Edible Brain

Ships of the Line

2011-02-01T00:36:00.006Z

My planned DECONSTRUCTED update has been delayed until Thursday, so to fill the time I'm uploading the spaceship doodles I Tweeted the other day, so apologies if you've seen any of this before.

I've scanned and cropped each individual design to the same width so that Blogspot's habit of scaling by image width will not interfere size of the images. I've also included a size comparison image to give scale.

CRUISER

CARRIER

GUNBOAT

FRIGATE

TRANSPORT

SCALE COMPARISON

Although these designs fit with the general design philosophy of the DECONSTRUCTED universe as far as I have realised it so far, I must stress that these ships have no exact background or purpose. I'll leave that up to DECONSTRUCTED god-creator Den Patrick.

No Power in the 'Verse Can Stop Me

2011-01-16T00:16:00.005Z

It's much later than I had planned and I really should be making my way to bed- pretty pathetic for a Saturday night but that's retail for you and I learned to live without a weekend social life long ago.

As promised in my midweek post here is the colourised version of my Firefly characters.

I've just put them against a neutral background until I can throw together a background that compliments the composition and palette that I've used.

I'd planned to write in some detail about techniques I'd used and colours I'd selected (Most noticeably Rivers pallid complexion) but I think I'll save that for when I've got the backdrop rendered and the piece is actually complete.

Also, work in the morning and bed is looking more and more inviting.

Two straight days off next week which I plan to put to use on MOAR PAGES for DECONSTRUCTED, so expect an update on that next week (should keep Mr. Patrick in happymode for a few days if nothing else.).

You Can't Take The Sky From Me

2011-01-11T22:00:00.006Z

In an attempt to avoid my weekly blog updates becoming mechanical and perfunctory I've decided to do a midweek post- you know; mix things up a little bit.

This is made all the more exciting because, as I write this my lovely Mac keeps repeatedly warning me that my Bluetooth keyboard batteries are spluttering their last dying breaths and could conk out at any moment, in fact because I type eyes- down I could at anytime look up and find an entire passage missing and my screen covered in a big pretty "HA! I TOLD YOU SO, MOTHERFUCKER!" sign. Fun, no?

For some time I've been working on some Firefly fanart (not that kind you dirty, dirty bastards) and thought I'd share it with you lot. If you don't know what Firefly or it's big screen incarnation, Serenity are I kindly suggest you stop wasting you time here and go and watch it now. Now NOW NOW.

Ok, back now? Lets continue.

The intent is to produce a nice big group shot of the whole Serenity crew in cartoony caricature style. I figured the best way to manage this would be to produce each character separately and then combine them in Photoshop later, this allowed me to fully realise each design without elements being concealed by obstructive foreground characters. Doing this also allows me to post a separate pic for each character and add some brief notes about each one, which can be found below.

Mal

Mal was a difficult prospect; a character who is at once totally devoted to his crew and yet at the same time often stands apart from them. For obvious reasons I planned to place Mal at the center of the composition and paired him with Inara but to highlight the unrequited affection between the pair I placed them back- to- back, with both of them sneaking over the shoulder looks at each other.

Inara

Inara's pose is set to mirror Mal's but be simultaneously alluring and closed- her foot is raised denoting an intention to turn to face him but at the same time her arms are folded forming a classic barrier to his advances.

Jayne

I designed Jayne to look BIG. Although in reality Adam Baldwin and Nathan Fillion are of similar height Jayne was always framed to look as big and mean as possible, helped by Adam Baldwin's superbly brutish performance he was always larger than life on screen and I wanted to bring this to his character when I drew him. Although you can't tell from this image because of blogspot's irritating habit of arbitrarily resizing images, the Jayne character is drawn to be at least a foot taller than any of the others. I rendered him in a plain t-shirt which I later added the Blue Sun logo to, and his simply awesome orange woolly hat (which he received in 'The Message' from his loving mum) which has become somewhat iconic for the character amongst fans. He also sports a grenade. Grenades are useful in many situations, and Jayne doesn't like leaving home without them.

Zoe & Wash

This was one of the easiest comps to come up with. Zoe & Wash are so obviously in love it went without saying that they should be drawn in an embrace. I wanted to put something in that would show Wash's playful almost childlike exuberance and tie in his position as pilot so harking back to his introductory scene in the pilot episode where he is seen playing with toy dinosaurs I placed a toy Serenity in his hand- this also allowed me to place the ship in the character line-up, honoring it's position as the show's "10th character". Zoe looks on, a tolerant smile on her face.

River Tam

River is meant to be significantly younger than any of the other crew. A child prodigy, she is rescued by Simon in the pilot episode (the actual events of the rescue are shown in flashback in the movie). In order to accentuate her vulnerability I drew her a couple of years younger than actress Summer Glau actually was when Firefly was shot, not being restricted by the abilities of a younger actress to convey the nuance of the characters condition. I drew River in 'wander mode' a condition that can be observed numerous times throughout the series when she is introduced to a new environment- this is in contrast to 'manic mode' and 'homicidal death orgy' mode.

Simon & Kaylee

Aw now come on- who wasn't pulling for these two during the original run of the show? Although Joss Whedon saw fit to bless the faithful fans with a bit of closure for these characters in the final scenes of Serenity I have chosen to draw them at an earlier stage of their relationship (similarly Shepherd Book's lack of bullet holes and Wash's missing impalement spike). Kaylee is playing her typically forward sexuality against Simon's clumsy inexperience. Looks like he's made the right move with those strawberries though.

Shepherd Book

Book was even harder than Mal to pose. Given that we learned so little about the character during the show's short run and his relegation to a supporting role in Serenity I went for a pose that reflected his position amongst the ensemble as the crew's upstanding moral compass. He holds his Bible before him, symbolic of his faith but also that perhaps he hides most of what he is behind it. People see the book, and not Book the man.

That's all for now- this post has unexpectedly turned into a monster and I really should be going to bed. Tune in for Saturday's update to see what happened when I coloured all these guys.

So Very, Very Bored.

2011-01-08T20:57:00.005Z

You know how, on the odd occasion it seems as though the world is trying to tell you something? That is precisely the feeling I got the other day when I saw the above image.

I mean, if the fucking Batman can't motivate you nothing will right? I'm thinking of getting the pic blown up and mounted so it can stare down from above my drawing board.

Been a fun week. So very busy at work now that everyone and his cat have realised that they've spent their entire January living budget in the first weekend of the year and have to somehow scrape a meagre living on the pocket change they have left after the new year's debauchery.

By and large this does not seem to have left anyone the means or inclination to buy phones. At least not from my shop.

This funny fella is a Robodragon. I wish I had more to tell you but the fact is this guy is just a doodle that sprang to mind during a quiet period at work. He has no background and i have no intention of using him in anything. Just a good way of wasting a bunch of biro ink and a sheet of copy paper.

The only thing exceptional about this sketch is that I did it in one shot, no uncorrectable errors or disguised mistakes- the design, pose and rendering all came right first time, which i must say is highly unusual for me.

RESOLUTION§

2011-01-01T22:54:00.003Z

Not much time to write this- I made a new years resolution to update this blog weekly from now on, starting today. Various obstacles presented themselves, including the mother of all headaches (not alcohol related I assure you) and a temperamental scanner, but it looks like I've managed to do it- so happy!

Below you will find page 3 of DECONSTRUCTED, a page which I have feared for a long time owing to it's scripted format- 6 identical panels with nothing but dialogue and the gradual disrobing of Sophie to differentiate them.

In rendering the final version I made some changes, including a couple of close ups for emphasis, particularly panel 5, which is the first time the reader actually sees the heroine. It seemed important to give her some 'face time'

Have to stop writing now or I may not get this posted before midnight!

Happy new year!

One Of Us, One Of Us...

2010-08-23T02:34:00.000+01:00

I learned one of the most important lessons of my life the other day;

Laptops are not Ribena- proof.

Now this might seem fairly obvious to most of you, but ask yourself; "Am I sure? Have I actually tested the theory?"

I have. They're not.

So you can tick that one off the list. If you were ever unsure, now you don't have to be.

So my blessed old HP lappy is dead- drowned in a sticky puddle of delicious strawberry flavoured syrupy goodness. Have you ever spilled liquid on a computer? There's a tantalising second or two where you will be lead to believe that if you can just invert the machine and drain the wetness back the way it went in before it drips onto anything important then everything will be okay. This is a cruel deception. There is no hope. You're fucked. As soon as that water/ beer/ wine/ Ribena makes contact with you beloved electronic life-partner it's on a one-way trip to a flickery spasmodic death. And don't expect anything dramatic either, chances are for all your trouble all that'll happen is you'll get a ghostly after-image of the last thing your computer displayed before it unceremoniously fades to black, never to be revived.

But all is not lost.

Wise people keep backups.

Wiser people keep Mac-ups. (See what I did there?)

It took a few days, some wrangling with the financial department (Mum's can be ever so helpful) and a frantic search around the local PC World stores but I am now the ever-so-proud owner of a brand spanking new iMac!

SQUEEEEEEEE!

Never again do I have to worry about spillages on my desk- the sexy innards of my computer are now suspended four inches above any kind of liquid death housed behind a rather splendid 21.7" screen.

I've spent the last two days getting the thing set up the way I like it and transferring my iTunes library (a process nowhere near as arduous as I had been lead to believe) and now I'm ready to start work!

P.S. OH MY GOD MY WACOM WORKS SO MUCH SMOOTHER NOW!

P.P.S. I've been playing around with colouring a little on one of my DECONSTRUCTED pages, just to get used to using a mouse with no buttons and an OS that feels like someone turned WINDOWS upside down and tipped all the shit out.

Fingerpainting

2010-08-15T22:24:00.004+01:00

Yep, that's right- two posts in two days! I'm on a roll baby! No seriously, I fear I may have been replaced with some sort of over productive pod-person. Please advise me of any other abnormal behaviour if I exibit it- for your own safety, and the safety of the planet.

