Janelle Monae

I quite like drawing Janelle Monae. She's one of the most compelling performers of our age. No one can sing and dance like she can. Her album didn't quite win me over but I am certain that there are great things to come from Ms. Monae.

Foxhole

When I ended Scary Go Round, I promised a new Shelley Winters project, "Destroy History", would follow. Well, it didn't. I wrote about 13 pages, couldn't see how I could write the character any more (given the direction I'd taken her), tore up what I'd done (I write all my comics longhand, away from the computer) and let the destroyhistory.com domain name lapse.

But I still enjoy drawing Shelley, she's a reasonable piece of very long-term character design. And on Sunday I started, by accident, working on a new thing for her. It's a short story called "Fox Flakes". It's not really a comic, it's all in rhyme, and I'm not sure what to do with it to justify working it up into a finished form. I don't even know what form it would take! And it's not drawn like my normal comics. But if you miss Shelley, she might just come back.

Watercolour sale

I have five watercolour drawings (all on 300gsm/140lb watercolour board) left over from my two-city tour. To prevent a run on them and a spate of refunds, they will be available first-come first-served by email reservation. They're £32.50 each including shipping.

Email scaryorders@gmail.com with "watercolour reservation" as your subject line and let me know which picture(s) you would like. I'll then direct you to the payment page. If you haven't paid within 24 hours of my sending you to the payment page, I'll cancel the reservation and put the pic back on sale - easy!

Charlotte (21cm x 25cm) SOLD!

Daisy (21cm x 25cm) SOLD!

Shelley (21cm x 25cm) SOLD!

Esther (17cm x 25cm) SOLD!

Susan (21cm x 25cm)

Martin & Tracy

I received this leaflet through my door the other day, I thought you might like to see it. Something about it worries me.

Here's Martin, hard at work. No bubbles in that wallpaper, and he's wearing a button-down shirt, lending a confident, stylish air to proceedings.

And here's Tracy. Nice job with those tiles, Tracy. That's a wicked finish too - no chance of cracking.

WHO'S THIS? It's not Tracy, and it's certainly not Martin!

The whole situation just has me feeling a little ill at ease. Until I know who the third party is, I won't be calling on Martin & Tracy for any of my painting and decorating needs. 

Your move, Martin & Tracy.

Forty drawings

Here are forty little drawings, give or take, drawn watching TV last night. Click for a better look!

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the Super Static Feedback Party post earlier today. I have said it before, but I am always surprised and delighted by the thought and care that you all put into your replies on posts like that. On an internet full of yahoos, crazies, loons, no-goodniks and wrong 'uns, I'm pretty sure that my readers by-and-large represent a calming island of sanity.

Super-static Feedback Party

I've just been looking at the numbers for Bad Machinery and they're going nowhere. Let me tell you, dear readers, never has a project vexed me so. Everyone I speak to about the comic is very enthusiastic about it. They like the setup, the characters. And it's a comic I love making. But I just can't put on new readers. With Bobbins and Scary Go Round, the curve always pointed gently, and sometimes steeply, up. But I can't get any momentum behind my current work. It's infuriating!

When I look at the drawing and the writing, I can't see where I'm going wrong - I work hard at both. But obviously am doing something wrong, as I get very little feedback these days. So at the end of each story, I sit back and think, a. is it worth doing another one for 24 weeks and b. if it is worth it, what could I be doing better?

Here's what I suspect may be wrong

1. Kids are a hard sell
2. The stories, at 100 pages, are too long, or too slowly paced
3. There are too many central characters

In the old days it was easy: I read emails that people wrote, looked at my message board, did more of what people liked. Now I find myself apparently getting something fundamental wrong and not knowing what to do about it. It's not that the sky is falling in - I can survive, just about, at the present level, but I don't want to spend another six months repeating my mistakes.

Special presentation: The Mentalist

I love The Mentalist. It's a program about a wizard, I think? Here's a special episode, just for you.



I apologise that there is a lack of some of the secondary characters in this comic but maybe I will do another one showcasing Van Pelt and that if you're really lucky.

London Small Press Expo review

I have just returned with mixed emotions from the London Small Press Expo, a new event held at Goldsmiths College in our glittering capital.

