What I’ve been doing

• Working on an the cover to an EP, and a website for Kirsty Bromley. You’ll be able to buy the former from the latter soon.
• Working on a script for Crash Talyor.
• Doing flats and generally being the not-really-that-glamorous assistant for Mr Andrew Tunney. You’ll be able to see the results of that soon.
• Playing with new materials. A pentel GFKP brush pen, and Manga Studio EX.
• Starting running. I’ve been trying to get on a bit more of a health kick lately. Needs doing. Trying out a neat little app called Get Running, it seems pretty good. I guess I’ll know how good in a couple of weeks.

What I’ve been reading

• The Action Philosophers trade. It’s been out for a while but I’ve always meant to pick it up and it doesn’t disappoint. A fantastic way to learn about the history of western (and some eastern) thinking. It’s funny without undermining its subject, and has a tonne of interesting little details about the lives of philosophers as well as their ideas.
• The New ‘Hark, A Vagrant’ Trade. Sure I’ve read most of it online but it’s smart, it’s funny, and Ms Beaton deserves our money.
• One Piece. Yes, I know, but I only started reading it when I moved back to Manchester and was pleasantly surprised by how wonderful the characters are, and how bouncy, clean and energetic the art is. I was so ready to brush it off as yet another epic shonen saga for me to have no interest in reading but to my horror it turns out it’s actually fantastic. I’m not sure I want to watch the show, but the comics are great.
• Wonderwoman and Justice League Dark. Already spoken a bit about Wonderwoman (see: ‘Yay!’ and ‘SHE HEADBUTTS A CENTAUR’ etc), and JLD is interesting but so strongly entrenched in set-up land I can’t say much about it until it gets going.
• Next up is going to be REAMDE, because there has not been enough Neal Stephenson in my life. (Can there be enough Neal Stephenson in your life?)

What I’ve been watching

• Spinning Penguin Drum. Strangeness from the director of Utena. Deep strangeness. And penguins. And trains. And references to national disasters and hypothetical libraries. And more symbolism than you can shake a stick at. I’ll post about this one in more detail when it’s finished I think.
• Fate/Zero. Oh man. Fate/Zero. TypeMoon stuff has always been a guilty pleasure of mine and this is TypeMoon plus Urobuchi (writer of Saya no Uta and Puella Magi Madoka) plus UFOtable and Kalafina (Studio and Musicgroup that did Kara no Kyoukai) . If you don’t know the Fate universe, the set up is effectively a battle royale between a bunch of mages (who generally keep all magic a secret from the public) who each summon a legendary hero to fight for them in a battle for the ‘holy grail’. It’s a prequel to ‘Fate/Stay Night’, but where that was a grail war fought by effectively flailing newbies getting it wrong, this one appears to be run by cheating assholes and it’s brilliant. The result takes a few episodes to get going but once it does, it’s gotten better every episode. Occasionally the budget shows (it’s TV anime after all) but it’s incredibly pretty, and the story and characters keep getting better. Streaming in a load of languages on NicoNico for 7 days after broadcast, then it’s over to CrunchyRoll. Where you can have it in the delicious high-res it deserves. (If you do plan on watching it and want some F/SN first… do yourself a favour and skip the anime. Find the game or a play through and read that instead, as the show is both the weakest route of the story, and makes the lead character terrible).

LinkBloggy bit

• A Brief Rant on The Future of Interaction Design. What it says on the tin. An interesting look at how we interact with our technology.
• The excellent mr Sam Gwilym carries on thinking about that, and especially about styluses (styli?).
• Takeshi Miike and Phoenix Wright. YES.

(I also grabbed Justice League Dark but I really DO need to read more of that before I can say anything about it.)

Tachikawa School-G Pen

So, over to the left there is a quick sketch of WW, using the School-G for the lines and some Zig Graphic Twins for the shading. The School-G is basically like a cross breed between a cartridge pen and a traditional G nib… which frankly is an awesome idea. I’ve been getting into G nibs lately, and the idea of being able to throw one in my handbag is very appealing.

Now (art quality aside), the WW sketch there shows the biggest flaw with the Tachikawa, and that’s that unless it’s on the right kind of paper, it bleeds massively. This is pretty frustrating because of course, my default sketch book isn’t the right kind of paper.

A quick test on Bristol Board shows its okay on that (but my wallet is pre-emptively crying) and over to the right is another quick test I did on some printer paper. Once I’ve done some more experiments I’ll come back with more conclusive things about it.

The big negative out the way, what about the rest of it? Well, you’re not going to get quite the range of thicknesses that you’ll get from a traditional nib from it, but you can still get a decent range—I’d say between a 01 and a 07 fineliner depending on pressure, if you can avoid bleed. Maybe a little thinner if you’re featherlight and fast, and it is available in an extra fine as well. It’s a little rougher on the page but it’s clean, fast and forgiving; It dries very fast and you’re not going to get an accidental, picture-destroying blob of ink falling off the pen. It plays just fine with watercolour markers. And again, it’s a nib pen you can throw in your bag without thinking about it. You do need to use it at least every couple of days to stop it drying out, but as I want to get better with a nib that’s actually a feature rather than a bug for me.

So, conclusions on the Tachikawa School-G for now: Needs the right paper and won’t replace a G-Nib if you like really high line varience, but it’s a really good tool to be able to throw in a pencil case or when you don’t want the mess you can end up with from the real thing. More thoughts when I’ve gotten more used to it.