So, what do the pictures below have in common (other than a less-than-usual adherance to form and proportion)?

They were all created using 'Sketchbook' rather than Photoshop.

'Big wow' I hear you say but the cool thing about Sketchbook is not that it offers an easy to use alternative to more expensive competitors (it retails at £1.79) but rather that it's an iPhone app.

The pictures below were constructed variously in the time between customers at work, on lunchbreak or, in the case of the last one, during the finale of the BBC's superb Moffat/Gatiss reworking of Sherlock Holmes- 'Sherlock' (Masterful, really really just bloody good television).

The app features a very respectable selection of tools and brushes, allows you to fiddle with layers and filters and even gives you a free-transform tool which, thanks to the touch interface is actually much easier to use than the one in photoshop- nifty.

From time to time I may upload more of these little pocket artworks, if nothing else creating them is teaching me better use of brushes and such- something I have historically never been too good at (always been more of a sketcher).

Hope you like these, and please forgive me if they're a bit rough- it's surprisingly hard to paint with your fingertip.

Beware 'Nudey Burning Chick'! I sometimes use this one to demonstrate the power of the iPhone for customers. I'm all 'Dude- I totally painted this in my iPhone' and they're all 'No way! You're a big fat liar!'

This is actually one of the first sketches of DECONSTRUCTED's Sophie I ever did!

And this is one of the most recent. The weird framing is to hide the fact that her body mysteriously stops at the shoulders.

Johnny Five... Is Alive!

2010-08-13T22:55:00.004+01:00

Here we are again then... a couple of weeks later than planned. Again. Work continues to eat away at my time like a ravenous parasite that feeds on my ideas. Starting your day job at 8:30AM and getting home 12 hours later is not exactly conducive to the creative process.
None the less; here is DECONSTRUCTED page 5 in both its rough form (above) and the finalised version (below).
Please note in particular the tool box and equipment strapped to the front tread housing in the rough. An idea I really liked but forgot to render in my pencils for page 1 and thus had to leave out here for continuity. In fact if you look at the pencils for page one you'll notice that Sophie's footprints stomp around in place a little at the front tread- originally where she was to be retrieving tools. Maybe I'll get a chance to correct it later or it can be picked up in inks.

Nothing more to say other than to thank DECONSTRUCTED writer and creator Den Patrick for the awesome hardback copy of 'Slaine- The Horned God' (signed by Simon Bisley himself) I received in the mail today- a gift that actually made me SOL (Squee Out Loud) when I got home this evening.

De Page Boss, De Page!

2010-07-23T06:39:00.002+01:00

Seems like an age since my last post. Time is a commodity that I have little of at the moment. Work obligations seem to consume most of my life and leave very little room for anything else. I had intended for this to be a much larger post with two whole pages to show but sadly time constaints have limited it to one.

Hopefully this will improve soon but for now its all work, work, work - and not the good kind.

Behold, DECONSTRUCTED pencils for page 4 rough (above) and finished (below)

Peace y'all!

MOAR PAGEZ!

2010-06-29T20:02:00.006+01:00

Well, technically that should be 'MOAR PAGE' as there is only one today. But don't fret- there will be another on Thursday, which should keep the Dens of this world happy at least.

This is page 2 of DECONSTRUCTED. Below are the rough pencils, and the final version, which you will see have hardly changed at all.

So those are the originals roughs, obviously...

And these are the finals. Let me know what you think, more to come on Thursday.

P.s. Those who follow me on Twitter may recall I recently found my old school yearbooks. You'll be glad to know I fully intend to humiliate myself (and possibly a few others)

Time Is The Fire In Which We Burn

2010-06-20T09:07:00.005+01:00

Considering my dayjob title is 'Sales Consultant' (Admin Sales now) I tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the phone on hold or just sitting around waiting for customers to actually take the leap and decide the best way to buy a phone is to actually come into the store.

Most of the other staff spend this kind of downtime messing around on their iPhones or pestering friends on facebook.

I get creative. Now I'd love to be able to say I have a mature attitude to doodling but the fact is, when I'm bored, its girls, guns and robots that tend to come to mind. Ive already shown you a few robots , so here's a couple of the girls.

Now because these are just work place doodles and done in biro no less, they are obviously not as polished or well posed as normally my pics would be. Also because they're drawn on a flat desk they tend to have a stretched look to them. I prefer working on an inclined board or in my lap.

In short, these aren't my best work, but I thought you might like to see what drifts through my head on a slow work day.

This one in particular irks me. I managed to make a sniper rifle weightless. Annoying, but in biro, what's done can't be undone.

Blast from the Past, Yes?

2010-06-17T06:44:00.004+01:00

I got promoted at work the other day.

Wheeeeee, great.

Of course while the kick up the arse of my stagnant salary is welcome it does mean that things have been a little stressy of late, what with me running around like a panicked chicken trying desperately to upskill for the position I have to assume in two weeks (not easy when you consider that one of those weeks will be spent on holiday).

This has lead to a lot of late nights and early mornings, hardly condusive to the production of 'MOAR PAGEZ' as my DECONSTRUCTED editor Den (channeling the spirt of a pimply internet- spreaking teenager) constantly badgers.

Possessed by a need to draw but having neither the time nor the energy to crank out the latest DECONSTRUCTED page, I scrawled out the above doodle during the mindshattering drama of South Africa vs. Uraguay.

Now anyone who grew up in the nineties will recognise the fellow above as Death's Head II and his trusty sidekick, Tuck. For anyone not in the know DH2 was a creation of Marvel UK during the early nineties who bounced around time fighting various well known (and plenty of not so well known) baddies from around various Marvel franchises.

Many despise DH2 for replacing the original wise cracking smartly written DH but I always had a soft spot for Big Blue for a number of important reasons. Firstly, he was the figurehead of the Marvel UK pantheon during the formative years of my teens. Secondly he looked totally badass and thirdly, and perhaps most importantly; whilst the original DH was a quipping, one- lining sociopath and DH2 tended to be a little less complicated he scored over the older, smarter incarnation when it came to sidekicks.

The original DH had Spratt- an ironically bumbling street kid who DH claimed to openly despise but secretly harboured a soft spot for.

DH2 had Tuck- a bio- engineered love slave turned amazon with a taste for skimpy clothing and heavy artillary.

I was 14. Do the maths.

The Internet Told Me To.

2010-06-09T23:32:00.003+01:00

So, totally out of order; here's page one! First the roughs:

And then the finals:

You'll notice very little difference in the composition between the two, although the Donkey has undergone some cosmetic polishing. The main difference is that the finished pencils are drawn using three point perspective, which required the use of so many construction lines that halfway done the piece looked like the work of a demented but very spatially aware spider. I also got rid of the Donkey's snowplough, mostly because although it had a kinda cool retro cow-catcher look to it, in practical terms it served no purpose- in fact it was positioned in such a way as to move snow into the path of the tracks.
More to come soon. Den has found me on Twitter so now there's no escape from his 'encouragements'.

I, Robot(s)

2010-05-30T07:37:00.004+01:00

Fuck Blogger. Fuck it in it's stupid ass.

As soon as I work out a practical replacement I'm moving this blog to a different host. The Java powered editor I use to write this is a ghastly fuck of a git. Using it is like a punishment. Wrote a full entry this morning before work, in the hours that I think are some of the most important of the day, the ones that set your mood for the next eight hours or so and was very happy with it. Then I tried to upload my work and the stupid bastardfuck decided to instead irradicate my hard work and put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Pity. It was looking so good until then.

Here's some bloody robots. First two black ballpoint doodles from work. Second two out of sketchbook. Want more description?

Tough.

Blame Blogger. Dumb piece of shit.

Canvas

2010-05-18T14:04:00.003+01:00

What? A post? Here? From Me?

That's right peeps, I'm back and no amount of work related worries, finacial woes or Xbox releases are going to stop me this time!

Met up with the awesome Den last week and had a good old chinwag about numerous things, like two friends who haven't seen each other in nearly a decade might be expected to do. Most important and exciting of which was obviously our treasured project, DECONSTRUCTED.

Its been nearly three months since I posted my rough pencils for the first half of issue one and I'm please to give you the first page of final pencils that I've produced. Below is the rough for page 9 for reference so you can see the changes I made to the final version.

Now its probably handy to give you a couple of bits of information about me. 1.) I work almost exclusively in A4. 2.) I almost never produced finished work. 3.) I very rarely place my characters in an environment.
Now knowing Den was going to need some exciting pages to show to potential publishers I decided to throw myself in at the deep end by drawing the most action packed page out of my section of the book; page 9.
More of a challenge than I imagined. turns out my roughs were a little basic in composition so I made a couple of cinematic changes- switching in a few close ups to pull the reader into the scene and breaking up the linier setting with some more exciting angles. Took much longer than I expected and a couple of high profile Xbox releases ended up battling for my attention. In the end I ended up making a new playlist for my iPod entitled 'Youthful Dreams of Success' containing all the music I used to listen to back in the mid 90's when I first invisioned being a comic book artist. These tracks were the same ones I used to listen to while hunched over my parents dining table creating some of the characters you may have already seen on this blog and it was amazing to see the psychological effect those tunes had. I found myself enthused as I haven't been in months with that same naive energy I had in my teens.

The energy it turns out is still there, just buried under tonnes of adult concerns which mostly amount to issues about what I am, not who I am.
Turns out that even if my adult life gets mired in mediocrity on a day to day basis I still have the power, as do we all, to escape into imagination and what is even better; I can put it on a page. Never realised until now how grateful I am for that.
Still wish I could play the guitar though. Stupid little hands.

Down a Hole.

