ho, decided to come back and mull over patreon. I think I can think of a way to make it work – Monday will be a look back, I’ll find something old and post it up – usually the lineart, sometimes the pencils. This will be for level one patreons.

 Friday will be more interesting, I think. Friday will be “The Week So far” – I’ll drop bits and pieces of what I’ve been working on. This will be for higher level patreons.

My plan is to set two patreon levels – $2 and $5 (and maybe $10 for you billionaires out there, determined to spend all your money supporting artists)

This new way of using Patreon will start in September – that’s when the tiers change. (and there will be tears)

Before then I’ll start to build the muscle memory/habit of shoving interesting things up here maybe with a Friday update – available to every level of Patreon, so you can see what you’re getting.

Look, thanks for sticking with me, if that’s what you’ve done (and apologies if you just haven’t been paying attention and the whole thing has happened without you realising)

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make Patreon afford to pay me to make comics, so instead I’m gonna use it as a little window into my work-life here.

(Clearly, I’m not in a position to have to ponder the ethical questions of what would I do if substack offered me $100k to do a comics newsletter, but until patreon do the same thing, I think I’ll be very happy to make a nice even $100 per month off here…)

This is the entire black and white art from the Judge Dredd story three kings by Kenneth Neimand… you may have missed it. 

I designed the robots to look like the rock ’em sock ’em robot, a point missed by a number of common taters who suggested they just didn’t look very interesting (a fair point, next time I’ll be less subtle about it)

Struggled with the inking on this, and ended up starting with pen and paper and almost immediately went all digital. Sometimes it’s a struggle.

Gosh, I’m amazed some people have stuck around. I guess you’ve probably forgotten this is even a thing, patreon slowly leaching money out of your account and over to here, where I’ve rudely not posted anything for some time.

I guess the big problem is having things to post, but, you know what… if you can keep a secret, what I think I’ll start doing is posting work that I’m in the middle of here. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PUT ANY OF THIS OUT IN TO THE WILD! Cheers

It’s all gonna be here for you. This is from an idea that a writer pal and I were bouncing around. It wen’t nowhere (pandemic took over).

Maybe it’ll be resurrected at some later date. Who knows. Any way. Get ready for weekly updates…

My youngest son has introduced me to Junji Ito how does a magnificent line in existential dread and horror, so I’ve been playing with that with a view to seeing what I can do in short one page form. I’ve written ideas for two other things done, but here’s the only one I’ve fully written, drawn and lettered. Hope you like!

Was asked by Gav Thorpe to do some illos for some rpg characters he was playing with on a Dredd game. Here’s one!

We’ve decided to stop (well, this is more on me than John). Monster Macs has been fun, but much more work than the folklore stories and a bought of illness (I’ve IBS which will flare up occasionally but has recently stolen over a week from me) means we’re (ok, I am) getting much more behind that I would have wanted.

By way of apology, I’ve uploaded a pdf the folklore thursday stories.

We’ll still be looking for a home for monster macs, and, hopefully a publisher interested in investing for us to work on it. 

For now, I just want to say thank you. 

If you download the file, and cancel your patreon you should save yourself a little bit of cash. 

Hopefully you’ll continue to enjoy whatever work John and I put out, you can see me on twitter.

“At last we reveal ourselves to the jedi…”

Here we go, finally we see our bigfoot! Hope it’s been worth the wait!

Hope your xmas was safe & peaceful to, and my gosh I think we deserve a calm and peaceful 2021 (it’s not starting out like it, but fingers crossed, right?)

PAGE NINE

Okay, I think this is a six panel page, but I’m going to leave the exact beats up to you, PJ. I know what the first and last panels should be, but between them, I think I may as well let you see what you think works best.

Panel One

Here we’re outside in the garden, directly behind the hairy creature we’ve just glimpsed through the window. We can see the back of the creature’s head and shoulders and can see Biko’s window ahead and above us / it. The creature is turning its head to one side, so that we can see (a bit of) its profile. It is sniffing the air as if it’s smelled something interesting. You could even do a “Bisto” smell trail, if you think that would work (or not).

One FX.

FX: snff-snff

Panels Two to Five(?)

So, what’s going on here is that our hairy friend has smelled some open snacks which have been left in Biko’s tree-house, which doubles as MACS HQ. Without ever showing the creature fully (definitely not its full face), but showing shots of its hands, feet, etc, I want us to follow its short journey up into the tree-house, sniffing all the way. Shots of the sniffing nose, maybe? Hands and/or feet on the ladder up to the tree-house. The top of the hairy head pushing up through the trapdoor in the floor of the tree-house. I think that what the creature is smelling is a big open bag of Tayto crisps, which we can maybe see in the foreground as the head appears inside the tree-house. Thinking of the ET eating M&Ms riff, but using crisps, basically.  We might even risk a “Yum” from our creature?

Final Panel

We the hairy creature’s foot / ankle is tripping a laser tripwire as they grab the big bag of crisps. I think all we need to do is show the two terminals (or whatever you’d call them) which face each other, rather than an actual laser beam (unless you think a beam being broken would work better visually). Google kids Spy tripwire alarm, and you’ll see what there are loads of them. A little LED on one of the terminals is glowing red, and making a tiny “bip” type noise.

PAGE TEN

Again, I think this is six(ish) panels, but the exact beats are up to you. Dialogue isn’t set in stone if you don’t think there’s room for all of it in the composition you go for.

First Panel

This panel shows the a small light bulb lighting up in the darkness of Biko’s bedroom. I think its probably part of an electronics kits that he’s built himself, so it might be like a breadboard type thing. There’s a handwritten label taped to the contraption which reads INTRUDER ALERT.

Now whether, you want to just show this detail as a panel of its own and then “pull back” to show Biko wakened by the light and the noise, and looking towards the light, is up to you. But that’s what happens; the light and the sound wake Biko and he looks towards the light in shock.

There is one FX from the alarm (not too big / loud) and Biko has two balloons.

FX: bzzz bzzz bzzz

Biko: What the heck…?

Biko: Someone’s in the tree-house!

Panels Three(?) to Five(?)

Okay, we want to get Biko and Fort outside so that Biko can climb up and investigate who is in the tree-house. I don’t know if a straight cut to Biko pushing open the back door of the house works? He has a torch in one hand, the beam cutting through the darkness, but is barefoot in his pyjamas.

Maybe we show him climbing the ladder so that we’re looking down at him, and we can see Fort on the ground below looking up at him/us?

He could have a couple of whispered balloons here.

Biko: Li? Evie?

Biko: Is that you?

Then maybe a panel of the interior of the tree-house, with a bit of our hairy visitor in the foreground all in silhouette, busily munching crisps. Biko is pushing the door of the tree-house open and entering towards us, the beam of his torch not yet on the hairy fella.

Biko: We didn’t say anything about a midnight…

FX: munch crunch munch

Final Panel

This is a reaction shot of Biko’s face (head/shoulders) as his torch finally illuminates the visitor properly. He looks shocked and stunned.

He has one balloon (and maybe the munching continues?)

Biko: …feast…?