Firstly, thank you to everyone who came down to see me! It is always a pleasure to meet people who enjoy my work, or who just take an interest in my varied luxury items on the day.

LSPE has in effect replaced the now-defunct, bizarrely named UK Web And Mini Comix Thing, an odd event at Queen Mary University that drew a large crowd every year but had begun to show signs of fatigue. Hopes were high that it would correct some of the faults of that event.

The venue (Goldsmiths' art deco Great Hall) was certainly far nicer, and the organisation on the day far superior. So it was disappointing that, with the doors opening at 10am, I didn't make my first sale until 90 minutes later. There were almost no punters for the first half of the show.

The situation began to improve after two o'clock, but this was in stark contrast to the Thing, where there tended to be a steady stream of people throughout the day. It was difficult to tell whether this was down to a lack of promotion, a poorly signposted, difficult to find venue, "New Cross fear", transportation difficulties or simply an ever-increasing number of similar events in the capital and further afield.

It may just have been the fault of the show's poorly-designed website, which featured ample information but made it very hard to dig out. I would be interested to hear people's opinions.

For all my reservations, it was hard to feel that the event cannot return, lessons learned, stronger next year. I still believe that there is a gap in the calendar for an alternative comics event in the UK (in the vein of Mocca or SPX) that draws talent by reputation rather than proximity. Rightly or wrongly, London is probably the place for that. But I'm still waiting.

For Your Consideration

Here is a seaside special selection of sketches I drew this weekend as a thank you to those who voted for me in the Eagle Awards. It was very sweet of you, my readers are the best!

Here I am pretending to be a great caricaturist and editorial cartoonist. Sadly there are no actual likenesses in the image below. But imagine if any of this was real. IMAGINE!



It's cold underwater. Keep your fish warm with a "fish balaclava"! They love it.



I don't think Daisy is paying proper attention in this candid image. Note: Esther is withdrawing £30, enough for a pretty fun weekend in studentland.



Who is Steve Shields and why do his guitar stylings conjure images of a strange, inadequate Batwoman?



Finally, for KC Green, some BOMERS!

Looks Brains + Everything ebook

As promised, I am slowly getting the out of print Scary Go Round books into the ebooks section of my store as PDFs. I've just put up Looks, Brains & Everything, which now includes the original SGR story, "Gas", and a new introduction all about that story - plus all the extras from the 2006 edition. It now clocks in at 163 pages! At this price, lunacy.

Giant Days 2

Giant Days 2 is lightly pencilled in to run from mid-May - not sure as to its length and schedule yet. We will see! In the meantime, to remind you of this prospect, some wallpapers featuring the image below.

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LONDON AND LEEDS

I have two appearances lined up this month, London at the Small Press Expo (at Goldsmiths art college) on March 12th and Leeds at the Alternative Comics Fair (at A Nation Of Shopkeepers - just off the Headrow) on March 19th. It would be great to see you - especially if you've not come to this sort of thing before! These are both relatively new events, the sort of thing that right minds support (if I have any say about it).

I will have a raft of luxury items with me, let me see...

* A load of new watercolours for sale (see my Flickr for in-progress pics)
* The Giant Days commemorative edition
* Bad Machinery story 1 & 2 collection
* Such Scary Go Round collections as I can gather together from my limited stock
* Knitting Is Zen totes
* A variety of prints (I will try to debut a new show-exclusive print too)
* Teatowels
* Stickers, badges (many new, idiotic designs) and fox fridge magnets (I know!)
* I will be doing postcard sketches of course
* As ever, RAW LOVE FOR FANS will be handed out willy-nilly

As well as my childish, baffled face, both shows have a selection of my favourite art kings and queens offering up their wares - see the respective websites for details.

TRAVEL INFO:
London: New Cross Gate or New Cross are the stations for Goldsmiths, they're both overground and underground so you should be able to avoid Mayor Boris' trademark weekend travel chaos.

Leeds: plough north from the station up Briggate, turn left onto the Headrow, pass Albion Street and Cookridge St is the next right. Easy!

