"Losing my favourite game.."

Phew! Been really busy this last week and weekend - no time to myself and no drawing time. 

An added bonus was leaving my sketchbook at a gig I did on Monday - luckily after a few days of phone calls I finally managed to contact the venue and I'm picking it up tomorrow - so I'll post some stuff up soon - probably late Friday night. 

Looking forward to doing some recording this weekend - I've been doing a lot with the band recently, but it's been really long time since I did some 'solo' stuff. Going to clean out the front room and just muck about and hopefully sample the results later. 

"I'm the garbage collector.."

"Gouge away, you can gouge away.."

Only one page (and a bit) but I feel like I actually made some progress today. I quickly realised plotting out the whole story is going to take me longer than I thought, at least if it's to be worthwhile.

I think I'm going to carry on the way I'm doing it now - three steps forward, two steps back. I've found that by redoing the earlier panels each time I add new ones I can get a sense of the pace of the comic and whether the storytelling is tight enough or not. Each time I do it I'm streamlining the story a little and adding little details - or taking them away.

Hit a wall at the end of todays work so I left a page half done. I felt I was getting sloppy anyway. Pretty pleased with the basic idea of the first eight pages so far anyway. This was supposed to be a short story though...

Also pissed about with the scanner. I don't know why. It's probably because I'm a fucking child.  

"Kiss could've killed me, if it were not for the rain.."

Some new bits. Not much because I have been weathering headaches recently. Whereas the brainstorming before felt like I was making progress, I feel like I'm just being pinickity with this latest lot. A lot of useful nice little touches came to me but I should just lay out the whole story in one rough swoop instead. I always find when I do that I get so rough that I may as well not plot out anything. So there's obviusly a middle ground to be found there. 

Did some looking at various comic artists for references/inspiration. I'm going to try and do more poses without references but I'll still look up everything else. 

By the end of this week I think I should aim to have both comics roughly plotted - not sure which one I want to do first though. But I know enough about each of them to plot them out and then I can go to town designing each panel, playing with the sound effects etc. 

I should and could write it all out in text first but funnily enough neither comic has any dialogue in so it just seems boring and more useful to plot it out by drawing. 

One of these days I'm going to get the time to cook dinner, draw, post a blog and read something before bed. One of these days. 

"Got me so down I got me a headache.."

Been doing very little work - seem to have been having non-stop but mild headaches at the moment. Very annoying. Will be back on track soon. Have some stuff to post up but I'm going to wait until it's more substantial.

"Get your rocks off, get your rocks off honey"

And the rock references from Kirby - poorly and half assed copied by my, I wasn't really trying today, more doodling. 

And I forgot to mention the story's called 'Levelling Out' and involves a pogo stick. 

"I have a bad, bad feeling my baby don't live here no more. That's all right I still got my guitar..."

Came up with an idea for a new comic on Saturday. It interrupted my flow on the one I was currently working on, mainly because I thought the idea was simpler and the story was more of a straight line. So the plan was to quickly bash this out (originally straight onto the page in ink) as a quicky-never mind-how-bad-it-looks comic, but by the time I got home ot draw it I had started getting little ideas to reinforce the main idea and realised I would have to put some work into it as I cared about it a little more than I planned. 

The very fact that it's such a straight line of a story is actually making it quite tough to plan, as it really just involves the same event happening again and again with greater consequences until the final payoff, and making that interesting could be a challenge.

So here's some ideas. I don't think they give anything away at all really as they're quite indistinct. The story is a horror and I'm thinking of looking at Eraserhead and Ttseuo (Body Hammer) for it. And Jack Kirby's rocks for reference! 

"I'll be coming on a rare horse.."

Did some work yesterday - suddenly got the idea of this kind of body horror comic. Nice. Got it while I was walking along the beautiful sunny Brighton beach. Might post some of it up tomorrow.  

"How do they see when there is no light?" "They live by night, they live, they live by night!"

