One Last Time Bundle – The Doctor Pencil

Buy this sketch and a copy of my comic 'One Last Time' at the HI-EX! Comic Expo, 2nd & 3rd February 2008!

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Crash...

Last week my trusty computer, an Apple G5, froze and died after five years of service. Having never ran a proper back-up until only two months ago (forced on by the scowls of disapproval by my friend Matt) I'm feeling reasonably lucky that I haven't lost a lot of work. I do store most of my work on external drives so I knew that I wouldn't be losing too much but not having my G5 to hand I have lost the ability to get on with a lot of work. For instance I can't scan in the sketches that I have been posting for the Hi-Ex show in February.

The G5 is currently off being carefully tended at Mac Hospital but with fair warning I've been told that it might be the Motherboard that needs replacing and the costs involved might make it wiser to buy a new Mac instead. Unfortunately Macs don't grow on trees and cost a fair bit of money so it might just be very possible that I don't get back to "proper" working ways too soon.

I can still connect to the internet and check e-mails etc, using the "families" helpful iBook but working in Photoshop etc. on that portable is very quirky to say the least. One way or another I will be back to some normality soon (I hope).

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One Last Time Bundle – Darth Vader Pencil

Buy this sketch and a copy of my comic 'One Last Time' at the HI-EX! Comic Expo, 2nd & 3rd February 2008!

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HI-EX! (Highland International Comic Expo)

The weekend of February 2nd and 3rd 2008 sees the start of the hopefully annual comic convention in Inverness. Personally I'm quite excited that there is a comic convention in Scotland, its going to make a nice change travelling north rather than south to attend it. Not since the mid-90's has there been a proper comic convention (not going to included the Moniaive festival that Alan Grant ran in Dumfries) in Scotland. The Glasgow Convention ran successfully for about five years but suffered and closed like many others due to dwindling attendance. So I'm hoping for a positive start and a successful one.

Its already shaping up to be a well attended Con by some top guests (check out the site) and the venue, Eden Court, looks superb. I'm happy to say that work allowing I will be there and hopefully sharing a table with my good friend Dave Hitchcock. This time around I will be trying something a little different at the convention which I think deserves some explaining...

Not being known as an artist who occasionally draws comic strips by anyone other than say my own Mother it can be difficult to justify attending a convention and actually being able to afford to do so. Travel costs, accommodation, table hire and food and drink will see you set back anywhere from £100 to £200 before you even begin to add the cost of producing your comic so a lot of people attending conventions tend to forget how much of a risk the creators who come along can be taking.

A few years back I collected a lot of my own small comic strips into a collection called 'One Last Time' which was received well by those who bought it but there lies the problem in that a lot of people didn't buy it as it doesn't feature any known comic characters or indeed look like anything remotely resembling what the "public" might think a comic book should look like. So it didn't sell and the conventions I attended left me financially worse done by.

One thing that was popular though was sketches. Once people realise that you are an artist they love you to draw them something. Now while I'm happy to do that it does bring about two problems. One is that while you sketch something you can't concentrate on trying to sell your comic to anyone and the other is that I'm never happy with the quality of my sketches. Most people seem happy with the drawing I had back to them but to be honest I'm not one of them, I find it hard to produce, I feel, something worthwhile in ten minutes.

So here is my idea. Along with buying a copy of 'One Last Time' you'll also get a pre-prepared sketch!

I plan to produce (eventually) fifty finished sketches which I will be spending about two hours each pencilling. That way I'm happy that I'll be handing over something that I wouldn't be ashamed to say I produced. The fifty sketches will cover a wide range of subjects and characters and will be first available as pencil versions and then I will also produce a finished ink version. Once all fifty are finished I will probably also produce a limited sketch book of all fifty illustrations.

Now with time being short and my workload being heavy I know I will not be able to finish all fifty sketches in time for HI-EX so I plan to have about half of the pencil sketches finished for then and if possible some of those inked versions too. After that, if its been a success, I will continue producing the sketches and bring them along to the next convention I manage to attend, that being either Bristol or Birmingham. So you'll be buying a bag containing a copy of 'One Last Time' and a sketch lovingly prepared before the show. The comic costs £2.50 itself so its been suggested that I could charge anything from £4 up to £10 for the bundled sketch version, I'm thinking £5 but I'm happy to hear peoples thoughts on that.

So far the suggested sketch list reads:

Han Solo
Superman
Darth Vader
Doctor Who (Tennant)
T Rex (dinosaur not the glam band)
Captain Jack from Torchwood
Dalek Sec
Spiderman
Yoda
Zombie Nazi Stormtrooper (folk ask for strange things!)
Judge Dredd
Dan Dare
Vampirella
Emma Peel (Avengers)

Suggestions and comments in general about the idea are welcome too! I'll post the sketches (see below) as I complete them so if you are attending HI-EX you'll hopefully see one that catches your eye and make my trip worthwhile by buying it :)

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One Last Time Bundle – Superman Pencil

Buy this sketch and a copy of my comic 'One Last Time' at the HI-EX! Comic Expo, 2nd & 3rd February 2008!

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