Forbrydelsen

Like all sane souls, I've really been enjoying The Killing on BBC Four, an excellent Danish detective series. The characters are great and the production design is excellent. There's something almost cartoonish about the way they all wear the same signature outfits most of the time - Lund's snowflake jumper, Meyer's stripy sweater, Troels Hartmann's purple shirt without a tie! So I have done a few little drawings and if you like them, maybe I'll do a few more.

Sarah Lund


Theis Birk Larsen

THE BABE-L-CLOTH

HUNGRY? TOO TIRED TO MOVE, LET ALONE MAKE DINNER? TRY THE BABE-L-CLOTH! SIMULATE THE FORM OF A HUNGRY BABY, FLOATING BY A WALL!

Within two minutes of meeting each other, Leeds' top illustrator Kristyna Baczynski and I had come up with an incredible invention. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here we are modelling it.



We've not set a price yet, but you should probably form a line outside your nearest branch of Woolworths.

Writer's regret

In art, you're meant to be able to rewrite all the mistakes that you made in life. But the more I look back at Scary Go Round from a point of years' remove, the more I see the glaring mistakes that I made. They're not "ran over a granny on a zebra crossing" type mistakes, more the permanently documented evidence of missed opportunities and mis-steps.

There's definitely a point in Scary Go Round where I start writing the comic that I think people want, rather than the one that I wanted to write. Don't worry, I couldn't have written that comic at the time even if I'd wanted to. I didn't have the tools, some might say "chops", to do so.

The biggest hole, for me, was at the heart of Esther and The Boy's relationship. It's expressed in such vague terms. The average story was 45 pages long, which didn't leave a lot of room to get to the root of the matter. It's only since writing the new comic that I've begun to understand some of those older characters properly.



Part of the reason that I wanted Bad Machinery to be about kids, and slower, was that I could look at these things more closely. I love drawing nutty things, but it's the interpersonal stuff that interests me when I write, more now than ever.

I used to try to fit as many firecrackers as I could into a comic's dialogue, now I'm more concerned with what I can leave out while saying as much as possible. Does that make sense?

In art, you can always go back, but it's best to press on. Endless revision is the domain of the insecure. I did do a couple of little drawings while I was thinking about this though. Perhaps you can see them.

In support of libraries

I believe passionately in libraries and have been horrified by the prospect of closures throughout the system as part of local government cuts. I tried to make a useful comic to help but it wound up being a bit... flawed?

I am an economist: THE EURO

What few of my readers know is that I am a skilled economist, and that my knowledge of the field is not restricted to hanging around the front door of the L.S.E giving winsome number-crunchers the glad-eye. I'm about to blow your mind by solving one of the major issues of the day.

THE EURO: IT'S ALL OVER

Economic brains such as myself know that it is all over bar the shouting for the Euro. European monetary union seemed great until crazy nations went buck wild, got drunk on debt, and blew up. Germany can't bail everyone out! If Spain "goes Ireland", no one will have any cash left. The global economy will collapse, government bonds will be used to line canary cages and you'll be buying chickens with your gold fillings.

I HAVE THE ANSWER

Several commentators have suggested a two-tiered Euro, one for all the economic basket cases, and another for the sensible countries. I say this is no good. You're storing up problems for the future.

HERE'S WHAT YOU DO

At a predetermined time, all countries in the Eurozone will reintroduce their original national currencies. Issuing new tender will be impossible, so every citizen will have the responsibility of crossing out "Euro" on notes and coins and writing "francs" or "lira" (etc) on there. They will also append as many zeroes as their country's central bank deems necessary. For francs, one zero. For lira, ten or eleven. And here's the important bit: no one acknowledges that they were ever a member of the Euro, ever again.

GLOBAL CURRENCY MARKETS AREN'T GOING TO LIKE THIS

No, they're not. But what can they do about it? This process works on a simple principle. Imagine European monetary union as a big office Christmas party. Everyone gets drunk. People misbehave. Someone screams at someone else during a blackout. Someone is sick on someone. Two people have "extra-marital sexual intercourse". Someone calls the boss "a knob" to his face. But the next day, you've all got to get along again. So nothing is ever said about the matter. And the hurt, like the hangover, fades.

