PJ Holden's Blog

Cross posted from my blog 

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]

Me, drawing the leopard from Lime Street. I dunno why but I’m really happy with that last panel…

Like a fool I posted saying I’d do a week ending on the friday, then I remembered my diary runs Monday to Sunday. So Sunday is better.

Here’s last week’s diary. Planned to Pencil all of BadMagic, but deadline for the Leopard leapt on top of me and I had to turn my attention to that.

This is a diary of my own devising, my pro comic artist diary, I can keep track of pomodoros I’ve done (you can see here, I’ve done none) and – optimistically – four pages at a time (plus room for notes).

Boxes with a single stroke are where I’ve pencilled a page ((oh Tuesday, the third, you golden child, how I thought everything was gonna work out fine because of you). You can see Wednesday I had to start pencilling/inking stuff. The numbers above the squares were my original plans for what I’d planned to do.

Still, this tells you: six pages pencilled, five pages pencilled and inked – that’s not bad (given I had an ibs attack last night and genuinely didn’t think I’d get anything done – saturday morning I thought I’d get three pages over the weekend, but, in the end, all things considered I got two… still not awful.)

Next week’s plan? finished leopard (one page left to pencil/ink – it’s a cramped one though) that’ll happen monday, then I have GOT to get a book cover done, might also pencil that for monday. Tuesday – Wed finish pencilling Bad Magic (three pages left to go) then Wed-Sun ink as much of the bloody thing as I can get done, I hope for two pages of inks per day. That’d be a good week. Will let you know how it goes!

Right, gonna try THIS – a regular weekly check in to tell you what’s going on behind the scenes… This is all hush hush though, but you’ll find out what I’m up to as I do it…

This week … I’ve already lost track but so far, I’ve pencilled six pages (of shhh! Skulduggery Pleasant graphic novel) and pencilled and inked two pages of a new Leopard from Lime street (also shush!) and done my taxes. Which was grim. Tax year 21/22 was the best year I’ve ever had (and expect to have) a large part is from the misfortune of my pal John McCrea which meant I ended up shouldering a chunk of his workload (at one point I was drawing three different projects in one month, crazy)

I’ll be checking in every friday, though this first week basically only covers Tuesday to Friday since that’s all I’ve taken notes of.

Leopard from Lime Street – I thought had a deadline of the 7th of Feb – but it turns out that’s the print deadline, so my deadline was actually the 10th – so there’s a rush on now! (irritatingly after I’d spent a day pencilling four pages and thinking I’d finally gotten ahead of stuff)

I really wanted to find a good voice for Leopard, but in the end I didn’t have time, so page one suffers from a weak first panel and a strong last panel. Which I hated, so I decided to redraw it and (unusually for me) added a panel. Script (by Simon Furman) called for an establishing shot AND a close up all in one panel, but I couldn’t do it (tried but failed) so repencilled a new version adding a decent establishing shot and a good closeup. Hoping to get to that today. After I pencil and ink page 3 of the story!)

It’s only six pages, so I’m hoping I’ll get it completed over the weekend then can pour myself back in to skullduggery. 

(At some point I’ve got to work up a cover for the collected Folklore tales by me and John Reppion too)

-pj

Couple of pages from the new DC story from the Grifter Got Run Over by a Reindeer Christmas special (it’s a 10 page strip in the special).

So you can have a look if you keep it to yourself 🙂

This was a silly little idea that I had simply from the notion of a hard boiled detective describing some really long legs (you know the sort “she was the kind of dame whose legs had their own zip code” sort of nonsense) believe it nor, page 2, the punchline, didn’t occur until I was describing the story to my son, Thomas (even at age 14 a prolific maker of comics) and then I realised that oh my god, I could make that joke – it was all there! And he literally said “oh my god dad, you can’t do that joke  that’s terrible” (but he was laughing and aghast, the perfect reaction). My describing it as “and that’s how the dream ended” is a bit of a fib, it wasn’t a dream, obviously, just a silly idea – but that sort of justified all of it.

I definitely enjoy cartooning and feel liberated to do so when I’m the central character, almost like it’s a license to be silly – or at least be less precious. Once I’m writing another character I tend to clamp up and over think, but when it’s me its] just flows out (even when it’s super ridiculous).

over The course of the week doing these has been pretty valuable, I think, I went from “i dunno if I can write something bup it doesn’t matter if it’s a bit crap looking” to “actually I think I could write any stupid story I can think of and draw it quickly as a comic and it’ll look decent”. Certainly it’s not something I’d expect to send to 2000ad, but actually if it turned up in the right venue I’d not be offended by it (Laurence Campbell has suggested some of them wouldn’t have looked out of place in deadline)

I know I’m gonna lose momentum though, holidays coming to a close (three days at home) and then Iol be on holiday again in Paris, but I won’t have any opportunity to work then, though I might still bring my sketch pad and some pens in the off chance.

anyway, hope you liked them!

Script, written in notepad , looked like this:

Panel 1: soldier hacking through jungle

Caption alone

Panel 2: close up of arm. Bubbles around a festering bite mark.

Caption I think I’ve been bitten.

Panel 3: standing in jungle. Being him statues of ancient Burmese gods.

Caption totally alone.

Panel 4 his face as he looks up skyward. Night.

Caption you can see the star s from here.

