True Grit

Here is a cartoon about watching the moving picture True Grit (click it to embiggen).


I give the movie six cowboy stars out of ten.

Daal saag for dinner, caramel apple crumble for afters.

Lip sinking

I started making an epic animated feature because, frankly, if you haven't made an epic animation (preferably at least BAFTA winning) by the time you're 27 then you haven't done much. But after 12 minutes realised I have not the talent, patience, time or ability required.

This is as far as I got.



Stuffed peppers for dinner, cherry brandy chocolate for pudding.

Cheeses

Beans and cheddar on toasted pitta for lunch, Soreen for afters.

Haircutting

Stuffed crust oven pizza for dinner, Soreen for pud.

My best of 2010

The thing about all these dull December best-of-the-year lists is the year isn't over yet. My list too is dull - duller in fact, since I lack both the enthusiasm and the expertise of others, but at least I waited till January 1st just in case something amazing happened at the last minute (it didn't).

Album of the year: Star of Love by Crystal Fighters

Now, I like music. I don't just mean I'll tap my foot along to a T-Mobile ad, I am a proper fan. I briefly even wanted to be a music journalist (I did meet the Sugababes). But either I've lost that passion or perhaps 2010 was a bit of a damp nothing of a year. I mean there was lots of vaguely promising dubsteppy type events but then the James Blake song that everyone really likes is actually just a Feist cover so where does that leave us? As a bunch of flipping Feist fans? At least the Crystal Fighters one has some twinkly guitar bits alongside good old fashioned bass wobble, plus they're obsessed with basque stuff and I for some reason like things to do with Spain so that's something.

Book of the year: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Who reads books the year they come out? Maybe if you work at Waterstones or are on the Booker panel, sure. But otherwise, really? Thankfully for me the one book I have read this year is the book of the year. I only read the first 100 pages or so mind, because I had to return it to the library, but once you get the jist you can imagine how it all winds up pretty easily (in my version it climaxes with a sexy alien invasion).

Movie of the year: Good Hair

I didn't pay to see Good Hair, and probably never would have. I mean, I like good things, but hair? I had barely ever considered my own hair - good or bad - let alone the hair of black women and the industry around it. But then for an hour and a bit one Tuesday night I learned it all. I learned what a weave is, where hair comes from and that all those men that hang out in barbers are funny - especially Chris Rock. So whilst it wasn't about how weird dreams are (pretty weird) or how fast Mark Zuckerberg talks (pretty fast) and didn't have a nine year old girl using swear words (pretty rude), it was good. And about hair.

Book cover of the year: The Shallows (designer - Ben Wiseman)

I wish I read more of these pop-intellectual books but I'm too busy reading (and occasionally writing) blogs about the inane lives of struggling creatives with series 45 of The Apprentice streaming in through another window. Perhaps the internet has made my brain shallow.

Viral video of the year: Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)

Well, I only saw it for the first time today on the Guardian's list of viral-videos of the year, but these things aren't supposed to steep in your mind for eternity. They dance in front of your eyes and then disperse seamlessly back to wherever they came from like a flash mob. Plus, at least this one's not secretly an advert (though thinking about it, it could be). You can watch it here.

TV show of the year: Modern Family

Despite being a gentle American sitcom with every episode drooping into a super-saccharine schmultz fest, Modern Family, once you scrape off the sugar, has some sharp writing hidden inside. It's like our own Outnumbered, but with jokes. You can watch it online here (allegedly).

And so on.

Turkey curry and sausage rolls for lunch.

Post Christmas

So that was Christmas, and what have we done? Well, I done some pictures for my parents.

Here's a picture I drew of the peace statue that marks the Brighton/Hove boundary, an invisible line that harks back to before Brighton and Hove teamed up to become a city. In the background is the skeleton of the West Pier, a popular meeting point for starlings. On the horizon is Brighton Pier where, growing up, I had fish and chips with my grandparents every year on my birthday. That was back when it was called the Palace Pier, which was later deemed too confusing for tourists.


In the foreground is my dad and sister adjusting their rollerblades. My dad bought a Kangaroo Poo brand short-sleeved fleece jumper from a discount store in Cornwall in the early nineties and has worn it almost every day since. He was wearing it when he unwrapped this picture for Christmas on Saturday.


I used a pencil rather than my usual pen which gives the lines an undeniable pencilly quality.

Mother received a screen print I made of some old rope. I later heard her telling her friends that I'd given her "a lovely frame" and so I guess it's not really her cup of tea. She did seem quite pleased with the frame though.

Turkey soup for lunch, Turkey Hash for dinner.

Sweet Relief

It's taken a lot of drawing, a lot of colouring, a bit of fiddly coding and a fair few arguments... but Sweet View is here! We're really proud of the whole thing - the six prints all look great and the website is fun too - do have a look around and possibly buy a print for yourself and everyone you know.