THIS IS DANGEROUS THINKING

Rubbish. Come up with one example of when 326 million people simultaneously flat-out denying that they were ever members of a single currency has failed. You can't. And that's the point.

THANKS, JOHN

You're welcome.

Colin Meloy on the "race to the bottom"

The quotes below are from a recent interview on Pitchfork with Colin Meloy. I've tried to make a post about this a couple of times on my blog but never managed to phrase it as succinctly as he does. He's referring to the music industry, but what he says is as true for any other entertainment sphere and mine in particular.

(The emphasis of certain sections is mine)

Pitchfork: Sixty-five percent of the sales for The King Is Dead were digital downloads, and a number of those were a result of Amazon's $3.99 album pricing. Not everyone's a fan of that particular practice. What's your take?

CM: It's their prerogative. It's like Costco-- they're just trying to get people onto the site. We don't take a hit. That said, there's bigger things at play. It's the devaluing of music. But music has been already devalued by the consumer. There's an expectation that it should be free so the race to the bottom has already been won. It's just a question of how we continue to protect copyrights and support the people who are making music. We are wiping out a potential generation of new voices because it's not as easy to get into it and support yourself. I have no idea what the solution to that is.

Pitchfork: Well, with new technologies, it seems like there are more avenues for people who want to make their voices heard popping up every day.

CM: Yeah, but when everybody is playing at the same level, there's so much more noise. And there's less incentive for the people who should be rising above that noise to take time and invest in what they're doing. It just becomes about hustling and grabbing attention.

Webcomics is the sphere where you give it all away. All your hard work, all of it. It works to an extent, but only to an extent. Giving away your backbreaking labour then selling someone a tshirt based on a Star Wars joke you knocked out in fifteen minutes is mental. I don't expect this to change, I don't think there are answers, but there are days that I want to shed tough, manly tears as I package up orders or desperately try to design merchandise when I could be doing a fifth, a sixth comic for the week.

Mope tshirt rough

Mope tshirt rough, originally uploaded by scarygoround.

Pencil cleanup in Photoshop

I've been trying to work out the best way to use just my pencil art to make comics, without inking it. Not for my main feature, but for fun side-projects, just to cut out some of the donkey work, to knock out quick comics for shows and things like that. I have a pretty serviceable pencil line - I've spent years practising not hashing around shapes but drawing things straight out.

The problem has been turning that greyscale art into something I can colour quickly with flood fills, which is to say, a grubby grey page into nice clean B&W line art. Here's how I did the image above.

1. Scan page at 600dpi greyscale.

2. Set the magic wand tolerance to 30, non-contiguously select the "paper" and fill it with white

3. Deselect the paper

4. Filters > Blur > Smart blur ; Radius: 4, Quality: High, Threshold: 75.4, Mode: Normal

5. Select the white area with the magic wand, non-contiguous, invert selection and fill with black

6. That should do it!

This didn't work perfectly on every image I tried it on - and fine details will suffer somewhat, but have a play with the settings - the basics are all there!

If you find this saves you a lot of time, maybe whole years of your life, why not visit my shop and express your gratitude in the only language my venal mind understands.

The Munch Bunch

One of the most impressive developments of the 1990s was the discovery of how to extract every drop of charm from concepts that had previously been twee but delightful. To avoid breaking hearts all over town, I'll present the horrors first, followed by the originals.

By the late nineties, this was The Munch Bunch, 'tood-crazy yogurt shills



But fifteen years earlier, they had been a low-budget but sweetly wiggy puppet show featuring (in this episode) an incredible reggae jam, a weeping onion and some mad Moog incidental music. This is genuinely the same thing.



Another egregious instance of this madness was Sugar Puffs' Honey Monster campaign. By the mid-nineties he had become a faintly sinister character, puffed up not with wheat but SOLID 'TOOD!



This was the original campaign, little short of genius.



I do sense that there is a concerted attempt of late to retrieve the baby in this case, even if the bathwater is long gone.

Work expands to fill the available space

In preparing two of my old books for digital downloads in the last few days, I couldn't help but wonder how on earth I managed to do these extra books (one of which was 100 pages long!) alongside the main comic. Along the way I managed another couple, both of which ran to about 30 pages - all of which when I was doing five, not four comics a week.

