I got to draw author Lily Fox’s lovely characters from her GUARDIANS series! Pestilence (green), Lady (red), and Kath (blue)! Descriptions of the characters were quite specific, so I tried my best to capture them. Lily was happy, so that’s all that matters! I had a lot of fun with this one. I ended up making one large print of the characters together, and three mini-prints of the characters separately. I think Pes is my faaaaavouriiiiiite ;3; You can check out a collection of Lily’s short stories here!

Wanted to write a bit about these two comics! First up is Dead Roots, a zombie anthology. I do rather like zombie stories, so this was up my street! I liked how each story focussed on how different people coped during a zombie outbreak. There’ll be more issues, so check it out here and show your support!

La Belle Dame sans Merci (part 1 of 4), by Philip Buchan and Karen Lusted, will be out at Thought Bubble. Based around the poem of the same name, we have part one of the story, some lovely pin-ups as extra material in the back, and a feminist essay at the back. Romantics and feminism in one? Hello, what more could you ask for! :D Check it out here, along with Bucky’s other work. I got to colour Karen’s lovely linework for the cover of issue one as well, which was real nice *^_^*

Okay! I’ll see people at Thought Bubble NEXT WEEK! Me and Paul are at Table 43! See you! \^_^/

Hello! I’ve been bogged down a lot lately…! But quickly, here are two interviews. The first was for Thought Bubble Festival as their series of Minterviews… I’m so excited for Thought Bubble again! It was definitely one of the best shows I’ve ever been to! Click for the interview. The second was for Richard Reynolds of Fanboy Confidential, and was also really fun to answer. I like answering questions ;3; Click for this interview!

I am also excited to be a guest at this weekend’s KAPOW! Comic Festival in London. I’ll be attending on the Sunday, with the Independant Comics panel at 12.45 in Room A, and then signing straight afterwards in the same room, until 2.15. This is a great panel: we have Emma Vieceli, Becky Cloonan and the creators behind Bayou Arcana joining us! Following that, I’ll be at the SelfMadeHero table from 2.30. Hope to see some of you there!

So anyway… here’s four little sketches of characters from A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones (mostly based on the actors portraying them in the series) that I did in a cafe when I was going nuts waiting for a replacement monitor to show up. I’d Instagrammed them at the time, and now I can’t find the originals, so, the Instagrammed versions will have to do, haha.

Hopefully they’re easy enough to figure out who’s who, but just in case, from top right in clockwise motion: Ned Stark, Joffrey Baratheon Lannister Whatever, Jaime Lannister, Sansa Stark. After that I got bored and went home. I should do some more sometime, though, they’re quite fun to draw.

Other than THAT, I’m coming to the end of a series of ilustrations for a perfomance piece as part of the Cultural Olympiad. I hope to be able to share a bit more information on this very soon!

The launch party for The Phoenix was on saturday. It also marked the date of Issue #1, so that was handy! :D It was a cool event set in the Story Museum, which I’m looking forward to seeing open its doors to the general public in 2014 (also it’s 10 minutes walk from our house – again with the handiness!)

I neglected to take a camera, which was pretty stupid of me, but you can see photos from the event at Sarah McIntyre’s journal here!

The comic itself is absolutely beautiful. It was lovely to see kids (and adults) sitting round and reading it from cover to cover! One little guy got really squealingly excited when he realised he would be getting a new issue every weekend (“Every weekend?! EVERY weekend…?!!”). If you never got your hands on one of the Issue Zero preview Phoenixes (Phoeni?) then now you can, by the way! It’s up here: https://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk/free-digi-phoenix/ And please do consider supporting the comic by subscribing or getting your issues every week in Waitrose stores and selected children’s bookshops (with more outlets to follow!) The comic itself houses many diverse storytelling and art styles from many UK creators and buying it is a good way to a) support the UK industry and b) have some fun.

Here’s a quick teaser panel from Episode One of The Lost Boy…

I’ve finished thumbnailing it now, so all I have to do is draw the rest of it! Woo! I hope those who will be following the story as it unfolds will enjoy it. I have definitely enjoyed making it…! For those who are following along, you MIGHT have guessed by now that a large part of The Lost Boy revolves around a map. Or, more specifically, map pieces. If you keep an eye on the TLB page on the Phoenix site, you can print out the map chunks as the hero finds them, and put them together with him as he goes along! :D The first one is up now…

Happy printing and arranging! ;D

(Quick round-up!)

Thought Bubble was great! It was my first time there, and the first time the comics festival covered the weekend as well. I had masses of fun and I really liked the attendees. I would say a huge number of them were A) younger than me and B) female. Very embarrasingly, I missed the first half of the first panel I was meant to be doing, which was about the then-newly released Nelson… though I did catch the last 20 mins of it and I’m not certain I would have been terribly useful anyway, everyone on the panel looked like they were doing a super job :)

On that note, Nelson is excellent! I’ve finally had a read-through and it is actually quite astonishing as a project. The thing that struck me overall was the vulnerability of Nel, and the emphasis on how quickly our lives rush past, the decisions we have to make in the blink of an eye, and the way memories can transform into stories – almost as if they’d happened to someone else – after a certain length of time. Have you read it yet…? Do you own it? You should! It’s a superb cross-section of the UK comics industry, and the book’s profits go to charity. Please consider supporting it – click here for the Blank Slate store page!

So a week after Thought Bubble (nearly typed ‘Bibble’, tee hee) it was off to Malta Comicon! This was my second overseas convention. We were all very well looked-after as guests, and were treated to some sight-seeing on the following week! We visited the War Museum and the Inquisitor’s Palace. I found the latter absolutely fascinating – I admit that the majority of what I knew about the Inquisition was down to hear-say and its representation in popular culture. So, to discover everything about the Maltese Inquisition was really eye-opening. ALSO! We visited Mdina on the final day, which, as was mentioned off-hand as we entered the city gates, was used as part of the set for King’s Landing in Game of Thrones. I promptly shat myself in excitement… and then my camera battery ran out. Damncakes. I *did* get a fat bunch of photos from the Inquisitor’s Palace however, so I gotta process those and get ‘em up on my Flickr at some point!

But yeah. Was sad not to spot either Jaime Lannister or Corto Maltese. They must have seen my fangirl aura approaching like a swarm of bees and hidden themselves (I don’t blame them).

So, really I’ve been so busy recently I’ve forgotten what my office looks like -_-; I absolutely have to cut down on events next year – my work schedule has really taken it in the face. Gotta try and catch up as much as I can…!

Speaking of work! Did you manage to catch Issue Zero of The Phoenix? :D I had one waiting for me when I got home! It was such a good read, and I’m so excited about January! Please tell me you’ve subscribed? You’ll be getting an awesome product and you’ll also be supporting the UK comics industry!

That’s about it from me… sorry for a non-pictoral post. I know it’s a bit boring :( I’m so squeezed for time at the moment!

Take care! Oh, and if you’re in the Melksham area, me, Emma Vieceli and Paul Duffield are signing and sketching for you at KOMIX on Saturday 10th! See you there…!