so since the first 5 pages for the anthology went up over at the unseen shadows' site, posting them here's fair game, right?










more on the story/book here (including a rather swish cover by peter mason)

but seriously, if you have a potter around the site, you can see a whole lot more from the anthology, including a PREVIEW of cy dethan and valia kapadai's story.

man am i digging valia's brush work on these pages! totally jouncing over here to see the final product….

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these two episodes of wtf with macro maron were an excellent back to back of art talk. ugh. conversations about getting creative and shit are totally my jam. give them a twirl and feel enthused.

Episode 319 - Loren Bouchard

Episode 318 - Coop

so where have you been for the past forever, man?

busy. a while back, i got an email from richmond (raconteur extrodinaire who wrote the story for the robot-filled-romp we did with renegade arts, TURNING TIGER) asking if i wanted to do a story with him for an upcoming anthology.

it goes without saying the answer was a resounding OHELLYES.

the anthology's a collection of short, one off stories expanding barry nugent's unseen shadows universe (more on that HERE ). goddamn, goddamn do i like playing in this sandbox.

here's a page:



and here's some sketchbook stuff:








i'll be posting some more snippets as we go. at the moment desperately hauling ass so the book can be launched at the upcoming thought bubble con.

*******
in other news, massive congratulations to fellow middlesex ex-pat BEN HENDY http://hendyism.blogspot.co.uk/ on only getting MOTHER FLIPPIN' SHORTLISTED FOR THE THREADNEEDLE PRIZE. if you fancy a spot of art, head on down to trafalga square and check it out. it's a _massive_ show with oodles of fantastic work. you can also vote for the people's choice prize *a nudge nudge wink wink*

fingers crossed!

so that final major project thing, huh?

initially this was just going to be a comic designed to be read on a computer or some sort of snazzy digital reader do-hicky thing. my tutor though the we could spice it up a bit by adding some interactive elements but then it turned out the programming skillz required would melt minds. so instead we made a movie. here it is. i hope you enjoy it.



sharp teeth is a cracking read by toby barlow. the super dulcet narration was provided by our print tutor phil shaw

more drips and drabs from the Final Major Project. the comic itself is done, but i still need to 'animated' it for our degree show so i'm going to wait for that miracle to happen (ha!) before sticking the whole thing up here.

gosh. what a tease.

in the mean time, here's a handful of links to some of the other middlesex folk's outcomes for this whole Final Major Project thing. check it. they're totally rad.

fredrik's fake freak show, abi's collaged children's book, and some rather spiffy animations by katie and eileen.

aaaaand then there's this crazy map hector's putting together. it was still in the process of being finished when i took the photos but it is totally one of my favourite things ever:

god damn guys. god damn.

some things are still being worked on. but you can come and see them in all their finished glory at the truman brewery between the 8th and 11th of june. more on that right over--------> HERE

IT'S DONE. IT'S FINALLY DONE.

oh man. everything about this took about a bajillion times longer than it should have but that's the brighton rock comic finally lick. phew.






well, that's two projects down. only another two to go. BOOYAH!

so one of the projects i'm currently trying to nail down is this book about all the old shops in muswell. what with everything turning everything into yet another supermarket or ubber bougie hair dressers, they're becoming something of an increasingly rare breed.

anyhoo, some in process stuff. i apparently learnt NOTHING from the last talk with the tutor about this because we are still very much in 'AAAAHHH, LET'S JUST DO A LOAD OF SHIT AND CHUCK IT AT THE WALL AND HOPE IT WORKS' vein of things.


(warning. high levels of funky perspective can induce brain aneurisms)







hopefully going to get the brighton rock project licked today. this is not a lie i tell myself.



p.s. recently discovered you made it weird, another wonderful show on the ever expanding nerdist network. holy shit. this show. it's pretty much just pete holmes sitting down with a fellow stand up and rapping for an hour but oh my stars and garters, is it good. HERE'S A LINK TO A PERTICUALRY FINE EPISODE WITH TJ MILLER . put it in your ears, son.

oh the liberty. i really should be working on you ever waking moment but i'm totally blowing you off this month. i should also probably be reading up for the dissitation right now instead of pottering around on blogger.

