Quick update today as I’m juggling work and life like a drug addled seal.

Work on Hood is going well, colourist has been chosen and is starting to play with the concept images while Jason works on a pretty tasty wrap around cover and I mess about with thumbnails for the second scene (which i’m not happy with. We’ve got the excellent Chloe Isherwood, gorgeous lady and phenomenal photographer booked in for a weekend next month to shoot every panel (plus a few variants as we play with angles) so Jason has some top quality photo references.

Note : Jason doesn’t need photo references to get this done, but at this stage i’d rather make his life as easy as possible and it gives us a chance to play with angles and scenes in a way that we wouldn’t normally. Jason and I communicate via the medium of digital clatterings (i’m not even sure if he really exists) so the photoshoot will be an excellent chance for us (and Chloe) to play director for the day and get the maximum impact for our shots – these pages will be the ones that ‘sell’ the idea to Editors after all.

Plus it’ll be an excuse for us all to dress up, run around with (fake) guns and dramatic lighting and ultimately get taken down by riot police. Good times!

If you’re in the South of England area, give me a call….if you have my number or email address (top right)

Outside of Hood, I think I’ve mentioned I’m working with the talented Meirion Jones (no relation) on another short comic. This one will be a standard 4 pager with a bit of dark tongue in cheek, far future humour. As soon as it’s done, you’ll see it up here. I do have another super secret project which will hopefully see publication this year, once it’s out and about I’ll let you know (or you’ll read it on the national news “naked man covered in honey leaps into Olympic stadium – forgets parachute”).

Speaking of Meirion, both he and I will be at Kapow comic convention this weekend if you’re about. Meirion’s got a table and I suspect I’ll be floating near by looking lost (with a crowd of bewildered people trying to hook me down off the rafters). Pop by and say hello, check out Meirion’s project ‘Christopher Marlowe and the Bards of Nemeton‘ – an awesome “science-fantasy-psycho-druidic time-travelling-chase-thriller”

Weekend after is London MCM. I’ll be at that too. Looking lost. Maybe hungry.

Been watching Justified and Homeland. Both awesome TV shows in their own right – one tapping into my love of westerns and the other my love of Clare Danes.

Anyway, enough waffle. Here’s some colour samples (unfinished) of our Hood concept art. Thanks to those who got in contact regarding the colouring gig (there is some excellent talent out there) but we’ve gone with the super Jonny Rizzo who live’s in the middle of an American wasteland and occasionally sends us body parts of road kill through the post. They’re still works in progress (in fact Jason hasn’t seen one of them – bad dumb Anthony!) and I welcome any comments on them.

Ant

In my early teens I lived in a small village just south of an inconspicuous city called Lancaster. Nothing was remarkable about the village, nor was the city itself what one could realistically call a ‘bustling metropolis’. With one major road that ran through it in a torturous one way system, a billion pubs per square foot (we lived in the North of England after all) and more inbreeding than most of the southern states it was a quiet place even with the students that littered its streets on a regular basis.

My mum was a district nurse in the next town over, my older sister worked at Little Chef and my older brother was in the army. An average life in sheltered small town Britain.

This, by the way, is scene setting.

The point is, there was nothing about my life that was particularly abnormal. Sure, I personally was fairly abnormal –as my beatings at school attested, but life in the early 90’s was fairly average and ‘safe’.

Until one day I went shopping with my brother.

Now my brother (who, by the way, is a prick but at the time I worshipped the ground he walked on) had done one or two tours in Northern Ireland as well as Germany and a couple of other places. Every time he’d come home was a time of great excitement for me as he was pretty cool and often there would be presents (Action Man usually) or he’d race me about in whatever car he was driving at the time.

We’d spent the day doing some general shopping (or maybe it was the pub), I can’t remember what for and we were heading back into the car park to begin our trip home. My brother wandered around to the driver’s side and, without warning, dropped prone to the floor – as if he’d suddenly been inspired to start doing push ups for no readily apparent reason.

