What I’ve been working on.

Palm Lines

Big News!

Last week I completed my debut comic, Palm Lines and took it to the printers. It is now for sale over at Folksy until I get my full website online. Anyway, if you are someone who has followed this blog, you’ll know it’s taken a looong time (nearly eight months) and that’s due to all the changes that have been going on in my life and the sheer lack of spare time I’ve had due to my job.

Thankfully, I have learned a lot about the process of making comics and how I work best. I’m currently incorporating all of this into the preparation for my new comic, Lost Art, which will be a fair bit longer and should, story wise, be more accessible.

I have also come to neglect my writing exercises, which are supposed to be the main focus of this blog. So I have made a greater effort this past fortnight to keep them up and make time for them – my writing needs the continual improvement. Heck, I’m not special: everybody’s does.

Palm Lines – New Page

Yes that’s right, after a good seven weeks, I have fully inked the second Page of my short comic, Palm Lines.

In some ways, I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew, because right now, I don’t have the time to be taking on a project like this, especially as my job demands so much of it. The only reason I’ve managed to get this done is because I’m on holiday. So what I am going to do is this: Every weekend I will dedicate the sum total of one day to working on this comic. That means I might be able to produce one page a week. That’s  20 weeks to produce one comic book. I don’t like it, but it’ll have to do for now. The next six weeks are going to be hellish and stressful.

Oh, and I should mention that the whole thing will be lettered at the end, for the sake of consistency.

Part One

I’ve been busy. Sort of. I’ve produced an ebook, filled with work taken from this blog and my short story, Apocalypse, published on The Whistling Fire.

It’s nothing fancy and perhaps brief, but I hope you enjoy it. Print it off, pass it on. Spread the word. It would mean a lot to me.

AllTheGhosts Part One

I should mention that I have started to actually use my DeviantArt.

Ooh and hit me up on  Twitter.

Antidote

I drew this Sunday evening when I should have been prepping for Monday.

I was listening to Tegan and Sara for the second time ever. Just as I finished laying down the last piece of ink, all of a sudden: “I’ve got a cure/I’ve got the Cure for you.” And I looked at what I had just written.

Somehow I was surprised.

Solanin

Inoue, with part of a piece  I started writing.

Last week I finished reading Solanin.

It’s about a 20 something Tokyo girl called Inoue, her boyfriend and all their friends. It fell into my lap at the right time in my life. And holds all the sentiments I’m feeling, writing about and drawing.

Inio Asano’s artwork is superb, expressive and articulate. He was 24 when he wrote and drew it and so are most of his characters. They feel real. If I could get anywhere close to that, to reality and to emotional depth, I would be happy.

I turned 24 myself last Friday. So here’s to that.

Eliza, in the Cafe

Eliza in waiting

One page penciled, one to go. Ink by the weekend? Maybe.

New things, moving forward

I’ve started work on a comic, which should run to 19/20 pages. It’s an adaptation of a short story I wrote, so the large chunk of the work is done. The trouble, though, is how to portray those subtle nuances, because I can’t simply tell the reader what a character is thinking, I need to show it on the paper, in the image.

It’s called Palm “Lines”. So far I have fully inked one page and penciled half of another. The first seven pages have been scripted and thumbnailed. The rest is an outline, and won’t get scripted until I’ve completed the first part. It’s hard, rewarding and fun. Here is Page One.

Last Sunday I dragged a bunch of people to The WAW+P Drop In + Draw. It was good. I chatted to Adam Cadwell (who draws The Everyday) for quite a while. He liked one of my character sketches enough that he drew her for himself!

I’ve also scripted and thumbnailed a two page comic I’m calling “Eliza in the Cafe”. Here are some character sketches. It’s a talking heads piece, musing on life and such.

Paper Science

The people over at We Are Words + Pictures produced a rather excellent paper (or is it a zine, or an anthology of… something. I don’t know I’m not selling this very well am I? ButthenIguessyoucouldsay it is very good). As a promo they sent out some free copies in exchange for some interesting pictures. So I man-handled a couple of friends into helping me out. Here we are, out and about in Southampton and hanging out in arty coffee shops. It was Indie as Phuck.