Awesome Podcast-A-Go-Go

I'm guest on the 35th Episode of the Awesome Comics Podcast. A great fun podcast that focuses on all things small press helmed by Vince Hunt, Dan Butcher and Tony Ezoyeh.

They're really passionate and supportive about all things small press and up and coming creators.

I talk about childhood influences, working methods, my Charlatan Tales series. And work with writers Lee Robson, Ryan K Lindsay and Martin Hayes, of whom there should be more news soon of our 'Gentlemen Ghouls' project in Aces Weekly.

First time I did a podcast so was bit jittery/waffley but they treated me gently.

The Complete Charlatan Tales

From 2012 to 2014 I created and self-published three issues of anthology-style comic 'Charlatan Tales'. The title was a clear indication that I was largely making things up as I went along. The collected material is now available through Comixology Submit and can be found here. It's 80+ pages of material for only 99c.

Charlatan Tales no.1 - released 2012 - blog post here.

Charlatan Tales no.2 - released 2013 - blog post here.

Charlatan Tales no.3 - released 2014 - blog post here.

The material varied from one-page humour pieces to full-length full-colour sci-fi satire adventures, taking in dystopian poetry and kitchen sink supernatural shenanigans along the way.

I rambled at a bit more length about my experiences creating material for 'Charlatan Tales' over at a guest post on Colin Smith's fantastic 'Too Busy Thinking About My Comics' blog.

It feels good drawing a line under this, collecting it and pushing it down the river in a digital Moses basket. It's good to look forward to fresh projects now.

Thanks to all who picked up, stocked and said nice things about these issues as they came out. Big shout outs to Camila in Orbital Comics London, Tony Ezoyeh and Mark Kardwell. It's all good.

Rip it up and start again.

Behance Portfolios - 2014

A round-up of images and drawing from the year that was, 2014, over at my Behance account.

Have knuckled down since the summer in keeping a sketchbook in my hipster-lite Moleskin sketchbook, it's been overall enjoyable and hopefully beneficial, at very least a good way to kill dead time such as travelling to/from work. Link to my first portfolio dedicated to sketchbook pages.

Illustration link contains a mix of comic book material, including cover and pages from my third and final edition of my 'Charlatan Tales' comic series, and one-off illustrative pieces as well first two pieces from ongoing series illustrating A-Z of personal music heroes.

Let's what's at the end of the line in 2015...

Beardrock - Charlatan Tales - Review and Interview

 

I was chuffed to get a really positive review of my 3 anthology-style comics 'Charlatan Tales' over at the BeardRock site. A lot of the reference points and influences assumed and highlighted are uncannily on the money. Also great to get faults/niggles raised to give me some food for thought moving forward. 

 

The review was followed by artist interview, which was fun to do and to look back and think about what were the big inspirations through the years. Though I feel I let myself ramp up the waffle-factor a bit too much.

 

The reviewer/interviewer Tony Esmond was a really hassle-free guy to have a correspondence with and he really seems to know his apples when it comes to comics. He can be followed on Twitter @Ezohyez

Charlatan Tales... The End

It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights...

The third issue of my self-published comic material 'Charlatan Tales' is now out there in the big bad world. I've decided that this will be the final issue of material under the 'Charlatan Tales' banner. As the title hints, this was an open-planned vehicle for me to make things up as I went along and to have an outlet for producing pages of material. The first issue contained 5 self-contained pieces, ranging from a 1-pager to 6 pages. The second issue contained two longer tales at 9 pages and 18 pages respectively and now the third issue contains a single 28-page story in full colour. So I feel, it's served its purpose in giving me the outlet to stretch myself and limber up for doing more (semi) polished long-form work. And also, to be frank, it's been a bit of an indulgence which is getting less and less tenable to throw money at.

Below are the first 6 pages of issue three's story ' The Cosmic Plectrum'. My initial idea was to try and cram loads of fun/daft imagery, concepts and set ups into one story that would be fun and engaging to flesh out, without too much over-thinking or picking apart. The likes of Gilbert Shelton's 'Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers' adventures, specifically 'Idiots Abroad', where it careens from one crazy set-up to the next with a bit of sloppy satire thrown in to the mix, was a main point of fuzzy reference. Along the way, some genuine sentiment and my own half-baked world view crept into proceedings, hopefully fleshing things out a bit.

A lot of the stuff going on in this issue stems from interests and passions going back to my teens; hoary old rock references, psychedelia, dystopian sci-fi satire. Even the character of Spaceman first appeared in a school copy doodle going back roughly to maybe aged 17, and to be honest he hasn't developed much farther from that in the meantime, so this is definitely going to be the last time he appears on the page. Hopefully I can move on to fresh work putting new ideas, outlooks and ways of working into the toybox.

I'm really glad I committed to doing this in full colour, even though this took far longer than I initially considered, it's really made me appreciate the sheer scale of work a colourist has to do in modern comics. Where possible I wanted to ramp up old school garish comic book colouring and contrasts. Prior to beginning colouring, as a main point of reference and influence, I took in and soaked up a cherished, battered copy of Captain America 111 by Steranko. In future, I'd like to display more confidence in using more extreme colour choices and contrasts to ramp up the stylized possibilities of comic book visuals.

It can be picked up in the following outlets, who've all gratefully carried previous copies of Charlatan Tales:

Mega City Comics, 18 Inverness Street, London NW1 7HJ

Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7J
Sub City, 62 Dame St, Dublin 2, Dublin
Universal Books, Church Lane, Letterkenny, Co.Donegal

It can be bought online via my Etsy shop and also on Comicsy. Charlatan Tales no. 2 & 3 can be bought together for only £5 (+p&p).