2010-02-25T19:07:00.008Z

Ha! At long last the much anticipated, much delayed second part of DECONSTRUCTED issue 1 is here! Featuring much more action than the first part as well as a whole number of perspective related problems; seriously- setting an action scene in a ribbed corridor? That's just mean!

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

Page 11

Page 12

Think I need to do some proper design work on those cryo pods before commiting to the final pencils- sometimes I wish I had any skill at all with 3d modelling; it would make many elements a heck of a lot easier to cope with!

There's Too Many Of Them!

2010-02-20T21:39:00.002Z

Hardly a post at all, just paying respect to Den's love of the Republic Cruiser from the Star Wars prequels. Be careful what you say to me in jest!

Big update with five more pages of DECONSTRUCTED to come tomorrow- 'night y'all!

I Can Sing a Rainbow

2010-02-19T16:04:00.003Z

Just playing around with some colours, not that it really falls within my responsibilities on DECONSTRUCTED- just a bit of fun. Wanted to mess around with some more interesting colours than you normally see on typical scifi spaceship- they're all so typically dour. No idea if Den will like any of them though.

Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!

2010-02-18T21:45:00.005Z

Hallo everyone!

Very exciting post this time- I've finally finished a design for Evengeline and I'm pretty happy with it. To anyone not sure what I'm going on about Evengeline is the salvage ship from the project I'm working on with Den Patrick called DECONSTRUCTED. For some reason a design that both Den and I are happy with has eluded me until now (I think- Den has only seen the front and side elevations so far).

This one takes elements from numerous design concepts and combines them in what I hope looks like a pretty sturdy functional vessel. Anyway, stuff I've said earlier on the subject can be found here.

It's Been a Hard Day

2010-02-12T21:55:00.006Z

Tough day at work. Early start tomorrow. Need to sleep. Haven't time to scan and watermark the other pages of DECONSTRUCTED so here's a portrait of Sophie I knocked out the other day to relax when I was stressing over page comps.

Herr Durr Derp Derp Derp

2010-02-11T20:17:00.004Z

So it's been over a month since my last update. Consider it a winter hibernation period from which I have now awakened. Or blame Modern Warfare 2, Trails HD and Mass Effect 2.

I've also invested in an iPhone so Doodlejump probably has some blame to share too. that and Twitter. Twitter rules my life now. With Twitter I can pretend I know celebrities and converse with them through the medium of shortform blogging, a delusion not discouraged in the least when David Hewlett (@dhewlett), Dr. Rodney McKay himself from Stargate: Atlantis deigned to respond to one of my comments. Just how geeky you are will determine if you think this is a) Awesome or b) Tragically sad.

Anyway, mega-bumper-update to make up for the recent laziness: The first seven pages of DECONSTRUCTED in rough form, sans dialogue.

Note for Den; I realise this isn't the 12 pages you wre expecting but I figured spreading it over two days will get me back into the habit of posting regularly, plus the scanning took way longer than I expected and I had to watermark everything to boot!

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

The rest tomorrow my friends! Promise!

Why So Serious?

2009-12-03T00:00:00.003Z

Told you so.

Suffer Not The Mutant To Live!

2009-12-02T23:35:00.005Z

These two pics have been drifting around the top of my sketch book file for the past few months and, fancying a break from all the shiny new DECONSTRUCTED niceness I thought I'd post them. Sadly, although the extremely thin drafting paper (about 40gsm) I drew them on is great for detail work and takes a line really well it also had a tendency to compress and then crease when used. It's not really noticeable to the naked eye but the strong point light source of the scanner I use really accentuates the ridges. Pity, but there you go.

This dude is just your standard rank and file cannon- fodder guardsman, no doubt soon to become a Tyranid toothpick or have his head burst by the fiendish machinations of the chaos gods. Poor bloke. I always liked the guard- I mean Space Marines are all very well and good but they only account for about a tenth of one percent of the Imperium's fighting strength. In terms of sure volume, it's the Guard who win every time. Plus they get tons of cool tanks and shit.

I freakin' love Eldar. That's all there is to say about this dude. Somewhere, lost within the pages of my books or on a dusty hard drive somewhere there's a pretty cool picture of a Harlequin Deathjester. I'll see if I can find it.

Ghostwriter

2009-12-01T22:45:00.001Z

I DID IT BABY!! WOO!!

I was beginning to think I might not manage to ever upload here again- life keeps throwing obstacles my way like some kind of crazed Donkey Kong rolling barrel after barrel of angst at a hapless Mario who is all out of hammers. Sorry about the insanely dated reference there, I suspect its a reaction to the sudden influx of virtual children into my workplace making me feel old in every regard, right down to the similes.

Still, at least i have a silver lining for, unlike the countless hopeless cases of the workforce who share the feeling that the world is gradually overhauling them and will eventually leave them choking on vibrant, youthful dust, I have a chance to change lanes. DECONSTRUCTED.

Work continues abreast after a hiatus of a month or so and Den will I'm sure be delighted to see not one but TWO designs in this post. Yay!

He's been working tirelessly in his centre of operations in our great nations capital and I just cant thank him enough for all his work and enthusiasm, as well as his encouragement. Not only has Den been recruiting some of the other people we need to get our fledgling project off the ground, but he's also but together a production blog where all of the work to date has been collected. He really has been a busy bee and I thank him immensely for it.
Footnote: I cant wait to get up to London and bang heads Bro!
Anyway, without further ado~

Janowitz. Frustratingly, since my latest PC crash I haven't been able to set up outlook or retrieve the character bible from my Blackberry so I cant copy and paste the excerpt here as I have in the past. Janowitz is the Captain of our crew. Den said he wanted a Kris Kristofferson kind of look for a capable, well- worn sort of character. This is my take, hope its OK.

Riley. Riley is in her late thirties, loud mouthed and abrasive. Den and I discussed designing a female character who doesn't conform to the usual comic book stereotypes so as a result Riley is a little more working mum than super heroine. Her trademark accessory is one of those quit- smoking- plastic thingies and I figure she used to smoke ALOT so since quitting she's piled on a few pounds and become even more grouchy. Nice. Actually a lot of fun to draw.

Anyway, that's all for now... Promise more soon, maybe even some non- DECONSTRUCTED stuff. I really want to produce a pic of the Knights of Good- in character from Felicia Day's THE GUILD. Finding time of course, that's another matter.

Death of a Salesman.

2009-10-27T19:43:00.004Z

Just in case anyone was starting to worry about my relative quietness recently following the flurry of DECONSTRUCTED activity, fear not- I have not died (I seem to have to say that with alarming frequency) or lost enthusiasm, I simply have a lot of work to do at the moment.

If any of you have worked in sales at all you're probably aware that the end of the month can be quite frantic as you desperately try to meet those quotas. Commitment to this has meant a few late nights in recent days and I've been left feeling rather drained so my productivity has dropped a little.

Fear not, however for happily I now have two straight days off to indulge my sketchbook so expect some new stuff in the next couple of days.

Speaking of work, the creation you see above is a little something I knocked out during a quiet spell this morning- call it a doodle if you will. Most of the doodles I do at work also have confidential customer details all over them, or it might be fairer to say my confidential customer details have doodles all over them- either way they get filed or shredded. Fortunately this one was done on a fresh piece of 80gsm printer stock so I was free to bring it home.
It's rendered in Biro and depicts one of my coworkers, whom I hate enough to draw having his head squished by a naked demon. He has also soiled himself if you can tell. The demon also raped him. You can't tell from the picture but he did.

In the interest of professionalism I shall not reveal the identity of the individual.

He is not called Steve.

Tales of Acadie

2009-10-20T19:36:00.006+01:00

Spaceships, spaceships, spaceships. I love designing spaceships. Have a look in my sketchbooks; spaceships- all over the place.

DECONSTRUCTED requires the design of a spaceship; The Evangeline. I was given the following brief:

DESIGNATION: LOS PERDIDO COMBINE SHIP EVANGELINE
TYPE: COMMERCIAL SALVAGE VESSEL/ HAULER
CLASS: AMERICANA HS B-20

Not a lot to go on huh? well, thankfully Den is more than happy enough to furnish me with additional details as required. After a few well aimed e-mails I was able to ascertain that Evangeline was somewhere around the size of Serenity or Betty- a kind of Millennium Falcon affair which needs to be atmosphere capable, able to carry two 'Donkey' size snowcrawlers and capable of microgravity salvage operations. Den also mentioned that Evangeline is private rather than military so large battle cannons and maser guns were pretty much out of the question...

First up I went back to an old design you'll find hiding here and tidied it up a bit but I thought it looked a little too airplane-ish

I played and played and played with the design but every time I ended up with something that looked like a cross between Colonial One and Darth Maul's sith interceptor... I got a little obsessive with the overhanging bridge module element as you can probably tell, and don't even ask what I was thinking about the one that looks like a tugboat with a tail...

It came down to this; I wanted a ship that looked utilitarian but also shaped like it could enter an atmosphere without any of that 'shields' or 'repulsorlift' jiggery- pokery. It needed to be tough, but clearly not military, and about the size of a middling to large airliner. Obviously we needed space to store and deploy our snowcrawlers and also areas to stow cargo both internally and externally. I wanted to have an engineering section distinct from the cargo and command sections.

All the designs I was producing started from a side elevation design and were falling into the same trap- too streamlined, too nice to look at, too aggressive- some even looking like fighters. Pretty cool in most respects but not Evangeline, so I started afresh. Not fair to say i went back to the drawing board as I never left it but I certainly attacked the problem from a new angle and more importantly a new perspective- I started not from a side- on view but a 3d projection allowing me to create the shape and presence I was looking for, whilst simultaneously making something that was pig-ugly from the side. Much more satisfying.

This looks not like an airliner, but a flying Tonka-toy. I can fully imagine this ship being coloured building- site yellow or John Deere green. Certainly a tool rather than a joyride.