He got up, and without a word wandered round to my side and again, the push up position, his neck half craning around to look under the car.

See, I didn’t realise at the time, but my brother was checking to see if someone had put a car bomb under his car.

Meanwhile...in a DIFFERENT Lancaster. The Amish have solved the car bombing problem.

In Lancaster

Shitty Lancaster.

See, in the time my brother had been having a few pints (or pushing over grannies…or juggling whippets) he’d noted a chap with a northern Irish accent and taken upon himself to just double check that said Irish chap hadn’t left him (and me) a little present under the car.

Mad? I thought so at the time.

Until a while later a bomb went off in Manchester (our nearest ‘big’ city), planted by the IRA, which subsequently destroyed a shop that had a lot of cool star wars memorabilia in. There had been time to do an evacuation but a bunch of folks (200 I believe) were injured never the less.

I was maybe 15 or 16 years old.

Thing is, after that incident. Both the bombing and my brother’s caution (which I noted several times again both when we were in the UK and visiting in Northern Ireland).  It opened my eyes to two important things – both of which have affected my own world view and thus (because this is a writing blog after all) everything I produce from a writing point of view.

The first thing was, quite sensibly, that the world wasn’t as safe and secure as I’d thought. You could just as easily die after having a couple of pints as you could shopping for the latest X Wing fighter. There are people out there who don’t live in action movies or the comic pages of ‘Commando’ who have real world issues that impact on the most mundane parts of our lives. To whom looking under a car after a pint (or maybe trying on women’s clothes, I don’t remember) is not only a normal thing, but a valuable life saving exercise.

The second thing, which most people don’t think about, is how accepting of such danger we become. How easily the British brain keeps buggering on in the face of such overwhelming evidence that we, as a society, are well and truly fucked.

Britain is a land of animal lovers. Unless they're Jihadist animal lovers.

Not just from terrorism, but from a thousand little deaths and compromises that every one of us know leads to utter extinction and we don’t care.

Well, it’s not that we don’t care. We just don’t let it bother us. We soldier on quite happily both aware and oblivious to the extreme closeness of the chaos that is waiting to kick the shit out of us.

When was the last time you put some rubbish away in a train station?

Think about it now.

No (rarely) bins in train stations remember?

Why?

Bombers of course. Same with storage lockers and the like.

This isn’t mad speculation, or conspiracy theory. I remember them announcing it on the BBC news of all things.

“Sorry chaps. We’re getting rid of the bins so some Irish fellah (and little did they know some Jihadist later on) don’t blow us to kingdom come and delay our already broken and tardy rail network”

Oh. Fair enough then. I’ll just get rid of it on the train.

“Sure thing, but we’ll make the bins small just in case, you know, bombers and all that”

After 7/11 (remember, when terrorists bombed a bunch of shit in London?) the thing that struck me most of all wasn’t the fear of terrorism or worry for my friends who were in the neighbourhood (and though laziness thankfully didn’t bother to go to work on that morning – via Liverpool street as normal). No, the think that struck me was the interviews the next day of normal London commuters who just took the bus and tube as normal as if nothing had happened.

“Well, we’ve got to get to work right? These banks won’t destroy our economy by themselves!”

Hundreds, thousands of Londoners (and other cities) returning to work the next morning after a significant terrorist event without blinking an eye.

Don’t leave your bag in a public space, we know this, not just because (par for the course) some dick head will nick it – but if they don’t steal it, bomb squads will be along any minute to incinerate your wallet and or Gameboy.

Guns, Knives, Razorblades, rubber bands, tissues – all banned on planes.

Par for the course.

CCTV, the erosion of civil laws…

When was the last time you didn’t jokingly send the words ‘bomb’, ‘terrorist’, ‘anal fisting’ or ‘guns’ in the safe knowledge that someone somewhere would be reading your texts (probably very bored) about 5 minutes later.

