Folklore Thursday

I’m having to revisit folklore thursday strips for a collection (hurrah!) and oen of the things I’m doing is a brand new strip. Except… I don’t remember how to do it any more! So I’m sitting staring at the John’s tweet (remember, John Reppion would write a folklore tweet and I’d make up a comic using it) and thinking “how did I do this for a year?”

Four page days

I’m scheduling the pencils I’ve got to do this week for four page a day. Absolutely bonkers, but very doable. I mean, for a start my pencils are super rough (a guide for my later inking). Hoping I can get 21 pages completed, then start inking next week. One annoying thing about that schedule is when you have a hard crash in the middle of it (for whatever reason) suddenly, you’ve missed two days and you’re eight pages behind. Horrible.

Qwitter

I’ve gone round the houses on twitter, and the quitting of it. Here’s where I am now: my account – while active is only so because it’s a reasonable defence against my username being handed to a pornbot or similar (how many old comics forums are now in the hands of porn websites? I dunno, but don’t look up panelxpixel, it’s depressing)

Anything I post here gets autoposted, I do occasionally browse twitter and when I do, I might RT someone generally if it’s someone looking for help, or trying to drum up an audience for their kickstarter. I’m trying not to engage, but twitter still remains the best way to catch up on the world. BUT – my days of posting bon mots are, I think, over.

I have occasionally posted stuff, but it’s now basically just when I want eyeballs to look at things. I’ve found, like my old boss Davie used to say – I’m as replaceable as a fist in a bucket of water (you remove the fist and the water rapidly fills in the void)

I suspect over time those eyeballs numbers will drop and drop until the point where there really is no point posting there (partly this is the algorithem anyway, and partly I suspect Musk’s push for payment for audience is gonna make it useless)

That all said, my blog has never had more attention from me, and I’ve been averaging three-four pages of pencils per day (I mean yesterday I finished pencilling a page from the previous day, then did two pages of pencils and then did two pages of inks and still went to bed at a reasonable time…) so being mostly off twitter has been generally a net positive in my life – even if I do miss all my old mates who haven’t made the leap to Mastodon.

Film Night!

So, I did the first class – a sort of introductory who-we-are-and-what-our-favourite-films-are, two hour thing.

(For the record, I said my favourite film is The Big Lebowski – which I think it is, probably the film I’ve seen the most, and has bits that make me laugh, though honestly the reason I’m doing a course on short film making is I love things like Inside No 9, Black Mirror and… you know … 2000ad)

The plan is everyone who wants to can pitch an idea and then Larry (who’s running the thing) will pick one (based, more on how well it’ll use everyone’s abilities, as much as the quality of the idea/script)

It’s weird introducing yourself in a group – especially one where odds are you’ll find a comic fan – or at least someone who knows you (Belfast is a small place anyway, so – as was the case here – Larry had heard of me, but from people saying “there’s a guy who lives [redacted] who writes* for 2000ad” (*these things are always a bit garbled)

So last night I sat and had a think and came up with about five ideas for shorts, I dunno if any will get past tomorrow, and they’re all a little nebulous, but here they are:

TANGO

Outside a community centre a husband and wife talk about their past, and their future, and how this tango class is a first step in a new future for him. As he walks haltingly towards the door, we see a sign for the tango night – “Singles Tango Night – widowers welcome” and he turns and says goodbye to his wife, who vanishes.

The Pass

Spide and Jaunty are two not-so-bright belfast hoods who need some money for weed, and decide to mug the first person to come down the back street they’re in. That first person, it turns out… is Gandalf.

There’s a confrontation – Gandalf gets the better of the two idiots and escapes, but as he does so, he drops his pipe.

Spide is disappointed, they got nothing. “‘er, you think he was… you know, Magic…?” Jaunty, drawing from the pipe and in a smokey weed induced haze – “I dunno about him, but this is fucking magic”

The Ticket

A traffic warden and a badly parked driver face off, as the warden is about to place a ticket on the car and the man knows if he can get to the door he can claim he was just leaving. No dialogue and filmed like a spaghetti western, including tumbling crisp packets and close up of sweaty eyes.

Working Stiff

An office style docudrama as a husband and wife are interviewed about their typical day. The husband though, is a monosyllabic zombie. “Oh well, day to day there’s not much difference from before, I mean he’s still mostly in the way, though he is a LOT better with the dog and to be honest his personal hygene isn’t what it was… ” “And your … love life” “Oh, well, now … that IS different… I mean… now he’s always … ” [end credits]

Eat my Shorts

I woke up this morning and thought, I should really be trying to do something beyond just sitting in the house and drawing comics, and LO! I booked myself a course on making short films at our local arts community centre. (if you’re in Belfast, it’s the Crescent Arts Centre)

I did think “I should do something totally outside my wheel house” – but I’ve wanted for years to make short films and never done anything beyond a couple of little goofy shorts for my son (who was the main driving force – when he was about 8) and my mate (years and years ago, again, he was the main driving force). I have all the kit, I just lacked time and a way to remove the barriers you construct around yourself.

I’d like to do this, then maybe a course on writing, but we’ll see how we go…

Drawing a Crowd

Some people have imagination to burn, NOT ME! so, when required to draw a crowd, I’ll stick something on tv and liberally steal from every extra that walks past. Right now I’m catching up on Servant which means M Night Shymalan makes an appearance (well, not really, I’m not going for likenesses just INPUT for my imagination engines to latch on to.)