Nota bene

I had three pieces in the recently launched 'literary free-sheet ' that is Notes from the Underground (or NftUG, as it's parents like to refer to it). The team behind it managed to build up quite a fanfare for their first issue, with coverage from The Bookseller, Radio 4 and nolessthan thelondonpaper.
It's short stories and poetry and a few cartoons: perfect fodder for tube journeys (or taking to the loo), with each entry thoughtfully labeled with it's duration in tube stops (not bowel movements, unfortunately). Lovely.
Look for it on the underground and also in bookshops around London (I've seen it in Foyles and Waterstones). NftUGaaiBSaL, you could say.

A digital-painterly bit to illustrate this story, about a young chap who sells his grandmother as a work of art.

Here's my first crack. It's more of a sketch really.

And one to accompany this tale of a man struggling to deal with the death of his psychiatrist. This one was all a bit last-minute so I didn't let myself think about the concept before I started the drawing, I just assumed I'd think of something funny to write on the tag at the end (I didn't). The tag isn't enough of a focus anyway- they actually ended up cropping the image close round it.

And a strip. I've done one for the second issue aswell. I'm enjoying the self-imposed challenge of comics without speech- very Perry Bible Fellowship inspired.


Edit
It's also been on BBC news, I just found out. Look.

The Vice trap

An unused-commission from Vice magazine to accompany an article about the current wave of electro-whatever chancers jumping on the Justice-bandwagon with far more laptops and silly headwear than any sort of talent. The brief dropped into my inbox at 3am, with a deadline of the very same evening. Trust a magazine called Vice to have such tight deadlines. (Geddit?)

On the day I was working in Oxford, making it extra tight, but I was keen. I sketched a few ideas at lunch and sent them over.

The top left sketch was chosen, and I was pointed towards this kind of thing as a reference:

I got home at 8, and got straight to it. As there was no time for fannying about drafting I cheated and took reference photos of myself. Which isn't really cheating at all, I've decided.

First lines:

Then flats:

Then press the "lighting effects" button on photoshop:

And then a little detail. If you look closely, you can see they're really just playing Justice's album through iTunes.

As I said, they're not going to use it which is a shame. But never mind.

Saturday

I took my big sketchbook round with me all of Saturday. I'd like to do a sketch diary like this all the time, but it's not very practical. I've tried a couple of times before but if you're not careful you only draw when you sit and end up with a book filled with nothing but drawings tvs and the insides of buses and toilets.

(click it to see)

All the most interesting bits of the day, of course, are the ones that don't get drawn. Even on this Saturday. For as well as the documented episode of me-watching-Char-eat-soup there was the much more exciting event of me being accosted by a dishevelled chap threatening to "get mad" if I didn't give him some money ("for my shopping" he helpfully explained). Fortunately I managed to shake him with the old mumble-something-apologetic-and-then-suddenly-stop-and-pace-off-in-the-other-direction trick, but unfortunately all without taking time to prop up my easel and draft his likeness.

A second incident, also occuring in the brief two-block stint between the tube and home, followed soon after. I turned the corner, somewhat elated by my near escape, to be confronted by what the media (and my subconscious) would call a street gang. Being the liberal minded Guardian reader that I am though, I reminded myself that they are but children. I walked through the four boys, head down, and emerged unscathed. As I continued I tutted inwardly for even considering crossing the road. Crossing the road? From four children? If I was Jamie Oliver I'd probably have just started chatting to them all about growing your own organic veg, there and then. Not cower in fear. I would offer them jobs in my restaurant and turn their lives around. Cowering wouldn't have come into it. They would be an inspiration to their community. Drug profits would go way down, beetroot profits way up. They would put a picture of us all hugging in an allotment in the Guardian Weekend...
And then crack.The car window next to me exploded. The gang already knew about communicating through food: they'd just thrown an egg at me, and only narrowly missed.
It was only an egg though. I could do something. Chastise them there and then and show them the authority they want to see in society. I could work a joke into telling-off them off, thus setting a delicate tone of harshness and humour: "that deserves a beating", say. Chastise them and nip it in the bud. They're probably only ten years old. If noone stops them now, a perverse evolution will take place: eggs will become stones, stones will become bricks, bricks will become knives and so on. But knives that you throw. Sais maybe, like Raphael had in the Turtles.
But I didn't stop them. I didn't even turn round. What if they already had Sais? Or a sword? Or nunchucks or a staff? I didn't want to be another slayed footsoldier on London's streets. So I just carried on walking, without even looking back.
And I didn't draw that either
In the evening I went to a lumberjack-themed party without realising that was what it was and spent the duration sitting in a corner tutting at everyone slavishly following the lumberjack fashion. With their trendy little checked shirts. And deerstalkers. And big axes.
I didn't draw that either.

