Vincent Price Presents "The Effigy"

So, the other project to come out of my initial round of pitch page promotion was a one shot on the "Vincent Price Presents" series for Bluewater Productions. The issue I've now completed for them is "The Effigy", written by Paul J. Salamoff, and is a classic slice of American small town horror. Scarecrows, cornfields, bullying... all the good stuff!

Inspiration and reference

One of the major discoveries I've had since starting this comic book journey is something I suspected, but perhaps I should have known. Producing lots of images on one page is just like producing one image. The process is exactly the same. Reference, sketch, final artwork. The only difference is you have to do 10 images across a spread over a couple days. As soon as you make any less effort with a panel than you would for any single image then the art suffers.

If you have a strong process as an illustrator I've found you don't tend to panic... or a least you panic less! You simply drop into your system and knuckle down. All the art for this book was 100% digital, sketched and inked in Manga Studio, coloured in Photoshop using a graphics tablet.

I always produce tonal roughs (thanks "classical" Illustration degree) as it really helps with composition and with the colour stage.

Panel Process

Final Spreads

Hopefully no spoilers there! The pages are currently being lettered and I'll let you know when the book's coming out.

Frank Sartre

Frank Sartre – The City of Cosmopolis

I am thoroughly thrilled to announce that I will be producing the art for "The Ballard of Frank Sartre" for Insomnia Publications. The book is written by James "Supergirl, JSA, Green Arrow, Batman" Peaty and I've been working on it already, producing concepts and starting page layouts over the last few weeks.

Mood board created from early research

To give you a flavour of what to expect here's the pitch;

"A mysterious killer is on the loose in the surreal city of COSMOPOLIS and only one man can stop him!

But as panic spreads, that man -- part-time nightclub singer, sometime private eye and full time philosopher, FRANK SARTRE -- has other things on his mind.

Who is the mysterious stranger known only as 'Mr Memory'?

What is the secret of the library containing only one book?

And why do all paths lead back to a fateful car crash one rain swept

evening in a very ordinary part of New England?

This heady, meta-textual investigation of guilt, passion and obsession will be a treat for fans of David Lynch, Dennis Potter, Grant Morrison and Paul Pope.

This book is a huge and exciting undertaking for me and I am stunned that this has happened so quickly. The estimate on deadline for the book is 12-18 months although I'm hoping I can get everything done faster than that. I'll be focusing on the project as much as I can and I aim to post weekly updates with some sketches and art previews.

More soon!

Pitch Pages

So, like a teenage cat burgler, I want to break into comic books and graphic novels.

Well, I don't want to break into a store and steal them, so that unfunny metaphor really stinks, I just want people to pay me to draw them. My illustration work is heavily influenced by comics and graphic novels and I've drawn a few small strips but I've always shied away from trying actual page art as, well, firstly it's really hard and secondly... everyone wants to draw comics so I figured no one would give me a break.

The move to Athens has freed up my week a bit and, taking deep breaths, I sat down and thumbnailed out a pitch script.


I couldn't have dialogue but I would've have put any in as I wanted to concentrate on telling a simple story with pictures. I knew I had to show pacing, mood, action... and in 6 pages I didn't want to trouble myself with concluding anything. I just wanted it to feel like part of a larger story.

I've posted all the pages I sent to around 40 or so publishers below. All drawn in Manga Studio, coloured in Phototshop.









Within a couple of hours I had some responses! When I had finished dancing around the room I started emailing back and... well. There's a couple of projects on the horizon, contracts pending, and when everything's final I'll post all the exciting details here!

Stay tuned. Good things are coming.

Patrick Moore

About a month or so ago Steve Sayers, the Art Editor on BBC focus Magazine asked me to produce a full page Illustration introducing a feature on a crash course in astronomy from UK TV legend Patrick Moore. I had done a feature for Focus a month or so earlier and there's no better compliment than being commissioned again so quickly.

