Sunday recap

Last week I thought I’d try a new way of working (nothing to do with drawing, everything to do with organising myself) and you can read about it here.

I’m going to add to that process by doing a Sunday recap, where I just look to see how it worked/what’s next.

Mon 6Dredd #3 LayoutsDONELight day, really, but that’s ok.
Tue 7Dredd #3 pencils 1 & 2DONEBit of a struggle to get second page done – family stuff tends to eat time. But that’s ok.
Wed 8Dredd #3 pencils 3 & 4DONEDitto.
Thu 9Dredd #3 pencils 5 & 6DONE
Fri 10CHANNEL HEX DAYDoneNo script yet, but began redesigning elements and thinking about artistic style for the book. Stuff that needed done anyway. I have 5 pages of this pencilled and inked, but was never happy with it. (Maybe this is always the problem with work without a deadline though)
Sat 11Research “D”DoneActually, researched it and layed it all out. 8 pages of strip.
Sun 12Layout “D”Did it yesterday, Daniel.as above

One of the key things to what I’m trying to do is not overburden myself with stuff, even when it seems very possible. And to give myself days where I’d consider them “light” – a full day to do layouts on 6 pages? crazy. But that’s just the target, after that, I have time to do other things. I’m trying NOT to do the other things that are on my task schedule, because what I’m trying to avoid is that feeling that “oh no, I did loads but it was not enough” – I definitely enjoy working more than not working, but, for example, if I’d done layouts on monday and raced ahead to pencil the strip the same day and got, say, a page and a half of pencils done, I’d’ve felt like I didn’t manage to get enough done. Punishing myself for getting ahead. It’s bonkers, but it happens.

As it happens, during the week, because I had room for thinking, I also came up with a kid friendly cartoony style that might be the basis for two entirely different new projects. I conferred with John Reppion on year two of our folklore friday. Which will be the same but different. Very different. I also did layouts for a friend for a strip and laid out the self-written Jericho 5 (a four page strip I’m doing for The 77 – a fanzine based on the kind of British comics that came out before US comics dominated everything).

So in all, did what I wanted and allowed me freedom to do more. (Without it, I’d’ve felt guilt that I wasn’t working and would never have had the brainspace to do more)

So, now, next week, here’s how I see it shaping up.

Mon 13Dredd inks 1 &2I’ve already started inking 1, which is me instantly negating everything I’ve just thought about above. BUT, I’m gonna put it away for Monday.
Tue 14TAX DAY
Dredd page 3		Yuck. Just gonna get my tax paid. Honestly, I’ll need a lie-down after this. (Yes, it’s early to pay, but I like to get this stuff out of the way)
Wed 15Dredd inks 4 & 5I feel like two pages of inks might be too much, but we’ll see.
Thur 16Dredd inks 5 & 6I do love the plain simplicity of those days where it’s just – draw x and y.
Fri 17CHANNEL HEX DAYIf I’m waiting on a script, it’ll be working on the cover, and the book size
Sat 18Pencils D pages 1 & 2Project D I’ll talk about it when I can.
Sun 19Pencils D pages 2 &3
PODCAST

And that’s my plan. I feel like it’s a little more filled than last weeks and that might be a mistake. Plus I’ve got to make room for drawing Folklore Thursday (which takes approx 3-4 hours) and I’m going to try and up the blogging schedule a bit plus I have to record a podcast next sunday, which eats up most of a night.

Last week I felt like I got everything done I need too. This coming week i feel like it might be a struggle. But we’ll see.

Folklore Thursday: Cray

Seymour Roger Cray was an American supercomputer engineer. Beneath his suburban home he constructed a series of tunnels. When Cray reached a creative impasse he would retire below. “While I’m digging, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem”

John Reppion on Twitter

“Whether we’re supposed to take it that Cray’s elves were literal Other Folk, or a kind of metaphorical muse I cannot be sure.  “

John Reppion on Patreon

I’m fairly sure: Cray was messing around. And I think we’re only just getting by with this as a folklore tale by the skin of our teeth. THAT said, having slept, ate, and breathed computers from an early age and always ALWAYS been fascinated by Cray super computers, I’m not gonna argue the point. If Elves are what he said, Elves is what I’m drawing.

