Following on from yesterday, here’s some more explorative sketches! Our *airquotes* “hero”:

…who looks like he’s chanelling Joffrey Baratheon Lannister Baratheon Lannister in that bottom one, there. And:

(I don’t know what happened to his tooth. Probably someone socked him).

And some super rough environment stuff… not sure how interesting these are but they were kinda helpful to me so… anyway here they are:

I realised with horror that I have, yet again, another comic in which the vast majority of the backgrounds are bloody foliage. Thank god Freakangels was so urban… or I think I would have killed something by now.

Please check out The Phoenix, and I really do recommend subscribing! Special Issue Zero that’s just gone out got some lovely and favourable reviews from children and parents, and I can promise you that Issue One and each issue after that will be FUCKING AWESOME.

It’s nice because I often get a bit BLEH after christmas and don’t generally enjoy my birthday, so The Phoenix is a great way to lift those early year blues, should you happen to get them as well! :)

This may well be my last post before Christmas and possibly of 2011 altogether, so… Merry Xmas to all those who celebrate it, and all those who won’t, have a safe couple of weeks! x

Well… that’s it! It’s done! (More or less!) I need to settle on a blurb for the back cover, and edit a couple of pages, but really they’re very minor tweaks. I finished on Friday 11th February, at 2am in the morning after an epic final battle that lasted 18 hours, in which time I ate maybe three bowls of cereal and did not go to the toilet. Paul, bless him deeply, stayed up with me until the end. By the time the last page rolled around, we played Chariots of Fire on Spotify, repeatedly, until I saved my files in PS for the last time. Then I had a vimto and gin (Ginto? Anyway, we had no tonic) and a further bowl of cereal, I cried a bit, and then went to sleep. And didn’t really move for the next 24 hours XD

Because I pulled many ridiculous days over the past few weeks, and like, I’ve not even been getting dressed, and just sitting still for hours upon hours on end, I’ve actually given myself chilblains XD Protip: wear socks and make sure you move around when completing your comics, folks.

So anyway, here’s the final cover (minus blurb):

And I thought I’d share the title plates as well for each story:

So how do I feel about it? “Fucking relieved” comes to mind. The Cherry Tree is something I’ve been working on and off with since university, which was a good few years back now… like, 2004 or so? The Piper Man is the most recent, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned somewhere before, but even that’s been sitting around, a half-finished script, some character desgns, etc., for about three or four years. Completing Matryoshka feels like I’ve exorcised something. That story has been through the wringer.

The entire book means a lot to me. I mean, really. Finishing it was extremely emotional, and if you’ve been in contact with me in the last few months or so, I’m likely to have been a bit moody… sorry about that ^^; With finishing those final pages, I feel like I have achieved one of my life’s goals, and I feel very, very lucky to have been able to do so in my twenties.

I also feel like I’ve stuck it to a few people, you know. People who have said I could never make comics for a living, that I should really think about getting a “real” job; people who have laughed in my face when I’ve told them what my passions are and what I do… and, most especially, when I was sick for several years and the doctors told me and my family I should “just give up” the idea of being an artist, as it would never likely happen because I could never lead a normal life and it would be best for me to forget about it all. So fuck you, doc! Not only did I get better, I’m doing what I always told you I would do, and what I told everyone I would do. I didn’t give in. So there!

So now! I need to do those final checks, and get this baby off to the printers. I’m as yet unsure how long it will be before I get my product, but I’m guessing it’ll be around 2 – 5 weeks from now. Fuck knows where I’m going to put 300 of these things. In the office, I guess! You guys gotta help me out by buying them all!! XD

Fish + Chocolate aside, things have actually been going quite well recently. I hope to be able to chime into this blog again soon with some nice news ^_^b And of course, details and purchasing info for the book~!

Lastly – huge, huge, HUGE, HUUUUUGE thanks to everyone who has shown me kindness and support (and given me confidence to continue instead of just collapsing into a self-loathing ball) thoughout this project. If I could try and explain how much it meant to me… but I think I’m too inadequate a writer to attempt an explanation… just thank you, thank you…

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… ^_~

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.

(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!