Kingdom Figure - The Legs

 Ok, so the arms and legs are much easier. Much less detail on them.

I decided to paint the joints and sole of his boot a more silver colour.. but then put some black washes on to darken them a bit.

All the while trying to make sure that the metallic colour was consistent.

Looks ok.

Just the arms left then.

Almost there.

Oh yeah, and his wrench.

Kingdom Figure - The Body

 Ok.

Colour scheme sorted, and it's pretty much all gun metals.

Now to try to get the same colour, or close enough, for the body.

Once again I started with the fire glow through the vents.

And then it was just a matter of laying on the metal colour and plenty of washes.

and of course, those pesky dials.

I quite liked that the figure had little flaws.

Little pitted holes, maybe where bullets had hit him.

I'm pleased with how it progressed.

And once the upper body was nice and dry I could focus on his lower body.

I like the way the red dial displays stand out.

And all that left is to see how it works with his head on his shoulders.

Yes. I'm very happy with that.

Kingdom Figure - The Head

I couldn't put it off any longer.

I tried a few samples with these news washes (they call them 'contrast' and 'technical' paints, which I don't really understand) and I decided to go back to the way I had always painted my figures, back when I painted them for Dungeons and Dragons.

Again the head started that grey colour and the first thing was to paint in his fire glowing eyes.

It's quite daunting when you start. 

You have an image in your head as to what you want it to look like...

and then you start putting on the paint and layer of washes.

trying to get it to come out something close to that.

All in all I'm quite pleased, it's good start.

Now for the torso.

It has plenty of detail and needs to fit with the colours and effects of the head.

Kingdom Figure - the base

 In the background we've been playing with producing a figure of Stephenson's Robot himself.

Jon Ayre, co-writer on some of the Stephenson's Robot back stories and the martian sequence (to be collected in Book 2) has modelled him and Gary Crutchley's son Jason has printed one off for me to paint.

I've started with the base.

It comes in two pieces. One is the rock formation and one a plaque with the Stephenson's Robot logo, designed by Andy Bloor.

I decided to paint this a a basic grey, to keep it boring looking, so as not to distract from the robot himself.

Quite pleased how it came out.

Just need to work on the robot now.

Wish me luck.

Quantum issue 3 is off to the printer.

 

  Yep, the good news is that we hit the deadline for getting issue 3 to the printer in time for it to hit the shelves of local stores on the 22nd August, and as you can see from the image above, this issue has a WesterNoir cover by David Morris.

   It's a real challenge pulling these together in time for proof reading and correcting bits here and there and still hitting the date for Andy Bloor to work his magic pulling it all together, which always seems to involve a little reformatting here and there. Andy pulled out all the stops though and I do sense that he worked a little later than intended and on the last day he even started early so we could get a small correction into the issue before printing started.

   Our printer, Rich Hardiman (Comic Printing UK), also went the extra mile and popped into his office for 30 mins or so on one of his holiday days so we could get this moving through the print process rather than wait for his return in 2 weeks. Had that been the case we would have missed our dates.  

   It's this kind of support that makes the difference.

   Willing to help out as we learn the ropes and hit the little bumps in the road.

   Lesson learned, we'll make sure we discuss dates around holiday times (Summer and Christmas) etc much earlier in the future.

   We'll get there.

London Film and Comic Con

This was my first ever visit to the LFCC in London's Olympia.

Steve and I made our way down on the Thursday to set things up and as is typical these days it seems, we found the convention centre undergoing building work which meant that finding the loading bay was a challenge. We'd had the same issue at the recent MCM and so took it all in our stride.

I must say it wasn't as big as I'd expected, and we were on the balcony level overlooking the toys, posters, comic back issue sellers and ..well... all sorts of stuff related to films and comics, on the floor below.

We found our table pretty quickly and dropped off our stock before nipping back to the car to free up the loading by space for someone else.

I did notice that there was something a little off about my sign which made me chuckle...

 

Can't you spot the error?...

Friday morning we walked to the venue, not waiting for the shuttle bus laid on by the convention and had set up in plenty of time. 

As with Fridays at MCM in the early days it was a slow day but we met a number of customers who had picked up Quantum in newsagents and we sold a healthy number of books.

Saturday was much busier. We had a great day. So good in fact that we agreed to go for tea with Matt Hardy and his mate Andrew Clemson. A great evening eating, drinking and talking... well... comics mostly.

I also picked up a commission from the legend Hunt Emerson. 

How cool is that?

Sunday was quieter than Saturday but better than Friday and so all in all a pretty good Con.

I will say that the organisers (thanks Tony and Amy) made sure we were well fed and watered all weekend. We felt very well looked after to be honest, more so than at any Con I've ever been to before.

All in all a very enjoyable weekend and one that was worth doing for a number of reasons.

Looking forward to the next one.

Another great review of Quantum 1

 ...can be found over at MidLifeGamerGeek.

Issue 2 is out at all good newsagents and WH Smith stores now.