All original ink pages are for sale at very reasonable prices, please inquire if interested.

I'm hoping to consider working on something more structured and more long-form, maybe a 48-page one off or a 3/4 issue series, or potentially working with a like-minded writer.

To the future...

The Cosmic Plectrum

Have finally sent the material for my third issue of Charlatan Tales off to print.

It contains a self-contained 28 page full-colour story 'The Cosmic Plectrum' containing my erratically occurring character 'Spaceman'.

Below is the cover artwork, hopefully update sooner rather than later on release and availability of the finished product.

The High Priestess

 

The third in my on-going trash comic book style re-interpretations of the Tarot card designs.

 

 

The previous two designs 'The Fool' and 'The Magician' have been used as the back cover illustrations on my self-published comic publication 'Charlatan Tales'.

 

I'm limbering up to getting everything in place for the third issue coming together, just got the cover design and a few designy bits and pieces and general clean ups to carry out.

 

The Cosmic Plectrum - Pencils

The next issue of 'Charlatan Tales' is going to include a single self-contained story.

I've finished 28 pages of pencils, it'll contain my sporadically popping up shaggy dog of a character 'Spaceman'.

In my mind initially, the story was to be a daft bit of good-hearted fun which collided Steranko's Nick Fury material with Gilbert Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Bros. work, though most likely it'll be lacking the dynamism and verve of Steranko and the warmth and satire of Shelton.

Below is the first six pages of pencils:

 

Nest step, jumping in with the inking and doing the pages in full colour...

Emanata - Update

 

 

A (belated) update to highlight that I've got more material available on the Emanata app.

The app is available to download on Ipad, Iphone and Android and gives you the opportunity to view and download the work of many independent comic creators, with a lot of material available to view for free.

There's my 18 page story 'Light and Dust' available to download for $1.99 and also spooky short wrtitten by Mark Kavanagh, 'The Hollows' to view for free.

Older material is still available, the first issue of 'Charlatan Tales' and also 'Random', which is available for free.

It's a decent app with a smooth interface and it does no harm to support independent creators doing what they love.

Charlatan Tales - The Second Coming

The second issue of my self-published material is now finally available.

It contains two main stories, 'Light & Dust' and also 'The Hollows', scripted by Mark Kavanagh.

It can be bought through my etsy shop, where you can also pick up issue 1 and 2 as a set for just £5(+p&p).

 

It is on sale at:

 

Mega City Comics, Inverness Street Markets, 18 Inverness Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7HJ

 

Orbital, 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7JA

 

Sub City, 2 Excequer St, Dublin 2, Dublin

 

Also available online at Big Cartel.

Consume!

London Super Comic Convention

I'll be involved with the London Super Comic Convention for the first time, this coming weekend 23/24th February. I'll have a table in the Artist's Alley section.

I'll be selling comics, prints and other stuff, including a new edition of my self-published material 'Charlatan Tales'. Hope to see you there.

Light & Dust - Charlatan Tales 002 - Cover Design

  

 

This is the cover design for the next edition of 'Charlatan Tales', which I'll be releasing at the end of this month at London Super Comic Con.

The main story 'Light and Dust', references classic horror movies and is set largely in a ciema so I wanted to bring an old movie poster feel to it.

 

I had a specific idea for the type treatment so this involved me designing and hand drawing it.

Light & Dust

Here's the first three pages of an 18 page story which should be the centrepiece of the next edition of 'Charlatan Tales' which will be available at my table in the Artist's Alley section at the London Super Comic-Con in February.

The story's a bit Hammer Horror meets Ken Loach.

Also, this is my 100th blog post, woop woop. It's been a good incentive for me to get work out there and to catalogue and use as a quick reference of what I've produced over the last few years. Right, enough of the celebrating, back to trying to figure out how to make a viable living out of holding a pencil.

Emanata - iPad - uPad?

I've got comic material for download on the American-based Emanata app for iPad. This is a comic reader for the iPad which focuses on the work of independent comic creators.

Older material 'Random' is available to view for free and my more recent material 'Charlatan Tales' can be downloaded for $2.99.

It's an easy to navigate app with some great work from a really varied mix of independent creators, they hope to roll the app out on to other tablets in due course.

The Hollows

I've just completed a nine page story 'The Hollows' which will be appearing in the next issue of 'Charlatan Tales'.

It's written by mate Mark Kavanagh, actor, writer, raconteur.

Here's the first three pages...

The basis of it came about after a drunken discussion to do a story built around the old school ghost story set up of a seance. A lot of fun to work on. Here's the layers of the onion showing pencils and layouts of the first page...

Charlatan Tales

Interior page samples...

I began selling the first issue of new comic material 'Charlatan Tales' in the Comic Village at London ComicCon MCM Expo at the weekend. It contains a number of self-contained stories and is printed in colour and black and white.

Here's a shot of me at the convention (covering up a facial bruise/graze I got from falling off a mate's bike the night before the convention, perfect timing!)...

It can be bought online through Etsy, Ebay and Big Cartel.

It can also be bought in-store at these comic shops:

• Sub City, 2 Exchequer Street, Dublin 2, Dublin (available from 30/05/12)
• Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7JA (available from 30/05/12)
• Mega City Comics, Inverness Street Markets, 18 Inverness Street, Camden Town, London, NW1 7HJ
• OK Comics, 19 Thornton's Arcade, Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6LQ
• Gosh!, 1 Berwick Street, London, W1F 0DR

A big thanks to David McAtamney for giving me a fun wee script to work with for one of the tales and also to Stuart Gould at UK Comics Creative for supplying hassle-free printing.