Sunday, January 02, 2011

A wretched scratching at the door

2011, 2011! This is the year! It is your time to shine, ladies and gentlemen! Or is it my time to shine? I have no idea. I don't think I've ever worked harder than I had to last year, at times I thought my brain had deflated like a second-hand beach ball. But I survived. Let's hope that some of that furious effort pays off.

YOUR QUESTIONS, ANSWERED

* A few people have asked if there will be more Giant Days, and there's every chance that I'll do another month-long run in between Bad Machinery stories as it proved so popular last time. That would mean it would be back in May. I might collect the first story in a little book, though I'm not sure anyone is clamouring for such an item.

* Bad Machinery will continue for as long as making it is viable. At the end of each story I review the numbers and see what is to be done. I'll always err on the side of caution, as I love the process of making the longer stories, and writing these characters.

But I want to explore all the avenues for publishing it before I put it out myself (as hopefully it could have an audience outside the traditional webcomics sphere), so a collection isn't in the works at the moment.

I've been experimenting with my looser sketchbook style, I'd quite like to make some minicomics that exploit it to reasonable effect. Here's a particularly rough and ready page. I have quite an "attacking" pencil line but as soon as you ink it, it's gone. A note to my more timid readers: this was just for fun, I'm not going to start putting up comics this messy on the main site.

Style experiment 1

5 comments:

Caitlin said...

if giant days was at a viable "zine" range price between that and shipping to down unner I would definetely pick it up! finally a chance to own a piece of physical work?!

John A said...

It wouldn't be very expensive, probably 2 or 3 pounds max. It's shipping that ruins everything. It's £1.82 to send a 100g envelope to Australia!

Nick Taylor said...

I've always thought there was a little of Quentin Blake in your artwork, and the scratchy style really brings that out. Especially Esther in that last panel.

Incidentally, I've just been leafing through the Scott Pilgrim books I got for Christmas. I never knew you'd done a guest strip. Bonus!

Unknown said...

The sketchy style is so expressive, I love it whether people find it messy or not.

me said...

"I might collect the first story in a little book, though I'm not sure anyone is clamouring for such an item."

I am, that's for sure! A giant days book would be great, even better if it had the first TWO Giant Days stories in it. The price range you mentioned to Aus would be quite OK, even if shipping it to the non-penal side of the Tasman cost a bit extra.