Posts Tagged ‘ f+c

F+C cover preview

A screenshot of the cover for Fish + Chocolate. I’ve been doing all sorts of nice things recently like getting back in contact with the printer (my old estimate of completion date was October 2010, remember that? HAHAHAHAH *fail*) and doing the cover and inside stuff, and laying things out, and so on and so on. I’m getting pumped because I can see the end of this…! It will just be crazy to finish it all. I’ve been working on it for so long, considering how short the actual book is…

Almost, almost, almost there……….

Titles and Planning

It’s my birthday today! I still need to work, but I thought I’d do something fun, so I’m planning the layouts and title pages for Fish & Chocolate ^_^/ It’s going quite well!

It might be too small to see in the scrappy scribbles in my sketchbook there, but the total page count stands at 144! O_O; That’s bigger than I first planned it. I’m pleased! :D I’m excited to have a fat book.

I have ideas for poster images for each story. I would really like to make them as promo pieces (perhaps get them printed as postcards…?) but it’ll depend on time. If I do it, it’ll probably be after the book has been sent off to print, so I wouldn’t be able to put them in the book.

At least, not for the first printing… ^_~

*noises*

Still wading through the mire of F&C… I’m getting there, though. Every now and then I see the faint light at the end of the tunnel, haha! I might start posting snippet-style previews… but then when I think about doing this I can never pick which bits O_O; Anyhow, you must believe me that I’ll be flapping all over the place once the book is done. (I’m looking forward to HOLDING it!)

F&C previews

Welp, I’ve dragged the prints around in my portfolio for some time now, and had them up in various places on the net… in fact, everywhere but my own place on the net it seems, ha ha ha. I guess most people have seen these by now, but oh well! Here they are once more… these are the first 9 pages from ‘The Cherry Tree’, Fish & Chocolate’s second story. It is trĂ©s pink! I hope you like the look of them… I’m really going to try and get the book done and dusted for the end of January!

I’ll put these up on my site at some point.

Apologies for not mushing the double-page-spread together. I… have no excuse. Anyway. I picked this section as it’s one of the (possibly the only) readable sequences that doesn’t give anything away or is too long to be considered a preview. The book is about 128 pages, but as it’s three individual stories of roughly 40 pages each… you know, they snap on at a fast pace.

Gotta get this baby DONE. NOWWWWW!

In other news, Mr Awesome + Awesome = Neill Cameron and I are off to the Dragon School tomorrow to do some… stuff! We are not quite sure what it is yet. It’ll involve comics, of course :D Yesterday we hit up Banbury school for some comicking goodness. It’s like Kate & Neill week. Wooo! (I’m so knackered).

The Graph of Love

So I’ve done a few long-term projects now, and I’ve started to notice a bit of a loose pattern forming around each project. I have no idea if anyone else goes through this (lemme know if you do – I’ll feel like less of a freakish rollercoaster of woe) but here’s my “Graph-Type Thing of Completing a Graphic Novel, shown in terms of Time Spent on the Project Vs. Emotional Output or Something” …

The blue cross is where I’m at right now. The red wiggles heading off the end of the Time Spent On Project bit is to allow for panic & self-doubt in the printing stages of the work.

So yeah. Anyway! I’ve been enjoying reading the articles on The Comics Bureau recently! Check it out – it focusses on the UK stable of creators, and asks nice questions, rather than just the ol’ “Who are your influences” type of crap.

Epic paper-cuts.

Horribly grainy photo, but it’s a horribly gainy photo of COMPLETION. Almost. 99.9% of completion. (I’m going to re-draft a page from The Cherry Tree entirely, because I hate it and it doesn’t work. But other than that… completion!) According to my wonky note on the last page I drew, I actually finished drawing on 15th November… but then our scanner broke and we had all sorts of fun and japes, and I’ve only just finished scanning in the pages as of this moment.

I’ve completely finished colouring and lettering The Cherry Tree (apart from the page I want to totally re-do), finished all my touch-ups and re-draws, and it’s all coming together how I expected, more or less. I took what I had of it to show Emma Hayley (who nominated me initially for the Arts Foundation Fellowship) and Shelley Warren of the Arts Foundation a couple weeks ago, and I think they liked it. I’m looking forward to giving them the printed book.

Still looking at a late Jan/early February release date. Roll on!

Dying, dying…

Oh god, I’m… dead under all this. I just have a little bit more to go on Fish & Chocolate… but I think I’m out of my first, second and third winds already. I’m desperately trying to find a fourth.

10 min sketch ’cause I’ve not had time to draw anything for weeks and I don’t feel right when I don’t draw SOMETHING.

I’m really looking forward to going to a secluded cabin for Christmas (this is actually happening) and spend a bit of time in front of a fake fire with Paul & my lovely friends… but I know I need to really chill the fuck out for a couple of days before I go, or I’ll just be a juddering lump, which won’t be fun for anyone.

Not dead yet…

Just as a quick update, since I don’t like to keep my journal so silent…

I’ve been a bit ill for a while with some crappy low-level virus, and over-working as usual. I ended up lining pages in bed the other day and strained all the muscles in my neck and shoulder as well. Yes, it has been fun here. Thankfully, I have now got a lovely flatting assistant to help out with my comic, which makes me feel a bit less stressed ^^ Selecting a flatter was actually really tough work, and I do not envy people who need to make hard choices and log people’s progress/efforts on a regular basis O_O; I really thought I’d only get one or two people apply… though it turned out to be way more than that, and as such took quite a while to get it all settled. At least it’s settled now!

*sniff* *coughcough* Anyways, I need to scan more pages… wooo…. T_T;

F&C – Pipered!

(So… obviously missing a lot of production notes due to the database deletion. I’m just going to continue).

Finished the pages for The Piper Man, the first story in Fish & Chocolate (though it was the second story I drew)…

Meh. I had a hard time with this one. Had one of those “yeah that’ll look awesome!”-times in drafting it, and then getting round to actually drawing some of those “awesome!” things was… like, not so awesome. More like headache-inducing. I test-coloured a couple of pages at the beginning, though I’m not really sure if I like how they came out. They’ll prbably look a bit better with text on. I’m really not sure I like that first page much at all, anyway. Oh jeezuz, here I go with the happy XD

A little bit about The Piper Man! So, I think this is technically the newest story to add to the bunch. It’s about 3 years old now? It’s been through a few drafts. Not too many. I had one of those “complete visions” of the idea for it one night, and had to write the whole thing down in case I forgot. At one point it was going to go in an anthology, although that fell through. Kinda good in a way, as I get to mash it together with the other two F&C stories, and it sits quite nicely alongside them.

I’m going to be interested to see what other people think about it. I have a firm idea of what it’s about, although when I showed the draft to Paul, he found rather different things to say about it. I think that’s cool. I will be fascinated to see if people see it from his point of view, or my point of view, or a totally different thing.

Anyway! Currently, I’m about 10 pages into doing roughs for Matryoshka. So, 30-odd pages to go, then I’m done with the pencils! Woo!