Some more comic sketches and ideas. I've finally caught up on the backlog of the horroretc podcast, so while I'm waiting for the next episode I've started listening to a film noir one called Out of the Past  

http://outofthepast.libsyn.com/

A lot drier than the horroretc, and shorter - each episode is about half hour long and concentrates on one film - but has loads of great points about film noir and how the camera says the lines that the actors are swerving around. Going to try and take some of it on board. 

I should be listening to music while drawing, but I find that I just want to pick up a guitar instead, so I'm keeping the music and drawing seperate until I just have to concentrate on drawing rather than planning. 

The planning is going really slowly, but as I keep sketching the same panels I'm coming up with problems and little tiny details which seem to be strengthening the overall comic.

And I think I've managed to do a bit of work each day of this week so far. Whoa. 

"Maybe tomorrow.."

Did some more work today on the comic, but had band practice tonight so I'll do a bit more and a post tomorrow. 

"It's dark and it's savage but it's only in neon, so come out and grab it"

Must remember to use Make Up's lyrics for the next post title. This is from 'Come Out 2 Nite' by Kenickie and I thought the lyrics were "It's dark and it's savage but it's only a meal so come out and grab it", which I actually prefer, though it makes a lot less sense. 

Anyway - more comic ideas. I thought I was sketchily plotting out the story, but the more I do the more it seems like brainstorming. Which is a good thing really - it's what I should have done in the first place and something I really like doing when I'm trying to do something. It's one of the fun bits. So this will take me longer than I thought, but it also means the story should be a lot stronger once I've finished it. 

Whats been revealed to me is that there's a couple of parts I've been concentrating on that I may have to cut out. I've been working on the intro and the explanation for the story and I've found I've started expanding it. I love the characters that I'm using to do this, and as a result I ended up writing two or three pages about them. Unfortunately I think this will get in the way of the main story. What I might have to do is cut these sections out and write them as little mini-comics for the story instead. I haven't even finished the basic plot and I've already got spin-offs. 

I like the fact that I have a strong idea of these characters even if I think they should only have one page to share. I think it'll help me put in lots of details alluding to their background to keep it interesting. I decided to plot the bits out roughly though to see what I can keep and also just to keep the ideas on record. 

The other thing I found problematic/inspiring is the start. I've had multiple ideas for the first pages - one was kind of serious with a lot of writing, one really kinetic which may burst into a weird psychadelic rock album cover/pop collage thing. I really like the idea, but it won't really fit in with the tone of (what I'd like) the rest of the comic to be like. There's a couple of kooky ways of starting off with a couple which I like, not very ambitious but might flow nicely. Then there's a whole thing with a city and a heart which I want to draw but I don't know if I could pull off or get to work. 

Let's experiment! 

Juicy juicy juice!

"Have you seen Horror James?"

Not much - some little ideas and thumbnail sketches for my comic. Worringly the most focused work I've done on it so far. 

"Listen, the snow is falling everywhere.."

Actually had a day off today because of the sudden snowfall we had last night - no ones driving anywhere! So, anyway - I did some drawings from Repulsion - very hit and miss. I warmed up with some Posemaniacs stuff, but I still seemed to waste two pages on terrible drawings. 

I seem to be very hit and miss at the moment - by that I mean I still have a long way to go, but I feel my quality seems to be fluctuating wildly. Going to try and do some more comic planning out tonight. 

The world drips down like gravy, the thoughts of love so lazy, everyone's ideal of fun - repulsion!

Not much - some posemaniacs (I've only posted one here) and I meant to do some proper drawing but I've been waiting to watch Repulsion for ages so that had to take precedence. I did do some speed sketches while I was watching it, but it was more like doodling because I didn't want to miss anything. Did more than I've posted here, but they're not that special.

Really enjoyed the film and the lighting so I think I'll actually watch it again and pause some scenes to draw. 

Been wetting my appetite with lots of great comics - at the moment on my list are Jack of Fables, Doom Patrol (first run), X-Factor, Enigma, Madman, Big Numbers, Journey Into Mystery, Sandman, The Invisibles, The Phantom Stranger, The Hands of Shang-Chi - Master Of Kung Fu and Strange Tales. Phew!