I, Robot(s)

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

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.