We're on facebook too, so please "like" us.

Stories

Well, I certainly was glad to open my virtual newspaper to see Stephen Collins as this years winner of the X-Factor-of-the-comics-world that is the Observer Graphic Short Story prize. If you ask me, as nobody ever does, no comics person deserves that cool £1000 more. And, as you ask, I'd also say that if you've got a week or two to kill you could do worse than reading through his last four years of funny bloggery. This post is a good place to start "That's if they even have shoulders..." Ah, rofl etc.

And - again, since you asked - I featured alongside him once. In Solipsistic Pop 2, no less. An organ Top Shelf said was "almost all hit" and even went as far as to imply that mine was one of the good ones.

Here's my four page opus in full:

Solipsistic Pop 3 is out now too. I'm not in it but by all accounts it's the best yet, so that's nice.

Ninja XX banners

I made dozens of these lo-fi animated gifs advertising the Ninja Tune XX box set and live shows. They are all strongly lead by the boxset design and the whole XX identity, but I was still proud to do a little bit for the celebrations - 20 years is a long time.

Sweet View

Sweet View (a bold venture from Charlotte and me selling a series of London based art prints online, see here) is slowly taking shape. Eventually we're going to have a print each for 12 inner London boroughs, but we've decided to launch with a select six as soon as I finish drawing them.

It shouldn't be too long now - I've done most of them. Three of them are markets.

The Lambeth one is Brixton:


The Southwark one is Borough:


And the Tower Hamlets one will be Columbia Road:


We also have a holding page and a mailing list - email info@sweetview.co.uk if you'd like to be added to it.

We both saw The Social Network the other day, and it has filled out tiny entrepreneurial heads with dollar signs. "You know what's cool?" we say as we wonder who will play us in Sweet View: The Movie. This is our time, possibly.

OXJAM flyers

Oxjam sounds like something Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would have on toast, and is actually a month long series of sprawling music events raising money for Oxfam. Think Camden Crawl but good. Felix and Jacob are friends of mine with great names, and are at the helm of this years Brixton event on 23 October.

I helped a little with these plyers (posters/flyers):

Bloody boring

I might start putting some more strips and stuff up here, like I used to.

This one marks a new beginning, and a reason why.

Stinky post

Ah, can you smell it? That's the damp metallic whiff of an unattended blog. A combination of stale J cloth, old milk and burnt out pixels.

Well rest assured that the great lumbering mass that is my life continues apace. Since my last post I've been to spain and italy, a wedding and a funeral, seen a town and a social network and weathered the international storm of Gamugate.

I also drew this picture of Sam Macrory for his 30th birthday. It's him with all the big names he's interviewed over the years.

Can you tell who they are yet? Apparently he showed this to his colleagues and they recognised everyone, so if you don't you have only your own political ignorance and not my bad caricatures to blame. If you're stuck, here is a key.

I played scrabble too. Looking at my letters (and the internet) I see my next move should have been VOLUTIN which is something grainy you find in cells, like porridge.


I also watched some people on sofas on computers, and a guy from Lemon Jelly making sweet music under a bridge.


If you want, you can listen to the music whilst looking at the picture for the full immersive experience.

Match of Tomorrow

Match of the Day Magazine asked me to do an audition piece (a pitch, if you will) for a series of double-page comic strip predictions of England's World Cup performances. I poured all my wealth of footy-knowledge (largely based around the 1994 Arsenal squad), a couple of anti-American clichés and some blind optimism into a script and the first page came out like this:



And then the second page was to be a bit like this:



Not exactly what eventually did unfold, but then if they were to all prove accurate it would be a pretty depressing comic series. Sadly they didn't go for me though, which is a shame because I'd love to do more stuff like this. I'm not sure if someone else got the job or not, but if they did I do hope it was Paul.

SweetView

I donated this cover to this weeks Le Cool. I drew it a while back as part of a project called SweetView.

SweetView is eventually going to be a series of art prints designed to resonate with Londoners. So rather than views of the London Eye with Big Ben in the background, or Big Ben with the London Eye in the background - views we only recognise from the Apprentice titles - they will be the crossroads, markets and hidden squares that provide the true backdrop to our lives. I'm running it in conjunction with Charlotte, my very own Lord Sugar, and we will launch it fully in September. There's to be twelve prints, one for each inner borough (Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Islington, Camden, Greenwich and Lewisham - suggestions for locations in each place would be gratefully received).

If you'd like a friendly email when the SweetView project launches, just email jack@jacknoel.co.uk or put a comment on this post.


The Hackney print will be the one adapted for the above cover.


Right now I'm colouring the Lambeth one - Brixton Market. Here's what the linework looks like:



There's an interview, of sorts, on the Le Cool website.