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.



Event dates- 2009

14th Nov Signing at Tokyo 15 in  Afflecks palace Manchester
21st Nov Thought Bubble convention, Leeds





( Mephistos book 1 sample pages )

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

just like to introduce a  runnign webcomic by a friend of mine who does some mindbogglingly complex shading on his artwork. He's been working on this forever but it's certainly worth the wait! please take a look and perhaps join on and become a bit of his following :)



Just click the pic to go to the site :)

I usually have prints for sale at the cons, but i didn't really get organised for the bics con, and as a result everyone got to take a pick of prints with my free-print for every £15 spent offer. However, I'm thinking of doing two special edition prints especially for the freebie offer, i'm just trying to get a number of drawings done so i have something to pick before the next printing. I've always sort of wanted to point out Meth's lefthandedness [before he was 17, he had a right-handed guitar, and is actually proficient using it that way- but having a chance- he'd more likely use a lefty]

Hmn. maybe the maria pic i did a few days ago if i refine it....

hopefully booked webcomix thing.
I have a headache.. grump gah. work. argh

Gahhhhhh....
I just got home dropped off by Chamonkee, phoned in a chinese... and then started working through my work emails and list... T-T no rest for the wicked.

Anyway- I had a fantastic weekend, it was really good, and even though I was in the small room, I was actually eventually glad of this as when i had time to go socialize a bit on day two- the bigger hall was really hot, and being windowless as well, was pretty dark and stifling.



This is the bigger hall at the end of the second day- I didn't get a chance to go take photos until the very last moment- and the darkness is why my camera played judas and decided to go slow low light mode.



we arrived pretty early the Saturday morning to set up- but the table looked pretty nice by the time we finished, I grabbed an edge space on the left to put the prints folder again, will in the middle and dan on the end. Looking at the photo with a pang of guilt- i seem to have taken up rather a lot of table there.....
Anyway- we were selling Meths 1, Meths 2, Shika shika mini comic,  caffine 2009, small wooley crochet bags [I am going to make more phone and camera ones i think] prints, Cardboard doodles, Flowereaters part 1, The SEA 1,2 and 3, and Chipmunk part 1 and 2.

We were a bit surprised that the two doodles we thought were most likely to go didn't- although Mouryo sold, but simca and rock lee are still there!! shock. We drew a KEN from streetfighter pic for a guy[will penciled, I inked] but he didn't turn up so it's going to be there at the mcm.


We did pretty well over the two days, and i got to see a lot of people- Maggie and Al from Astral gypsy, Sonia leong and selina dean, asia alfasi, sara mcintyre was there with her new childrens book as well [which has fantastic microbe endpapers!! and even more fantastic contents... makes me think hard about doing kids books again] fetishman and mavis the minion [with his official minion badge] mal and lost of others- I lose track. anyway- a whole bunch of us ended up going for curry afterwards, including a person who i discovered only on the drive home on sunday night- was paul gravett. It's probably a good job i was clueless, but apologies if i cause any offence by not recognising you. It takes roughly [unless you are very very striking] 5 meetings before i recognise you in connection with your name. I am supremly bad at recognising people. good gods people, please tell me who you are, because i is STUPID.

anyway- the second day was surprisingly busier- it was much busier overall than last year anyway- but this year the sunday had more sales than saturday- partly i think because people were less concentrated into queueing for signings and sketches.




the less crowded well lit small room, our home for the weekend.

Bryan talbot was there too.



The table at the end of the second day- there is ken, kekkashi, rock lee and simca left, but we were all pretty happy with the overall sales and the people we met and the books we splashed out on. Got a few very nice things- and even finally chatted to asia, whose work will had been pretty enthusiastic about. :) it has a lovely sense of story like the short stories by rumiko takahashi and adachi mitsuru. you know what i mean.]

Bought- the rainbow orchid by garen ewing, hokusai, demons and other tales limited edition by the astral gypsy, Orbital2 PELLE Runberg [liked the art], papyrus, ramses revenge release by cine books, and also biggles comic with loads of spitfire pics., plus harvest.


Fab this year.

Well, back to the mines [sighs]

Next is J-culture con in Derby on the 17th Oct :)

Oh- and I won thiss faaaab fetishman doll!!! Mwahahahahahahaha [for faking a fetish monetary note.]



PS- apologies- i accidently deleted the post last time... T-T

doodle before i plough back into getting work done T-T

( table list )

I'm in the small room which you go into straight in from the entrance I think- sharing a table with will kirkby and dan wild.

filled with driving all over the shop because my current home town is in the middle of nowhere and is as far as possibly sited from anything i need to attend. [Plus, i still ahven't managed to cajol jam into driving yet. The whole thing about being driven around by somone else has really spoilt him. wait til he has a saturday shift again, because i'm going to ignore him and not get out of bed at 6am just to drive him. that'll learn him good. i just don't have the time to drive him to a quet car park and work out how the car works again.]
Un-segue.
A) like enrolling for uni.

because my uni is so frickin' far away now, i'm actually mostly doing my course as a blog and lots of pictures, but i also found out the assesser person has changed the assesment date to- the 11th of December instead of january as it used to be, which has made the blood pressure of every MA student with a dissertation and final project to hand in, hit the ceiling.
anyway, as i had to stay up north for a bit because i also had some family events on sunday- i met up with UBERMIDGET in manchester and finally, finally snaffled the METHS PLUSHIE she's been making for me off'ff her MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



It has a real really tiny shirt and tie, and trousers with a tail hole and everything.....

anyway- she's startnig to make comissions to order- I mean Meths is a bit bigger than the average plushie  and is about a foot high, but she's made quite a few, and has just invested in her own sewing machine, so if you're interested, she's tryign to create her own business as an everything goes, animator illustrator plushie maker.

and i ended up in limbo waiting around [without my work equipment which annoyed the hell out of me, that i ended up crocheting in the spaces.... -_-...]



phone size- mini ipod size and finally- cameraish size. I've had one for ages [since well over last year, and it baiscally lives in my bag, but rather surprisingly, it not only keeps my camera safe, it's survived and is in a reasonable condition considering the bashing about it gets. Jam has one for his ipod... My fave is the brown camera bag with blue eyes...

i'm going to the  to the birmingham comic show which is this weekend!! go to it! buy stuff! feed me for the next few months so i don't have to steal from allotments and can spend more time drawing comics for you! Rar!

[most of this mood is from eating unitentifyable mushrooms from the nearby woods.]

please help my friend-

http://chamonkee.livejournal.com/141709.html

Over the past few months, i completely forgot that drawing comics was supposed to be a happy thing as i changed my drawing method slightly using finer lines, but i dropped back into one today to break up drawing from my job, and remembered that it was FUN drawing mephistos in a loose spazzy style.

yesterday.. -_-

it was nice just to doodle.

here are some of them.

[including some of the meths crew as pirates. we all unanimously agreed that maria would probably be the captain sicne she's probably the only one who owns any braincells between them all.]



getting some of my con stuff together ready for bics at the end of this month- need to get prints and bookmarks sorted.