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).