Brighton Am Legend

What do you know, nothing for weeks and now two things in a day. Both animations too.
Here's what I thought might be a good way of getting some quick animation practice. Actually, it's probably taken hours in all. I didn't really give too much thought to the story or any planning really. It's just an idea I had when I watched the I Am Legend trailer last week back when I was actually considering going to watch it.
As it was we went to see the Kite Runner. I found the film really affecting, in a good way, and I wasn't the only one- there was a sobbing teenage girl in the cinema with us who had to be dragged out by her mum because she was so incapacitated by distress (in a good way). Charlotte however, cold emotionless robot that she is, thought it was shit. But then she's read the book, and so she's probably just saying it's inferior so she can sound literary and intelligent.


Here it is. I don't know how to embed it, or even upload it to YouTube so I can get comments on it from American kids. If you do let me know. So you'll have to click
here.


You see, it's all about globalisation and that. I'm like Naomi Klein with a pink and black colour scheme.

Here's the real one:



If you're looking at this via facebook, by the way, bits will be missing. You may have to here to see the original post.

Flash git

Right. I'm back from my Christmas holiday.
Now for a round up of 2007, and a look forward to what we can expect in 2008. Remember Amy Winehouse? Heard of Duffy yet?
That's enough of that.
I went to the Stephen Friedman gallery a while ago to see the David Shrigley exhibition which I think is still going. I'm not a huge fan of his but then he does do weekly Guardian cartoons and has animated a blur video so maybe I am just jealous. The show isn't great, just dozens of marker drawings stapled to the wall like an art room in an orphanage. There was an animation though (On/Off, which can be seen here) which reminded me that I've been meaning to learn to animate: partly inspired by Ratatouille, and partly by the Brazilian Ratatoing (which came first, I wonder?).
I've got Flash, but it's hugely unintuitive and it's taken me ages to get anywhere. Just weeks of circles moving slowly across a screen, and that's it really.
I thought for my first animation I'd try and overtly ape Shirgley's style, rather than pretend in any way I was being original. His formula is basically take no story, make it dark: about death, illness, rejection etc., in text scribble out some letters and use a ruler for straight lines.

Here it is... (refresh if it's finished)




Not too bad, I think. And here's my first walk-cycle, which doesn't really work.

Long Term Relationship Hell

A load of quick strips that I drew, judging by the Big Brother references, sometime last summer.

Seafood

For my OMG WTF BFF Beatrice's birthday gift, I thought I'd print a design of mine onto a T-shirt. She like's seafood, cooking it and eating it, and I like drawing dead fish so I thought I'd do something around that.
I started with this ink drawing.

Then I coloured in the lines, thinking a light minimal colour-scheme would suit a T-shirt.

But it all looked a bit too light and minimal, so I blocked in the colours.

It was around this point it was brought to my attention that there are some differences between boys and girls. Girls, I was reminded, have breasts. And their shirts have complicated and cryptically named necklines: scoops and vs and queen annes and halters. These things mean that trying to put a design on a t-shirt for them is to enter a strange and confusing world, as difficult as gift-wrapping a bicycle. Also no girl really wants the phrase "I like fishfood" across their chest. Given these factors, I decided I'd make the design into a kind of art print instead.
So I put some gradients and bitmap overlays in over the flats to add interest.

I didn't like the way it was looking, but I was running out of time. I dug out this picture of some wood.

I laid it over the top, and it didn't look so bad. I printed it out and framed it all nice, and I think it was alright. It wasn't exactly warmly received on the night, but still...


Just in case you lost interest at any point there, let us recap (you may have to click this to see the "animation"):



You may have noticed I've changed this blog so that the post headings come up in a lovely blue. This is to complement my new look website I made last week. Hopefully it's a bit more professional than the last version, with that silly silly sandwich. I cut out loads of less strong images and all of the card section, but I think it's better.
Have a look. Go on.

Please.

Hair today

I'm not sure why, but I've done two hairdressing bits recently.
Here's a girl-friendly strip:


And here's a noone-friendly watercolour postcard:


The football result from Wednesday, if you're wondering, was 12-1. Still morale is high, and we're confident that when our ABCDE FC kits arrive we'll be turning those scores around.

Football, football, football

Here's a thing for The Thing Is magazine, to accompany this article, an interview with "BT futurologist Ian Pearson".