Then I had a look back, and saw that the period during which I worked on them coincides with some of the, shall we say, lesser work in my back catalogue. Stories that, rather than not ending well, didn't really end at all. The work in these lovely parenthetical volumes, seen by around 2000 people on each occasion, rather spoiled my daily efforts.

Needless to say, scarcely a day goes by when I don't fancy a stab at another side project. I love making proper, standalone books! But if a member of the audience could nominate themselves to come and pat me gently on the shoulder when I suggest it, and take me away for a seaside "rest-cure", it might be best for everyone concerned.

Here's a long lost drawing I found from this era. The era of uneconomical toil. Speak to you... SOON!

Girlspy and HMHAF ebooks

Several of my books are now out of print, including a few containing material that was never available on the web. I've put two of these, Girl Spy (24 pages) and Heavy Metal Hearts & Flowers (99 pages), up for sale as PDFs in my shop.

These two are unusual among my output, as they were conceived of and written as whole books, rather than collections of daily pages. I was very proud of both of them at the time, and looking at them again for the first time in years, I still felt that way.

I made a new cover for Heavy Metal Hearts And Flowers too, a mysterious image full of manly strength.

The Mope

The Mope
Originally uploaded by scarygoround

Super-seamstress Feltmistress has been teasing me all week with something she was making for me, and LOOK! It's my most mystifyingly popular creation of recent times, THE MOPE, rendered in glorious fake fur. It's an honour and a privilege to meet him. But why do I feel... so sad?

Bob Staake

You are probably familiar with Bob Staake's work even if you don't exactly know him by name. As well as a series of iconic New Yorker covers in recent years, he's responsible for an astonishing run of childrens' books (often writing as well as drawing) alongside copious illustrations. His books feature gorgeous endpapers and the kind of attention to finish that I wish I could emulate - hopefully one day I will get there. Bob is very open about his process, if you follow him on Facebook he drops all kinds of anecdotes and insights on a daily basis. To the best of my knowledge, he still uses Photoshop 3 to generate his trademark style, making a mockery of the "upgrade curve" - as the video below displays. There are a number of videos of his technique if you search for "Bob Staake" on Youtube.



I honestly believe that among working illustrators, Bob is peerless today and an example to anyone who wants to see how to do the job right. Here's his website!

New links, new danger

I often fear that I neglect my blog these days, we get a little rush of activity, but then my interest is diverted to Twitter or Flickr or all the other places you can issue forth a swiftly-forgotten memorandum. I rather like how information soon dies on Twitter, I can stamp my foot about some terrible abuse of the English language and a day or so later, it's like it almost never happened. The human dream writ large.

I've added some new links to my blog list on the right, great artists whose work will enhance your day.

Dan Berry - Dan runs a great comics blog called the Comics Bureau, full of interviews and pointers to fine work. He is also one of the the most disciplined artists I have met; in the couple of years I have known him, his comics artwork has improved to an amazing extent, there are good things to come from "Dan Berry Wine".

Warwick Johnson Cadwell - I'm sure I've written about Warwick before, he's a stellar illustrator who literally never stops, despite working a variety of jobs and attending to his young family. He makes the rest of us look weak-limbed and shabby.

Eric Colossal - Eric makes games, but he also makes comics sometimes, and what comics! He has a great, expressive line and is a very funny writer.

Steffi Schütze - Steffi works primarily in fashion illustration, often with her partner Christian Nauck, but her blog is full of process work that I find fascinating. She also links to a lot of high-end fashion photography that I doubt I would ever see otherwise.

Giant Days cover

I'm making a little collection of the Giant Days story, just to bolster my range. It should be available soon. Here's the cover!

The Little Goth Boxes

Here's a poster I designed yesterday...



I'm in the process of reorganising that side of things so I don't (personally) have to ship tubes any more but this is a likely candidate for sale. I'm also designing some new items that I haven't sold before that I think you'll like!

My recent design efforts have illuminated some interesting issues. I can't easily make Bad Machinery merchandise because you can't really sell stuff with childers on it to adults. Books are one thing, the stories are meant to be like Calvin and Hobbes, good for all ages. But when it comes to visual stuff to sell, I can't make it work that way. Whereas Giant Days is easy, for pretty obvious reasons. It's broad and unapologetically sassy! Like a drunk aunt at a wedding.

