shameless self-plug

THE NEW ISSUE #3 OF MY COMIC OMNIPATHY IS OUT NOW AND AVAILABLE FROM A NUMBER OF SOURCES.

YOU CAN READ ALL ABOU' IT ON THE OFFICIAL OMNIPATHY BLOG AND YOU CAN EVEN ORDER IT THERE TOO VIA PAYPAL. I WILL LITERALLY MAIL AN ISSUE TO YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS. ISNT THIS EXCITING?!??!!? OMGOMGOMG

#155

more hourlies. hope you like 'em!

for those mystified by hour 21:00 - 22:00 (that includes like all of you except maybe two people) I have nothing to provide for your enlightenment except this

#153

so I did hourlies this year. they are terrible but it was fun to do shitty short autobio again, it was just like being at uni. i actually like all the different ways i drew my face here. PART 2 COMING SOON

#148

I had an idea for a comic so I started drawing it to procrastinate over other comics I need to be finishing.

#138

more comic what-have-you

#137

some panels from that comic that is taking forever.

#134

Adding text to a comic is pretty uncomfortable for me. I don't like doing it by hand (tiring and hard to get the consistency I want, plus I edit a lot throughout) but I think typefaces look too mechanical. In addition to this picking a text/bubble colour is always hard, as I don't really like outlines. The white-on-grey thing here reminds me of the dialogue panels in FFIX.

#128

I can't really say I have a consistent method for making comics yet but here are some pages showing a sort of process. Right now I'm laying out text first (trying to do this as early as possible so it doesn't end up looking tacked-on), then I rough out all the art in B&W linework before blocking out colours and lastly adding details and adjustment layers.

In addition to this I did two drafts of the text in a word document beforehand, pretty much wrote it once and then rewrote it with quite a different story and tone. I've never done this before, but with the first story was floating around in my head for ages and it felt like it was trying to talk about too many unrelated things at once, so I wasn't really happy with it. When I wrote it down I still wasn't happy with it, but the process of writing it down (aided by a helpful lightbulb moment I had when I went out on an impromptu walk) sort of dislodged all the elements in my brain and I knew exactly what I wanted to change, so I just spent a few more days and rewrote it entirely. I have a hard time with character design so I end up spreading it uncomfortably across the whole thing (with OMNIPATHY #2 I finished designing the lead character as I was drawing it).

I think the process of colouring and detailing is laborious and a lot of my favourite artists favour something that looks more rough and ready, a bit more immediate. With OMNIPATHY #4 I'm gonna try something like that.

#125

unfinished page from OMNIPATHY #3, trying to pin down a look for the thing. this is unfinished (gonna add little details for the faces etc but other than that I'm happy with the way it looks.

#117

doodling for my next biggish project. trying to draw girls not looking retarded, mostly succeeding. really need to get some good reference for suits of armour, though. quite happy with the colour comp panels.

#87

#85

so is there any way not to make male nipples not look slightly homoerotic or what? or is that just me?

#84

pugita

#83

comics take fucking 10 x as long to make as anything else. usually at some point if i find out that someone is an illustrator I ask them whether they make "comics or anything like that". if they do, my respect for them doubles.

it sounds like im saying this in a self-congratulatory way but it literally is that i find comics really really hard and i honestly have respect for people who put any amount of effort into doing them (even if they're shit) (although some people do them so badly and get famous regardless that it's really hard for me to not hate them)

#76

More comic stuff. the subject area of "faces" really shouldn't be something for a comic book artist (even an illustrator) to be scared of. I get why I hate drawing faces. They're these complex series of patterns we're wired to spend all day recognising. people deal with them in different ways. for me, it's something like this awkwardly impossible balance between getting something approaching anatomical consistency and getting a face capable of expressing a range of emotions. I hate samefacery and i think less of artists that give in to it too obviously. but then I look at these people like that person who draws Lackadaisy and those enormous model sheets of expressions and I think even people who are "good" at drawing faces still have just like a stock catalogue of symbols in their brain that they shake up and vary heirarchically. so I guess that's what I should aim for. the more i draw the more it feels like every problem I have with drawing could be solved by more drawing (which is an unpleasant thought because if i drew more as a child and didn't chicken out all the time I'd be fucking amazing by now). etcetera etcetera.

#75

went to comiket yesterday, which was tons of fun. bought a buttload of comics. Definitely should have booked a table. still drawing this nautical monstrosity for OMNIPATHY #2 (which will be available around the end of may at the London MCM Expo). it's pretty thrilling, it feels like the first story I've written which has something approaching a beginning, a middle and an end, although I imagine people will probably say they preferred the coloured story in the first issue to everything I subsequently do because people like simple cutesy shit and nobody appreciates a good story anymore and nobody wants to read anything that is remotely difficult.

#74

if i were a popular indie cartoonist this is where i'd say "here's a little snippet of something I've been working on!" and then there'd be like eight comments of people saying they like it. and then in about 70 years i'll die and nobody will remember i existed.

#62

#59

 assorted faffings from a short synopsis I'm making for my dad's new opera for children, a The Little Mermaid number set in cornwall. top left - initial storyboard sketch. top right - character designs (generic even for me but just sort of practicing drawing pretty girls and old men that don't look like exactly like triton in TLM or zeus from Hercules) bottom - first "pencils" for the final comic, with script.

super simple (it's for little kids, although I'd be loath to use that as an excuse for it if it sucked) but a fun little excercise for me.

#19

continuing the dinosaur-themed requests from last night - a velociraptor playing a violin. I'd almost forgotten how painfully stiff my comics can be!

as suggested by @BenjaminTobitt.