Panel 5 amazing sit from the web space telescope.

Caption it’s glorious.

-ENDS-

I wrote this at 5am, It’s only notable because I don’t normally script them at all. Mulling over a few things I wanted to do, one was do something with all the Chindit stuff still floating around my head – I learnt how to draw those bloody hats, so I’m doing more of it, dammit.

Wanted to draw abandoned Burmese statues in the jungle (something I didn’t draw for Lion and the Eagle) and I wanted something to marry that up with all the space Web telescope doing the rounds and … well, that was it.

Sometimes you do these things and you edit and rewrite as it goes, and somehow there’s a few ways to interpret some it and so you end up trying to ease up on some and lean harder on others. As drawn panel 3 caption said “But civilisation is out there” and that could lead you to conclude that the chindit didn’t consider whatever he found in the jungle as civilisation (it wasn’t my intent, but certainly I could see how that could be read as that). “I think I’ve been bitten” felt tonally wrong, but I dunno, it could all do with a rewrite. Somehow the little me talking to camera strips are a lot easier to write the dialogue for as they are me writing letters to myself, more than anything.

Anyway, a slight depature and somehow a companion piece to this other story (which I eventually retitled ALONE)

Yes, I’m as surprised as anyone I did more.

So, this comic clearly follows yesterdays, I was thinking “what would I do if someone did come back in time and shout “Buy Apple Shares!” at me, and the reality is… not much really.

Time travel element aside, this is entirely autobiographical – in 2006 I did legitimately think “I should buy apple stock” and then … didn’t. I literally had no idea how to proceed. This unnerring sense of not buying stuff that will go up in value has also stopped me buying shares in Google when it did its IPO (I was using google from university around 95?/96? so had come to really much prefer it over things like Yahoo, and thought “Well, everyone will eventually use google…” oh how little I could know) I did not buy shares in google either.

Somehow, I think I got distracted while writing it “Buy apple shares” became “Buy apple stock” and I’m two minds – do I go back and add in panel three “I should say “BUY APPLE STOCK” – which introduces the idea that I DID go back in time and I’ve got another chance and I think changing the word to “STOCK” will work where “SHARES” didn’t – or do I just replace any errant use of the word “SHARES” with “STOCK” – not sure, a decision for the inevitable non-collection!

Anyway, hope you’re enjoying these. I’m getting a little too caught up in how to make them look good instead of just goofing around. My son (Thomas, now 14 and maker of his own comics) quite likes ’em, and said they remind him of some art I have on the wall – that art, dear reader, is from my first published work – Holy Cross, published by Fantagraphics, that was drawn in a not disimilair style, which makes me wonder have I been lying to myself about how I draw all these decades? 

So I’m on hols, one week in Rathmullan – this is our regular escape from it all. We book a little holiday house and the kids get their own room, we get a dish washer and a tumble dryer and day trips with me, typically, squeezing work in between it all.

Here’s the first three, with some notes!

Day 1 – an actual conversation I had with my wife, in the car. When she told me we’d be in france for a week I felt sick. Three days in Disney land, three days in Paris. Then I thought – jesus what’s wrong with me. The truth is I love drawing comics, but I’ve spent most of during covid trying to squeeze as much work in as I can. And I’m not sure how to reset that.

Ok, the little one page comic is also work, but it feels like a different thing. An act of defiance. I had fun doing it. I could only lay my hand on one pen and I thought, let’s just use that.

Day 2

It’s early to start getting into toilet stuff, but here we are, eh. Again, another actual thing that happened – I should’ve gone to the loo when I left, and I found walking on dry sand (collapsing, as it did under my feet) was destablising to my tummy and it was a source of constant danger (next time, I bring immodium). We went out of pizza after this (gluten free for me, because cramps and loo visits are the GOOD options …) and it was pretty much the same thing. Basically if I eat, I need the loo 15 minutes later. Regular as clockwork.

Day 3

A prompt from twitter “If you could travel back in time and only tell yourself three words what would they be…” – my initial thought was “Remember don’t ever…” and just leave it hanging there. Saw quite a lot of the “Buy Apple Stock!” messages but surely that would depend on when you see your younger self and how much your younger self is aware of what apple is. (This has sparked a follow up comic, but you’ll see that tomorrow)

Anyway, this has been a fun exercise. I might even keep it up. Day 3 was a pain for the art though, days 1 and 2 I had no really good tools so used the big thick pen I had, day 3 I found a smaller pen and decided to up the quality but that leads to more thinking and more work that needs rescued, so a stupid idea. Stick with simple.

They’re all drawn in an A4 SAKURA sketchbook, pencilled in HB .5 inked with a Winsor and Newton pigment pen 1.0 (except day 3 which was inked with a 0.5) photographed on my phone using a scan app “Scanner Pro” which ups the contrast, and straightens the image up (even if the camera is at a funny angle). Then pumped over to Procreate on the iPad pro where I use the levels to clean it up and export as a decent sized PNG. 

I suspect I’ll keep it up for the hols at least, even if I am now super tempted to keep going and then collect 30 days worth in a small press comic… that’d be stupid though…

So I’m drawing a short for DC about Dr Pyscho – originally a wonderwoman villain but now a supporting character in the Harley Quinn animated series.

Here’s a page of it! Coming shortly…! (please don’t share as I’ll probably get in to enormous trouble…)