Reading John’s tweets usually fairly quickly pops an idea into my head, and this idea appeared fully formed. Initially though, I drew the supercomputer in Cray’s head with a whole bunch of Elves working away at it, but then it felt wrong – we don’t hear mention of the elves until later in the tweet and so I didn’t want to spoil that fun surprise too early. If anything I regret not making the direction of Cray’s walk follow the reading direction, if I had time I’d redo it (and if a publisher comes along and wants to print the entire run of these things, I’ll certainly look at them all again…)

I can’t remember when I first heard or say a Cray supercomputer, but it was fairly formative. Look at that weird part alien, part Henge computer design (it’s actually more of a C shape, with a gap, but I stuck that in the rear view on this drawing). She’s a beaut. And, as time wears on and Moore’s law keeps progressing, she’s now only about a fraction of the power of whatever device you’re currently reading this on. Ain’t technology grand?

(Now If I can just convince John that Turing got his ideas from pixies, Ada Lovelace from Gnomes, and Steve Jobs consulted with swamp monsters then we could have a full set of technological folklorist…)

Process

Part of a regular cut-out-and-keep collection of Blogposts about well… process.

(I mean I say regular, the thing that really distinguishes my processes are they’re constantly in flux so it’s less a bunch of steps you should take as a bunch of things I’ve tried that have sometimes worked, sometimes not, but might spark a notion…)

I have a weekly whiteboard and I’ve been using a bullet journal the past three months. The bullet journal got a lot of use in its first two months, largely as I started writing thoughts down in it. But now my week is getting back in to a semi regular shape, so I thought I’d share it with you (and I write it all on my white board)

I’m trying to have reasonable targets for a day – nothing major, but enough to get stuff down and progress, and leave me spare time to do other things.

This week, for example:

Monday: read and layout a dredd script. – This is pretty light, layouts are exhausting, but this is the start of the new school term so the days still a little chaotic. (And, as it happened, I had time to pitch a short – four page – strip to a small press magazine and then write it up, at some point I’ll be drawing it [For the sake of talking about it, let’s call it “J”)

Tuesday – pencil two pages of the Dredd strip. My pencils are pretty loose, so in theory this is doable, but equally wife back at work, kids will be out of school, so there’s some big family to-dos in between times.

Wednesday – pencil two pages of Dredd. Tuesday and Wednesdays have similair structures. The biggest obstacle is usually me. Inertia and other things. Trying to keep other things to a minimum. (But sometimes they impose, like they’re already doing this week, but it’s ok! SLACK BUILT IN!)

Thursday – Pencils two pages of Dredd. No obligations on Thursday, and this should see Dredd pencilled. And I can start prepping for Friday.

Friday – Channel Hex day! Getting back to channel hex. Waiting on script revisions, so if they’re not here I’ll probably go back and redesign some characters and rethink the look of it.

Saturday / Sunday – I’ve another strip (waiting script) and I’ve set aside Saturday and Sunday as research days for it (that’s a light load, but family stuff may end up wiping me out at the weekend)

And that’s this week! Next week I’ll move on to the dredd inks, and try and up the ante.

A Month of Batman

On the run up to the New Year, I was thinking about some of the things that worked and didn’t work for me in the past. I’d spent over a year drawing WWII books, which was great fun, well paid, and I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity, but it did push me into obscurity a little and I need to make sure I’m visible both to the reading public and to editors.

So, I thought, I should try and think of big two books I could work on and do good work on. And then, from that, I should try and get some art of those characters in to my portfolio and online. And, to give me a bit of focus, I should take one big two property every month and just try and focus some fan art, some samples, and maybe even send to an editor or two.

January is Batman.