Evangeline awaits Den's approval. Or not. He might hate it. Erm.

Delayed and Diminished.

2009-10-19T16:42:00.006+01:00

Sorry this post is a little later than I intended. I had planned to spend all of Sunday digging into the delicious character bible that Den produced for me this week and churn out another few character designs but unfortunately I was struck down (for the second time in a fortnight!) with a nasty stomach virus that left me quite incapable of anything other than lolling (and I don't mean laughing out loud) around in bed and occasionally sprinting, as much as that can be done with clenched buttocks, to the bathroom. My apologies to my housemates for disturbing their Sunday lie ins with my noisy BLEGHHHH exclamations.

Anyway, on to the work. I've only managed the one new character sketch and it was probably the hardest, this one actually having to look like someone, and someone I've never met to boot.

My apologies to Steve White if my cartoon representation in any way sells him short.

VARENKOV, – He looks like Steve White. He wears khaki combats and a black t-shirt with the legend ‘PUT YOUR DISEASE IN ME’. He is reading a book on Vietnam.

Note to Den; How do you spell this guys name? The documents you have given me variously have it as 'Varenkov', 'Varenko' and 'Varanakov'. I've stuck with the version from the script, and assuming the second is a typo. The third doesn't fit with his nickname 'Ren' so I'm assuming that one is also wrong...

We Live in Exciting Times

2009-10-14T18:21:00.003+01:00

Something odd has happened.

For the first time in a few years I am spending most of my free time working on artistic endeavours.

My Xbox lies unused, the Internet unbrowsed and I am at least two weeks behind on all my favourite TV programs.

The reason? DECONSTRUCTED. Around a week ago my estranged friend Den Patrick approached me with the idea of producing a limited run web comic to be serialised online and then, all being well, published in time for next years Birmingham Comic Expo. the industrious little chap had already knocked up a script and list of characters and such to be designed and asked me on board to help out with pencils and design work. Seems he had caught the writing bug at this years event and within hours had passed it to me with all the virulence of swine flu.

I put out the first sketch I did in the previous post but I wasn't sure how much Den wanted circulating just yet so I had to be a little circumspect with the information. After a few (dozen) emails I now have a much better idea of Den's plans (some of which are growing rapidly, fuelled by his burning ambition) and soon there'll be a separate blog charting our progress on the project.

Until then I'm going to post stuff here, and after my first day off since beginning I can offer you the following bits;

Full page. The front end of a large, boxy snow crawler. It is painted khaki green but is covered in ice and snow. It bears the legend ‘DONKEY’, but someone has graffiti’ed ‘WONKY’ just over the top of the word. The grille is opened and a single person is tinkering with the engine. Don’t make it look American, instead opt for that blocky, un-fussy Soviet style. Perhaps decorate the side of the crawler with a big ‘02’.
Orange sirens on the back of the crawler cast a weird light over the surrounding environment. Instead of making the whole thing run on two tank tracks maybe opt for four, like the Jawa Sandcrawler from Star Wars.

This is the Donkey; a futuristic snowmobile-apc type vehicle that features in the early pages of issue one. Den instructed me that it needed to be built like a Soviet era tank and have tracks rather than wheels much like the sandcrawler from Star Wars. The script demands that it have a cabin large enough to sit at least two with good forward visibility and a rear habitation compartment accessible through the cabin. Den didn't specify if it had a plough so I left room for one to fit if needed. I took my inspiration from the photos and drawings that Den handily included in his notes but also from a John Deer combine harvester- recent models of which look awesomely scifi.

NAKAMURA –Behind them, at a kitchenette is NAKAMURA, a Japanese man. He is fixing himself a drink. He wears combats but with a Lab Coat, so we know he’s the science bod. I like the idea of him having goggles pushed back on his forehead too.

Nakamura; A member of the Evangeline (an interplanetary salvage and transport vessel in the style of Serenity or Alien: Resurrection's Betty- more to come on that) crew. Nakamura is described as Japanese and wearing a labcoat, thus denoting his place on the crew as 'science guy' but also wearing combats, so I picture him as a pretty laid back type of dude.

AMENT, – is the chief mechanic. A bear of a man, from Russian stock. He wears dog tags and a black bandana. All his gear is scuffed, ripped or worn. He looks like he escaped from a Grateful Dead concert.

I had a lot of fun drawing Ament. His description, though relatively sparse gave me plenty to play around with, and seeing as I rarely draw the huge, musclebound comicbook type guys you often see in mainstream books it made a refreshing change. By the way- his T-shirt is an actual Grateful Dead tour shirt- summer 1987. For anyone who cares.

I've got lots of things still to design before I can even get started on page comps and this is going to keep me occupied for ages to come. Posts about other stuff may suffer but I'm sure most of you won't mind seeing so much new stuff- yay!

Watch this space for news on the DESCONSTRUCTED blog...

More New Work!

2009-10-10T23:16:00.004+01:00

Technically, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post this. I'm working on a project for Den and this is one of the preliminary sketches I've come up with for a character he's asked me to draw. I'm not 100% sure however, if Den has given me permission to post my workings here. For this reason I'm going to be deliberately ambiguous as to who this is supposed to be.

To Den I would say this- I've tried to include everything you mentioned in your description, however you did say she was wearing both a parka and a toolbelt, which would seem to be mutually exclusive if they were to be depicted at the same time as one would cover the other, so I've gone for a shorter jacket design. As for the gun; I had to go trawling through Intron Depot and the Appleseed Databook to find designs to homage (rip off) and I hope what I came up with was more or less what you envisioned...

I've also been working on the Wonky Donkey (reminds me of the Mucky Pig, ah, memories) and thought I'd combine the ideas you had with a combine harvester style design, replacing the wheels with tracks and the whirly deathblades with a plough, then Sovieting the whole thing up a bit (btw I live with a Russian so if you actually want any Cyrillic text on it just let me know and she can translate whatever you want). Obviously pics will follow either here or, if you'd rather I didn't post, then in an email.

Quite buzzed about this project so watch this space (or don't, depending on the level of secrecy required) for more...

Not Dead.

2009-10-07T17:09:00.004+01:00

Three weeks!? Three weeks!?

It's been three weeks since my last post? Damn. I'd love to say that it's been because I've been off around the world exploring exotic locales or doing volunteer missionary work in the Pacific islands but the sad fact is that I've rarely been more than a few feet away from my laptop.

I have only the Xbox and an overbearing feeling of indifference to blame for my absence and I beg your forgiveness for this.

Now lying in a sickness induced sweat I decided to actually write something, you know, in case anyone was still checking for updates. I know Den has been and I thank him for his concern- and offer of involvement in juicy projects! I was looking forward to providing you all with yummy new work that I have been doing (between bouts of Halo 3: ODST and Fable II) but tragically it seems my laptop had come to enjoy its relaxing period of disuse and hoped to extend it by contracting a particularly nasty virus that locked me out of all functions on the machine other than installing 'Antiviruspro 2010'. Being the naive and trusting individual I am I naturally saw no other option but to format my entire c: drive and start windows again from three year-old settings.

I'm sorry to say that all my recently produced work was lost, including everything I've produced for this blog, saddest of which (witch, lol) was the newly completed rendering of Bellatrix Lestrange I was intending to include in the post. I'm afraid all the new work I had been doing on Deadend is also gone, thus teaching me that using a Wacom, though versatile, is no match for a real sketchbook. Boo.

Thankfully all my older stuff is stored on a backup drive, which means although I cant bring you anything new, I can still give you some Darkside, so here you are; I've decided to skip to one of the later colour rendered strips, just because I like this one, and it's particularly geeky being that you can only really understand it if you've read 'Heir to the Empire' or are familiar with the Extended Universe...

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

2009-09-13T14:54:00.004+01:00

Continuing on a theme, a character whom I actually believe to be the evilest in the Harry Potter series; Bellatrix Lestrange. Voldemort may have been a nasty piece of work but at least he was an insane megalomaniac- Bella was motivated purely by a desire to cause pain and misery. A nasty, nasty piece of work if ever there was one, she is personally responsible for the deaths of two of my other favourite characters- Sirius Black and the aformentioned Nymphadora Lupin (nee Tonks)

Work... FINISHED (More or Less)

2009-09-10T23:56:00.003+01:00

Following the constant goading of literally no people I've managed to get this picture complete to a level that I can unashamedly call 'finished'. Yay me!

I think the only extra work I could put in would be to maybe add a shadow and a bit of outlining but I'm not going to let that get in the way of achieving my target of having it finished by the end of the day so there.

Why Tonks you might ask? I dunno, I always liked her and she and Lupin both have this kind of tragic appeal to me. Maybe I'll do him next. By the way; am I the only one who see's J.K. Rowling setting up a Harry Potter: The Next Generation eleven years down the road starring little Teddy Lupin? I called it here first!

Let me know what you think of the pic- it's the first 'finished' piece of art I've produced in about three years!

Work In Progress V.

2009-09-10T18:29:00.003+01:00

I aim to have this more or less finished by the end of the day...

Work in Progress Er.. What Was I Up To...?

2009-09-10T16:44:00.003+01:00

Just in case you think I forgot or something, heres a screencap. Nearly finished the first colour pass. After that I'll start inking and tidying up.

Work in Progress III.

2009-09-09T20:29:00.003+01:00

This is probably the last update for today- the pencils are more or less finished and the next stage will most likely be to take a high res scan and start going at it with my tablet...

Work in Progress II.

2009-09-09T17:01:00.002+01:00

Told you I'd update! Now she has (some) clothes!

Work in Progress.

2009-09-09T16:02:00.004+01:00

I know ok, I know! I didn't post that Tales From the Darkside I promised and I haven't updated for a couple of days; I suck.

The fact is I'm on holiday and the last couple of days I've spent basically doing absolutely nothing- feels good to take the time and fill it with bone idleness, but now it's time to do something so here you go.

