My testing personal period continues, but somehow the business of government has continued. I've completed writing the mystery print project which should come out early next year. Regular Patreon readers will recognise it by name when it emerges, although it has changed considerably in moving from a webcomic to consideration by one publisher to finally finding a home at another. It has been the most ...
2022-08-12 11:12:37 +0000 UTC View PostYour PDF is linked under the cover image - please let me know if you enjoyed it in the comments. And thank you for supporting the making of these comics.
For new $3+ Patrons, your Solver stories so far (links are to the PDF download posts)
Issues 1 & 2 - Circus Windows part 1 & 2022-07-31 23:01:04 +0000 UTC
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I don't really take commissions except in special circumstances or in times of penury, it's not the kind of drawing I enjoy. I can seldom find the emotion that underpins the illustration. But I did ten character drawings that I liked for the French Giant Days Kickstarter and here they are. I did the pencils on the computer then inked them by hand, circumventing my inability to draw a character in the correct position on a piece of paper leading to "ankle cut off" and "having to do it again".<...
2022-07-27 19:11:08 +0000 UTC View Post
Sorry that the posts have slowed down a bit over the last few weeks. The hot weather has made sketching very difficult, there has been a hill of difficult personal matters to get over recently, and I am mostly writing at the moment, which leaves me with very little visual stuff to showcase here.
In addition, I've been away from home for a protracted period, so I can't do a sket...
2022-07-22 10:54:35 +0000 UTC View PostIf you're reading this far, you've (hopefully) read my rough NEMS Part 2 PDF. As I wrote on Monday, I couldn't draw it. I'm not going to go, page by page, through why it was a bit of a bear to tackle, art-wise -- put simply, I had tried to keep it to 32 pages, which led to some sequences that were far too compressed.
I could draw exactly what is in the rough I showed you (and I...
2022-07-07 15:45:39 +0000 UTC View PostEarlier in the year I wrote the second part of the "NEMS" story from 2020. I wasn't happy with the results and I consider it undrawable, at least, by me. So here, as a PDF download, is the rough comic script for all 32 pages of it it. Think of it as a very slapdash 32-page comic featuring a lot of funny faces.
I'll follow up with a commentary on what is in it (which you may or may not be able to decipher based on your cryptography skills). Because while I don't want to make this comic, ...
2022-07-04 16:07:17 +0000 UTC View PostMariel Tam-Ray asks:
Hazel, age 10, wants to know: "When can I read the book made by the absolute genius Charlotte Grote, Energy Crow?"
I have thought about writing the Energy Crow book (as featured in Murder She Writes and a couple of other places) so that ten year-olds everywhere could read it and have their minds activated, but Charlotte's genius exceeds mine, so I am a little bit scared to try to do justice to her wisdom. I hope that...
2022-06-23 19:02:03 +0000 UTC View PostJohn Lee writes:
"This is a question more concerning the business end of things, so not sure if it's completely relevant, but I'm curious - what are some of the biggest differences in producing webcomics in current day vs when you first started in terms of advertising, networking, community, etc? And do you have any tips for people interested in going into such endeavors in present day? I'm sure that things must have changed quite a lot given how much the internet h...
2022-06-17 14:24:18 +0000 UTC View PostRoss Webster writes:
"How do you maintain the balance between your dialog and what's going on in the panels so that neither overtakes the other? I ask because of all the webcomics I read yours are some of the most verbose yet it never feels Iike any of your dialog takes away from the action (as opposed to say, Meredith Gran's Octopus Pie which in long stretches there's often no dialog and the art does most of the talking [Not meant to be a criticism; bot...
2022-06-16 15:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostThomas MacColl asks:
"Could the Brian x McGraw handymen crossover mooted in this week's comments ever really see the light of day? "
A serious answer: the Giant Days characters have to be handled with immense care in the context of the wider Scary Go Round universe. Remember, Lottie was 11 when we saw her in the last few issues of Giant Days, she's 19 now. Steeple is concurrent with that. For any of the central Giant Days cast to appear immediate...
2022-06-14 15:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostYour PDF is linked under the cover image - please let me know what you think in the comments. And thank you for supporting the making of these comics.
For new $3+ Patrons, your Solver stories so far (links are to the PDF download posts)
Issues 1 & 2 - Circus Windows part 1 & 2022-06-12 23:02:00 +0000 UTC
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ITEM! It's been a few months since I've done a Q&A, so if you have a question on creative matters, Scary Go Round history, or anything else (within reason), stick it in the comments below and I will think on it and do my best to answer. Previous Q&As are under the Q&A tag.
Solver 6 "drops" on Monday, here's the cover for Solver 7, due August.
Good luck working out what this issue is about.
I've written previously about the Great British Bump-Off; it's still out there in the murk, being tinkered with.
It's not like NEMS pt2, where I wrote a script too difficult to draw. I had a look at that yesterday with a view to having another crack at it: I should definitely have taken those two weeks I spent writing it off, if you know what I mean. Perhaps I'll post up the roughs one day... when I feel that I have fully recovered from trying to edit what I'd done. A lot...
2022-06-05 09:11:29 +0000 UTC View PostI've been working to capacity and trying to catch up over the last few weeks, which has left very little sketching time. But here's a quick one, one of my many attempts to do something more substantial with pen and paper. I don't think I'll ever have the time or the confidence to set other work aside to draw on paper again on a regular basis and get comfortable. So scraps like this will have to do.
