Monday 11 October 2010

The Death of Summer

Oh, hello! Long time no see. This place has gotten pretty desolate of late seeing as I’ve been so negligent with updating it. I had to prune back a wall of ivy just to get into the admin area, and I swear I saw a badger in the ‘about me’ section.

The main reason for the lack of updates is because I’ve been in Brighton for the summer, and I did sweet flip all with regards to artwork. Of course, now that I’m back Shef-side and the weather is returning to its naturally bleak and drizzly state I’m sure I’ll be a lot more productive.

First up, I did a Fuse cover for the final issue of Forge Press before the summer holidays. I was trying to make it a tiny bit more stylised (hence the ridiculous proportions of the policeman and the slight blush on the girl’s joints). All done in Photoshop, of course:


The latest cover I designed – for the first Fuse of this university year - was slightly different, as I pencilled and inked the drawing on two sheets of A4 before scanning them in and colouring the whole thing in Photoshop. I liked how the colourised buildings turned out; I think they look a lot better stylistically than my last attempt at depicting Sheffield structures.


Most recently I’ve started writing and drawing a fortnightly comic to go in the back of Fuse. The first one is a six-panel introductory comic, whilst the second – and all further updates – will be short, three panel jokes.

I really like the look of the characters, design wise. I tried to make them unique both in the shapes of their figure and the colours involved in their appearance, and I think they all balance each other quite well. The most challenging thing is the writing – making a comic funny is harder than you’d think. Whilst the first one is okay, I’m not really pleased with the humour in the second strip as it lacks a satisfying punchline. As with anything, however, there is a learning curve and I’m sure I’ll improve as the comic progresses.

Finally, here’s a poster I made on the request of my girlfriend. It’s based on the ‘Get Excited and Make Things’ poster, which in turn is a variation of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.


I may also make an update in a while based on the recent feature pages I’ve been designing for Fuse and Forge Press, as not only is the role of games editor keeping be busy with Indesign but I was recently duty co-editor of the whole of Fuse. It’s probably not that interesting, but I figure that I don’t really have any readers to lose (seeing as I have no readers in the first place).