I've been listening to Stephen Fry's Harry Potter audiobooks and I must say they're a great way to keep your brain occupied during the walk to work or while you do the housework. I'm up to 'Order of the Phoenix' and enjoying it massively. In fact I've even been inspired to draw something yes, you heard it here first- I'm drawing something and I thought I'd let you all in on the process so here you go, a work in progress for my picture of Nymphadora Tonks. Updates to come as I continue to work.

I'm blue dah bah dee, dah bah dah...

2009-09-06T09:36:00.005+01:00

I found the blueprints for the Swallowtail fighter- looking at them now it's hard to believe I ever thought in that much detail; I think the resolution of my imagination has dropped a few levels since then. I got the blueprint effect by scanning the original pencils then inverting and adding a blue filter- pretty simple really but I was happy with the effect.

I also found the blueprint for this puppy; the UISC Starrunner. This thing is designed to be an exploration vessel equipped with Swallowtail fighters. If you thought the level of detail on the fighter was nuts, check this guy out! I only regret not having produced front or top elevations for this, but as I recall the original drawing for this was rather large and I didn't have space on my drawing board to construct them from the side elevation. Boo.

Seeing as how this is yet another Deadend post I think I'm going to have to add some variety so I'm going to post some more Tales from the Darkside tonight...

Making it look easy...

2009-09-04T22:18:00.004+01:00

Just to demonstrate that it doesn't always happen as rapidly or easily as it did with Anthony Hayes I thought I'd share the process that went into the creation of Rachel Myers, one of the other characters in our team. I apologise for the very poor quality of some of these scans, but they're ancient and I cant currently find the originals to make better copies.

1.) This image shows what I think is Myers' first ever appearance. Bang in the centre of the page you can see her, tattoo on the wrong side of her face wearing a very poor Alan Davies hairdo and a very baggy space suit.

2.) More of the baggy suit and the horrific hairstyle. I seriously have no idea what I was thinking. I know I was trying to make Earth technology look a little bit backwards and unadvanced (as indeed was the concept for Deadend) but the hair... really don't know what I was aiming for there.

3.) Getting closer... The horrible hair is finally gone, replaced with pretty much what has come to be Myers' trademark style, but she's lost her clan tattoo and gained some piercings... starting to get a little alternative, but the bulky spacesuit is still there.

4.) Final version. We have the hair, the tattoo and the piercings- perfect! She's even smoking a cigarette (cos she's got attitude, see?). Plus I've disposed of that nasty spacesuit and replaced it with something better looking. The new suit is not, as you might expect, an excuse to slip a female character into something skintight and superherolike- it's a 'squeezesuit'- an actual scientific concept for a pressuresuit. The idea is that instead of wearing a suit that contains a pressure of one atmosphere you could instead wear a suit that exerts a pressure of one atmosphere on its wearer to hold them in shape. Such a suit would be much more compact and would restrict movement to a much lesser degree. Also it looks much sexier!

Frantic, part 2.

2009-09-04T12:54:00.002+01:00

Just noticed there's a lot of stuff about the Swallowtail fighter in these sketches. I actually produced a full blueprint for the final design at some point- even coloured it blue! Think I'll post it if I can find it... The Swallowtail is the main fighter featured in the UI fleet an is piloted by Rachel Myers and would feature in her story quite a lot.

Frantic, part 1.

2009-09-04T12:36:00.002+01:00

Most of the pictures I've posted here have been completed drawings or at least well finished sketches. It might be helpful to know that ideas dont necessaraly pop out of my head in such a complete fashion. Above are a series of standard pages from one of my old books, presented sequencially so you can see how ideas have developed. Most of the subject matter is Deadend but there's also a few bits of Star Wars and even a few bits of stuff based on an Iain M. Banks novel (though I forget which one).

I thought looking through some of this stuff might help inspire Simon to get on with some Deadend stuff, which he seems to be enthused about according to his blog here.

More to come in a minute...

New World Man.

2009-09-03T20:32:00.005+01:00

This is Anthony Hayes. Anthony Hayes is very special, in more ways than one.

Hayes is the only character Simon and I created for Deadend who has remained pretty much unchanged from his inception. He's always been a well built, tall human male in his mid twenties called Anthony Hayes. Unlike Sam Campbell (name change), Martin Baxter (race change) or Rachel Myers (random changes in height, hairstyle, facial piercings, tattoos...), nothing has changed in his designs from my earliest sketches.

Hayes is something of a genius. A wunderkind perennial underachiever he works in the R&D department of the United Industries Security Force (UISF) and fulfils the role of support for our illustrious squad of heroes.

Hayes is a 'G-man'- a genetically engineered superhuman- that is to say physically fit, super intelligent and disease resistant. This kind of modification does not come cheap however and Hayes is not from a rich background. In fact he is an orphan, though through no tragic circumstance. Three generations of his ancestors voluntarily entered into indentured service and worked their entire adult lives to fund his geneering and upon the completion of their contract Hayes was produced in a biowomb and raised to adulthood at the expense of his parent company- UI.

Sadly it would appear that Hayes is somewhat afraid of failure or at least unwilling to live up to his full potential and as such sought employment in the security force, where he spends his time hacking criminal networks, developing new technologies and field testing new weapons systems, the geneering program apparently having no ability to influence the human nature to rebel.
Hayes wears spectacles although he has no need for them and in fact has better than perfect eyesight and constantly smokes, because his advanced biology suffers absolutely no negative effects from doing so.

What's that coming over the hill?

2009-09-02T21:14:00.003+01:00

I'M NOT DEAD! I've just been.. er busy... er than usual. Really.

Ok- fine; I've been seduced by the green eyed cyclops and done little more than play xbox for the past week. I noticed that one of my friends was in danger of overtaking me on gamerpoints so I found it necessary to hammer out as many cheap achievements as possible (sorry Toby) even going so far as to buy 'Blazing Angels II' for £8 from Tesco (on the same note, anyone think it's worth picking up 'Eternal Sonata' for the same price? It's notoriously difficult to earn achievements from JRPGs but I must say a Namco game set in the world of a dying Chopin's dreams seems weirdly appealing...).

Anyway, the guy illustrated above is another of my creations for my steampunky fantasy idea; 'Untitled Fantasy Project No. 2'. He is but one of a whole range of nasty beasties I envisaged to inhabit the valley floor below the floating islands of the Avian people. These guys I imagine to be somewhat akin to the Morlocks from H.G. Well's 'The Time Machine'- devolved canniblistic cavemen. Looks pretty threatening, no? I wanted to create a kind of hulking heavyweight creature without putting all the strength in the arms, which seems to be the cliche for such things. This guy carries all his muscle in his chest and neck, supporting powerful jaws for clamping and ripping.

I NEED TEEPEE FOR MY BUNGHOLE!

2009-08-28T11:26:00.003+01:00

Hello loyal followers, long time no post. I thought I'd get back to some arty stuff for a while given that that is what I started this blog for in the first place, and I'm sure you're all sick of planes by now.

These ugly fellows are members of the Cornhalli race, the proposed antagonists in mine and Simon Odd's dream project; Deadend. Obviously I've posted a fair bit about Deadend previously but all I've focused on were the main characters, so here's something a little different.

The Cornhalli are an aggressive species bent on galactic domination. They are not members of the galactic senate and have no political relations with any race- in fact no communication has ever taken place with them at all. Immensely powerful, they utilise advanced weapons technology to obliterate any advanced species they find within space they have entered.

As it would turn out, the Cornhalli are actually a genetically engineered slave race who have overthrown their masters and set about expanding their domain throughout inhabited space. Their geneered nature means that specific breeds of Cornhalli exists to fulfill specific roles- those of pilot, worker, warrior etc. Though I thus far haven't drawn one I have little doubt that somewhere within their sprawling empire you will find Cornhalli administrators as well.

The reason for the Cornhalli's aggression stems from their origins- as a genetically engineered slave race recently emancipated they have developed no culture of their own, no society. In this manner I imagine them as being similar to the Borg from Star Trek, although the Cornhalli do not share a hive mind, they do have a common purpose, to exercise their right to freedom. Sadly, the only way they are familiar with earning freedom is through violence.

By the way, you may have guessed from the title that the name 'Cornhalli' stems from the caffine-crazed Beavis alter-ego 'Cornholio' from Mike Judge's 'Beavis and Butthead'. If you can find out what year Cornholio made his debut you will know when simon and I first thought of Deadend.

Yes. That long ago.

Vintage Roundup.

2009-08-25T14:34:00.009+01:00

Hope you like pictures of planes, cos otherwise you're not going to get much from this post.

As promised here is a more detailed post about the Bournemouth Air Festival. I'm focusing this one on the vintage aircraft that were on display this weekend (there'll be a separate entry about the aerobatic planes later).

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Consisting of a Spitfire, a Hurricane and the mighty Avro Lancaster bomber.

Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk- I love this plane; there's just something about its proportions that appeals to me!

Boeing B- 17 Flying Fortress. It's important to note that, while this bomber bears 'Memphis Belle' nose art it is not, in fact that plane, which was an earlier model- notably lacking the nose turret. This one is painted as an homage. Still looks awesome though, especially when escorted by its little friends.

North American Aviation P- 51 Mustang. This thing is just beautiful- aside from it being very difficult to photograph with its polished finish (this Mustang is G-BTCD S/NUMBER 44-73419 - Painted to resemble 44-13704, "Ferocious Frankie," Operated by the Old Flying Machine Company, Duxford, Cambridgshire, UK- amazing what you can find out from Wikipedia). I have to say in my opinion, aside from the Vulcan this plane definitely made the best sound of the show!

de Havilland D- 100 Vampire. I love the sound of early jet engines- they kind of whistle rather than roar. There's something a little more refined about them.

