This reminds me of my time on 'Last of the Chickenheads'...preparing what looks like real-world art to grace the walls of a work of fiction. Hopefully it adds authenticity to proceedings!

Tada -- the big reveal!

In order to ensure that a regular output of pages continues while my day-job slows me down (I'm busy!) I've decided on launching Alameda as a webcomic. One page being posted every week is the plan (although I'll draw more if time permits) and gradually the project will complete and be released as a graphic novel. If output becomes fast enough then I'll release more than one a week, but we'll see how it goes.

It can be found HERE. The accompanying music was played on classical guitar by my Dad way back in 1985, and it's about time it got a wider audience, if truth be told.

Currently working on page 4 of what will be my big revelation and ongoing project for the time being. The page is going to have one of those panels that tests me to the max....a big bustling scene-setting picture that will test my patience and powers of composition.

Anyway, just thought I'd get that off my chest. In the meantime, a picture of a 'creeter'...something I sketched over the weekend (I think I'm spending too long with the family dog):

I couldn't just make do with one blog entry in the whole of February, especially when I've been working on various written and drawn projects. Anyway, something is definitely afoot, and I'll be revealing it soon. Plus I'll be at Harlow Library the morning of March 6th, for the Essex Book Festival, talking comics!

In the meantime, here's a glimpse of the art from the mystery project:

Painful progress. PAINFUL! Very busy with web-design at the moment.

Still, another couple of pages of this level of complexity (you'll see what I mean once it's coloured) and then about 4 or 5 swifties, and it's done. It will be nice to have a self-penned short story under my belt -- at last.

Edit:The finished page :0)

I've drawn the first 3 pages, and pencilled page 4....and now here's what will probably be page 7 in the the story (I say 'probably' because I'm being quite free with the layout of this particular story).

I don't normally draw out of sequence, but this was an easy page, and so I decided to squeeze it in between vast amounts of webdesign.

Part of an upcoming anthology....

Happy new year, albeit 3 days late!

I hope you had a great Christmas and good New Year celebrations. If you made any new year's resolutions I hope you kept them/ are keeping them better than I have. Mine was to draw a sketch a day, every day...well, it hasn't happened yet. I've been mega-busy with kids/ dog/ work, and too much Xmas food/ drink hasn't helped my energy levels either!

However, I managed an Alameda page...page 2 to be precise:If I get a spare moment in the next few days I'll start page 3.

I hope to get back into the swing of it sooner rather than later, as Alameda is a story I really want to get off my chest.

Now that I finally know what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, the first page has gone from a mass of scribbles to this:Expect to see a regular outpouring of pages, now that I've sorted out the technique.

You can read more about Alameda and all the work happening in the background HERE, where you'll also get a much better look at the page, and various other pieces of artwork.

So, I guess that's it for 2009. On behalf of both Martin and myself, C2D4 Comics wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

See you in 2010!

So, Jack in the Box took about 1200 man hours, just to draw, which works out as 10 hours per page. Now that's cool, because it was drawn in a style that was very exacting, and with alot of line work and detail and shadow. But it's also a process akin to having one's testicles gnawed on by locusts for 50 days, and to be honest it's an experience I don't relish repeating with the artwork for the upcoming Alameda.

I drew a Daredevil the other day (below) and although it's lineart only, with colour and grey shading adding body, it still took a couple of hours just to ink, which considering the artform of comics, is actually quite ridiculous. The whole idea is to rattle off page after page and tell a compelling story, right? Surely that's the primary job of a comics artist, or in my case writer-artist? I love pretty pictures as much as the next man, and am a huge fan of artists such as Brian Bolland, and Dale Keown, and their finished pieces are breathtaking. But to be honest I'm more envious of people like Frank Miller who can dash down their stuff and create amazing stories in a fraction of the time. It may be sketchier, or less polished (if clean precise inking is your bag) but the guy's output is incredible, and at the end of the day he has a huge body of compelling STORIES behind him, that is a tremendous legacy to leave the world of comics.

Yes, you can combine the output of Miller with the exactitude of Bolland and have a body of work such as Katsuhiro Otomo's awe inspiring Akira...but I don't really fancy making myself ill over my art, thankyou very much!

I've been looking at my preliminary sketches for Alameda, and my pencils for the first page, and then at the loose open line/ wash of Moebius' latest Arzak book...at the sketchy fresh approach of Posy Simmonds' Tamara Drewe....and with 77 pages of story ahead of me my desire to go mad on the precision and detail has totally deserted me.

That's not to say that I want to be careless or sloppy, but with the story being set in an island paradise, with the subject matter being alot more naturalistic than the sci-fi horror of JITB...I can't see the point in going for style over content, when all I really want to do is draw a bloody good (hopefully) moving yarn that is less hung up on looking pretty than it is appealing to people's emotions.

To that end I've been trying to rattle off some pictures of characters I'd previous laboured agonisingly over in preliminary 'sketches'. In doing so I managed to finish one in 30 minutes as opposed to 2 hours, and to be honest I think the style would better suit the story anyway.

Well, here it is: