A bit of irritating honesty (...sorry.)

This is a character sketch Dylan has done for the story he's doing for me, which is called "Death Be Praised." Cheery title!

It is the middle of the night right now. My kids are fast asleep. I've had a couple of drinks and I'm left to thinking to myself what would I do to get the career I want? Times like this I realise how stupidly impatient I really am. I'm feeling extremely frustrasted!

Next.... !

As soon as I can get my hands on a scanner or a copy shop that can scan artwork A3 0r bigger I'll post Glenn's cover and the firstpage of the John McCrea story. (Actually John McCrea story is at present the only part of this project that is complete. At four page it is aslo the shortest too.)

I'm also getting into that awkward internal mental debate over lettering and colouring.

Lettering is pretty straightforward. I think I want to go oldschool and letter onto the artwork itself. That way I've got control over the finished product for longer. Not that I'd dream of wrecking pages of comics art with my awful scrawl. Just don't want to go digital on the lettering I don't think.

Colouring is the real problem. What is better black and white or colour? Give me a couple of days and you'll see what I mean. This is a real dilemma. I have a real passion and softspot for black and white artwork. But colour is commercial, it sells, and I can't really afford to be precious. Having said that if I self publish its simply gotta be black and white.

One Panel

This is a bit of a tease really. One panel coutesy of Dylan Teage. It really is damn good. He is almost a 21st century Dave Gibbons. I realise this is close to comic book blasphemy, but it happens to be true. I simply cannot wait to get more pages from Dylan, the guy seems to have talent in spades. He's a busy guy and by his own admission not the fatest artist on the planet, but man the quality just so makes up for that in spades!!

Hello...

I'm slightly new to this, and have been inspired to start this blog by reguarly checking the blogs of a handful of comic artists I'm something of a fan of. Chiefly among these would be Dylan Teague and Dave Taylor's blogs. There are others of course, Glenn Fabry's website is cool and Alan Davis's site is also well worth checking out. There's lot of lovely art on all four of these. Hours of Entertainment!

As the header of this blog says I'm trying to get back into scripting comics after a break of several years. If anyone is suitably curious by all means enter my name into wikipedia. There's a list of everything I was fortunate enough to get into print on there, and it seems more straightforward to suggest this than type it all out. Not that there's THAT much of it.

Besides that's all in the past and I'm not really hoping to spend too much time thinking about the past. The future interests me far more. I'm an ambitious sort and would love get back into writing successfully. The buzz from it is better than any drug. There's no better feeling than writing a page of script, describing all the panels and working out the dialogue and then seeing that page drawn up by an artist. Sadly I have trouble drawing stick men and am consequently in awe of anyone that has that special gift to be able to draw.

In this vein I've been writing lots of scripts for years. I never stopped writing, life just seemed to get in the way. Now I'm thinking you only live once, so do something. With this in mind I'm in the process of putting together a comic myself which I'll either self publish or possibly be able to persuade someone to publish for me (Dark Horse,Wildstorm, or Image Comics would be fan-bloody-tastic). Each issue would feature two or three short stories. I've got three artists onboard for this project so far. It will feature artwork from Glenn Fabry, John McCrea and Dylan Teague. Three exceptionally talented artists.

Someone once said leave your audience wanting more, so that's what I'll do... Assuming I have an audience...
Anyone out there? Next time I'll see if I can put some art for the comic online. Glenn's done a lovely cover.

Anyway. Thanks for reading.