Strange Times Book 2 - Evolution of a cover.

Strange Times was always going to be a trilogy in two parts, and I'd always intended the cover of the second book to reflect that of the first. I wanted it to be similar, but different.
The danger though, as I've experienced a little with my Blessed/Cursed books, Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man ? and Missing - Have You Seen The Invisible Man ?, is that this can confuse people. I've had customers at the table in conventions say that they'd read The Invisible Man when I knew that they couldn't have. When I then show them Fastest Man and point out that it's different they have all then bought the new book.
So.
Strange Times Book 2.
How to make it similar, but different.
How about use a different character in a different car. How about it being a car that flies (which does appear in the book). Hmmmm ... still looks too similar...
OK, how about setting it at night.

OK, that seems to work. I had to lose the animal this time as it's night but I quite liked it.
Time to send it off to Andy Bloor to work his magic.
Andy had problems with the moon. I hadn't thought about the placement of the book title.
That's why I'm not a designer.

Yep. I like that. I had thought to make the lettering red, similar to the car but once again Andy had been right to make it blue.
A day or so later however I wondered that maybe the background fields were a little too light and that they lost the impact of the vapour beneath the car.

And there you have it. I'm really happy with the finished look.
Now I just need to sort out a quote for the back cover... oh, and finish the internal pages.
Thanks as always to Andy for his help in making our books so polished, and for being patient with my 'ideas'.

'A Place To Hang Your Cape' reviews Fastest Man and Invisible Man.

David Molofsky has reviewed both of our Blessed/Cursed books over at A Place To Hang Your Cape, and there's also an Interview up there as well.
This week, and the next, will be spent getting ready for the Copenhagen Con, Gary Crutchley, the driving force behind WesterNoir has produced some special sketches for the show, I wonder if I'll allow people to buy them though... The always busy Gary has posted the title page for Issue 3 up on his blog. In a word... awesome.

Getting ready for the Copenhagen Comics Convention.

It's been a few years, I think maybe 3 but would need to do some digging to be sure, since we attended the last Komiks.DK in Copenhagen and we've really missed both the trip and our friends over there. It'll be great to catch up and talk about what we've all done since.
We're going to be a little more limited in terms of what we can carry over with us this year as it's just me and Colin. Previously our friends Chris and/or Scott have come over with us but sadly this year they're not able to do so. We'll miss them both.
We're both really looking forward to it though, it's always been one of our favourite Cons and hopefully the name change will be just that, a change in its name.
I've been busy this month with the day job and the impact that a such a significant change in the Organistional Design of the company brings, but am still finding the odd moment to be creative.
Gary Crutchley has been great keeping WesterNoir 3 progressing, and has worked wonders with my script to produce a book that sets things up really well for the final book in the story arc, even changing bits of scripting here and there to improve it all. A great collaborative effort. A big thanks to Gary for his efforts, and talent.
As I've not had much time to do my own 'art thing' lately and work on Strange Times 2, I've been playing with collages in my spare moments, cutting and sticking images on a page, I wish I could be more loose and random but I think for me that's not going to happen...

 If nothing else I'll have a little sketchbook full of images to look at should I great a creative block...

WesterNoir 3, cover image is all sorted.

Well, as promised WesterNoir #3 is the Mermaid issue.
Once again Gary Crutchley has worked his magic on the cover (and pulled the script in all sorts of interesting directions), Andy Bloor has continued with his great design and Matt Soffe has worked wonders on the colouring.

How good does that look...
Gary is well into the book now with all the inking done, he's applying the grey tones and lettering. All coming together really well.
And then it'll be onto book 4, last in the mini-series, I'll say nothing more on that... for now.

M.A.D

I took a day off work yesterday and took the family on a trip to Stratford Upon Avon. The town is famous as the birthplace of a long deceased writer called William Shakespeare, but more importantly, to me, it is where the Mechanical Art & Design museum is located.

Now I must admit I was a little surprised by the £6.80 fee for entry, and multiple this by two and add a child and it's a sizeable amount. I've been caught out before by museums that promise much and deliver very little. I wasn't going to be put off though so I entered a rather dark room to a world of mechanical sounds.

I was in fact in tinkerers heaven.
There were two floors littered with all forms of mechanical contraption. Most of them did something at the push of a button or were in some form of perpetual activity as ball bearings raced around tracks of wire.

Now I like to build robots from all sorts of salvaged household appliances, and some odd items bought at car boot sales or antique shops (don't tell them though), but the guys who built these machines (on retrospect the word 'contraption's doesn't seem fair) are on a whole different level.

Some of the pieces where some kind of kintec art,

whilst others had strange little creatures manning (or is that flea-ing) exotic craft on some adventure or other.

We spent a good hour in there marvelling at the creativity and effort involved in producing such elaborate structures.

A great way to spend your time and well worth the price of entry.
I believe that they change their exhibits periodically so I'll be back some day to see what else is going on in studios across the globe.

I don't feel so odd now, having seen that others are also out there tinkering away with salvaged bits and pieces.

Lego WesterNoir 2 and some reviews.

As is tradiotional now, here's the Lego figure to accompany the latest Accent UK book.Also this week we've had two great reviews of the book appearing on the web. First we had downthetubescomics.blogspot.co.uk and then www.brokenfrontier.com.
Both are great reviews which really helps motivate us to complete Issue 3, which is progressing very nicely indeed thanks mostly to the effort Gary is putting into it. You can see page samples and more over on Gary's blog.
And ... if you're in Dundee this weekend then pop over to the Accent UK table at the Dundee Comics Expo and say 'Hello', you can have a look at WesterNoir first hand while you're there, as well the rest of our books. You'll find more details over on Colin's blog.

Robots Assemble.

I've been meaning to get around to this for a while now. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a thing for robots, I collect all sorts of robot related bits and bobs, make my own out of collected bits and bobs that before then had nothing to do with robots, produce comic books with robots in them and, and this is where it becomes relevant, I used to collect robot sketches and commissions from comic book artists.
A few years ago I ran a website that let people see all of these pieces of art but then it all got a bit too much and running the extra website took too much time. It had to go and soit did. And I've always regretted it.
Then came blogs, so simple to maintain and so nice to look at.
And so RobotsAssemble is back.
As a blog.
As frequently as I can I'll post an image up there, and a little bit about my memories of the robot in question. Yes, I know that they're not real, I was meaning more about when I first came across it on screen, comic page or hidden between the covers of a book.
The first page has been posted...

...enjoy.