24 hour comic weekend 2011 Perth WA

I made an effort to join the official WA 24 hour comic weekend, held at FTI Fremantle again this year. Tim came down with a crook neck, and was pretty much a turtle on his back in pain on the floor at home, so unfortunately he couldn't make it. Which made it all the harder to make myself stay there.

But I did stay, later than I had planned. It started at 10am, and I planned to write and draw as fast possible and do two pages an hour, so I could go home at 11pm, sleep 5 hours and come back at 6am to rejoin everyone 'til the end and finish off my comic. I ended up staying until 4am, and then had to bail, because my mind in it's fatigued state was starting to hinder me instead of help. My mind spent the last hour trying to find ways to cut pages out of the comic and ways I could make it shorter so I could be done with it already.

I am happy that I got it off to a good start though. Chris Markle the organiser tried a theme this year, based on a guy's successful 'death machine' comic theme. A machine that takes a person's blood sample, then processes a card that tells the person how they are going to die. All the comickers had to write a story based on the machine, but could create it any way they liked.

Chris came up with a bunch of cards with made up deaths on them, which we 24 hour comic participants randomly chose one to write our comic about.

My card was "Sudden Unexplained Explosion". I didn't want to kill any of my characters ever, that's how attached I get to my creations. But after an initial hour of brainstorming I locked down a good story and thumbed it all out by the second hour in. So then it was just straight drawing late into the night with everyone else.

The company was great, Michael Lombardi, Linda Foote and Chris, who are all old hands at the comic thing by now. And Jane who I know from life drawing was there, and we both staked out the couch (by default, because we came late and all the tables were taken) where I stayed the whole time, resulting in a very kicked back, leisurely comic drawing experience for me. It was great drawing on the couch by a coffee table. I had my shoes off, warm socks, feet up on the couch the whole time.

I will write more later about some of the other comickers and their fantastic comic work that I spied later. I'm going to try to finish the rest of this comic today. 

Planking the stupidest trend ever?!

POLICING OF THE STUPID


Lately there's been report after report about people planking and trouble with the police etc etc. Doesn't the news have anything more important to show? And I'm sure the police would rather be policing other stuff. What a waste of time and effort when resources are used to protect stupid people from hurting themselves through their own choice, sheesh!






THE END.

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Belated Halloween jellybaby cheer

OH DARN IT!
About two years ago when I was in Hobart, I started writing a few jellybaby four panel cartoon strip, you know like the "funnies" comics you get in the newspaper. These were mostly in draft lead pencil form. When I started doing my post grad studies at the beginning of this year, I got more snippets of comic strip ideas for the jellybabies while I was sitting in my lectures listening about Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The jellybabies were such a great voice for my more serious, political/environmental pondering. I was so inspired that I began finishing some of the comic strips to 'publish', and one of the first ones I wanted to put up for show, happend to be this Halloween themed one. But it was for Halloween.

So I have been hanging onto it for so long, waiting ALL YEAR for Halloween to come round so I could post it up.

And then Halloween came, and it is now a few days later, and I realised I have totally forgotten about my Halloween four panel comic!!!
But I'll be damned if I have to wait a whole 'nother year to roll round, so here it is. Hope everyone had a spectacularly spooky and quirky Halloween.
And I hope everyone reads this comic strip!

* thanks to those who gave me the feedback. I've left the version that had the better timing :) 

SodaPopJam

Last weekend I joined a group of local artists/comic artist peers at FTI for the annual 24 hour comic challenge. The event is a lockdown type thing, firstly for our own safety as who knows what Fremantle folk might wander in if the doors are unlocked.  Secondly the lockdown thing is just to encourage the whole vibe, peer support and challenge of the event.

So I felt pretty poor when I (as subtly as I could) packed up my things and snuck off after 12 hours and drove home. I started off great in the beginning, and thumbed out a whole fantastic, colourful, neon-filled story about three jellybaby rocker gals called Soda, Pop and Jam! But the great visualness I could see in my head was so amazing that I geuss I psyched myself out and my drawing got slower and slower, so that by the 10 hour mark I had done two pages. TWO PAGES. Mostly everyone around me had done ten. Someone who was struggling had done six.

