New WesterNoir banner

After 10 or more years, and it has finally started to be a challenge to put up, I've decided to invest in a new WesterNoir Banner.

I wanted one with both Josiah Black and Cassidy McRae and Gary Crutchley did a fabulous job (as always) on the artwork.

Matt Soffe then added mood with his glorious colours

Before Andy Bloor added logo and a few words here and there...

But the problem working with two other creators is that they have different preferences for the words.

Jemma wanted...

Whereas Gary wanted...

and as Gary may well be doing some Conventions on his own, I've ended up getting one of each.

The things I do to keep my co-creators happy.

Dead End has arrived...

 ..in plenty of time for Thought Bubble.

It's a great little book. 

Self contained story. 

An extra 10 pages.

Same cover price (because I forgot to ask Andy Bloor (who did his usual wonderful job pulling it all together) to update it) 😆

Getting stuff ready for Thought Bubble.

Thought Bubble in the biggest Comic Convention in the UK.

Many tables full of wonderful comics, posters and prints.

It doesn't have the footfall or an MCM but the difference is that all of the people who come to Thought Bubble are looking for comic books and not a signature from some Dr Who actor or someone who was behind the voice of a cartoon character.

It's all about comics.

So, if you're going to bring out something new then this is the Con to do it at.

Along with WesterNoir Tales we are also hoping to launch out second Cassidy McRae collection, Dead End with art from the very talented Gareth Sleightholme. 

Here's the thumbnail of the cover that Gareth sent for approval before proceeding.

It really is great.

Cassidy figure has been painted

Following on from the last post on the Cassidy figure...

I decided to get a little adventurous with her scarf. Blue stars I thought would pick out the blue in her eyes.

and I like to make the shirts look a bit dirty, as if she'd been out in the wilds a bit, rather than sat in a nice hotel room somewhere.

Her hair isn't this long in the comics, not yet anyway, but I do like how the figure has it.

There's a lot of brown so it was nice to add a little purple to the back of her waistcoat.

Silver buttons on the front also help bring it alive a bit.

Added blue jeans trouser colour, gloves brown and gun belts a slightly different brown.

Red handle to the gun with the special bullets, to add a non-brown colour really, makes it jump out nicely.

Lighter brown boots also accentuate them against the legs and also base colour.

I like to keep the bases very understated so as not to complete with the figure.

Also added her three scars on her right cheek, the most nervous bit as it be a lot of effort to correct any mess. Interestingly I decided in the end to not make them all uniform in length and shape, not to over work it. Naturally they would all differ anyway, and I think it looks better for that.

and she's done.

Quite happy with how she came out.

Working on some new table display items for this year's Comic Conventions.

Those of you who popped over to our table at last year's events, and particularly Thought Bubble where we had some for sale, will have seen out 3D miniatures. Little figures of some of our WesterNoir characters.

I thought it would be cool to get a few printed much larger to help make our table look a little more interesting at Conventions.

I'm no expert on 3D printing but our printer (Gary's son Jason) told me it needed to be filament and not resin, due to the size...

and warned me that I'd need to do a bit of cleaning up, as little bits of filament stick out here and there. This is not a problem with the resin prints.

The first thing I do with all the figures I paint is to choose a good base colour, so if you miss a crack, or hard to reach area, then it will be this base colour (which should blend in better with the finished figure) that would be visible rather than black (the original 3D printed colour).

The first figure is of Cassidy McRae, and the base colour of choice is brown, which will work equally well with skin and leather cowboy garb.

I always start with the head. This needs to work well otherwise the figure won't be worth completing.

I paint the eyes in and then build up the skin colour to cover the white as much as needed. Much easier than paining all the face skin colour and then trying to add white eyes with a blue iris.

Once I've got the face looking good enough (and more highlights etc will be added later) I sort out the hair.

I'm happy with how Cassidy is looking and so will now continue with the clothing.

Forgot to mention that, in order to get a consistent colour, I do all the parts of skin showing at the same time as the face.