OH GUILT. HOW YOU GNAW AND GNAW AND GNAW AND GNAW.

i am so happy whenever the air ship docks come up in this book. sure, it means the pages take like 9 million years to draw but whatever, stella.

in other news, when i grow up, i would very much like to be this lady:


this song/video combo is utterly exquisite. came its way after listening to EPISODE 2 OF THE MAKING IT PODCAST over at the nerdist. i would recommend it if you like stories about creative people prevailing. just... try not to rip out your ears when the glee-tastic theme song kicks in....

stuff from the last batch of liberty pages. now with at least 100% more gonnahavetachokeabitch action.

here's a great little blog post from sam macleod examining shot progression through a scene and how it can play into characterisation. you should check out the rest of his blog to boot. man does some FANTASTIC watercolour studies.

stuff from the book WHICH WE'RE NOW A QUATER OF THE WAY THROUGH. AW-FUCKING-YEEEEEEAAAAAAAH.

what's a better way to celebrate than with some beatboxing fish?

a big old sploge of work stuff. mysterious, out-of-context boxes! what secrets do you hold??
...
i guess you'll have to wait till it's done till you find that one out.

ANYWAYS, remember that totally heart warming story about the time they let us paint the university red (and black and blue and yellow and any other colour we thought to bring with us)? well, turns out some genius in management decided that it was ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to white wash the place the next day. even though they're demolishing the site pretty much right now...

wack.

oh well, at least we'll always have the photos on facebook.





p.s watched this superbly put together documentary about rand-inism and how it tied into the economic meltdown. you should give it a go. it's TOTALLY facinating:

the rest of the self initiated pages.

*note to self. find the time to finish this off.

work and HEY DUMBASS! WHERE THE WORD BALLONS GONNA GO?!?

on a totally unrelated point, i needed to learn how to do this like 5 minuets ago:

WALK OF SHAME! actually, that's wholly appropriate seeing as i only managed to get a shocking 2 PAGES done this week. poor form, moore.

IN OTHER OLD, OUTDATED NEWS:



so a while back, we went to the macmillan book prize show. as mentioned before, HECTOR got his ass shortlisted which is totally awesome. speaking of awesome, some of the other entries on show at that thing were absolutely mind-bending. it's a shame the macmillan website has ABSOLUTELY NO COVERAGE OF THIS COMPETITION WHATSOEVER since this stuff totally deserves to be seen.

being anal, i did some rooting around and found some websites you should most definitely check out:
http://emmabennettillustration.tumblr.com/
http://cargocollective.com/naomijonesillustration
http://elysdolan.blogspot.com/
http://vanyanastanlieva.blogspot.com/

coloured pages from the self initiated. i thought i was going to get 24 of these licked. i did 5. ah well, win some-lose some, right?

it's a bugger though. moseying through SKOTTIE YOUNG'S totally badass blog (speaking of, why are you still here and not checking that shit out? it's HOT!), i came across this pearl of wisdom: that you draw things differently depending on how you're planning to colour them.

this kinda sorta totally blew my mind.

i guess before this, i'd put ALL the emphasis on the drawing and left colouring as an after thought. but thinking backwards like this could lead to such richer results. take water colours- you can actually do so much of the form building with them rather than over-saturating a picture with too many lines. this is something i deffinatly need to remember; such an anal control freak when it comes to drawing and OH MY GOD, THIS IS SO BORING. HERE'S A PHOTO OF SOMETHING FUN INSTEAD.

work stuff.

oh my god, library backgrounds. you are an awesome way to drive yourself totally nuts.

GOOD MORNING!



so yes. the last couple of pages for the self initiated. ah well, at least i pleasantly surprised myself with how quickly i could actually draw a comic page when i has to, RIGHT?

unfortunately, this speedy clip doesn't seem to have carried over to work-work. a boo-hoo-hoo.

in other news, totally impulse-bought seabear's 'the ghost that carried us away' and it single handedly restored my faith in blindly throwing money at albums.