Wonder Woman #1 & #2

If I hadn’t heard such good reviews, I’ll admit getting me to buy a Wonder Woman comic would have been a hard sell, especially with the less than stellar portray of women in some recent *coughCatwomanCough* comics. Wonder Woman has never been a book I’ve been hugely interested in, and I’ll admit I’ve maybe unfairly assumed it would be very saturday morning, straight laced superhero stuff, with a character who’s history has been pretty absurd at times.

But I’ve heard good things and it’s about time I read some main stream DC, so I picked up the first 2 issues and was pleasantly surprised. Here’s some reasons why:

• Rather than straight punchy-punchy heroism (which for the record is fine), we’ve got mystery/horror with a dose of greek myth thrown in. I mean, I knew she was greek based but this is nice and heavy on the ‘gods and goddesses being jerks to humanity’ side of things, and Diana getting lumped protecting Zola feels almost more like something out of a noir story to me.
• On that note, Diana’s attitude. She’s kinda surly and no-nonsense, and just gets on with things. I like that a lot.
• Also she is huge. With muscles. She feels really powerful even without gimicks.
• Also despite having a scene where she’s completely naked, she never feels that sexualised. She’s not ashamed of her body, but she’s not flaunting it either. With recent comics news, that’s just so refreshing.



• And she head-butts a centaur.
• Not knowing much about the series beforehand isn’t getting in the way, we get a little dose of backstory in #2 and it looks like the rest is incoming.
• The art is decent, the colouring isn’t afraid to be moody, there’s bags of energy and nice bold inking. The dialogue is solid too and the characters are all interesting so far.
• And she head-butts a centaur.

My only big negative is not really the team’s fault and that’s the huge amount of ads in there. If I didn’t want to support the singles due to it being good (usually my real reason for buying singles) I’d be waiting for the trade to escape having my immersion broken every 3 pages.

So yeah, I think this will stay on my pull list, and hopefully the quality stays up. As this is interesting stuff indeed.

I don’t want to do a big new years retrospective this year, but I’m gonna say this: 2010 has been a weird one, but it’s been all about the people. For all the wheel spinning I think I’ve done, I’ve met wonderful people and had friendship and support from the utter stars I already knew. I don’t like being super super soppy but when I couldn’t sleep last night, the only thing on my mind was how grateful I am for the amazing people in my life.

I think you already know who you are. Thankyou, so, so much. And lets make 2011 the year we get out there, kick some ass and take some names, yeah?

Have a great day. You deserve it.

Cheers!

–

KT

(Granted, an incredibly silly story, but hey.)

It’s a pulp-parody, possibly to be a webcomic, and we’re throwing it around under the working title of “Bulletwitch Baretta and The Gentlelady Thief”. I’ve been really enjoying drawing up the characters, combining Jack’s design ideas with my own. They’re all done in brushpen and photoshop, and I’ll be covering the colouring method I used in the next part of my Masks tutorial.

No good will come of this. But oh is it fun. Enjoy.

PS: Gun-shoes are still stupid.

The metal was still there when I got back later in the night, so I took a photo of it for posterity’s sake. Looking at the building, I think it was one of the dark side panels that run up some of the buildings on the estate I live on. That particular block of flats has a 2 tiered roof, the lower part nearest where I was, so I guess the first clang was it falling and hitting the roof, then it bounced and fell 4 stories down to me. I could be over-reacting but I’m pretty sure it could have killed me, or at the least caused some serious damage. Thankfully I’m easily spooked enough I didn’t just carry on walking.

So, right now I’m feeling pretty lucky.

It’s also a time of me drawing pictures I have to be all secretive about so I don’t spoil people’s presents, and I never get as many done as I’d like. Still, I’m liking the paintings I’ve done so far.

Comic wise, I got my script done, though it needs a lot of work because it’s still pretty clunky, and I decided it’s better as a pilot issue for something than as a fully self contained thing and need to bring that out a little more. But I think I’m going to try and do the layouts first, it’ll give me a better idea of how much space I really have to play with. Also, I just found out I probably should change my protagonist’s name because, due to not checking first, I’ve accidentally given him the same name as DarkHawk’s alter ego (From various marvel stuff). While I don’t think anyone is going to confuse my unremarkable 20-something photographer guy for a teenage magic-amulet-powered superhero… DarkHawk has been in Runaways and I LIKE Runaways, so Chris is going to have to get a new surname.

Moral of this story, kids, is Wiki/Google your characters’ names BEFORE you get attached to them.

(I didn’t mind the real world people that the 2 main characters in the first issue shared names with. Because they’re not exactly uncommon names. But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.)

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get the first issue done by Bristol, due to potential things with paid stuff I’m going to have to give priority to. I’m probably going to have it for Amecon in august though.

In the mean time, have some doodles I did while trying to get used to drawing the character. (Yes, I know you can’t hold a camera like that. Shhh. XD)

Okay, that’s enough babble for now. Laters.

I’m not quite sure what the guy’s name is but I think it may be Chris something, and either way, he really shouldn’t be where he is right now.

Anyway, here is a random sketch of Escabar (because he’s easy to draw, okay?) showing that he really doesn’t look very badass at all even when he tries to, and that he probably keeps that sheep around just to prove there is something in existence LESS badass than him.

I do kinda like this idea though, might do a better version later.