ACEO series 1 - wrestlers!

3 counts as a series right? So even if I don’t do any more of these I’m set? Cool.

I’ve wanted to get into ATCs/ACEOs for a while now, and recently I bought a set of assorted trading cards to try out. I think I know which material I like working with best now, but I’m yet to try the rest of the pack…I’ve really only used the vellum cards. I like vellum. At SMASH the Thingydudes and I were talking about wrestling (mostly, they were teasing me for watching and drawing from it ), so…yeah. Cue series of pretty WWE wrestler ACEOs.

ACEOs always seemed like the acceptable outlet for for-sale fanart, even among the folk I know who swear black and blue that trading and selling fanart (comics, prints or other merch) is Not Cool. Hmm. Need to think about it more to determine my own stance, but I do like doing these ACEOs.

Tomorrow at 11ish I will rejoin civilisation and my good  friends, Chris, Josh and Mark at SMASH. We will probably mostly be camping at Chris’s table, hocking excellent things like Jeff the Vegetarian Zombie, Itchy Tasty and then the three of us crash his table to hock The Thing That Should Not Be issues 1 and 2.

Come say hi.

So I’d like this to be an art blog. It’s not really going to happen, not any time soon. That’s okay – at some point at the very start of the year, while trying to fix this site I managed to bork it up further. At some point, possibly later this year, I will probably just throw my hands up in despair and format everything and start again. I’m not sure how yet. I do have some time off coming up, but I don’t plan to spend that working on coding.

At any rate, I’ve started drawing more often, lately. Or at least going back to quiet things I like to do. Have a half weekend’s worth of sketches done while watching wrestling. This is one of  the posts I probably won’t be resurrecting when format-time comes!

With this comic it also means I’ve completed my new year’s resolution: four mini comics in 2010. I don’t think this will be my last for 2010 though. At least, I certainly hope not!

The most excellent comics group of Lazytigersan, Kot86, Wraithdragon and myself are publishing our second book

I’ve never made a resolution before, so finishing this feels kind of cool but not really very different at all from, well, every other day. (Maybe I should go reward myself by buying Starcraft instead of going on about it) Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen it in print yet…

and speaking of seeing it in print, details coming soon on where to pick up the next TTTSNB!

Felt time!

Because I am a very slow learner, I decided to make another little stitched thing as a present. For the same friend, because she is amazingly patient. Here, have some hastily shot phonecamera photos.

Still not quite a finger puppet...but at least we're getting closer.

It wasn’t going to be a finger puppet – I was going to stuff her full and stitch her up properly , but then I ended up making her into a tiny little cover-thingy for the real present. And she also just happened to be very roughly fingersized. Sort of.

Sigh.

Sweet 2

This comic, which I have gone on about enough for now, and was pretty fun to do.

As an aside, the minicomic that went to print was not the comic I originally intended to print: it’s missing part of the ending, which I didn’t have time to thrash out and write the way I wanted to. I’m fine with the ending that got published, but it’s not really the full story.

On the other hand, thanks to the marvels of the internet, you’ll be able to read it soon anyway.

Anyway, the other book that got launched:

The Thing That Should Not Be

TTTSNB #1: Cover art by Chris Hale, graphic design by Mark Withington

As the cover says, this was a quick anthology (oh how quick) pulled together by Chris Hale, Josh Regan, Mark Withington and me. And it was an absolute blast working with all of them As a barbershop quartet we are enthusiastic. As a comicsmaking barbershop quartet we are almost superhuman with the deadline-creaming and the excited chattering and the comics-power. Josh powered through something amazing to get his adorable hand puppets comic done, Chris’s cover is fantastic and Mark’s graphic design – I am very much in love. (Me, I just sort of sat back and went ‘yeeeeeeeah’)

The comic was launched at Doujicon, and will be making another appearance at SMASH at Chris’s table. Which Mark and Josh will also be at. I probably won’t be though

Find out more about TTTSNB on our clubsite

The one thing I’m not a fan of is how the photocopier likes to murder these books – turning down the contrast didn’t help much, so a lot of the really nice subtleties of the toning has been lost for a mess of harsh black and white.

I really like drawing these trains. I don’t know why, they’re not very good – but it’s fun drawing them. I’ve uploaded the Other Train Scene in the first issue, but the cast shot is a train scene as well.

I’m not a fan of the peopleghosts so far.

I’m running a little bit behind time with Sweet 2 (well, a bit behind time for my current schedule – and I did take last year off comics), but it’s still going to be done well in time.

I’m really proud that I’ll have finished two minis in a month though. It’s kind of an experience going from doing nothing of substance for ages to churning out products for the sake of it. Unfortunately, thanks to the time constraints (erk deadline for previous mini erk Doujicon), I’m not really considering my panels properly, and doing some things as well as I could be – both minis have been pretty rushed. I’m going to have fun drawing Sweet 3 but egad am I going to look forward to not having any (urgent) plans for the weekends again. I think my workmates are sick of asking me my plans for the weekend/evening/month now, since I’ve been replying with nothing but “MUST FINISH COMICS” for a while.

On the other hand, I’m almost 3/4s of the way through my New Year’s Resolution

I’ll be taking Sweet down to Doujicon with me. At this rate, it may be my only new comic – alas alack. If you’re going, stop by my table and say hi! I’ll be sitting next to the ever magnificent and incredibly talented Dire.