When I think Batman I think “nope, not for you Paul, that’s for artists that are better” and that’s pretty much my thought process when I think of literally any big two property. But that’s pretty defeatist. It’s also nonsense. Digging deeper in to it, I think there’s a slew of Batman adventures I could kill on – including, but not limited to, a Batman horror series (monsters? are you kidding? I’d be a perfect fit). Noir (heavy shadows? Yes please!) Comedy (come on, this is easy) and er… well, if I’m not a perfect fit on Batman, I dunno who is*

Anyway, that’s the thing. I’ll spend this month between paying work, and other projects trying to find things Batman related to draw – that may include mock covers, some sample art or just generally sketching.

This could all fizzle out by tomorrow, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, and this is it.

*Ok, the truth is given the right project I think I could do a specatuclar Batman, but equally, I could be bobbins – but you get nowhere thinking you’ll fail, right?

Folklore Thursday: Threshold

Crank up the manifest, hoist the gibbert, weigh up the anchorage. We’re back!

Having tried to push myself to do a little bit of writing over Christmas (you can see the results at my blog pauljholden.com) I thought I’d approach this first Folklore Thursday of the new year with an eye to creating some sort of story (and I mean more than just the surface thing). I started laying out the pencils to the tweet and found that, well, all I was really doing was illustrating John’s words. Not actually adding anything of significance. So I thought I’d add a character – that at least gave me a little agency.

Having adding something like a protaganist, I figured the easiest thing to do with those words was make him get younger – so he’s stepping back in time, but ONLY in his own lifetime. Then I thought – I don’t think that’s what John meant, but I liked the fact there was room to decide that’s what it could be. So then I added a little impetus to our character, maybe he’s finding this place and wants to travel back in time but he’s been tricked.

That decided, I started seeing what I needed to add to the art to sell that little narrative. I added a loved one in panel one (thus fulfilling something I’ve always wanted to do which is to draw a doomed romance comic) and then panel two I was going to have him drop a note detailing the cancer diagnosis of his wife. But then I wondered if I couldn’t add a second narrators voice, a conversation he was having. (or had had). Which would help explain what was going on for him. Layering and layering the story telling. I’m hoping it worked.

Also, that last bit of captioned dialogue is partly the response in the conversation he’s having with some unnamed person but also partly me having a little fun and saying to John [Reppion] har har, I tricked you – you thought this was going one way and it went another 🙂

I’m not sure what John makes of it yet. Could be he hates it (hope not!) but we’ll see.

Happy New Year, everyone!

(And bonus, the b&w version…)

2019 A Year in Comics

Ok, let’s try and figure out what the hell I did last year. Things can be broadly divided into things I got paid to do, but I can’t talk about and things I got paid to do ages ago and are now out. (And I’m sure I’ll miss loads, but as best as I can remember, here we go…)

January

I was probably drawing stringbags. No… wait… I think I was flagging a bit and accidentally went off and did some cool VR/3d Work that ate up a bit of time. Trying to produce 20 pages of comics per month plus that was nuts.

The problem with committing to a long long graphic novel is it’s several months of knowing you’ll have money (hurrah!) but also several months of not having anything out on the shelves.

February

The VR stuff took up a big chunk of the month, still finishing stringbags though. (the book was divided into three chunks and right here, I think I was in the middle of part 2)

We launched the VR experience I helped build. That was fun.

And that led me to start exploring starting a business around VR stuff. But… things soon went off the rails.

March

Stringbags, Stringbags, Stringbags…

April

FLINCH! The TV show I storyboarded for came out on netflix (it’s stupid, and bonkers but it can be very funny) and I went and saw a screening in the cinema. Most of that work was done a couple of years ago (but hey, I got a screen credit!)


(also still drawing stringbags)

May

2000AD Prog 2131, Noam Chimpsky – I did the cover too. Cool. Bringing my 2000Ad cover total up to a gob smacking … 4.

Thomas, my 11 year old son, decided to write and draw his own comic – and amazingly he did just that – he’s done three issues of Why Not!? (a fun anthology comic, bursting with ideas) and a whole issue of Monkey Arms (one of the main characters from why not!?) mostly drawn over the summer school down time. Like an idiot though I offered to help, assuming his interest would flag or he’d burn out. Neither thing happened. So I ended up lettering and inking and printing his comics. You can download them here.

