Sebastian sketch 2

Sebastian sketch 1

Here's and ink and watercolour illustration from a book I penned a while ago but never got round to plaguing publishers with. I love traditional children's illustration, especially stuff in the vein of John Tenniel and (the more contemporary) Chris Riddell and Bret Helquist. There's just something endearing about all that hatching and feathering in the ink work. So, that's the look I'm trying to replicate here. Hopefully I didn't eff it up. I've got another drawing in the works that I'll post here in a bit.

The Cover's Done!

Happy happy joy joy.

Velocity

Remember not so long ago I blogged about Moray doing another big-balled indie anthology? Well, it's in the works and he's gone and called it VELOCITY and gone and set up a Deviantart page for it so you can bloody go look at it here.

It's coming out June/July 2011 and will feature the cream of the indie comic scum from countries as fucked up as South Africa and even Australia. And I'm pitching in a 5 page, full colour story despite everything. Watch this space, I'll post more as it churns out.

GN Cover WIP

This one element of many to be included in the cover, which will be a montage of images from the series.

Skull Gorger

Well that was quick.

This puppy is ready to go!

Too much Skinny Puppy?

This is the Sparko 3 cover I'm working on. I'll be making it do laps in Photoshop next, but I thought I'd share some of the process first for those of you who like that sort of thing. It's been a nice quick job so far, mostly because I chose elements I don't need references for. I was going to do a photomanipulation jobbie involving a junkyard, but the nanny state has done away with all the cool-looking yards, so I decided to do something easy and enjoyable instead, i.e. skulls, monster dogs and a decapitated protagonist.

Anyway, gotta crack on. I'll post the final version in the time it takes to listen to Cleanse Fold and Manipulate 5 times on a loop.

Igubu days

Here's another pin up featuring a character from my dark even-more-indie-than-indie days by my old comics cohort, Cape Town based graphic designer, Moray Rhoda.



Moray was my very first publisher with his line of Igubu anthologies. Igubu was the imprint for a bunch of Cape Town based comics magazines that ran from about 2000 to 2004(?). These Titles included Zero, Helix, Clockworx and Fang Club.

The stories were a weird muddle of horror, sci fi with some public interest and social commentary stuff thrown in. It was a bit like 2000AD, but more bohemian and eclectic, and like any self-published venture, D.I.Y to the burger. The output consisted of a few hundred issues per magazine and was distributed by hand to the few inner city comic and specialty bookshops that there were around at the time.

Although there were a few guys making creative decisions, Moray was the mainstay putting down the cash, doing editorial & design layout, fighting with printers, fighting off our army insatiable fans (ha, right!) all whilst still finding the time to contribute his own stories and art to the mix. Those there are indie balls, son. All good self-publishers have them.

Anyway, in the sheltering enclave of Moray’s massive indie balls, we did our comics. In the days before the internet became the great information sharing platform it is now, meeting up with fellow creative types and sharing know-how was, as far as the arcane practice of comic bookery was concerned, the only real way to improve your skill set. This was especially true for people who weren't educated in art, like myself. What I found really valuable being involved in this thing was constantly having to find ways to improve my own work to keep up with the other guys, who, besides doing comics, were preparing for careers in professional design and illustration (How I loathed you, you talented bastards!)

Yeah, Igubu was the place for cultivating creators who wanted to do South African comics but who weren’t interested in doing anything too commercial, arty or political.

For a while things were going well. We got mentioned a few times in the culture section of the Sunday newspaper and even snuck our stuff into some prestigious Long Street art galleries to slurp wine and scoff crackers with the more erudite breed of white-knuckled political satirists and hard-bitten underground comix artists.

Of course, in the end, it all had to go down the shitter. Too many flies spoiled the broth, I guess. Heads banged. Ego’s clashed. Pelvis bonked (LOL, maybe). I’m not really sure of why, but the project eventually ran out of steam and we went our separate ways to get on with our own art projects. Whatever the hiccup was, I definitely feel that we turned out the better for the Igubu experience, if only for the opportunity to see our work in print somewhere. There's no feeling quite like it and it really chalks up your self-confidence as an artist to be able to show someone some of your published work (tip: no-one cares about the print run, so don't go there ;p)

Yup, those were the days.