Avro Vulcan. It's difficult to describe how awe inspiring this aircraft is. Recently restored for air demonstration flight this plane is a show stopper. Having seen one before, long, long ago I knew what to expect, though apparently many in the audience did not. After completing it's first pass at a leisurely idle speed the crowd seemed slightly underwhelmed, perhaps confused as to what all the fuss was about. The Vulcan, however then turned and proceeded to climb, increasing her engines to full thrust. Then all the babies started to cry. It's a sound felt more than heard and it roared in terms of sheer volume was exceeded only by the Eurofighter Typhoon. I swear at one point as it turned toward the crowd some acoustic hiccough or other caused it to sound as though the plane were actually roaring like a living animal. Everyone knew as it left that they had witnessed something special.

That's it for the vintage planes, hope you liked the pictures!

Ps. Had to include this brilliant picture of my buddy Ross standing next to a Vulcan fan. Not sure which event would be noisier- Download Festival or XH558, heh. If you'd like to make a contribution to the upkeep of the Vulcan you can do so at http://www.vulcantothesky.org/ by the way.

Late, not never.

2009-08-24T00:26:00.006+01:00

So the Bournemouth Air Festival has been and gone and left us all with the uncomfortable combination of strained necks, Close Encounters sunburn and ruptured eardrums. I managed to snap 2.4GB of photos and it goes without saying that it'll take me a while to sort through them all, so here's some highlights to tide you over until I can put together a decent post.

Damnit. Just realised that Blogger has posted those images completely out of sequence (Sigh.). Is it too much to ask for editorial control of my own blog?!

I've got some truly amazing shots of some of the aerobatic displays but without context many of them look a bit strange so I think I'll have to stitch some sequentials together in photoshop, but thats for later.

My best friend is a 4.5- 5.6/ 75- 300 lens.

2009-08-21T10:07:00.002+01:00

Or at least this weekend it is because the Bournemouth Air Festival is back in town. This photo was taken by me at last year's event and I'm hoping for better this year. The weather's been utterly awful until now and it seems to be clearing up a bit so fingers crossed. I've just worked seven days straight in order to have Friday and Sunday off so if it does turn rainy I might just open up my wrists and bleed out on the sand.

Tuppence a bag.

2009-08-19T22:49:00.006+01:00

Seeing as how Untitled Fantasy Project No. 2 was to centre on the idea of flight in a fantasy/ steampunk world I wanted to include some 'birdmen' of some kind, however I was determined not to resort to the standard cliches of angelic figures with dove- like wings.

I actually ended up with two birdman species, the first pictured above in male and female versions was to be an antagonist race- cooperating with a human empire and assisting them in exploiting the resources of their land.

Physically powerful, these people are none the less slight of build, particularly in the legs, which seem underdeveloped to us- this is because their skeletal composition contains quantities of the lodestone mineral effectively reducing their weight and allowing them limited powers of flight using their vestigial winglets. Their limited flight ability is a source of conflict between this race of Avians and the second race, an example of which is shown below.

These 'Flyers' have the true power of flight. Residing in floating island oases their habitat has come under threat from the human population and their Avian allies who seek the valuable deposits of Lodestone that keep the islands aloft. These people sport better developed membranous wings that stretch from their backs to a special joint at the elbow and then out to a specially lengthened fifth finger on each hand.

Devoted pacifists this race would form an alliance with the sky pirate rebels, providing them with a base of operations from which to conduct a guerilla war against the empire as it spreads into the 'floating valleys' in search of mineral wealth.

More on this later. Sleepytime now.

Give the people what they want.

2009-08-18T22:32:00.004+01:00

Judging by his comment Den quite liked this character so I thought I'd post some more of her. Afraid I did away with the purple hair though, sorry Den- although her profile does state that her hair colour 'varies' so who knows, it could be back again. I really liked the two-tone hairdo but you might notice that in the head sketchs above the darker tone is clearly at the back- I swapped it around because at that point she was basically Freefall (tm) from Gen13(tm).

Remember I was really happy with the pencils for this one. Sadly, I don't seem to have kept a copy of the raw inks so I couldn't include them here.

I also read.

2009-08-17T20:39:00.005+01:00

It would be easy to conclude from the material that I publish here that I am some kind of lethargic scifi loving, snack eating, tv watching, xbox gaming couch potato- but that would be underestimating me. I also read. Quite a lot in fact.

I love reading. Sometimes I like to draw from books I'm reading- mostly character sketches and such- some of which I'm bound to throw out on this page at some point. Very occasionally I'll render something a bit more complete as in this case.

Above is a drawing I did while I was reading Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. Hopefully if you've read it you might be able to recognise some of the imagery in the picture, if you haven't I'm not going to try to explain it. Suffice to say it is somewhat... complicated. Definitely recommend it though, along with Robert Jordan (RIP) Peter F. Hamilton and Naomi Novik, Reynolds is one of my favourite authors. Look him up!

By the way, I purposely left the book binding in this scan so you can see just how much of the page I filled. Unusual for me- it's very rare for me to fill a page that much.

You'll learn one day, won't you?

2009-08-17T20:17:00.002+01:00

Ah, the simplest ones are often the best.

Product contains nuts.

2009-08-16T08:28:00.003+01:00

Seeing as how I posted a sketch of Faith I think it only fair to post one of James as well. This one kind of ties in with the 'friends as super heroes' sketches I posted the other week, but was produced much later. I'm sorry to say this one is only a concept sketch, as can be seen from the various doodles around the central character, but I think it captured James quite well, even if 'Stick Arms Man' does seem a lot more moody than James generally is in my experience.

Then again the photo below seems to show otherwise, heh (^-^)

Take my love.

2009-08-15T23:25:00.004+01:00

Until now I haven't mentioned anything about another project I have had going on the backburner besides Deadend, Tales from the Darkside and Retail. This project, which I never gave a name but for convenience sake now I shall refer to as 'Untitled fantasy Project No. 2' was, or is, a fantasy project (duh!) set in an alternate world that a protagonist would be placed into from our world (thereby giving the reader someone to relate to, a common cliche I'm sure).

This realm would be filled with a rich cast of characters and beasties and a kind of steampunk technology. An important element would be flight, as in this world flight is the main mode of transport over most distances whether it be by dirigible, ornithopter (a kind of aircraft that mimics avian flight, that is flies by flapping its wings) or skyboat. Important would be the acquisition and possession of 'Lodestone'. Lodestone is a mystic mineral that has negative weight, in other words it has mass, but reacts to gravity in the opposite manner to normal matter, that is, it floats or in sufficient densities, rises.

In a world where air travel is so important the mining and refining of this material means that an industrial revolution of sorts is under way as new and improved Lodestone alloys lead to eventual military application and conquest by the antagonist kingdom.

Above is a picture of Rosemerta; a pirate princess who rises to command of a pirate skyship after the death of her father and elder brother in a botched Lodestone raid.

Much more on this later as writing about it now has stirred memories of ideas long forgotten. For now though I grow weary and must sleep.

Take my land.

2009-08-15T20:00:00.003+01:00

Heh, This has always been one of my favourites. It's just something about the way I captured Anakin's demented look of evil concentration upon the bugs that works for me. This one (like all the TFTD strips) was produced between the releases of Episode II and Episode III and was my attempt to hypothesise how Palpatine would go about corrupting poor Ani (ugh, even writing it makes me feel dirty) behind Obi wan's back. Let's just say Episode III came as a disappointment and leave it at that. I had planned to do a whole series of strips where Anakin would be blatantly evil all over the place while Obi wan puttered on, blissfully unaware of goings on. Of course, I never got round to it.

Might have to change the name of the blog to that- "I never got round to it" has a good ring to it (^_^)

Take me where I cannot stand.

2009-08-14T20:55:00.003+01:00

Just found that I have three stages of completion for this image saved so I thought I'd post 'em and show you how I work, or at least used to- if you asked me to do this now the inking would be done in Photoshop or Painter. Sorry for the different scaling on these images; blogger does it automatically. If you click on the images you should get the original scale versions- be warned though; they're massive!

If you're interested by the way, this is what you get if you ask me to 'Draw you as a pink fairy'- at least if you're an attractive young blonde. Please dont ask me to do it if you're a thirty year old rocker.

I dont care, I'm still free.

2009-08-14T20:15:00.003+01:00

C'mon, say what you like about the prequels, the one thing you can't deny is that these guys frakkin' rock. I know it. You know it. Genndy Tartakovsky definitely knows it, and I wouldn't argue with him, he's like, God or something.

THIS is what makes a good blog.

2009-08-13T22:18:00.003+01:00

I'm sure this won't be of any great interest to most of you, but I know at least one of you out there who will be so I'm posting it anyway.

If you look to the right of my page here you'll notice a section devoted to 'blogs I follow'. At the top of that list is a man called Bear McCreary. Now you might not know who Bear is so let me just enlighten you.

Bear is the composer of all of the music that you'll hear if you ever watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica. "So what?" You might ask but let me tell you it's actually quite unusual to have just one staff composer write for an entire series like that. It means that the music in Battlestar is suffused with a consistacy rarely heard and develops throughout the run of the series as much and as dynamically as any of the characters on screen. As far as I'm concerned that makes Bear as much a member of the cast as Edward James Olmos or Jamie Bamber.

Last week Bear and his orchestra were performing at San Diego Comicon (The fact that they can sellout performances of a TV soundtrack three nights running should tell you what kind of a following this guy has) and from the sound of things it was a truely magical experience.

If you have fifteen minutes to spare and you have any interest in the behind the scenes stuff that goes on on a big show like Galactica, head on over to his blog, and if you're interested in anyof the Comicon stuff check out this post:

http://www.bearmccreary.com/blog/?p=2583#more-2583

One thing's for sure, now more than ever I'm making it a goal to make it to Comicon one year.

I rolled a natural 1 for my search test...