Sketch Fiesta 12 and THE MOPE

The Mope heralds a new Sketch Fiesta, my twelfth! Why not be like me, fill book after book with delirious inanities.

The Mope has proved a suspiciously popular figure. What next for this miserable lump?

2010 Chart in "full"

Here's my last chart post (if you're interested, all my charts from 1987-2010 are still up, here). I've added links to Amazon so you can listen to all the song samples, and if you buy one, I get thruppence. Nice.

No more music posts now, none. Back to normal.

1 PUBLIC STRAIN - Women
2 THE AGE OF ADZ / ALL DELIGHTED PEOPLE EP - Sufjan Stevens
3 BEFORE TODAY - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
4 HALCYON DIGEST - Deerhunter
5 HAVE ONE ON ME - Joanna Newsom
6 III/IV - Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
7 THE SUBURBS - Arcade Fire
8 S-M 2: ABYSS IN B MINOR - Serena-Maneesh
9 CLINGING TO A SCHEME - The Radio Dept.
10 COSMOGRAMMA - Flying Lotus

11 SHADOWS - Teenage Fanclub
12 INNERSPEAKER - Tame Impala
13 AT ECHO LAKE - Woods
14 GRAPPLING HOOKS - North Atlantic Oscillation
15 FIELD MUSIC 3 (MEASURE) - Field Music
16 AVI BUFFALO - Avi Buffalo
17 DISCONNECT FROM DESIRE - School Of Seven Bells
18 TEEN DREAM - Beach House
19 NERVE UP - Lonelady
20 MARE - Julian Lynch

21 TREATS - Sleigh Bells
22 THE COURAGE OF OTHERS - Midlake
23 KALEIDE - Sky Larkin
24 FANG ISLAND - Fang Island
25 A BALLOON CALLED MOANING EP - The Joy Formidable
26 EUROPEAN - Sambassadeur
27 LIFE OF LOVE - Callers
28 RELAYTED - Gayngs
29 MAKE YOU MINE - Best Coast
30 I WILL BE - Dum Dum Girls

Sound of 2011

On the first week of the year, the BBC website runs its BBC Sound of 2011 (for example) poll. With the greatest of respect - IGNORE IT. Here are the five acts to look out for this year - ending with the "Sound of 2011".

5. Botulism

Botulism is the project of Swansea-based audio technician Marcus Smith. Rather than embracing traditional instruments, Smith "tuned" twenty-four full-size hot air balloons then shot them with a cannon, sampling each explosion and using the resultant notes as the sole basis for his songs. A recent tour with Scouting For Girls showed that the act could also work in mid-sized venues. Look out for his 'Melt Their Faces' single at the end of the month, with an album due in March.

4. Macadamia 4000

Macadamia 4000's Pa'ul Welch and Nancy Bosson met working at Williamsburg's notorious 'Pies And Thighs' restaurant, where they discovered a mutual love of Prince, The Simpsons, and unfashionable right-wing politics. They've toned down the Tea Party rhetoric of their early indie EPs, but the synthetic funk of their major label debut "Palin" is still expected to make a few pinkos nervous.

3. Tunnel Under

Portsmouth hasn't been this hip since Telly Savalas popped in during the 1970s! Pompey three-piece Tunnel Under (formerly of S Club Juniors and Fightstar) throw off the shackles of their previous bands to create a sound blending ESG, Tom Tom Club and Oliver Postgate theme tunes! Their Mary Roze club night has had lines out of the door for a year, and the April release of their "Duttons For Buttons" mini-album ought to make them the toast of the festivals.

2. Stu*Stu*Studioline

Described by Radio 1's Zane Lowe as "the sound of a giant, musical fist smashing the Eastern Bloc", Poland-via-Coventry outfit Stu*Stu*Studioline's non-traditional approach, advertising mostly in delicatessens and independent supermarkets, turned out to be the start of a whirlwind 2010, leading to them being asked to accompany Roxy Music on their tour of abandoned London bandstands. Their 15-minute "Ghost Wheel" single was an indelible calling card, with its sonic maelstrom frequently described as "indescribable". Album "Magic Void" should stir a few hearts in February.