*Sigh*

Oh wait! The story doesn't end there. See kids, Moray still has some of his indie balls and will be releasing a new comic anthology in the near future with a fresh bunch of creators. The bugger is even scheming to get the thing listed on Amazon.com this time round so's he won't have to distribute the thing by hand all over the fucking world. I’m an old scab, but I’ve been offered the chance to contribute a few pages too.So much for getting out of the self-publishing thing, eh? ;p

For more of Moray's art, go check out his Deviant Art account somewhere here.

(btw. the Igubu Helix, Fang Club and Clockworx images are copyright Dan Hugo and Vincent Sammy respectively)

D.I.Y

Sparko 3 is nearly done (touch wood). I've got about 6 pages left to ink & tone. I've gotten started on the lettering too, which doesn't take too long (well...usually). Then all I need to do is whip out the cover (and another for the trade). I'll probably post the covers' WIP here since it won't be giving anything away (except maybe that this artiste is addled by much angst, but that should be obvious by now).

Btw. Here's some handy as shit info on how to make your own custom handwritten font:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5899158_make-own-font-wacom-tablet.html
All you need is a Wacom tablet and a PC (sorry Mac owners). Just go to Microsoft's site, download "My Font Tool" and follow the instructions in the link I posted above. You don't need a Tablet PC for this plug in, so ignore the label. I'm lettering S3 with my own font and I tell you it just suits the artwork so much better to have lettering that looks like your own handwriting. Also, it saves you money. I did some shopping around on various font sites and found that you pay about US$40 for a lettering license, even if you're doing work for a small independent company (and those are the 'free' fonts!!). Maybe that's why we still see people lettering with Comic Sans. *shudder*

Anyway, don't say I never gave you nuth'n.

Eye candy

Received this delicious Sparko pin-up today from Dan Hugo, a talented artisto mate of mine from Cape Town. Go check out his trippy comic gallery and experience the awesome.

It's weird seeing my characters done in Dan's more realistic style. It kinda reminds me of the Neverwhere graphic novel illustrated by 2000AD vet, Glenn Fabry.

sketchbook - digipaint

About half an hour or so in Photoshop. It started with a quick doodle and I just packed on more and more detail until he looked sufficiently surley to me. Whoever this sucker is, he looks like he had to eat a bowl full of scabs this morning for breakfast. Yep, Monday's a'loomin'.

More....sandwitch

Here's another sketch of Norman, still munching away at that sandwitch, but with more hair, and some random tiki mask and furry dice. He looks sad. Maybe it isn't what he ordered, I dunno.

Anyway, I've been on a get-stuff-done mission lately. I got a new computer to replace the old Dell popcorn machine. The specs on the old rig are still pretty decent, but I wanted something specifically for rendering 3D models. I'm kinda geeked out over Zbrush at the moment and decided I'd get myself something that'll last for a while. I also cleared a room in our house for a little art studio. At the moment you can't really walk in there on account of all the boxes and debris I still need to clear up and install some shelves for, but it feels cool to have some dedicated space for all my brain putty. One of these days I'll have to get a website up and running again, but that can wait for the time being.

Bleh.

Comb overs aren't sexy

Here's one of my first sketches of Norman. I thought I'd give him a slaphead with a stylish comb over. I thought this look'd make him, y'know, more real. And real is more arty and stuff. Right?

And that's an anchovy sandwitch he's munching on.

Sparko 3 update

6 inked pages! I wish every week could be this damn productive. Proper inking takes a bit longer than the digi ink approach I tried for Sparko 2 (which made everything look gummy and a bit too cartoony), and a fuckload less...... pencill....yyy:) than the high contrast pencil gimmick I used in S1, but the end result is so much clearer and makes me feel a little like some sort of geek rock star.