There was no way I was going to be seen with only two pages. So I left.

Yes, I will finish my story because look at the girls, they're so cute!

The Soda Pop Jam story will have to wait though, because at the moment I have a very special portrait I am working on. "Dominic and Luigi" the black poodles, my first official comissioned pet portrait! I am so excited, I'm scared down to my cold toes, that I am procrastinating instead of beginning. Ok. Calm down. Pep talk. pep talk.

Maybe the world needs a crazy vampire government

       

I just watched last week's episode (nine) of True Blood. *spoiler alert if you haven't watched it yet, don't read on*

Did everyone else crack up at the end like I did? I watched the end five times and I still laugh uncontrollably. 'WE WILL EAT YOU. AFTER WE EAT YOUR CHILDREN....Now for the weather. Tiffany.' The actor who plays King Vampire Russell Edgington should win an award for the delivery of his lines. So good. 

On a more serious note, I love his speech so much about all the wrongs of the human civilization. Apart from eating us and our children, it'd be great if we could have a scary, rightious government that will right the wrongs of the world.

Second comic "Peabrain Vol01" finitto!

Finally finished the second comic "Peabrain" Vol01. After only 4 hours sleep having stayed up handstitching the pages and binding the cover with gold threads the night before, I had to stumble out of bed at 8am, but still late and catch a bus into the city with Timothy to deliver the comics to Luke at the Semi-Permanent design event itself. This is because we couldn't get it done by Friday, and then still not done on Monday to hand over to Artrage for Luke to collate and organise. Of course the bus ran late, and of course there was an accident on the freeway involving a bus clipping a few cars, so by the time we walked to Pier Street from the bus port, the time was not only past what I had arranged with Luke (half an hour before the event opened to the public), but 10 minutes OVER the opening time. So I had to make another sheepish call to Luke, to say that we were stuck behind the crowd outside and he had to come out in the midst of manning the stall inside to take our comics. May I promise myself to start my next comic earlier next time.

So anyway, Vol 01 of Peabrain looks very neat and I'm really happy with it. The paper we used is like the sort that you used to get in those colouring in books as a kid. You know the yellowy, thicker scrapbook type paper. It smells like puzzles and childhood fun. It contains Tim's Mr Gough spreads and my jellybaby rabbit Egg Day stories, 50 pages of quirky cute, two comics in one, hand bound for 12 bucks in select bookstores... sometime. If you can't find it, give us a hand and go ask your favourite bookstore and create some demand. :P

Guache smells nice

Our cover, drawn by Timothy, painted by me. I love mixing guache and love how it smells, and I find painting so much faster than digital inking & colouring. Although this one I think I did too fast under the pressure of finishing our comic in time, and it didn't turn out as great as I'd like it.

"Egg Day" in Jellybaby land

4.mar.07 This is the first page of my new story

Last week Timothy and I were busy doing a freelance job. This recruitment ad for Mig33 to go on the web. Tim's put up some pics and wrote about it here. Tim's also doing a comic for the psuedo 24 hrs comic, this time full page spreads of Mr Gough. Which I really look forward to seeing because of this picture, and this short. We are going to release our comics in the same comic book this time.

21.mar.07
After more than a week of painfully writing out this new story, and sorting out layout/composition for every page, it is now fun. I say painful because of other pressing projects, work, looking for work, and little time to do as much as I want to make this new story perfect. Thank god it is now fun and I think the lengths it took to get here is worth it. take a look at the first finished pages above. I love eggs.

25.Mar.07

More than half the pages inked now.
The bulk of the egg machine was designed by the talented Timothy Merks And then I went and customized it for the jelly babies. (if you haven't yet seen, take a look at a couple of pages from the Mr Gough comic he's doing neck to neck with me. very cute and cool).

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