1. Maisie Blakefield

Championed by figures as diverse as Nigella Lawson and new Tory MP Zach Goldsmith, Maisie Blakefield has been writing songs since her early teens. After spells at Italia Conti and RADA, she decided to turn her attention to her first love - music. Citing Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Alison Moyet and Crass among her influences, a bidding war in September saw her signed to Universal. Her first single "Spangle Stars" is out tomorrow.

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.

Albums of the year 4-1

4 HALCYON DIGEST - Deerhunter

"Desire Lines"


3 BEFORE TODAY - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

"Bright Lit Blue Skies"


2 THE AGE OF ADZ - Sufjan Stevens

"Too Much"


1 PUBLIC STRAIN - Women
2010 was a good year for albums, but I think this would have led the list any year it was released. Full of interesting melody, complicated song structures, and experimental without ever being painful, I got something new out of it every time I listened. I was sorry to hear that the band ended the year by falling apart but on the basis of the quantum leap between their last record and this, I pray that they will be back.

"Can't You See"


"Locust Valley"

Albums of the year 8-5

8 CLINGING TO A SCHEME - The Radio Dept

"Domestic Scene"


7 SM2: ABYSS IN B-MINOR - Serena-Maneesh

"I Just Want To See Your Face"


6 THE SUBURBS - Arcade Fire

"The Suburbs"


5 HAVE ONE ON ME - Joanna Newsom

"Good Intentions Paving Company"

Albums of the year 12-9

12 AT ECHO LAKE - Woods

"Blood Dries Darker"


11 INNERSPEAKER - Tame Impala

"Lucidity"


10 SHADOWS - Teenage Fanclub

"Shock And Awe"


9 COSMOGRAMMA - Flying Lotus

"Mmm-hmm (featuring Thundercat)"

Albums of the year 16-13

16 DISCONNECT FROM DESIRE - School Of Seven Bells

"I L U"


15 AVI BUFFALO - Avi Buffalo

"What's In It For"


14 FIELD MUSIC 3 (MEASURE) - Field Music

"Them That Do Nothing"


13 GRAPPLING HOOKS - North Atlantic Oscillation

"Cell Count"

Albums of the year 20-17

20 Treats - SLEIGH BELLS

"Infinity Guitars"


19 Mare - JULIAN LYNCH

"Ruth, My Sister"


18 Nerve Up - LONELADY

"Immaterial"


17 Teen Dream - BEACH HOUSE

"Silver Soul"


I couldn't embed the videos for Norway and Zebra but they're on Youtube if you want to see them

Goals

It frightens me when I speak to art students and graduates who don't have any concrete goals for where they want to go with their art. It terrifies me how many of them end up serving coffee and barely doing any art at all. I try to tell them to look around at what other people are doing successfully and model their approach on that.

Set a lot of short term, achievable targets, and one or two nuttier ones. Just make your mind up, no one is going to put you in prison for falling short. When you're working during the day, throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks in the evening will soon use up what little energy you have left. Making a decision, and knowing roughly where you're going, lets you spot specific opportunities when they arise. What's the worst that could happen?

A festive wish to all readers

It's the giving season, so here's the Christmas card for all my readers, thanking you for your kind attention in 2010. Blessings be upon your hearths!

A traditional Christmas

For me, it's not Christmas until the family sits down together to watch The Star Wars Holiday Special, the glittering jewel in the Lucasfilm canon. We all have our favourite moments, I'm sure - there's a reason that this is re-released in increasingly handsome DVD box sets every Jesustide - I just bought it on Blu-Ray!



HAPPY LIFE DAY!

TOP TEN NOT-FROM-2010

These were the top ten records I bought this year that weren't from this year. I hope that makes sense. Most of them are inexcusable holes in my record collection, things I missed, often things that I heard "too early" or on someone's horrible car stereo that just sounded grisly back in the day.