So, comics, the biggest thing, I think, is I FINALLY FINISHED the 174(176? it’s a LOT) page graphic novel that had been eating up most of my drawing time over most of the year.

That’s coming out in May, please please please go and order it and buy it and read it and leave me nice reviews.

I think around here my Father-in-law went in to hospital, and bar a six week period where he was returned home to recover (he didn’t) he’s been in hospital since. At time of writing we’re doing hospital visits every day. This has taken a lot of thinking/processing time and it’s occasionally a wonder anything creative is happening at all.

June

Started thinking about what’s next, after Stringbags (still drawing it at this point). Decided I’d like to do a kickstarter starblazer style book (digest sized, 64 pages, b&w) I’m coming back to this – I had to let it slide for various reasons, but I’m definitely coming back to it.

My brother John went into hospital, and came out paralysed from his waist down. Up until this time he’d no back problems to speak of (or at least none I was aware of) and suddenly, his life is radically altered. For the next couple of months we ended up dealing with this and my father-in-law – visiting two hospitals, sometimes on the same day. I think at my peak I ended up visiting two hospitals twice each.

July

I had some downtime and so I cast around for something to occupy me that wouldn’t be too strenous. And I find twitter comics. Just taking someone’s tweet and adapting it into a comic. That was so much fun that I partnered with John Reppion to produce comics every thursday as part of folklore Thursday. Partly this was just about making sure people know I exist (get some free comics on twitter, hope they get seen) and partly it was an exercise in writing – basically every tweet I’m adapting into a comic, and even though I’m drawing it I have to write it as an adaptation of a tweet.

Anyway. Still drawing Stringbags. And from this month on, folklore Thursday a one page strip every single Thursday. Yikes.

August

Finally! Savage Dragon came out – the issue I drew a short (6 page strip for). I drew this… maybe over a year ago? But it finally came out. Hurrah for being on a shelf!

And .. what’s this… I’m nearly finished Stringbags? Holy moley gaucamole! Hurrah for finally finishing this. Time to do something else!

(I mean I loved doing it, but you really do go through a whole “EXCITED! excited! working! getting.. near… end… oh god.. please let this be over” thing when you’re doing any work, but especially something this long)

Sept

Got me a three part Dredd for the Judge Dredd Megazine! Whoo hoo! Unfortunately it was paired with those words no artists ever wants to hear “just finish it in when you’re ready” NOOOOOO! That’s a passion killer! Firstly what usually happens is it starts to take forever – I CAN do 25 pages per month (god, I’ve done 49 pages in some months) but megazine dredd dips to 12 pages per month as is, without having a big open deadline. But the real problem is… well, basically I’m only paid for finished work. So the longer the work takes the less money I make. Oh well, I’m getting my dream gig of drawing Dredd so churlish to complain in any way.

You’ll see this strip in the new year.

Oct

Took on a day job! Well, sort of. Hub Games needed an in house artist and asked me if I was available for month of so. Like a idiot I thought – “HAH! Those fools won’t know I’ll do this during the day and go home and draw my comics! I’ll be RICH!”

Reader. That is NOT what happened. I worked full time hours every day, and was knackered. Not only that, but some days I was dropping wife to work and picking her up and looking after kids, and so was just shattered and barely able to function. Dredd got put on hold (which is what happens when you’re told “when you’re ready”) and I got no comics drawn.

Well, except for this very silly frankendredd story.

Nov

Finishing off the three part dredd. Did a fun little story board for tv (can’t talk about it) and started a five parter for 2000AD! Hurrah. Again “When it’s ready” (MURDEROUS!) Decided to pitch a cover for the dredd I’m drawing – it’ll be the cover for the third and final part. Classic Dredd type stuff. Bringing my cover count now to FIVE!

Dec

And here we are… Been drawing the new Dredd, thought why not pitch a cover and I did and I got it accepted and I really like it and now my 2000AD/Megazine cover count is SIX! (turns out I can just ask and sometimes they’ll say yes!)

