Ernest Goes to Rehab

This was an 'assignment' for a drawing group I've joined. You get a week to draw a topic. This week was Ernest Goes To Rehab.

Cupcake in uniform

Not the most sexy of superhero uniforms ... which may be the point. Cupcake has retained this uniform since World War Two, despite various agents trying to update her look.

Drawing ...

I stopped trying to draw in 4th form art class, when my teacher told me I was hopeless. Thirty years later, in 2012, I was inspired to pick up a pen and doodle some silly faces, and I stuck at it every day (or most days) for several months. Now I can say I'm a published artist, having had two comics I've drawn accepted into Seqapunch Quarterly, #4 and #5. The picture here is from the story they printed in issue 4. I'm still much more comfortable with writing something for others to draw, but I'm determined to stick at the art, and I will even start posting a self-drawn webcomic sometime soonish ... once I have a very large buffer of material. More on that soon ...

Helping Hocusha

I haven't been posting on this blog for a while, but it suddenly occurred to me I could use it to mention some of the writing I've been doing of late, starting with something I helped co-write; the end to chapter 7 of the wonderful webcomic Hocusha.

The creator of Hocusha, Vig Starmax, was suffering from a case of the dreaded writer's block, and his excellent webcomic was on indefinite hiatus. I was fortunate enough to be a fan of Hocusha and to have worked briefly with Vig on another project, so when he posted a call for help I was quick to offer my assistance.

Vig put together a Hocusha bible containing character notes, setting, and over-arching plot details, and from that I helped work out an ending for the chapter he was stuck on. I got to write the dialogue and give some page layout suggestions, and Vig took that and made it much better.

Now Vig seems to be inspired once again to write and draw Hocusha, and it looks like there's a long series of adventures to look forward to. I for one can't wait to see what Vig does next with Hocusha.

You can read Hocusha here ... my contributions started from page 10 of Chapter 7.

Utterly Rucked Box Set

A printed version of Utterly Rucked. 144-pages in colour, plus covers, all in a flimsy box. Now I just have to work out how to sell some of them.

Tortured Plastic?

After a hiatus of 17 years I'm seriously thinking of putting out a mini-comic again. Here's a sneak peak at a possible cover design.

Cowboy Playmobil comic

I got an email this week from the creator of a really nice looking webcomic that uses toys.

http://famobill.blogspot.com/

It's in Spanish, for those lucky enough to read that language.

Character Development Nominated

Character Development has been nominated for a Drunk Duck award in the photo-comic category. It's up against some stiff competition, but as they say ... it's an honour just to be nominated.

Bad Meat EPISODE TWO

The second part of Bad Meat is up at www.virtuallycomics.com. Drawn by Andy Sanchez, who has excelled himself again.

Plastic People

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This is one of a number of one-page Plastic People strips, that are just silly little things I occasionally get inspired to do. A few, including this one, have been published on the web in the anthology project Lite Bites, and hopefully there will be one or two printed in an upcoming Radio as Paper. There are more on my website, www.virtuallycomics.com

Mid-year Secret Santa contribution (3 of 3)

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As so concludes my secret Santa pages. Not sure DevanMuse liked them all that much, but I had fun doing them.

Mid-year Secret Santa contribution (2 of 3)

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Part 2 of my mid-year secret Santa homage to http://symbiosiswebcomic.blogspot.com, which was my random assignment in the Drunk Duck event.

The hardest part about using Playmobil to recreate a comic is finding a figure that looks remotely like the comic character. We got lucky, in that a few years ago we'd purchased an alien encased in an opening plant set (really, not kidding) from a bargain bin.

Oddly enough, the alien Playmobil figure didn't have an eye coming out of its shoulder, but thanks to my wife's ingenuity that was easily solved.

Mid-year Secret Santa contribution (1 of 3)

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I was assigned Symbiosis for my recent mid-year secret Santa, a comic by DevanMuse that can be found at http://symbiosiswebcomic.blogspot.com

I'll post the remaining pages over the next two days.

Many thanks to DevanMuse for letting me use this.

Utterly Rucked fan art

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This Utterly Rucked art was done by demontales as part of the Drunk Duck mid-year secret Santa exchange. Wonderful stuff. I'll edit this in a few days to provide a link to demontales comics, but the Drunk Duck is detoxing at the moment, and has been down for a week.

Thanks demontales. It was amazing to see drawn versions of the Playmobil characters, and the blood splatter was inspired.

300th page of Character Development

Today marks the 300th page of the humour-fantasy comic done with Playmobil toys, Character Development.

Click here to go to the virtuallycomics.com website to read more.

Utterly Rucked -- Team Photo

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Production has begun on Utterly Rucked, which will go live at the end of this month.

It's a rugby/horror/mystery story over 144 pages, so we only have 139 to go!

Here's a teaser pic ... a team photo before anything terrible happens to the poor toys.

AFTER: Fire Sale (page 6 of 6)

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And that's the end of that one.

AFTER: Fire Sale (page 5 of 6)

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Many thanks again to skreem for drawing this script, and doing such a wondrous job.

AFTER: Fire Sale (page 4 of 6)

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Uh-oh!

AFTER: Fire Sale (page 3 of 6)

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Skreem really went to town with this episode.