Raiding The Lost Vault of Kor-Avul-Thaa

By which I mean; I have recently been searching through a portable hard-drive filled with time lost curiosities. Hidden within were various writings and pieces of art that had been left on an old house-mate's computer. Sifting through them was a bit like opening a secret portal into the past, and though it was a past not too distant, it is still a disturbing and unsettling place to visit. There were extracts from my woeful dissertation, photos of the skulls of species long extinct, and toe bones, lots of toe bones.

There was also a variety of sketches, entries into art competitions, and a collection of ideas for a Lovecraftian kid's fun activity book, which is a project I really need to revisit one day. Then there was the Random Violence art.

Random Violence is a board game being produced by a friend of mine, and back at university I was doing some artwork for it. The game was like a table-top version of Unreal Tournament, set in a near future cyber-punkish Japan. My brief was to make the character cards, which would show the character you were playing, and also be covered in lots of statistics and boxes that you would put equipment cards on and such like.

The necessity to put in lots of information goes some way towards explaining  why there is so much dead space here, but this is also due to these pieces representing my very first experiments at making art using a computer. You will notice I used colour! You will notice I didn't really know what I was doing! You will notice I haven't worked this way since!

Tattered Remains Of The Holiday Season

Way back at the beginning of December, I made this post about the 2000ad Christmas Calendar.

Well, Christmas has come to an end, and the calendar has been completed. Now, there is a lot of good stuff over there, and everyone involved put a lot of love into the project, but my incredibly biased opinion leads me to pick Party Crash! as my personal favourite piece.

Yes, Party Crash is a Choose Your Own Adventure surrounding a 2000ad office party attended by all your favourite characters. I say "surrounding" the party because, if you are anything like me, it may take you a few goes to actually get in there. It was written by one Van Doom, and illustrated by a whole host of talent

For this gargantuan feat of collaboration, I managed to call shotgun on drawing a picture of Slaine having a bit of a warp spasm. I first encountered Slaine in secondary school, and if they still existed, my English rough books would be full of doodles of twisted Irishmen spurting oil out of their head all over the place. It was this rough sketch quality that I wanted to revisit in this picture; a bit of seasonal nostalgia that only I would feel nostalgic for.

So, that's it for the Christmas posts until next December. All that remains is for me to put up this picture which I made to finish last year's calendar.

Where To Find My Stuff

You know how just before Christmas I posted a link to Lugal, claiming I would make the post look all pretty once I had returned to York? Well, this is that post.

 

That name in the credits? The one next to the word 'Art'? That's my name! I am more than a little pleased to see such a thing. It was only around Easter 2010 that I decided to get back into drawing, and now, as we leave that year behind, I have both a blog to show off my work, and a published credit to my name.

How can you see this fine story? Simply cast your eyes to the margin on the right, where you will find a list of Places My Work Has Found Print. It is but a paltry list at present, but I have high hopes for its growth over the coming year. 

Lugal Rises!

I'm stuck in the internet deprived wasteland that is My Partents House. I've just nipped into the library to find that Temple APA issue 8 is up and downloadable. So, you should all just go read it, cause a comic that I have drawn is in it.

GO HERE! DOWNLOAD LUGAL!

This is that comic I said I would link to in my next post, several posts ago. Well, I found other stuff to talk about. These things happen.

Later, I will smarten this post up, make it look nice, correct the spellings, and such like. Right now, the timer in the corner of the screen is ticking down to zero, so I need to be off!

Christmas Time Is Here Again!

Due to my recent discovery of the stats page, I realise that people from all over the world check out this blog (thanks all!), and I'm guessing that many of you will be mocking our joy of snow. Here in the Gulf Stream, however, this is a BIG DEAL!
Yet snow is not the only indicator of festivity. Today has seen the start of the 2000ad Advent Calendar 2010. This long standing tradition is now in its second year, and you can catch the collected edition of the first one here!

I haven't put my name down for this year's calendar, as time is pressing against me. However, Dirk Van Dom has come up with a wonderful idea that I will be contributing towards, along with a host of others. The allotted day for this is not until the 22nd, so you will have a bit of a wait before this inevitable masterpiece is unleashed.

Until then, I thought I might as well chuck my entry from last year up here; keep all my work in one place, and the like. This effort was valiantly lettered by Bolt-01 (AKA David Evans), who volunteered to do the job without realising that when I threw out my general lettering request, I hadn't even decided what I was going to do. The result is a story where I drew the art with a vague idea in mind, then wrote the dialogue based on what I thought might fit into the pictures.

I didn't always guess quite right, but Bolt did the job without a negative word. Thanks Bolt!

DINOBOT COMICS

Work continues on the comic I am currently working on, and once that is complete, I'm going to start work on another comic that will hopefully see the light of distribution-day!

As such, I won't be able to put any complete pages here for a while. Rather than let this place grow fallow, I will instead post something I knocked up the other day.


Obligatory cut off Livejournal title: As Galvatron once said, "This is bad co


Hover-over Text: Me Grimlock not time paradox! Me Grimlock KING!


Anyone a little confused by certain artistic choices displayed here should check out Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North. Kate Beaton once did a Dinosaur Comics Homage, and she was herself homaged (sure, that can be a word) when Livejournal user Astersyn turned this comic into this. I feel that by combining Transformers and Dinosaur Comics, I have somehow completed a circle of life.

Project Supersquirrel

Two updates in two days! How rare!

The reason I return so soon is because today saw The Legendary Shark (aka Mark Howard) post a public link to Supersquirrel Undefeated aka The Secret Project.

That last link will take you to where all the action has been happening, but to summarise, after hearing that Carlos Ezquerra (why yes, I am going for the 2010 Most Redundant Link Of The Year Award, thank you for noticing) had undergone an epic lung operation, the Shark thought up the idea of creating the Get Well Card to end all Get Well Cards. It was a Secret Project that truly earned its capital letters, bringing together fans from across the globe to show their appreciation for the great man's work.

Basically, if, after seeing this, you ever receive a get well card yourself, it will not fill you with the warm feeling of being loved, but it will instead act as a reminder that you will never amount to even a fraction of Carlos's lifetime achievements or manliness. Because you are not Carlos Ezquerra. Unless Carlos Ezquerra is reading this. In which case you are Carlos Ezquerra, and can just ignore this paragraph.

Anyway, enough wittering, just go here and look at the thing yourself.

Host 1: http://www.zshare.net/download/8035759096751fc8/

Host 2: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9075096/supersquirrel_undefeated_pblc_cpy.20100903-175749.zip

(Both links lead to the same file, in case you have difficulty with one or the other.)

The final word should go to The Legendary Shark himself, for achieving such an amazing feat. Many have called for him to be awarded the Krill Tro Thargo, and if Tharg was a democracy rather than a brutal, condescending, alien tyrant, then I would add my vote to the heap.