I am 1 durrr

Ok, so I was going to blog throughout the day. Except my laptop was on stage the whole day, and I knew that days ago, so yes, I am a durrr. So of course I didn't. However, it was a superb day, and although I missed quite a lot, running around Broadway, plugging stuff in and making sure the catering was ok, etc. (Which is a blog post all to itself, which I have resisted, in case in a Dooce way, someone read it and spat in our rice salad).

The Pizza the night before was excellent, and it was great to meet everyone beforehand, and I think everyone felt happy to be there. Jean and Robin (John's wife and Son respectively) were both there, and it was emotional, especially when we showed Robin the catalogue we had made which contained some of John's drawings, which brought dewy eyes all round.

I'll blog in detail about it soon, but I wanted to say something immediately about the conference, and it's a statement that Phil Mitchell from Mainframe (ReBoot) made 'The reason that I'm doing what I'm doing is because of John' - I hope no one from Animation Academy will mind me paraphrasing that to say the reason that we are doing what we are doing is because of John. That's as good a reason as any in my book.

x

Pizza and Insomnia

It's the night before the conference, and fingers crossed, I've thought of everything and it's all gonna be ok... Didn't really sleep last night, and I reckon there's another night of that on the way. Not that I'm worried, but I just keep playing out every scenario over and over again in my head...

We're off for Pizza in an hour or so, which is lucky as I've never tried to book a table for 30 on Valentine's night before, which was a bit like Joseph and Mary trying to find a B+B on Christmas Eve. It's kind of got that Christmas Eve feeling, that fatalistic calm that comes after the shops have closed where you think, 'Well, if I've forgotten anything or anyone, too flippin late'.

There's wireless at Broadway, so I'll try to blog the day as it goes, but I'm not promising anything!

Doodlin'

Here's a tryout of a doodle for the comic, admittedly hastily done, but it was a test of using a Wacom tablet to draw with. I've never really got the hang of that hand-eye-monitor-tablet thing, and end up fighting the mouse and the pen which I have in each hand, like a prog rock keyboard player. It's a left handed thing I think - I've got so used to controlling the cursor right handedly (?) with the mouse, that when I get the pen, and default back to leftness, i feel like a toddler trying to copy Escher, and the cursor flies around of it's own accord.



I kind of like it, although I think the line is a bit too brushy, too painted, but I think that might be some of my own clumsiness causing that. I'm so used to dragging my vector lines around to make outlines, that it feels a bit uncomfortable, and like I'm not getting on the screen what I get on the page, but I'm going to stick with it for a while...

The bigger question I'm asking myself is about the character design, and whether this kind of design can carry a longer, more mature narrative. I've always held that there's enough weight in really simple characters to carry stories, that part of why I wrote 'Angels', to kind of take the deadpan playmobil characters and see how they'd hold up in an 'adult' narrative. I kind of think these new style characters may be too cute to carry yet another spooky tale of grief, loss and loneliness. The look a bit er, card-y to me, or like they suit a single shot panel or 3-frame strip. Oh, I dunno, I guess I wont be able to tell until I've done more work on it. I'm also concerned that it might be a bit self conscious to force difficult themes on cutesy characters like when people deliberately gross-out sock puppets or fluffy bunnies. And I don't want that, I want people to care about the characters, have an emotional connection, and perhaps the cutesy thing just knocks people back...

In other news, and I'm not going to go into too much detail, I talked yesterday with the Harris about the idea of a game based around one of their collections, a kind of Monkey Island point and click adventure which would reveal the history of the collection and the person behind it. That is so deliciously Web 2.0/ARG/Transliteracy that it makes me feel a bit sick with joy and so on. I'm loving working with the Harris, it's like having a big fat digital canvas to play on, and everyone seems to be getting really excited about the potential for their Internet work to become a significant part of their plan.

Fridge Soup

I just started on a new comic strip, inspired by the great stuff I've seen on ComicSpace, and the recent re-readings of my Love and Rockets collection. I've even started going back into Page 45, and I'm pleased to have overcome that weird fear!

I'm still trying to work out whether to go for old style pen and ink, or to go for redrawing my pencils in Flash. I've done a bit of both over the past few days, and I'm still stuck. I think it's obvious that I'll be doing both for a while, so I'm not so concerned about making a definite decision. Add to that the fact that I'm not doing this for any other reason but my own amusement, and the pressure of that decision all but disappears. Me and Steve and Chris talked late last year about creating a comic, and spent some time trying to construct a 'world' or overarching scenario that our stories would fit in to. However, as Steve's Horror career has suddenly become really hectic, we've not had the time to bring it all together, so I'm going to plough ahead, and invite Steve and Chris to join in wherever they like, once I've begun to get a sense of what it is I'm doing.

I'm relieved that we didn't 'set' the world ultimately, as I think it was a really self conscious way to go about it, and would have restricted our freedom. I think it'll be better to have the opportunity to grow the strip organically.

Here's a picture of some initial doodling...



I said I'd post some webcomics I've enjoyed, so here's some links;

Shrouded - The first issue of this is great, a bit Ginger Snaps, a bit American Werewolf, and even a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Issue 2 promised soon.

Geek Blather - This comic is written collaboratively using a Role Play process through Live Journal. Very Web 2.0! I'm wondering if that's the way that me, Steve and Chris might develop our own comic.

Eekeemoo - Really nice sketchy strip. Monsters, little eskimo characters, what more do you want?

Thumpculture - Fight Club meets Street Fighter, in a sort of fantasy Soap romance thing.