In the 90’s anyone with an Irish accent was naturally suspect of being a terrorist, now it’s anyone with brown skin or an unhealthy obsession with Adele.

It’s not racism, it’s natural. We do it without thinking because this is our society. We don’t  do it because someone says it’s wrong (which sometimes it is of course)

This is Bomb Culture.

Just an average day for a London commuter

Possibly its root is in fear, or apathy, but in reality I think it’s something about the natural psych of the British to assume that all terrorists are brown skinned, all Scousers are thieves, anyone with a hoodie wants to mug you and that absolutely everything on the BBC is a waste of good taxpayer’s money.

Smoking will kill you, but we still do it.

Everything under the sun gives you cancer.

Terrorists across the street want to detonate our faces and the police and government want to spy on our porn collection.

The earth is getting hotter, movies more violent, tv more bland and soul rotting and your boss is a cunt and we know, we know that politicians are amoral and corrupt.

And we smile and moan with our mates and try not to think about it too much.

It’s amazing. It’s madness in its purest form. It’s acceptance.

It’s the point that you realise, that the society we live in is anything but normal and sane. That the thin veneer of civility that we place over our actions is just that, a layer of icing on top of a mix of contradictions and emotions that even we don’t understand.

We just accept. The rules are there for a reason right?

Now I’m not here to criticise, to advocate a train of politics, religion or whatever. I’m hardly average in intelligence and I certainly don’t have everything worked out so I don’t recommend listening to my advice on a lot of things.

But it’s the reason behind so many mundane things that we accept that’s the exciting thing. The reason why 10 years ago we feared one set of people, and now we fear a different set. Why words and their meaning have changed, even how the essence of humour has changed.

Think about Monty Python. The Carry On movies. Think about Mein Kampf or 1984. About attitudes towards homosexuals, disabled, middle class, working class, bankers and any other pigeon hole we’d like to create.

How they’ve changed and how they’ve changed, not because it was the right thing to do. Because of love of our fellow man or a maturing of the spirit (though no one would deny there are plenty of positive changes).

But because we didn’t really think about it. We just went with the flow. We didn’t ask why. We didn’t challenge ourselves to ask the reason. We, you and I, are not special. We’re average. Good at some stuff, bad at others. A bit broken and fucked up but that’s life right?

We live our lives, and then we die like it was a big surprise to everyone.

Shell shock of the soul where it’s much easier to just roll with it and move forward.

That’s Bomb Culture. That’s why I write.

I want to look closer, to see the clock counting down.

To what?

Don’t ask.

Responsible parenting at its best.

Just a quick note.

I’m not a fitness freak (i’m a writer after all, i love sitting and eating junk food at my desk) but quite by chance I came across the book “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall.

It’s hard to pin down, without instantly turning you off, what the book is about so i’ll cover a few basic points and hope one of them sticks like so much literary bukakke.

• It’s about a tribe of Southern American super runners who can easily run 100km in a single stretch using superpowers and wierd juju
• It’s about a random drifter cum middleweight boxer who went to live with them and learn their ways.
• It’s about fitness in general and how humans are designed to be running machines, to hunt down wild deer and the occasional speedy hooded youth
• It’s about a Men’s Health chap who wasn’t very healthy, who fell in with a bunch of running nutters who were all quite cool and taught him how to run.
• It’s about how your trainers are breaking your body and how the natural state of people is barefoot (apparently).

It’s an awesome book and well worth a read. It’s definitely not my normal kind of book, I have no real interest in fitness or running BUT it opened my eyes to stuff I didn’t know about and gave me an insight into a point of view that I’d never really understood before. It’s well written and well worth your time.

I mention it now, despite having read it over a year ago, because one of the characters (The White Horse) died recently.

It surprises me how affected I am by the death of someone I’ve never met, in a hobby I have (or had) little interest in and whom I’ve only ‘met’ in this one book. Perhaps it’s  testament to the strength of Christopher’s writing or perhaps it’s because the character of The White Horse is such a ‘once in a lifetime’ personality that I regret having never met him for real.