Finished drawing part one, pencilled part two, took a break over xmas, went a bit bonkers and drew a Dredd script I’d written some time ago. Took it out of a drawer, blew the dust off it and just went “Sod it, PJ, you’re never submitting this, you might as well draw it yourself…” and I did. And I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much.

Flushed with that success (of sorts) I then wrote and drew and coloured a silly one page fan strip of The Mandalorian. Which went down really well with fans of the Mandalorian. So pleased with that.

Sometimes you’ve got to just DO and never mind sitting back and worrying about how people will respond to the thing. And that’s a lesson I need to take with me into 2020. Just DO.

Scripting the Chryslids

The story of the Chryslids goes back something like 10 years. I know, I know. I’ve a few story ideas that never got beyond a seed – it always felt like I could lay my hand on a dozen smarter writers than I could ever hope to be, so it felt pointless trying.

Last year though, I decided it was time to script some things. So I wrote it (and a few others) up into full scripts.

I fancied this was a good shoe-in for actually being worth pitching to Matt Smith (2000AD editor / Tharg’s represenatative on planet Earth.

So I sent it to a few pals, writers/editors/etc.

But I’m always wary that, well, honestly, I’m a decent comic artist role playing being a writer. So I got some good feedback (Rob William’s, in particular was very helpful – Cheers Rob!) and then… well, this last year really got away from me, in a way I wasn’t expecting it to.

So the story sat and sat and sat.

I drew a couple of Dredds back-to-back (for the Megazine, next year – with Arthur Wyatt, and for 2000AD also next year with Kenneth Neimand) and Christmas was coming and I decided to down tools over the holiday, but it’s hard to stop that motor running, then I remembered the script…

Originally it was called Midwhich Cuckoo Block – which is too on the nose for a title, but explains the premise really well, I thought “what if midwhich cuckoo’s but in dredd’s world” and went from there. It was also an excuse (and I will make no bones about this) to draw a bunch of characters I’d never ever get the chance to draw, I’m not gonna be the go-to guy for a Judge Death strip, sadly. (Well, maybe) so I tried to figure a way to include big name bad guys in there.

In hindsight there’s some obvious plot holes, and I didn’t get the facetime with any of the bad guys I originally wanted – but, I think, the pacing of it is so fast and the ending (which I really like – though it divided the readers I sent it to) feels weighty to me. Felt like something, so I was content to ignore them (I mean, the obvious one to me is: does no-one account for how many bullets dredd fires?)

Anyway, here’s the script (below), and the art is here and you can compare them and see just how much artist-me got fed up with writer-me writing rubbish. Hopefully I’m a good enough artist that even in this sketchy unfinished form the storytelling works and I could paper over the worst bits of my kack-handed scripting.

Midwhich-Cuckoo-Block-draft-4Download

Dredd Chrysalids page 6

And there we have it. I’m gonna blog an almost redundant post after this one, that just puts all six pages together (including corrections I’ve done along the way – mostly minor things, but they all count). In the end, I’m fairly happy with it. Esp that last panel, it feels right to me. I might be wrong, but you know, whatcha gonna do?

I’d sent the script to a number of writer friends, back when I’d harboured ideas of pitching it to Tharg, and I got two responses about that end: dredd shouldn’t lose, this feels like dredd losing and the other (from a dredd writer) I like that dredd loses.

In the end, my gut tells me the ending with Dredd forgetting is the one that works.

I’ll post the script in a few days so you can see how much I varied it after the fact.

“But, PJ, Why DIDN’T you submit it to Tharg?”

Well, reader, I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel I had the chops neccessary to get a Dredd script accepted – even if it was brilliant (which I might not be, I dunno…) it felt like I needed to write a bunch of stories – of any sort – before I could expect to waste Matt’s time with a read of my script. Esp since I’m only playing at being a writer, I may never write again (though, maybe — I’ve two other Dredd story ideas that, like this one, have sat in the back of my brain for a long time, that maybe could do with a spit and a polish and some pencils… maybe NEXT christmas… we’ll see…)

Anyway, hope you liked it, please let me know – I’m not being paid for this, so the only positive I get is feedback…!

Now, on to the pencils and greywash…