2022-06-03 15:28:24 +0000 UTC
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The Solver Autumn Special will begin on June 13th, and appear here in PDF form for $3-and-up subscribers the same day. I finished drawing it today and I think you will enjoy it. It's got the lot, and concludes the "seasonal special " two-part arc. More Solver episodes are scheduled to follow - I'm writing the next one next week.
Here are the Autumn Special page titles, from which you can discern its themes, and the important matters covered.
2022-06-02 17:29:43 +0000 UTC
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I've never seen the Disney Beauty & The Beast (the late 80s Linda Hamilton TV vehicle is another matter) but I am vaguely aware of it. Recently I saw a superb exhibition about it at the Wallace Collection in London (it runs until October 22nd) and on the way home, I noted down all the things I remembered.
Unfortunately, my memory... is not very goo...
2022-05-25 16:20:33 +0000 UTC View PostReverend In Love had been in my back pocket since summer 2021 as an idea, and at some point I'd broken it down into a list of pages with a view to drawing it as part of a Steeple volume 4. Then, in December, Max Sarin reminded me that I had said I'd write them something to draw. So I spent a week of my Christmas br...
2022-05-24 15:15:47 +0000 UTC View PostSteeple is on a break while I consider a potential 4th arc. It's kind of a wait-and-see on how volume three (out in August) does, as I can only draw one series at a time.
But there is one piece of Steeple activity in 2022 for the faithful, and I very much hope you like it: a new special with art by Max Sarin of Giant Days and more great colours by Steeple stalwart Sammy Borras.
This one won't run as a webcomic - it's an exclusive to Patreon and my Gumroad. The downl...
2022-05-22 23:02:00 +0000 UTC View Post
On Saturday I was forced to sit still all day, which is always dangerous. I find that time goes at about half the normal speed when I don't feel well, which is obviously bad because it prolongs the misery, but as one turns the corner toward recovery it can open up the door in my head to the feeling of days sick off school when one could mainline strangely adult Australian soap operas like The Sullivans or Sons And Daughters, tapping a primal creativity. Into this rich, primordial soup was pou...
2022-05-15 07:42:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Had to make a pub with a beer garden yesterday for use in a few upcoming comic pages. It took about an hour, which is longer - a lot longer - than making it up on panel would have taken. But if I use it to help layout multiple pages, I can earn the time back quite quickly. The model itself doesn't have to be perfect. And it always helps to suggest compositions I might not otherwise think of. Obviousl...
2022-05-12 09:29:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a video of my colouring process for today's nutty page. Some people have remarked that it looks a bit like the old Scary Go Round pages. I thought about making it in Adobe Illustrator as I would have done back then, but the panel wasn't big enough to demand that kind of precision. I'm just drawing as I normally would, but with coloured lines. It's less than a minute long - enjoy!
2022-05-11 11:16:01 +0000 UTC View PostHere are some unused character designs from earlier this year. Nemulon-13 was designed for “the darkest timeline”. He’s experimental!
Here's an illustration I did for a 7" single by the band Candidate for their single 'Rough As Fuck b/w Windows & Pinback". I'm hoping this will open the door to me being asked to design some beer cans, I'm still waiting for the call from the (a) brewery.
2022-04-29 15:18:51 +0000 UTC
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The Steeple summer special is complete and looks great. Max Sarin and Sammy Borras have buffed this thing to a high shine. My intention is to release it to $3-and-up Patreon subscribers in late May, and through Gumroad. Hopefully I can get it into print at some point too.
At the same time as this glowing, beautiful thing is sent out into the world, a sort of equivalent Steeple nega-item will also appear, running Monday to Friday for three weeks. All I can tell you about "Brian's Insides...
2022-04-27 15:09:17 +0000 UTC View PostI posted these on Instagram a couple of weeks ago. Wobbly Head is the Wicked Things story that I planned to round out the initial arc with, it would have been issues 7 and 8 and would have completed the Miyamoto plot. Alas, there were no issues 7 and 8. It was a halloween story. It never progressed beyond a synopsis and a few sketches. Lately it is back on my radar.
I've begun work on a second part of Lottie's careers-related story. I'm still in a kind of work limbo waiting to start on various projects, but it'll emerge eventually, as the first part went over so well on here. Here's the cover. It says "Autumn Special", it could easily be a summer special or a winter special or a Christmas special. All I can try to do is make it special and let that specialness happen whenever it is ready.
2022-04-20 15:07:43 +0000 UTC
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Good news, I’m still alive despite the Covid. I had one day where I wore my dressing gown over my clothes with a hot water bottle shoved down the front, shuffling up and down stairs like a pensioner, but today I am feeling better. I won’t be running any marathons this week, but the shivers and tin hat headache were gone by 10am today. I’ve drawn a picture to prove my vitality. Thank you for your support at this difficult time. PING PING HEY HEY
2022-04-14 14:57:28 +0000 UTC
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I've got Covid. In the likely absence of red hot content for a few days, why not visit a long forgotten corner of my kingdom - my Flickr page. You may remember Flickr as a picture sharing website vastly superior to Instagram. This is why we don't use it any more. Why would anyone use something so chronological and linear, actually designed to showcase art?
There's loads on there, you've fo...
2022-04-13 18:32:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Marvel's 'Grand Design' is a series where Pittsburgh indie cartoonists summarise hundreds of issues of Marvel titles in an enjoyable and eccentric style. Ed Piskor's X-Men series was the best, it was six (big) issues long. Tom Scioli and Jim Rugg only seem to have got two over-sized issues each for Fantastic Four and Hulk retrospectives, so they have a tougher row to hoe.
But it seems to ...
2022-04-12 08:39:06 +0000 UTC View Post