Anyway, I include some links below to the subject matter if you can’t be bothered to read the book – it’s interesting stuff and well worth your time.

Ant

Rarámuri or Tarahumara are a Native American people of northwestern Mexico… – About the ‘super athelete’ tribe who run ‘Ultramarathons’ 100 kilometers plus

Ultra maraton - What it basically is.

The White Horse – The chap who died, featured heavily in the book.

The Leadville Trail 100 – An example of one of the main Ultramarathons

Barefoot Running – running without trainers…well..barefoot basically.

and finally the book Born to Run. (Amazon Link)

In Belgium (Ypres) watching giant devil cats consume the populous.

devil cat is watching you!

Now is a great time to be an emotional vampire.

Stay with me..
The recession is biting most of us in the ass, the rise of global terrorism impacts our lives in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways and people are finding new and inventive ways of making themselves, and everyone around them miserable. Generally, unless you’re on drugs (which will kill you by the way) things are pretty shitty.

Oh sure we’ve got great TV, some wicked cool gadgets and other great toys to entertain ourselves with but we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the undiluted river of misery and torment. The jam of depression replete with chunky bits of suffering between the bread and butter of a Writer’s (or any artists) life.

All of it, great material for stories.

Think about it, how lucky you are to be starving and barely making ends meet. How much worse your life would be if you were a millionaire, chilling on a beach somewhere (probably getting skin cancer) drinking Cubre Libre’s with your increasingly cocaine addicted girlfriend.

Today you can look out the window and see a dozen things wrong with the world. The news ramming wild speculation and everyday horrors down your throat. Politicians, corporations and peers all looking for a way to take a piece of you and make it theirs.

How much worse would it be if we were happy?

No. Misery is where it’s at. It’s where the good stuff comes from.

Another artist faces the task of drawing plaid horses while a crowd of faces (each unique) looks on

Seriously, think about it for a moment.
The best stories come through conflict and struggle. The best moments of pathos are through the sweetness of a heart breaking, the pain of mistakes made and the random sideswipes life takes at us when we’re not ready.

Okay okay, we know this. Writing 101 right?

No. Not writing 101. It’s an essential skill for ANY artist – both the personal experience of it and then translating that emotion and experience into a your chosen medium in a believable manner.

I mention this, not to teach you to suck eggs, but as a simple message.

Cherish your bruises.

Those shit times you’re going through? Write ‘em down. Use them later. Those illnesses, financial worries, personal fears and doubts. Keep them, don’t lock them away or lose them. Wrap them up in prose and keep them fresh for when you need to draw upon them again.

Every bad thing, every small thing is an experience that you can use later on. Whether on a personal level to become stronger, or a professional level to make your message or story clearer. Nothing cuts better than the personal experience of losing a loved one, struggling through hard times and betrayal. That pathos is what separates good writing from great writing.

I’m a far better writer (poor to middling) now than I ever was when I was younger. Not because of my grasp of grammar or prose (which if anything has gotten worse) but because of the experiences, both sweet and bitter that I’ve had over the last 10 years.

The happy go lucky 80's were a great influence on Watchmen

Looking at comics, what would “Watchmen” be without the political and social upheavals of the 80′s UK. Would “Maus” be as great a piece if Art’s father hadn’t experienced the horrors of WWII personally? I think not. Look at the difference between Will Eisner’s work and someone like Frank Millar. Both great in their own right, but in terms of emotional resonance Eisner is still King. Even comparing the contemporary comics of Mark Millar. Compare “Nemesis” to “Superior“. Both action packed, both pretty recent. Except one deals with a young boy with multiple sclerosis who becomes a superhero (if memory serves) and the other is about a photo negative batman. Both are pretty entertaining, but only one of them (Superior) has the ‘bite’ that some people will immediately relate too.

