Weak as I am. Part 1

Whoot! This got published by Blank Slate Books! So I've deleted parts 2 - 10 to force you into buying it!

Smithy

Smithy says "Stay down".

Super

Apologies and a Question.

I feel as though I need to make a small apology. I used to visit all your blogs a lot and sometimes comment. I've stopped that in favour of getting the book ready. So apologies. If you're anything like me a comment on something you've said or done feels erm... nice.

While I'm on the book...
It is a definite, A5, soft back, but the question is, should Blankslate books also do a limited (300) run of hardback copies?

Would a hardback copy be something you'd like on shelf?

P.S if you follow the link to blankslates site. Go to the blog and checkout Mawils point of sale thingy. Click the pic and notice the bottom of the box.

Very cool.

Redux

From the blog, from the book, and from the blog, from the book.

How to draw Spleenal part 1

Oh for fucks sake! He's actually doing a post about how he works. Like anyone actually gives a shit.

Yeah well it's pretty simple. It starts with a little book...
In this little bad boy I scribble my ideas.
The short ones are easy to do. It's a joke, and you draw it.
The long ones are a bit more of a ball ache.
In one side of the book I put the original idea like "Spleenal at school" or "Spleenal has an affair", and in the other side I put outline of the story.

This can be quite a tricky bit, because it tends not to have any jokes in it. Spleenal's quite a negative guy (unlike me, I'm Mr Sunshine.) So it can get a bit moody.
The Spanky comic say the outline might go something like "Spleenal's frustrated by his life, and stressed out with wife and kids. A girl leaves a comment on his blog saying that she likes him. He tries it on with his wife but it's interrupted by the kids. He's angry." etc. It's mostly pretty boring, or a bit depressing.
Very not funny.
It makes it hard to get though because at this point I don't know if I'll ever be able to come up with a joke for that bit, or that bit.

The next bit's the fun bit...

I scribble it all down and make it funny. So I guess it's where I plan out the page. but mostly it's a rewrite.
I got this one a bit wrong. As you can see it's page 7 but you can see that I've got extra numbers and a nine panel grid drawn again and again. Things needed to be rearranged. What was at the bottom of page 7 will end up at the top of page 9. This is because looking back at it I thought a couple of bits needed a bit more space.

Having sorted out that it's time to draw the bastard.

There it is. The berol colour (light blue) fine liner felt tip pen.
I sketch it all out with this bad boy first. It's a none repro blue, which means that photocopiers and scanners can't see it (your scan needs to be grey scale and not too sensitive) It's a felt tip pen so there's none of that rubbing out that chicken shit cartoonist do. There's no getting it wrong. I don't have time for that.

Then I ink it in properly...

Same pen only black this time. There are better pens, (and paper for that matter) but I'm skint so I use cheap. A better pen, and nicer paper does not improve your drawing. I learnt that the hard way. This is my one chance to improve the drawing. I go with the good blue lines and do something else for the bad lines.

The spanky comic was drawn A3 but I've gone for A4 since, because it means you can draw every where. Car, train, some other third place...

There you can see in my clip board I have the rough stuck in one side with the proper one on the right side...

Oh and I always have my nine panel grid under the top sheet to save me from having to redraw it. The nice thing about cheap paper is most of the time you don't need a light box.

There it is. Now you know what's stopping you?

Older cop

Whew!
Well there you go.
A six part story that can be read in any order you want.
The cop
The addict
The ordinary guy
The girl
The crook
The older cop

I had to write all six story lines at once, and when drawing it I had to always remember where everyone was supposed to be. Tricky.

I hope you noticed that I rendered each one differently too, because I think everyone experiences the world differently.

I hope you noticed too that they may all be different people, but they're all sort of the same too, with a lot of the same thoughts and emotions.

Well anyway I'm off on Hoilday now for a while so see you in a week or so.