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.

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.

Thought Bubble this week coming.

I must say it is my favourite event.

It's all about comics.

Yes, it's getting bigger and bigger, which results in each creator getting less sales, as there is so much quality competition, but who cares. It's great.

I spent this weekend getting stock together. 

I'm taking all the WesterNoir books and some of the new figures, in their boxes.

Lots of help on these.

Gary Crutchley and his son Jason on printing the figures themselves and Andy Bloor designing and constructing the boxes. I'm very happy with how they turned out.

WesterNoir Kickstarter Posting

I spent the last week or so making packages for all the WesterNoir Kickstarter Backers.

Quite an ordeal really, and made all the more complicated by the number of Add Ons we were offering.

It all seems to go fairly well though, and hopefully everyone will be receiving what they expected to receive.

The toughest part was parting with my painted Cassidy McRae figure.

She's gone to a good home though and I thank the backer for adding it to their pledge. 

WesterNoir TPB3 and Moon Cursed will be off the printer this week.

After a successful, if a little stressful, Kickstarter campaign I can report that the books have now been completed, with all the little extra design-y bits and pieces by Andy Bloor, and will be off the printer this week.

I can't wait to get these books printed and on the table at conventions.

The painted Cassidy McRae

Our 3D printed figures are pretty good. The detail is really sharp and I've been painting one for the table display at Conventions.

Quite pleased with how she's come out.

The face in particular came out really well...

with the scars easy to pain on.

And, thanks to a friend at work we were able to put her 'special' gun on her. You'll learn more about all of that in future stories.

I may add this as a Kickstarter Add-on to try an help hit the target. If I do I'll sign it of course. That said it took a while to paint and would be a challenge to do one that comes out so well.

A challenge.

WesterNoirs on Kickstarter

 Two WesterNoir titles are currently on Kickstarter.

Volume 3 of Josiah Black's story and the first collection of Cassidy McRae's tale that appeared originally in Quantum.

The double pack is suitably called 

WesterNoir Double Shot!

Next Subscription Top Trump cards feature WesterNoir characters

As part of our Time Bomb Comics Quantum Prime subscription we throw in some little extra bits and bobs. 

We had a Q sticker, a Q beer mat and also Top Trumps type cards featuring Major Rakhana and Sanjay.

With Quantum 8 subscribers will get cards of the WesterNoir duo of Cassidy (formerly known as Mrs. Jones) and Luther.

We wanted to have them all produced by the same artist and so asked Roland Bird, artist on Major Rakhana to do these. 

I've tried to colour them inn the same way as Dan Harris did for the first two.

They should work very nicely.