Unless of course your brother made you pregnant..in which case go with Nemesis.

“But Ant, my life has been peachy and shiny so far” or “Ant, do iI really have to get all those STD’s to write a good story?”

I lived in the same city for most of my life. I went to primary school near by, secondary school and University in the same place more or less. That’s more or less my first 22 years of life (if not a bit more). Sure, stuff happened. I had my heart broken a few times, got into a few scrapes. But my knowledge of the world, of people and struggle were limited to my ‘small pond’ experiences in my home City (which wasn’t very big btw). I could write, no problems there, but in terms of writing what I know…well..It’s only on hindsight I realised how little I really knew (and I suspect I’ll be saying the same about myself now in 10 years time).

My recommendation? Move.
If moving isn’t an option, then at least swim around in your own pond enough to get milk everything you can out of it. If you’ve spent the last week inside or playing Xbox, you’re literally not getting out enough.

My second recommendation. Become an emotional vampire.
You’re a writer or a creative type…or a terrorist who found this website by mistake. That’s a 7 days a week job and rather than putting yourself through daily torture, sometimes it’s just as good to latch on to a similarly tortured soul and STEAL THEIR LIFE.

Time to write! Time for the pain!

Okay, not exactly, and you’ve got to be both sensitive to the person as well as the situation, but…

People are a great inspiration for writing. Both in terms of dialogue, characteristics and their own life experiences. Use it in place of your own lack of experiences in that area. No character exists in a vacuum and it’s the people you know, or half know, that add the flesh and blood to your story (whether consciously or not).

Misery love’s company and as a writer you need to learn to love misery (buy her a few drinks).

First rookie mistake is photocopying a person and putting them into your book. As a clue, change the name at the very least. If you’ve got information of a sensitive manner, then for gods sake change it enough so it’s unrecognisable or in the case of a subject who knows you have the sense to give them a heads up. Writing isn’t a licence to plagiarise someone’s life, but to draw emotion and experience that you don’t have. It’s a heart, a lung, the eyes or the blood of a story…it’s not the whole thing.

I’m writing a story about a kid who died at birth. Am I going to ask the real world parents for permission? Maybe…once it’s fleshed out. But until then I’ll change it enough so i don’t tread on any toes, keeping the core pain and distress and maybe mixing in some of my experience from elsewhere and the cocktail that I produce will hopefully be something that resonates with them but isn’t a direct copy. In short, making it mine. If i’m engaged, hopefully you (the reader) will be too.

Anyway, this ramble is getting on a bit so I’ll close off with the following.

Good writers are great thieves.
Great writers don’t get caught.

Remember, all the shit you’re going through? All those emotional bruises?
That’ll develop into good strong muscle if you train it.
OR it’ll break you down if you don’t.

All the best, Have a shitty day.

Ant

Thought some of you might be interested to see how one panel in a comic goes from concept to final design. In this case I’ve chosen an arbitrary panel from The Sleeping King submission to MCM’s Huntsman’s challenge. Different team’s processes will vary of course, but it should give you an idea.

In this case, we start off with the script…

…which isn’t here right now – i’ll add this bit later. Basically after lots of fretting and umming and ahhing I’ll come up with a descriptor and some dialogue (which I’ll probably change later on).

My artist, Meirion, them comes up with some rough thumbnails to check we’re in the same ballpark…

Rough Thumbnail of idea, just checking both writer and artist are on the same page (so to speak)

Usually i’ll give the go-ahead unless i’ve had a radical change of mind – Alternatively what can happen is the artist interprets my script a totally different way and it works out better and we’ll discuss it through etc. Some panels are fairly self explanitory, others need a bit of back and forth before both artist and writer think they’ve milked all the drama out of it. The Artist will then pencil it, and in this case Ink it (though often the Inking is done by a seperate person who lives in a cave full of wet horsehair and muddy puddles).