I also find I need to spend less time toning if I ink properly because most of the shading gets realized in the hatching and texturing.

All in all I'm about halfway with S3. Well, actually more than halfway because I've done all the pencils more or less and 50% of the inks, most of which have been toned already. In other words, I may actually live to finish this monster someday and maybe catch up on all the sleep I missed out on in '09.

G'nite peeps

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Old posts

Below are some old entries, cut and pasted from my old LJ account. I tried exporting from LJ and uploading to Blogger manually (and later with third party software) but no beans. Oh well, at least I got the chance to do some needed editing.

SPARKO 2
27 May 2009 @ 02:13 am

...is done and will start running at slgcomic.com soon. I'll spamwhore everyone when the time comes for such things.

STUFF

19 February 2009 @ 11:59 am

Here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to:


Some paintings for a friend's health food store

These are approved character sketches for an upcoming children's book I've been commissioned to illustrate.

A rejected page from my SPARKO graphic novel.

SPARKO has been taking up the lion's share of my time. I'm currently inking Part 2 and gaining some good ground of what has thus far proved to be a major fucking challenge. I might post some work in progress pages later.

Here's the final Caustic pin up I did over the weekend, lovingly molested in Potatoshop. So much for the trad approach.

Sketchbook - knob fiddler

15 November 2008 @ 05:56 am

I've started my sabbatical and before throwing myself at my comic I decided to take a break from all that sequential jazz and do a caricature. I don't have much trad ink work in my portfolio, so I decided to give the PC

a break for a while and do the whole damn thing by hand. I dare say, it doesn’t look half shit. I'll make an effort to colour it in later. This one's of Matt Fanale, the self-styled 'Mister Bungle of Industial', better kno

wn as CAUSTIC,the one man band that brought us such classics as "Mmm papscraper I love you", "Emanuel Lewis Handjob" and "The reason I broke up with you is a million reasons you psychotic wang". If you're into powernoise and have a healthy sense of humour, keep an eye on this guy, he's really going places (no, really,he's going places, call the cops!!!!).

Sketchkook - party clown, pen & ink
29 October 2008 @ 01:21 pm

SPARKO
19 August 2008 @ 01:06 pm

I’m doing a graphic novel to be published by SLG Comics next year. You don’t have to wait till then to start reading it though, because it is featuring as a web comic on SLG’s website, updated weekly.
Here, have some blurbage:

“Sparko is a dark offbeat fairytale about a near-death experience by which the main character, Norman, is exposed to the strange inhabitants of the dingy fantasy realm that exists beneath London’s streets. He soon finds himself locked in a journey that will force him to confront the truth about his girlfriend’s untimely death, and face the evil that

dwells in the river Thames.

It’s a cautionary tale about not letting your problems get the better of you, but with a healthy dose of ghosts, monsters, killer chihuahuas and people going round bashing each other’s heads in to keep the reader’s entertainment levels in the red from cover to cover.”


Anyone who has ever lived in London will know it has this enveloping gloom that permeates absolutely everything. I could well imagine that if someone was to give in to the misery, it could suck them in and turn them into one of those creepy glue-sniffing bin people who are always hanging around the super market car park and hounding you for exactly 27p (I mean, WTF?!). I imagined myself in that situation, wasted and on rock bottom, completely consumed by the tragedy that is my own existence. I then proceeded to give my character hell, kicking his pathetic needy arse as much and as often as possible at every conceivable opportunity. I added a weird, alternative reality for a setting and ended up with the first draft for Sparko.

Basically, I wanted to do a comedy with the same premise as Neverwhere, but with the relentless nosebleed-inducing staccato pace of Alan Martin’s Tank Girl. The end result is

a racy, nightmarish (and somewhat bipolar) ride through the bowels of the world’s glummest city.

I’m well chuffed to have my stuff out there for people to see, and through SLG no less, the hippest publishing cats around, dig?

A book I did won a prize!
18 June 2007 @ 09:56 am

http://news.book.co.za/2007/06/18/via-afrika-awards-handed-out-in-cape-town/