We raffled off a large print of one of the original DFC covers of The Spider Moon, and also of course we had the auction… I was VERY happy with the result! We raised a lot of cash for Mind and also, in a rather cool twist, the winning bidders turned out to be the lovely folk at The Story Museum, which is about 10mins walk from our flat! If you live nearby you should keep an eye on this place. It certainly looks awesome. Oh, I love Oxford so much :D

Lots of my most favourite people were able to come along, so it was just such a cheery event! In a total surprise, some friends from Devon drove all the way up for the evening. It was super-awesome as I’ve not seen those guys for such a long time. My editor for The Spider Moon (a.k.a. Lovely Ben) was able to come as well, which was super-awesome too!

Here’s some pics that Paul took under the cut…

Setting up! I love how Blackwell framed the images. The Bekka-sitting-on-the-moon cover was the raffled image. It went to a lovely family home :D

Books!

All the DFC Library books together! It was great seeing them like this. Please do look out for Vern & Lettuce by Sarah, Mo-Bot High by Neill, and Monkey Nuts by Bob & Lorenzo out later this year! They’ll make great Christmas presents, won’t they? Eh? Eh? *nudge*

Crowd! (Including Philip Pullman! He’s just this guy, you know? somebody I admire a huge amount, so I was totally overwhelmed to meet him. We spoke about a few things, including my boots. I hope that I did not make a fool of myself.)

We had sketchbooks and drawing materials out on the tables! They were well-used! (Would like to point out here that David Fickling was making bowties cool long before Doctor Who ;p)

Paul is probably making a masterpiece! ;D Or could he be drawing a certain shining knight…? ;D

Also! Please do check out my friend Lisa’s collection of photographs from the event. She’s very talented! :D

The rest of the weekend was spent with friends playing video games and MtG and watching silly things on YouTube and eating nice things and talking about comics and books and films and basically everything we all love. Couldn’t be better! :D

Here’s the pieces we’ll be auctioning off at the (very, very late…) launch party for The Spider Moon:

I felt like making a new outfit for Kal (but doesn’t it make him look older! O_O;) Actually, that particular illustration is an adapted version of the third cover I was hoping to do for The DFC, for when Part Three of TSM started its run. All in all I’m glad I finally got to do that picture one way or another, as I was kinda fond of it.

They’ll go as a pair: linework on A4 Bristol board and a coloured print of each, starting at £5. So the winning bidder will get 4 items total. The proceeds will go to Mind, which is a charity I support anyway, but I want to give it an extra boost. That is… if anyone wants the pieces ;3; Of course I’m terrified that nobody will bid and we’ll all just stand there and then go home…

…someone will buy these for £5, won’t they? Right? (Right…?)

Private commission for a client ^_^ This was really fun to do, though rather challenging, as the client requested a scene from a dream that she had had the night before, and we both tried hard to re-capture it on paper :D Everything in the image was as carefully represented as possible. She was happy, so, I’m happy! I really missed doing illustration. It always shocks me how different it is to comics (in my opinion).

In other news, The Spider Moon has been nominated for The Northern Graphic Novel Award 2010 *^_^* I am totally shocked and thrilled *^^* Though I can’t find anything about the award yet online, the results will be given at Thought Bubble this October. Typically, I can’t make it to TB this year ;3; I don’t know who else has been nominated, either O_O; IT IS A MYSTERY!

EDIT: The other nominated titles are: MeZolith, The Wizard of Oz, Sliverfin, Good Dog Bad Dog and Beasts of Burden. I heard my hopes fizzle away down the drain when I learned of the other nominees XD Congratulations to these people! :D