2009-08-13T17:53:00.006+01:00

Ooops! With all that waffle about TFTD I completely forgot to mention that I now have five (five!) followers! Hello all of you out there, including the one that I've never met or heard of (that one was a surprise) and a special hello to old friend Den Patrick!

Den has been blogging forever and his is pretty much one of the first I ever started reading and the main reason I chose blogspot as a host. He also used to run a mean Star Wars roleplaying game.

Ah, those were the days. Making a fifty mile round trip weekly to sit in Den's lounge, roll dice and make notes on character sheets. Simpler times. Happier times.

Below are a couple of pics of 'Phil' (can't remember her full name) my character from those old sessions (if you're wonder why I roleplayed a female I'd say it's useful to have at least one character in your party who has the option to 'seduce' as an alternative to attack!) the large hole in her shirt is as a result of a critically failed dodge roll as I remember :-)

Nice to have you Den!

It is here.

2009-08-13T16:34:00.006+01:00

So yes here we are, finally. Tales from the Darkside. I've stayed away from posting on this subject for a while simply because I'm worried by the amount of posts it could end up taking up. Not that I don't want to share it with you- quite the contrary in fact, the problem is that there exists the possibility that I could get carried away and deluge you with too much material...
I'm acutely aware that for a lot of people, reading a blog is a diversion- a tea break filler and I've been very careful to try and limit the waffle for exactly that reason. The problem is I want to post everything at once but then I would have more of a gallery than a blog, and thats not what I'm trying to do here.

What I'm going to do is post no more than one TFTD strip per day, intermingled with various other posts as I have been up to now. To help anyone who wants to sort through the posts or is only interested in the TFTD strips I'm going to go back through all my previous entries and start tagging subjects so it's easier for you to find everything.

Today's strip is the first full TFTD I did.

The idea came to me whilst watching ROTJ a few years back. It occured to me that it would have to be very traumatic, not to mention humiliating for the elite forces of the empire to be defeated by a ramshackle band of three- foot teddybears led by a scoundrel, a girl, a gay robot and his dustbin friend. Then I noticed something that really made me pay attention. Right at the end, during the celebration scene (the proper one, with old Anakin- not the CG abomination that we get force fed these days) you an see an Ewok playing xylophone on a group of trooper helmets.

Am I the only one a little freaked by this?!

Playing music on the battered headgear of your fallen adversaries? Are the heads still in those helmets? What have they done with the rest of the bodies? Is there a group of ewoks just out of frame feasting on the tasty flesh of the empire's finest? For me this painted a grisly scene of postwar carnage that I simply had to explore on paper.

As a sidenote I'd point out that this was the subject of the first TFTD sketch I ever did- the ewok image I posted yesterday. It's a really important picture because it was the first I did using the construction style I've used ever since for the TFTD strips- normally I strive for a generally realistic style of proportion but for TFTD I went a little cartoony.

Anyway, as I recall I have frequently had conversations with other Star Wars fans on the subject of stormtrooper armour, how cool it looks, and which type looks the best (have you seen the new Clonetrooper armour for the Xbox Live avatars? How neat is that?!). That kind of got combined with my ewok musings and the fusion produced the first ever Tales from the Darkside strip. It was pretty much downhill from there...

Above you can see the original art for #1, below is the finished properly lettered piece.

Very soon...

2009-08-13T13:42:00.004+01:00

Soon...

2009-08-13T12:44:00.003+01:00

It is coming...

2009-08-12T20:37:00.004+01:00

Be careful what you wish for...

2009-08-12T20:29:00.006+01:00

I think James said that the picture I did of Faith was lacking a bit of colour so imagine my surprise when I was going through one of my archive directories and I found this!

I have literally no memory of creating this image, though the file information says it was made in 2003- six pigging years ago!

So, there you go Jamez; Faff flavoured wallpaper for your enjoyment!

Ask, and ye shall receive...

2009-08-10T21:58:00.008+01:00

See? I do read your comments!

These are a series of sketches I did of myself and some friends as rather dysfunctional super heroes. Myself as 'Moleking' (I used to have short hair believe it or not!) Paul Tallon as 'Pc Repair Man' (Check out how ancient that Pc is- its actually a desktop! Do they even make those anymore?) and Mat McGowan as 'Gamemonkey' (Insert amusing 'That's just Mat wearing a cape!' remark here.)

Sorry Mat, never got around to colouring yours- I had immense trouble with dark tones on my laptop screen at the time, it was very bad at displaying them accurately so I think I gave up with those ones. To be honest my current one's not much better but TFTs have improved immensely over the past few years so hopefully my next won't be so bad...

For the Emperor!

2009-08-09T18:06:00.006+01:00

So I was trawling through some of my mum's wardrobes (at her request) clearing out my old crap for the tip (I haven't lived there for five years so i figure this is fair enough) and I happened upon my old Black Templars 40K army. Looking through the individually compartmentalised red foam storage trays I happened upon this fella:

This is Maximus, my custom built Emperor's Champion- converted from the parts of some four or five figures including; a chaplain, a Space Marine force commander, a Space Marine captain in terminator armour and a few plastic bits and bobs. Now I thought I'd post a photo of him not because he's a cool figure but because I was quite proud of him at the time, proud enough infact to have drawn a picture of him, which you can see below.

I was pretty happy with this sketch too, and it's only the tip of the iceberg so far as Warhammer goes- I have plenty of that stuff knocking around the archives somewhere, I'll be sure to post more in the future.

On a sidenote I still haven't found the oldest of my sketchbooks and pads. I'm forced to conclude that they may be in the garage.... :-S

Hope and Charity.

2009-08-09T17:57:00.004+01:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/kZ7LCJ3Jvg91N2dG9YBt5A?feat=directlink

Just logged in and noticed that the lovely Faith Hern, whom I love and think is lovely has added herself as a follower of my blog so in recognition of this I thought I'd post this sketch I did of her in a comic booky form because I'm not sure I ever actually gave her a copy.

Ta daaa! Love you hon, hope James is well now mwah mwah mwah!

I wish I never saw the sunshine.

2009-08-07T17:24:00.007+01:00

A few years ago, while working for a large and well known stationary company I came up an idea for a comic strip. Called 'Retail' it would chronicle the wacky day to day adventures of a group of near- do- well store workers in a large department store (one of the old Debenhams style stores you know the kind, at least three floors arranged in a vertical labyrinth of perfumes, household appliances, toys and lady's pants) and was at least 60% based on real people I've known in my ten plus years in the retail industry, mixed in with a health dose of stereotypes to fill out the numbers.

It wouldn't only have been treading in Kevin Smith's footsteps either; I was taking a more fantastical approach than he did in 'Clerks' or 'Mallrats' (plus I can't write witty dialogue for toffee unlike him) one of my characters was a troll, another a witch and yet another a Satan-worshipping cheerleader. The main character, Dave was an art school student working for beer money and was not even slightly based upon my housemate Jon. The two layabout bum staffers; Seth and Rufus are totally not myself and Joel Bunn and the troll is definitely, definitely not Darren Wilcox. Hell no. It is important to note that, although Belle is based on the likeness of Sarah Anciaume, Sarah herself is neither a cheerleader nor a Satan worshipper, at least to my knowledge. Darren is not really a troll either. I think.

I had so many ideas for this series but sadly never found the time to get it done (I blame xbox live) and since series like Reaper and the awesome (geddit?) Chuck have started to air a lot of my plans don't seem so fresh. Shame. Never mind- for your viewing pleasure here are the character sketches.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaaa!

2009-08-06T17:20:00.001+01:00

I just saw G.I.Joe.

They say time is the fire in which we burn...

2009-08-03T20:03:00.006+01:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/lVWT4e1Ze3HJPkbFe4nVCA?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/XSfRT8wfBHXMpPiLVcd3mA?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/x9xDfe4wHmyBf4vCJMItxA?feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yzyo9sEgYaJ-Yzm5jgo0YA?feat=directlink

It's a dear friend of mine's birthday today so as a little present for him I've dredged up some old scans of some characters we created together.

The basic premise for this one involves a pair of vagrants who are charged with the job of protecting the unborn Jesus Christ II from the clutches of a satanic texan oil baron.

Did I mention that one of them was a spanish conqistador vampire and the other is a native american werewolf? Oh yeah, and Jesus's mum is a hooker called Fushia.

Happy birthday Andy, you weird bastard!

Yes, that is the time. No, I'm not in a different timezone.

2009-08-03T03:37:00.005+01:00

You'd think working eleven days straight without a break would provide good cause for an early night. Try telling my body that. It doesn't seem to want to sleep right now, which is nice. Thankfully I am now on holiday, so at least I don't have to be up at 06:00am. Not to say that that means I won't be up at 06:00am mind you. My bodyclock has always been about as reliable as a £10 Rolex so we'll just have to see...

Seeing as how I am awake I thought I'd kill a few minutes by bringing you another post, you lucky, lucky people. Continuing on the subject of Deadend's Sam Campbell I bring you this:

This is the first in a series of 'definitive' character sketches I produced to finally nail the design for each of the lead characters. It's a real shame that the Blogspot image uploader is so frustratingly shit because I'd really like to provide you with a high res version of this.

I'd really like to compare this one with one of the first renders I did for Sam- if only I could remember where that folder is... I think a trip to Mum's may be in order...

Addendum:

Just found that full res versions of all of my posts are available on Picasa, so until I work out how to hotlink from the small images in this blog to the big ones on Picasa I'll include a seperate link for each picture such as the one below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/C837weuDpU-sIgXxycvkZg?authkey=Gv1sRgCJSp5KjX1p2yyQE&feat=directlink

Deculture!

2009-07-31T21:47:00.007+01:00

Long time, no post... It's been a bloody hectic week here so far, and with two days to go it seems doubtful things will slow down for me anytime soon. For anyone who doesn't know I clocked up my ninth straight day at work today, with two more to work before I (thank god) have a week off.