Pencilled and Inked (in this case by the same person)

After this, it’s passed on to yet another person (again varies with your team – Adam Bolton went from thumbnail to finished colours and all the stages inbetween himself. He also burnt himself out doing so when we had uber tight deadlines – that being said, his work was epic on it). In this case Tanya and I had a crack at the flatting (hence it’s not as professional as it could be).

My dodgy flatting - separating the colour areas up into usable chunks

From there it’s passed onto a real colourist who, thankful he doesn’t have to do the flatting (which can be a bit of a ball ache and dull as hell), goes to town and adds further depth and shading and broadens the colour palette.

Ciaran's colours make it 'pop'

And the finally, the letterer – usually a different person again but in this case me, lays down the text and sound effects from the script. Or in my case has an 11th hour quandary about the script (it was for a competition and I’d meandered a bit) and re-drafts it on the fly while lettering.

Anthony lays down his shonky lettering style. A real letterer does it much better than this. A writer doing the lettering though has the advantage of being able to tweak and mess about.

And there you have it!

Add 1-8 panels per page, 22 pages and you’ve done your first comic!

Ant

Back contracting today on hopefully my last day of significant InDesign hell. Putting together a brief piece on the benefits of leeching off people’s misery for later this evening (stay tuned) but until then I’d like to share with you some of the excellent comments I’ve received about this site. I like looking through my spam folder, it makes me think I have millions of readers – much like Facebook makes me think I have millions of friends. Its gratifying in a transitory kind of way, the buzz without the high.

“Thank you so much for giving everyone such a pleasant opportunity to read from this website. It’s usually very useful and as well , packed with a good time for me and my office mates to visit the blog nearly thrice in 7 days to find out the latest things you have. And indeed, I am just at all times satisfied with your extraordinary information you give. Certain 1 ideas on this page are rather the finest I have ever had.”

Loving it How about this one?

“Thank you for another excellent post. Where else could anybody get that kind of information in such a perfect way of writing? I’ve a presentation subsequent week, and I’m at the look for such info.”

Yeah, eat my perfect way of writing bitches!

“I’ve been exploring for a little bit for any high-quality articles or weblog posts in this kind of area . Exploring in Yahoo I finally stumbled upon this website. Studying this info So i’m satisfied to express that I’ve a very excellent uncanny feeling I discovered exactly what I needed. I most unquestionably will make certain to don?t forget this web site and provides it a look regularly.”

No offers of sex or penis enlargement yet, but I live in hope!

More later,

Ant

Long day contracting, nothing exciting but it pays the bills (much like being a fluffer). Have had some really positive responses to the work online so far – as more is finished I’ll dump it up here again.

new post tomorrow about the joys of social vampirism.

Sleeeeeep

Re-acquainted myself with the work of one Sophian Cholet the other day.

You may (or may not) remember me talking about his “Zombies” comic which I stumbled across in an issue of Heavy Metal sometime last year.

The best way I can describe it it’s similar in theme to The Walking Dead but (in my opinion) better in many respects and the art is just gorgeous! I believe volume 1 is available in English and for those of you who have the ability to speak any other language, Volume 2 is out/will be out soon.

Here’s an AWESOME trailer for the comic (done by Balthazart Michael, Raphael and Gaudin Quentin Sauvinet school ArtFx conducted for Sun edition – embedded without permission so I might change this to a link later)

Check out some of his work by checking out his blog – it’s got some great examples of his sketches, links to original art from Zombies and I imagine the ability to find the books themselves.

Sophian’s Blogspot

Ant

Some great response for my/our effort in The Huntsman’s challenge (link to our submission here)- thanks for the feedback, both positive and sweary.

Working on my next short piece with Meirion Jones, though as i write it up I wonder if it’s going to get sent straight back with a simple message saying “get yourself some proper therapy”

Still, should be fun!

This one’s just a break in the pace while I get the first few pages of Hood finished and start the next few pages of my other project.

That and while I provide tech support to my mum who has just discovered Office 2010….save me please…

Ant