Thought Bubble 2025

Wow.

Thought Bubble 2025 was a fabulous way to end 2025's convention circuit.

It's a long way to Harrogate, and I pick up Gary Crutchley on the way, which adds an extra hour(ish). He's good company in the car though and we talk about WesterNoir most of the way before moving on to setting the world to rights.

Our location in the 2000AD Hall was always a worry.

We were at the far end on the rows of tables, on the corner effectively, and I worried that most people wouldn't even see us.

This turned out to be a valid concern but we did manage to interest most of those who did come past our table, and gained quite a few new readers of our books, as well as meet a number of our existing readers again.

This year we had two new comics

1. WesterNoir Tales and 
2. WesterNoir - Dead End.

Both were very well received.

We also had a new WesterNoir mini poster, coloured by Matt Soffe, and a load of new figures (gator men). 

It was a busy table that's for sure.

I gave out a few Contributor copies of WesterNoir Tales and also got to give one to John Reppion and thank him for his Introduction in the book. It's something I'm almost reluctant to ask people for as it puts them in a spot really. As a friend it'll be difficult for them to say 'No', without feeling that they are letting us down. We really do appreciate it and I wanted to make sure John knew that.

Gustaffo Vargas was pleased to receive his copy. It features his first ever professional (in so far as we paid him for his work) gig in the UK. He was ok with my colouring attempt as well, or was too polite to say otherwise 😀.

Ian Ashcroft also attended the Con, talking to 77 Publishers about his new book with Pat Mills (you can check it Hellbreaker which is still active over on Kickstarter). Ian also picked up his copy of WesterNoir Tales and we had a good chat about Kia Wordsmith over a coffee. All very positive and I'll be working on the script over Xmas, Ian has already has10 pages of script to complete so that should work nicely.

Jemma and I talked to the very talented Norm Konyu about illustrating a 10, or so, Cassidy McRae story for WesterNoir Tales 2, and he was more than happy to get involved, which is fabulous.

We are extremely fortunate to be able to have so many talented people involved in our works.

Added to this we now have WesterNoir books on sales in Harrogate's very own Destination Venus comic shop.

A great weekend.

I just need to recover now 😆 

Phew. We made it.

The great news is that our WesterNoir Tales Kickstarter successfully reached its £3,000 target.

We had 111 backers in the end, which is a nice number.

Now it's just a matter of getting the money in from Kickstarter and then printing the book and the special double sided art cards.

And then sending everything out to our backers.

Happy days.

Good news is that our latest WesterNoir Kickstarter is one third funded

 Yep.

And if you'd like to see more and risk being tempted yourself then please pop over to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kiawordsmith/westernoir-tales

It's coming along nicely.

WesterNoir Tales Kickstarter

The Kickstarter for WesterNoir Tales has been approved.

Here's the link to the pre-launch page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kiawordsmith/westernoir-tales

Gator Man figure for Table Display at Conventions.

This year I've focussed my convention table more and more on the WesterNoir series.

Adding 6 inch figures of Josiah Black and Cassidy McRae to try to make my table stand out a little against the sea of tables of great comics books around me.

The figures certainly drew people to the table and I had some really interesting chats with people I would not had met had the figures not been there.

But I need to add some monsters.

I love Gary's design for the Gator Men, first seen in issue 2, and so this monster was the obvious choice.

The first thing I do when pinging figures is lay down a flat layer of the base colour. This layer is watered down a little as I want it to fill all the little cracks and holes. There's nothing worse than seeing a little bit of grey when you look in detail at your finished work.

The eyes are the first thing I actually paint as it's easier to move the skin to the eyes than it is to paint the right size and shape of eye onto the skin colour.

I was tempted throughout to paint the iris and pupil in but love the way the orange stands out against the green and so left it as is.

Putting a lighter layer for the skin gives the figure its three dimensional feel. I actually stopped the lighter green on this time, playing with it as I felt it better reflected a crocodile's skin.

Picking out the detail of the sales on his back with a little green, accentuated but a darker green circle around it ... I love the way this came out.

Then adding a dark blue for the jeans base colour. 

Yes, there are two figures, one for the Convention Table and the other for the WesterNoir Tales Kickstarter.

A nice brown belt and a simple dark brown base (I don't like the bases to be too busy as they distract from the figure).

and he's done.

Very happy with how he came out.

Just submitted my WesterNoir Tales for Review on Kickstarter

It's been a while since I used Kickstarter but am happy to say that, whilst it has changed a little, I could still work things out.

You can check it out at:- WesterNoir Tales Kickstarter

WesterNoir Tales

This weekend I'll be working on the Kickstarter for our collected WesterNoir Tales.

WesterNoir Tales is a collection of the tales in the three published Tales of WesterNoir, and includes some new tales and also things that we didn't find room for in the ongoing series.

The stories are all by Gary and/or myself but the art is from a lot of people we admire, and are friends, in the independent comic book scene.

Originally the printed tales were in greyscales but Gary and I have been colouring pages for a few months now, adding to some pages already coloured by Matt Soffe, and the book is now fully coloured and pretty much ready.

Here's the first view of the cover... by Gary Crutchley, coloured by Matt Soffe and designed by Andy Bloor, as always.