The initial verbal brief Steve gave me was "Patrick Moore as a Mekon" which had me grinning like an idiot with the thought of spending time researching Dan Dare, one of my Sci Fi heroes. I dived straight in, gathering inspiration maniacally.

A few of the reference images I gathered.

Steve had supplied me with a rough page layout to draw over and, with a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do, I sketched up a rough straight over the top in Manga Studio using the pencil tool. He had also requested that I do the monster movie type treatment, which I was more than happy to do.



I bought the sketch into Photoshop and quickly splashed some colours over the top, adding in some background options, the one here being spaceships and colliding planets.



The roughs came back with the comments (paraphrased), "Wow! Loose the spaceships and green head colour. He looks like Frankenstein."

I opened the first rough in Manga Studio and inked back over the first sketch. I went for a heavier, pulp style of linework, pushing up the shadows to reflect the Eagle Comics/Pulp magazine/Monster Movie style I was going for.

I flipped the pose of the arms and sorted out the dodgy binoculars from the rough. I also decided to draw in all the mountains under the type. Now, strictly speaking this was unnecessary, but as the rough Steve supplied contained placeholder text I wanted to help the designer out (having done layout myself) and produce a completed image. This allows the text box to be set to whatever size is needed. Also, it felt better to be working on a full image, rather than with a huge lump of dead space in the centre of the illustration.



I exported the image into Photoshop and began to airbush. I always slap a gradient over the whole image, much like a watercolour wash and then add definition with a transparent toning layer on top. I also add little additional areas of colour blending down. I like to work with as minimal a palette as I can get away with and this technique allows me to keep everything together.

Colour with the ink layer down to 30% underneath.

For the type I tried a bunch of different options, setting in Illustrator, adjusting existing typefaces, tracing and overlaying... In the end I just sketched it out by hand (in Manga Studio again, using a dip pen tool), using movie poster references for style.

Type artwork. This was then coloured corrected and tweaked in Photoshop.

Final image. Published in the October issue of BBC Focus.

Athens

So, if you know me in the "real world" or have been following my twitter, you'll know I have moved to Athens, Greece. For how long it will be depends on how it works out. Service is now resumed and will be exactly as before, except I will be sitting in front of computer in Athens rather than London. Oh, and it's hot here. But it has rained too. To be honest I'm a bit confused about the whole thing.

(Pssssst. I've started a little journal about my experiences emigrating here. Don't tell anyone though, yeah?)

25/9/09 UPDATE: I've deleted it. I wasn't keeping up with it. Greatest plans of mice and men and all that.

Food Glorious Food

I was asked by the agency to create some food imagery for some potential projects. It's been years since I've concentrated on drawing a sheet of real stuff. Probably since my foundation tutor asked me to work up a whole sketchbook of drawings from life. It's been a fun challenge, but I am a little concerned I've gone a bit "dark" with the drawings... Oh well. Might have another go later in the week.

Jumpers for Goalposts

Moving into different subject matter as requested by the agency. I should be posting quite a few different things over the next week or so... depending on moving home busyness.

Watching the rain

Kind of appropriate in the middle of an English "summer". A replacement spread for the book... maybe!

Office Stress

So, I screwed up with my book.

I got very confused with the online service and whether or not I should include blanks on the inside front and back of the cover.

Whatever I did, I was wrong. All the text printed one page out so all all my rectos and versos were up the swanny. A disaster! Luckily for me it turned out to be a happy one.

I had designed the book with large double spread images separated by black spreads with the text. Seeing the left hand portion of the image first created a great lead in to the image and improved the context of each image vastly. I have therefore decided to redesign the book with this in mind, adding some extra artwork on those pages.

I also decided to change a couple of spreads that weren't working. Below is one of the new images.



Onwards and upwards!

Look Magazine and Kleenex

One of my images was featured in this Look magazine advertorial about creating a drawing to go on a Kleenex box. It was out at some point in July.