Happy New Year, Peeps! I Thought I'd Make A Post With What I Think Is My Best Work Of This Last Year.

Happy New Year, peeps! I thought I'd make a post with what I think is my best work of  this last year. In chronological order, these are:

The Mysterious Land of Under-Noodle, from the Inspired Eat Me! anthology

The Mystery of the Night Boy, a Patience mini-comic

The Hyaku Monogatari feature from the Hallowe'en issue of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?

This Is Not A Serious Music Publication, a collaborative music zine I made with Sammy, which is probably my absolute favourite thing I did this year.

Two postcards from my Autumn 2012 set.

I think what I learned this year is a) I do some of my best work under extreme time pressure, and b) I also do my best work when I'm really excited about it. (Both apply to the music zine.) Possibly also c) due to being willfully contrary, bad reviews only make me draw MORE COMICS.

Unfortunately I also learned that it's very easy for me to get caught up working on small press comics and zines because they're a lot of fun to make, neglecting the work which would get me closer to illustrating actual books. Hence my plan for next year is to manage my time better and prioritise book-related work, even if it means making fewer comics. This was a really difficult conclusion to accept because I really love making comics with my friends, but I only have so much time in the week after going to my day job, and I just can't do comics (in the quantities I've been doing this year) AND do the work I need to break into book illustration. Not until someone starts paying me to draw things anyway.

So... I hope 2013 brings me people who pay me to draw things? 

AW YEAH NEW YEAR!

SO EXCITED.

OKAY GUYS, HUGE NEWS! My upcoming graphic novel (based on a YA novel by Prudence Shen) NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG, will be serialized online from now until its publication in May 2013! 

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is a graphic novel about two guys, Nate and Charlie, one’s a nerd, one’s a jock, but they still manage to have this weird, kind of combative friendship. Until they both get tangled up in a highly competitive school election that spirals out of control and then … well, you’ll have to read it to see. ;) This book contains ninja cheerleaders, over the top comedy and SO MANY BATTLE ROBOTS. Seriously, I was reading through it the other day and I had to draw like 50 pages of robots fighting and it is insane.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE COMIC! I would really, really appreciate it! The comic is going online with the permission of my publisher, First Second, and I’m very grateful to them for letting me share it with the internet. So, internet, please tell everyone you know of its existance! 

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong will be updating with a page every weekday, and Prudence and I will be blogging along with the updates, giving readers insight into our creative processes and other nonsense.

Yay!!!!

July release date? Friends, my birthday is in July. I'm sure you know what to do.

Here is the cover of Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 4: Materia.

Looking to be a July release date!

My thoughts exactly.

P.S. Why 'Anna'? Gerda is hardly a weirder name than Belle or Ariel. 

These are the other five postcards I made for Thought Bubble, in my 'dolly' style. These are all my own characters as well, but they're not all as well developed. I was still aiming for a limited colour palette with these, and I think I was fairly successful. I definitely like my own work more with fewer and duller colours.

There's Coda, a young princess who suffers from an arranged marriage and is moved from her home in the mountains to her husband's kingdom, which is largely forested. Then there's those two creepy edwardian children from the Danse Macabre postcard, perhaps this is where they found their skeleton friend. Then Lena, sister of Lucas and possessor of the gift of prophesy, following a ghost lantern. A little witch in a field of eyes. Lastly, young Nettle and Spider, enjoying a psychic tea party (the best kind). Possibly Spider will read their tea leaves when Nettle puts the cups down.

In other news, I'm incredibly tired and I don't know why. The weather? Not wanting to go to work? My house being really cold? Tis a mystery.

Sketchavember 2012 - Part 3!

21 - Meilee, my adorable and awkward factory girl. She always looks pretty gormless, because people leave you alone if they think you're an idiot.

22 - Lin, who came to the same conclusion in the boy's side of the factory. Also has the misfortune of being on the back of Jemima's page, which I shaded with markers.

23 - It got to about 11:30pm and I was falling asleep, then I remembered I hadn't done a picture, so I drew Coda falling asleep.

24 - I almost got through Sketchavember without drawing Duo again. Almost.

25 - Noone, the main character of a graphic novel which I planned and then scrapped. I still want to do something with the characters though.

26 - Haha, I tried to draw a demon but he kept going wrong, so I rubbed him out and drew an angel instead, which was a million times easier. I wonder if that says anything about my psyche.

27 - Ah, here's the demon.

28 - Having developed a character model for Hephzibah, I completely failed to make one for Gorse. Oh well.

29 - A Vrega, having a nice stretch.

30 - Last but not least, Kero. Originally he was some kind of alien that resembled a demon, but I've been thinking I might just make him a sort of feral demon instead.

And that was last year's Sketchavember! I hope you enjoyed this insight into my pathological fear of drawing anything that's not people. XD