10 NEVER GONNA TOUCH THE GROUND - Still Flyin' (2009)
- Glorious, kaleidoscopic party music
9 STRANGE BIRD - Augie March (2004)
- Mainstream Australian hit but left of centre in the best possible way
8 HEAVEN OR LAS VEGAS - Cocteau Twins (1990)
- I thought I had enough Cocteau Twins to be honest
7 FAITHFUL - Todd Rundgren (1976)
- First side is some unnecessary covers, second side some of his best songs
6 GET BETTER - Lemuria (2008)
- At its best, sweet and concise like the early-90s Lemonheads records
5 K.K.K.K.K - Kahimi Karie (1997)
- Bought a decade ago and never played, quite splendid
4 HISSING FAUNA, ARE YOU THE DESTROYER - of Montreal (2007)
- Not purchased at the time of release due to long-term resentment of £18 paid for import copy of their first, horrible album
3 ADVENTURE - Television (1978)
- Deeply underrated follow-up to Marquee Moon
2 NEW DAY RISING - Husker Du (1985)
- Used to find it a bit abrasive on the office stereo, never got past track 2, what an idiot
1 TENDER PERVERT - Momus (1988)
- Basically perfect record of its era

(POST) CHRISTMAS LISTS

Bad Machinery will be taking a week-long Christmas break starting December 27th. Now, traditionally this period was taken up by Shelley's Dr Ladysounds end-of-year list, but with Scary Go Round now over, it felt like time for something new.

So from the 27th-31st here will be some lo-fi Giant Days comics rounding up the year's ripest releases in reverse order, plus videos and the usual explanatory notes. There's a lot of dancing, a few dangerously psychedelic moments, and some appallingly off-beam analysis.

Further festive entertainment below from Reeves and Mortimer's 1991 BBC2 Christmas special, as personal favourite John Shuttleworth drops in with a seasonal song ("Christmas Orphan").

Pantheon Of Idiots

People love to wax nostalgic over the things of their youth, and fair enough. But the one fond memory I can never countenance is He-Man. He was chronic.



Preening, be-bobbed aristocrat He-Man resembles nothing so much as the kind of aryan fellow who would pound on lesser youths at school. Over-muscled and gloriously vain, clad in furry hotpants and boots and... something he bought from the garden centre... this pompous ass wails on upbeat goth Skeletor week-in, week-out - presumably for liking The Mission and Sisters Of Mercy (not sure).

I won't explore his weird cousin She-ra's transposition of the "He-Man" way to a perfect prototype of the "Mean Girls" ethos but, needless to say, I think she was in many ways worse, titting about on her bloody gymkhana pony.

He-Man: a ponce, a ninny, and worse, a BRUTE.

Holier than holy

Tuesday's Christmas messages so puffed me up with joy that I neglected to post a Christmas video yesterday. So today, here are two. My two favourite Christmas songs ever*. The first showcases a giant of Caribbean folk with a peculiarly gnomic take on a classic standard.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - JOSEPH SPENCE



Now, the second video can be somewhat hard to get through. It may be a little too earnest for some people. All I can say is that, like many uncomfortable things, you get used to it the third or fourth time.

It's Christmas - GOTTA BE ANDREW!



* "Ever" may be a bit strong

Holy holy holy

Things are winding down in the run up to Christmas, so as promised, I will bring you a little something every day. First, let's get a little holy with what I can only describe as the greatest Christmas album ever made. It's VERY hot and VERY now - check out this commercial.



You can find out more about Lunge Dolphin at the THEFUDGEBABIES website and I recommend that you bookmark it three or four times.

In other news, here are a couple of recent interviews that I did, packed with mirth, merriment, making-merry, and merr (more)!

* An interview at Coilhouse

* An interview at The Comics Bureau

I will return... tomorrow!

A must read article for the self employed!

Sorry for the lack of blog action at the moment, I'm in the midst of the pre-Christmas rush but once I return from ATP in Minehead on the 13th, there will be a flurry of blog activity - loads of end of year music things, a new Sketch Fiesta, and some end-of-year etchings.

In the meantime, here's a great article for self-employed people by Keri Smith. My favourite point is below, but they're all worth reading.

7. If you want to work on your art, work on your life. All those personality traits that aren’t working for you will come back to haunt you in your career (i.e. assertiveness, fear of conflict, fear of confrontation.) It’s all connected.