I've managed to take a quick break from all the "festive fun" to play around with the blog templates. This one seems a bit better than its predecessor and has the added advantage of actually displaying the header picture correctly for the latest browser versions!

Computing fans may be interested to know that I have a review in the latest Linux Format (issue 88), but much more excitingly they've printed my picture on the contents page for the first time. It's the same pic as the one from my profile here, only with the cool Venetian background removed. Still, it's quite a step forward for me to be even this (very modestly) high profile. I almost feel like a proper journalist now

Anyhow, Massacre-wise the Walking Wounded printing is proceeding apace. I'll probably do a full post about this after it's all happenned but rest assured everything is in hand.

A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to anyone that happens upon this, and please come back in 2007 when things should start getting REALLY interesting...

It’s been a wile since I last painted, it’s been even longer since I lasted painted in acrylic, so the colour cover was always going to be a bit tricky. I had intended to produce both the front and back cover as fully painted acrylic pictures but found myself with a pencilled front cover and no paints. Spending a bit of time at 2 addresses tends to mean that half your stuff is permanently out of reach, all I had was some cheep poster paint like water colours a bottle of ink and a few pens, oh and my computer.

After a few false starts I ended up with a tonal painting that I was fairly sure I could use to make a painted looking cover. The real struggle was in trying to get a mixture of quick drying ink and not particularly versatile paint to represent shapes and lighting. By the last few figures (the zombies) I had pretty much sorted it out and the colouring is pretty standard Photoshop fair. The whole reason I was having all this trouble is the 10 years of computer aided art, the last 5 of witch have been pretty much paint free.

The back cover ident however had to be painted as I was back with my paints and without Photoshop and my wacom tablet. I had already opted for acrylics even though I have a good selection of gauche and have used it fare more recently then acrylic. It took me about 4 days of constant repainting and 3 versions of the picture before I got the hang of painting again. Looking at a bunch of my old stuff I wasn’t really that good any way so it’s no wounder it took so long.

Anyway, with the completion of the back cover image the comic is now ready to roll even with the back up story dropped in favour of printing on time it should be a pretty good read.

It's all systems goD

Walking Wounded issue 1 is finished save for a back cover. We've settled on a 24-page comic now, using the American Zine format of 8" by 10.5".

It's going to be Island of Terror on its own to ensure maximum impact. Our 8-page backup strip is being saved for a future issue, and I've revised the script (again!) to ensure it's worth the wait.

Steve is in the middle of moving house but he's been working hard to meet the deadline and has polished off the cover despite being "of no fixed abode" (well in the sense that he's been living in two places, rather than none!).

I understand that he had a bit of trouble getting to this stage:

I'm sure he'll be along presently to say some more about that. However, as soon as Steve got into the swing of things progress sped up and pretty quickly it was all done and ready to go to press:

Now isn't that splendid?

I knocked up a text-based inside front cover with credits and other boring stuff. The inside back cover is going to be an ad, so that really does leave just one page to go!

We're well on course to meet the launch date of March 17th.

I don't have a vast collection of graphic novels but I do read a decent amount of them. Oh, I do buy the odd one (Leviathan by Edginton/D'Israeli was the last) and receive a few more as gifts (Hellboy: Strange Places is coming for Xmas) but I'm mostly dependant on borrowing to keep up to speed.

Steve's collection is always good for a quick raid (Commando: The Dirty Dozen, currently) and my friends Matthew and Danny have refreshing tolerance for my habit of temporarily relieving them of their books.

But I still want more, and that's where Redhill Public Library comes in. These days, libraries have a hearteningly enlightened attitude to graphic novels and seem to be stocking more and more.

In the last couple of months alone I've borrowed Kid Eternity, Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War, Judge Dredd: The Hunting Party, Nikolai Dante: Tsar Wars 1, Batman & Superman Generations 2, Fables vol 3 and Tom Strong Book 5. Not a bad haul and all funded by my council tax!

If I were to be churlish and voice a complaint, it would be that Redhill Library seems to carry random volumes from particular series rather than complete runs of anything. This would be frustrating, for instance, if I was trying to get into Sandman now, as they only have Season of Mists and The Wake. In fact, it wasn't that great for Fables, as I haven't managed to get hold of vols 1 and 2 yet!

Still, this is a small quibble really. The library is after all providing free entertainment, and that's something you really can't knock!

I thought I would jump in with the news before Chris could. All 24 pages of island of terror have been inked and lettered. Although there is still a lot of work to do to make the comic complete for printing, the main story is in the bag! Island of terror will be published! The south will rise again!

One of the big problems with working in your free time is free time it self is fairly hard to come by and when projects grow like the Walking wounded the deadline crunch at the end is sleep depriving tight. With a painted cover and an 8 page strip still to go the work is far from over, but at least if all else fails we now have a 24 page project to print with the possibility of a 32 page one if all goes well.

Looking at the completed artwork I would say it’s been a productive and helpful exercise. Inking with a brush proved tricky but helpful, it will be interesting to see how the skills translate to the painted cover. I bought a dip pen last week, something I haven’t used for 10 years, to see if I could get a decent line out of that too. I’m not sure when I will get to use it but when I do I’ll write about how it goes.