I am a freelance illustrator who has suddenly found themselves drawing comics a lot more often than expected, and am slightly worried that it's so much fun.






( Mephistos book 1 sample pages )

drawing this was my treat for today... back to work T-T






I kinda miss drawing like this, no planning, no rehashing, no revisions, just plain drawing. ... I need to set up another drawing day, but i'm thwarted by mundanities, and i want to go feed the blue-eyed geese at the river this weekend as it seems to be the only free weekend i've had in forever. [Plus we check up on the Holey goose which we found caught up in fishingline and had to call the RSPCA to rescue.]













mo's effort to stay warm on a trip out of the tank.

I had quite a bit to do since thought bubble, and finally wound up having a short moment to put a bit of stuff up. As ever, it was a really nicely organised con, although i probably shoulda gone for a bit more of a walk around. I could see that the self made hero gang in front of me were swarmed most of the time, with nana li and faye doing brisk trade and doing some fab pad doodles. it did feel like there was less of a manga presence this year [maybe i shoudl leave my table more] but tokyo 15 was still doing pretty good trade, and I chatted to a lot of people.

Seriously though, if I've met you before, but don't recognise you, don't be mad with me. It takes me a serious run up before I remember anyone [I ran into my friend's dad in hobbycraft last week, and completely couldn't place him because we'd met in such a random place, and yet again the same thing happened with two ex students from my old uni at thought bub] a general reminder, name/ online name, last place i met you, and anything i might have doodled or said usually helps. It is actually a very bad affliction. [It's why I let Chamonkee do all the talking for birdsong.]




a rare rare tiny photo of me not dodging the camera for once.

I like cons, but I didn't have anythign new, and i really want to, but can't while i have work on.

My dissertation is currently me writing little postit notes of geekyness along the lines of "colour photocpoy on non-coated bond brilliant white A5 side stapled and trimmed" on the ton of small press publications i snaffled off will.

nana's artwork in twelfth night is depressingly good. -_-...

My internet is making a hash of uploading files I have to send for a commission.

I want to disappear for about 6 months and come back with a couple of comics printed.


I hate the sound of wind chimes.

Click pic for details at thought bub site. Gogogo!

cup of tomato soup with a greedy helping of croutons. gooooood.

dissertation is evolving beyond my original plans, but should be fun to deal with now. I'll ahve a lot of sticking in things and labling, and it'll probably be handed in to my tutor in 3 cardboard boxes full of relavant samples. mwahaahhahahahahaha

I'm actually back up north at the moment for a week- partly because yesterday I was doing the signing wheeze at my friend's shop [I had rather more passers by than people who actually wanted books signed!!] But we were in the most bloody minded location round a corner in a section of stalls which was a shared room, so it wasn't the easiest place to find- especially in afflecks, because afflecks is a maze, but I was there mostly to just pass the day,a dn met a number of very nice people interested in just chatting about gettign into teh coics industry, or about printing and making books, and people who were interested in manga and so on. It was a nice way to pass the day [although i'm out of shape, lugging my corpse con bag case with me and up stairs was a bit of a struggle.]



Anyway- the other thing that is happening this week is the hurry up on getting birdsong done, and me and will have ended up having to create some real collaborative efforts on the covers which have turned out ok actually. we hadn't intended on creating such a big collaboration at first, but when the original artist dropped out, we had to come up with stuff tootsweet, but we've both been swamped by work, so this week, i'm doign the uni stuff, and frantically fitting in the odd bit of birdsong drawing colouring and formatting and design work. arrrrrrrrgh.





people will recognise will's monster. and i'm going to hide now, because i'm sure he wants to stab me at some point because i'm a bit OBSESSIVE about design stuff at times [I can't design to save my life, but i've got a fairly good instinctive sense of balance in composition. It makes for a lot of fussing and tweeking stuff, and will get me killed by and angry graphic designer one day.

anyway- his other cover design is here

FFFPH! HAHAHAHAHAHA.

i'll regret it tomo, but it's been nice to chill :)

I did have an off day yesterday. Although it's been a while since I've had one, I also blame the fact that a friend sent me a book through the post, and I cannot put down a book without finishing it usually [it'll annoy me all day until i finish it.] If you catch me reading a book, I do warn you not to disturb me as I've cultivated the most evil glare in the world for people who disturb me reading. It's not that i particularly want to kill you in a personal way- but it's rather like that moment when you're in a cinema and watch a good film, and then kids/person with a plastic bag/small bladder disturbs your attention away from the film. Or, as my mother used to do which is stand in front of the tv and rustle about for soemthign in a plastic bag. I never did understand if she did it on purpose or not.

Hopefully managed to do my first chunk of paid work in a while, which i'm relieved about. Also happy in a subdued way, but yesterday's down was the reason I decided to go batshit nuts and take over another wall in my flat's livingroom/diningroom/computerroom/office. I've laready taken over one wall witha  shower curtain which usually has stuck to it the latest project I am working on, but it makes it difficult to visualize extraneous projects if you don't randomly get reminded of them occasionally.