In 2050, apparently, we'll all be old, degrees will be worthless and robots will play football.
And talking of footballing machines: I am one.
I have joined a football team. Not a likely move for me, as before last week I'd only played once since 1996. That one time was a battle between two student houses which I had to sit out from after five minutes as I'd turned green with the overexertion. Back in 1996 though, aged 12, my skills (along with my football knowledge) peaked. I was good, then. Captain of my school team and everything. Since I've got steadily worse, but somehow my self-belief has barely waivered.
Our first game was last Wednesday. I'd found out about the team, Abcde FC, the day before from Welsh James, a team mate from my last game who obviously clocked my potential that fateful day. I spent the next day panicking: we're not kids anymore, technically. James said you only need one thing to play: not a basic level of health, dedication or a drop of ability but shin-pads. That's when I knew it was serious stuff.
On the Wednesday it was raining horribly and it was cold. As I sat on the bus to deep dark South East London, my shiny new Sondico Pro Armour pads protruding from my thin black ankle socks, I began to get really scared. I'm just a cartoonist, not a grown-up amateur sportsman with the associated tattoos, scars and comfort in using crude language.
When I arrived I walked, as instructed, round the side of East Dulwich's big Sainsburys and listened out for the shouts and whistles. As I was introduced to the team, my team, I was relieved to discover that they were all as unsporty as me: of our team of of eight, only one already owned shinpads (clearly this is the best judge of a footballer. Someone should have told Steve McClaren. Eh!).
We got changed in a rickety shelter constructed from corrugated iron. It was so backstreet and makeshift it was almost exactly like Fight Club, with me in the Meatloaf role.
As found the other team and introduced ourselves to their manager, suddenly we were intimidated. A manager? They've got a manager? "Ah, but...", we said, "do they have shin pads?" They did have of course, along with full matching kits.
The game wasn't too painful in the end. We really would have benefited from a goal keeper, but we did alright. As it was we took turns in a Monkey Rush style, which didn't help in shaking our schoolboy appearance. My contributions were:

• winning a free-kick by falling over in my own half
• one good kick (which turned out to be illegal)
• encouragingly shouting out all the football-y phrases I know ("mark 'em up, mark 'em up", "square ball", "and the rest")
  

In the end it was 6-1. 4-0 by half time, and then 2-1 in the second half. I was disappointed to discover there is no third half, since by logical extrapolation we'd have won that.
Having made such negligible contributions to my new team I endeavoured to secure my place in the squad for any further games by designing a logo for the team. Everyone knows if you do the logo, you're automatically selected for the team. That's why [insert the name of a footballer who repeatedly gets inexplicably selected] is always in the [and the relevant team name here] fc squad!

The rain cloud remembers the stormy conditions of our first game, and perhaps our drizzly future prospects, whilst the yellow swirls that look like sperm echo the curling shots we one day hope to be pulling off (no really, it's not sperm).
The next game is tonight, in 2 hours in fact, and apparently we have no substitutes so I'll be playing for the full forty minutes. It may not be pretty.

IA: W

I was quite disappointed to find that looking on Wikipedia for a description of the wheelbarrow (sexual position) revealed only nonsense about the hand-propelled vehicle. Surely the actual wheelbarrow has been made redundant by the internet, or something, by now?



There is a definition, proving that I haven't made this up and thus it is eligible for the IA (combining education, illustration and titillation) in the "Urban Dictionary", but the parental control on the bus wi-fi won't let me find it to link to it.

Life Drawing

Life drawing. Always the most boring type of sketch-blog post.
My first week. I'm consistently shocked by how bad I am at this.

Generally I try to do proper pictures for a while- with charcoal and winking at my thumb and all that- and then treat myself to using pen, which I'm sure is in breach of some rule somewhere.



Where are the jokes? Where are the mild-profanities?
Oh, go on then:

IA: V

You'll no doubt notice the reference here to classic Hitchcock thriller Rear Window. Low-brow filth, indeed...

Obligatory shit halloween drawing

Sketch blog etiquette dictates a necessity for a wacky happy halloween drawing on this day.

I did this a few days ago. What's really scary is my apparent mid-nineties Britpop reference frame.
Actually, there's another rule that says you should celebrate your blog's first birthday by drawing a cute cupcake with a candle in it, but I missed that. It was on October 11th.

Wham, Bam... depressing.

A long time ago, it seems, I entered the Observer/Random House graphic short story competition. I'm pretty much relying on winning some such competition, some illustratorial X-Factor, to springboard me into career success. (And I don't mean just beating a bunch of nine year olds in a colouring in competition, as in my previous post). So I put a lot of time into writing and drawing this, and was then bitterly disappointed when I didn't win.
Looking at the winners and other entrants though (conveniently collected here) I'm less upset. Most of them are stylish and bleak and have a single figure word count. That's not really what mine is about. Mine's more Beano than 2000AD, or whatever it is serious graphic story-tellers are into. Mine's a comic, and I think that's what I prefer.
There are definitely far too many words in there though. I need to save those up for my novel. In Crumb, the Terry Zwigoff documentary about Robert Crumb, you meet his older brother Charles who is psychotic. You are shown Charles' cartoon strips he made as was growing up and see that as he gets older, and more mental, his panels become more and more crammed with words. The characters have to hunch down in the bottom until eventually the pages are just panels filled with tiny words. That's what mine reminds me of. That, but with more shit puns.

Virgin

I watched Knocked Up in the cinema and didn't laugh once whilst the rest of the audience fell about. Maybe I was bitter because everyone I was with booked seats in the middle at the front, and I had to sit on my own in the back corner. In a subsequent bid to get onto the Judd Apatow bandwagon, unsettled by my differences of opinion with the side of the bus and the internets, I downloaded 40 year old virgin and here we are watching it. It's still pretty dire though.



Now Ratatouille, there's a film...