So I've been trying to get some work done here all week and failing miserably- that and I managed somehow to watch the entire series of Macross Frontier which was also a bit of a distraction but now, here I am finally writing something.

Staying on the subject of Deadend I thought I'd go over some of the characters. I wanted to start with my original sketches from back in oh, I don't know 1994 or something but sadly I can't find the folder they're all in. It must be back at my mum's house which, unlike so many of my nerdy brethren I don't live at. That's a real folder mind you- not one on a computer or anything, back when I drew on real paper and stuff. On that subject; is it me or is paper a lot more expensive now then it used to be? I mean, I have books and books and books of the stuff, not to mention literally piles of A3 pads, many of them half empty or wasted with scribbles or just plain crap drawings and I can only conclude that paper must have been cheaper when I was young 'cos I wouldn't dream of being so wasteful these days. Maybe I just have a better appreciation of the value of things now.

That being said my Intuos3 tablet cost £400+ so I suppose moaning about the cost of tree pulp is a little redundant. I should be winging about the cost of consumer electronics.

Today I thought I'd post about Sam, our principle character and certainly the one who's received the most development over the years (again I'd love to show you some of those hilariously bad original sketches) so I'll begin instead with some character renders I did about eight or nine years ago. It's kinda like starting the story at the middle of the book but that's what I have to work with so bleh!

These pages originally had a lot of accompanying text that gave a lot of background information on Sam, but as I never ran any of it past Si I've omitted it here lest any of it contradict stuff he's written. In one of the sketches you can see a little doodle of Sam's shoulder joint. That's because one of the most consistent things I ever intended for Sam was for her to have an artificial arm, powered by a small internal energy cell- which would become important in regards to her 'superpowers' which were intended to include certain energy amplification abilities (I always wanted to draw a scene where Sam overloads her energy cell resulting in an enemykilling blast that would also take her arm with it).

Of all the things I've lost...

2009-07-27T23:47:00.002+01:00

Sorry, no picture this evening, I've just spent two hours looking through old sketchbooks and I've found absolutely tons of stuff I'm really looking forward to sharing- things that have never been seen by anyone, things in some cases I don't even remember ever having drawn.
Badly need to dig that old Epson scanner out and get down to some major image capturing!
anyway, I spent so long going through all that stuff that it's time for bed.
Interestingly, I found written in an old sketchbook a conversation between me and an unknown co-conspirator (these days such a conversation would take place by sms and no hardcopy would remain) during a lecture. It includes in it a plaintive and apparently totally serious complaint that "I've been awake since 8.00!" Oh, the idiocy of youth...
Got to go now- I need to be up at 6.00 to be at work for 8.30 and for some reason I no longer seem able to get by on three and a half hours sleep anymore.

...Said the joker to the thief

2009-07-26T08:10:00.004+01:00

Just had to put this up for Si, and anyone else who loves Bear's work...

You now officially wish you lived in California.

What 'bout my star?

2009-07-25T23:24:00.004+01:00

Years ago my best friend and I shared a dream. That dream was to be discovered by a major publishing company and to produce a serialised multi-arc comicbook series called Deadend.

Set a couple of hundred years in the future Deadend would have initially focused on the activities of a unit of security operatives on humanity's most far flung colony. Deadend was a inhospitable mineral rich world positioned at the terminal end of a vast network of interstellar beaming points, hence it's name.

Deadend would be set in a heavily populated universe in which mankind is at the bottom of the pecking order, mysteriously rescued at the last moment from extinction by an apparently benevolent race and cast into a massively varied xenoc culture in which humans are seen as backwards at best and lunch at worst.
Intrigue would abound and of course, as with all great epics everyone would have an ulterior motive.

So why aren't you all reading this every month and salivating at the prospect of the much anticipated movie adaptation?

Fucked if I know. Ask my best mate Simon; he's been writing it for the past decade.

The picture above is of our main cast, from l-r: Martin Baxter (squad leader), Sam Campbell (previously McKnight- named after a random shuffling of a deck of Star Trek: The Next Generation CCG cards, then hastily renamed after a trip to Boots revealed, to our horror that Sam McKnight is apparently a successful hair stylist with his or her own line of haircare products), Rachel Myers (merchant navy pilot and secret heir to a vast shipping fortune) and Anthony Hayes (perpetually smoking genetically modified super genius and all round nerd with a fetish for big guns).

I'm going to go into a lot more detail about each of these guys, there's a LOT of material spread across a dozen sketchbooks after all. I've been drawing these guys literally for years, and occasionally still do- the degree of rendering of one of my doodles is generally an indicator of how long I've been on hold on any given call.

See ya's tomorrow!

They mostly come at night...

2009-07-24T22:29:00.005+01:00

I was going to launch straight into my life's labour of love- Deadend but riffling (not a typo, look it up) through my scans folder I happened upon these gems. For some reason years back I created these caricatures of the old gang as zombies- the why of it is completely lost to me now but upon seeing them again it seemed only natural to post them today, after all these are the precise people I was writing about in yesterday's post. Well, not precisely- obviously the real ones are a little more lively.

P.s.

Two of those zombies got married last weekend. Congratulations, you smelly rotten lovebirds!

After, in the dark...

2009-07-23T22:31:00.002+01:00

Post the 2nd:

One second... Right, good- the USB powered flexible fan that now acts as my lappy's primary cooling system is plugged in and jammed up against the cooling intake on the underside of the machine. Demons of heat and frustration: 0, Chris: 1

So, as I tried to say yesterday; welcome to my blog!

A few quick notes about what I hope to accomplish here and why I'am bothering.

Most of the people I speak to on a day- to- day basis don't get me. They're friends, sure, but they don't, by and large get me. They like football and clubbing and 'Britain's Got Talent'. They're pretty normal in fact, and that's the problem. They're the kind of people who would say 'dice' instead of 'die' and then be decidedly put- out when the proffered item has anything other than six sides. They don't know how to play files on their PC's through their Xbox 360, come to think of it they dont know how to get those files in the first place. They don't know the difference between an Ork and an Orc. They don't know who Yoko Kanno or Bear McReary are (tracks by both of which have been spun out by my whimsy- making mediaplayer since I started writing this). I dont resent them for this, it's just that well, they don't get me. They're not my people.

My people know these kind of things. They know the name of the only rebel pilot to survive all three original Star Wars movies. They know how he's related to Ewan McGregor. They know the words of power that must be spoken before lifting the Necronomicon Ex Mortis. They include Sisko in their discussions about the best Star Trek captain. They know the best way to use a towel to escape the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal.

My people are geeks.

Years ago all my friends were geeks. I surrounded myself with them and felt pefectly at ease amongst them, back in the days when it seemed a perfectly good use of an evening to stock up on foodz at the 24h Tesco (when it was the 24h Tesco, before they all were) LAN up a bunch of PCs and play Aliens Vs. Predator on the commandeered Univercity front projector. Happy days.
They were certainly some of the happiest, most carefree days of my life (perhaps a little too carefree; I really should have gone to some lectures between slacking off) and through those days one thing was constant- I always carried a sketchbook with me. Everywhere.

I've lost touch with all those friends now, well, not exactly lost touch. They're mostly on my Facebook, which I hate. I hate Facebook. It seemed like such a good idea- never lose touch with your friends! Always know what they're up to! The sad fact however is that if you're anything like me you suffer from Facebook overexposure. So many status updates, so many phototags, invitation after invitation after invitation. Its just too much. These days I mostly check Facebook through the app on my Blackberry, which provides just about the right level of information for me to handle, but I actually fear logging in on my laptop. The sheer deluge of information can overwhelm me in seconds with the upsetting effect that I find myself ignoring people I really shouldn't be- if I talk to him I'll have to talk to him too... It's horrific that anyone should think that but thats what Facebook does; it gives you so much that you're forced to pick and choose, or become a slave to the bastard 'F' logo.

In recent weeks I've realised that I currently know more about whats going on in Wil Wheaton's life than I do in some of my once- close friend's. Wil Wheaton, for any of you who don't know played Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: TNG. If you haven't read his blog try to find the time to do so, its a very surreal experience to discover how much like you he is. He loves real ale, he remembers playing video games at an arcade as a kid. He plays Warhammer 40k. He spent his childhood roaming the decks of the Enterprise-D... ok, so he's not exactly like you.
The fact is I found myself taking far more interest in his writings because they were there for me to read if I felt like it and not jammed down my throat, Facebook style.

That's the crux of it. I don't for one second expect anyone to take half as much interest in my inane prattle as they might take in Mr Wheaton's writings (they are really very, very interesting you know) but I'm hoping to maybe coax one or two of those friends back and start chatting again about stuff that I actually like to chat about at a level that leaves most people zoneing out and begging for a tactful exit.

I'm going to be following a 'pic of the day' format following specific themes or taking a tangent, whatever takes my fancy. Feel free to make requests if there's any specific piece you'd like to see from my back catalogue.

Yes, I will be posting the Tales From the Darkside.

Peace out, y'all!

I Blog, Therefore I Am.

2009-07-23T00:36:00.002+01:00

It's 00.36 so you'll forgive me if this is a little succinct.

This is my first blog entry ever and I had written out quite a little statement of intent about what I planned for it over the coming weeks. It was witty and insightful, well formatted and punctuated with geek culture anecdotes and references throughout which I assure you would have had you slumped over your keyboard sobbing tears of nostalgic mirth.

Sadly that all went away when by decrepit shitbox laptop decided to overheat doing nothing more taxing than livestreaming text onto blogspot.

Fuck you, HP.

Here's a picture. It's random and I'm not going to write about it because I should be asleep already so you'll just have to settle for the assurance that I'm going to start this properly tomorrow, or later today as it now is. Shit.