In my old office, I had 4 walls to stick stuff to, and it worked very well. unfortunately, despite the expanded wall space i have in the flat as we're renting, thousands of little permament bits of cellotape will not amuse our landlord, so i've been severly restricted to leaving everything on the comp.

which sucks ass.

so I bought another shower curtain, texted the other half of my intentions and bunged everything on a spare wall.

I feel so much better.

The problem is that my current paid project and the meths 3 project ahve very diff artstyles, and it's hard to switch easily without first getting into the right mindframe for each project. I generally find it by sitting with a cup of tea and staring at thumbnails i've set up, or mnemonic sketches etc. I sued to have pictures everywhere, so i couldn't understand what was really wrong here at the flat for a long time, and this morning, I did. ...

anyway, i was able to do some sketches of maria which i was happy with and which corresponded with the meths style. [Thank goodness i can still draw it]

Heres to more work, and contentment. -_-

conflu decended on me this week, but i needed to get a bunch of work done for this weekend, so i'm still wading through the various lurgy related maladies.
anyway, things are starting to slowly appear through the post- including my acrylic book stands which i'd ordered for teh london excel [I was startign to feel I was taking up rather too much room on a shared exhibitors table so wanted to have a better space save plan for the books. God forbid when i start getting more books made eventually.



but i was really chuffed with them anyway.

Me and will are still trying to get the Birdsong anthology sorted, hopefully we'll have sorted the pages and the cover soon, and try and get it made and ready for printing.

Much as I love cons, I'm almost glad that the con season is almost over, with only the Leeds thoughtbubble to go, and the London MCM the biggest con that I go to over for the moment. -_-;;
I'm pretty tired, but- firstly-

thanks to all the organisers including the frantically overworked but still fabulous looking anna and emma who we glimpsed occasionally threading through the crowd off to do some job or another.
Chamonkee for driving the first day and Tea minion and Sewing minion, the cosplay minions and LAN minion for helping out on both days, I really would have just keeled over at the table without you guys occasionally propping me up from behind and puppeteering and talking for me when i froze like a deer in the headlights.....
Also many many thanks to everyone, and I mean EVERYONe who came over to the table to say hi. -_-;; you are all swell.


Calm before the storm. 8.00am setup time on saturday morning




This is our table on the second day. I spent a couple of hours making cardboard stands beforehand as I'd ordered some acrylic stands, but they're languishing in the Royal mail's backlog pile somewhere, along with my extra official minion badges and my grand generalissimo one. I'm going to have to find a better setup for the print portfolio one days as it's takes up far far too much room.



My lovely demon ladies who helped me out over the two day con, watching the table, bringing me tea, recruiting souls...
( Read more... )
the con was packed as usual with lots and lots and lots of cosplayers. the usual toy and plush and manga stalls were there although there were a large number of doujinshi stalls as well this time.

Still, it was fab, and hopefully i'll still ahve the energy to go in may as well :D

But, now, baaack to the mines. hi-ho.

GUH.




back to work -_-;;;;.....

I arrived back from J-culture con, and landed up to my eyebrows in work and backlog. In anycase, I ended up not being able to get anything done today sorting things out and have a meetign tomorrow which means i'll end up out and about for the entire entire entire day.

Anyway- J-culture con was fantastic, and sooo full of people in cosplay- and I even got my very first UK [I've had at least one US] cosplay! Of- FIIIIG! yey!

I was sharing a table with Tokyo15 again, and was pretty busy for the whole day.

Should hopefully be doing a signing at Tokyo 15 on the 14th of Nov in Manchester- the week before the Thought bubble con :)

Apologies for the listless post- I'm just tired...


[The poster...]

a wee update :) cheers em!

17th Oct 2009
J-CULTURE CON in Derby

The last year this will be run, which is a shame as it's a really lovely friendly con, it's on for the one day on this Saturday.

It's at-
Assembly Rooms,
Market Place,
Derby.
DE1 3AH

Probably limited tickets


Other cons coming up are also the London MCM which the table maps have just been sent out-


OCT 24-25th



I'm with Chamonkee on table C26 [look! Ben templesmith was nearly next to us!! GEEK -FIT!] And yey! I get to wander about a bit more this year! There are sooo many people this time :3 I wanna go check stuff out!

I've also hopefully got at least 2 Soul recruiting demon minion  ladies this year to help me out this year [and who are probably going to get sent out to try and pied piper some of the crowd from beyond the village to actually enter it. Just look out for red shirts, expanses of cleavage and a clipboard. Also check  for official badges. [but try not to oggle too much]

[A bit like the example below [disclaimer- actual ladies may differ from illustration, but the gist is there.]


Assembly Rooms,
Market Place,
Derby.
DE1 3AHAssembly Rooms,
Market Place,
Derby.
DE1 3AH
Assembly Rooms,
Market Place,
Derby.
DE1 3AH

Warwick is one of the artists in the birdsong anthology and he did a chamonkee and  meths fanart yey! XD

this is his fabfab blog-

http://warwickjohnsoncadwell.blogspot.com/

And this is the bloggety thingie the pic is on Weeee!

http://warwickjohnsoncadwell.blogspot.com/2009/10/continued-bics-reportfan-art.html