Here's some more pages of my traffic safety comic for Sandwell District Council. Enjoy!









See that? That's some unsafe traffic behaviour, right there.

This job was sooo much more fun than perhaps it sounds on paper - it was a great chance to loosen up and have fun and try a few new tricks, process-wise. And they were only mildly annoyed at me for filling it with subliminal product placement ads for Thumpculture...

...ayway, that's probably about enough of that. REMEMBER: look both ways when crossing the street.

My work here is done.

5) Actually getting weekends and bank holidays off.
4) Having quiche, chips and beans for lunch at the Oxford Science Park 'bistro' when I couldn't be arsed to go to the gym.
3) Getting a couple of hours a day - lunch and the bus ride - to just read books.
2) Um...
1) ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE.

I'm just gonna cross-post these here from my DFC blog:

Mo-bot High Trading Cards!









...it's just for my own amusement, really.

I just realised I've been diligently building a 3D recreation of my old school...



...just so I can then have giant robots smash it up.

Apparently I may have some unresolved issues with that place.

In order of how heavy their rotation has been on Neill's-drawing-board FM! (note: this is albums I have bought / been listening to a lot this month, not necessarily ones that came *out* this month...)

5) Portishead - Third
4) Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
3) Beck - Modern Guilt
2) The Roots - Rising Down
1) RZA as Bobby Digital - Digi Snacks.

Seriously, can't stop listening to that Bobby Digital album. The track 'Don't Be Afraid' may be the single catchiest piece of music ever created by mortal man. I've had it stuck in my head non-stop for, oooh, about three weeks now, and - weirdly - don't seem to be sick of it yet.

Here is a look at the first 3 pages of my recently-completed comic strip about road safety!



What's that I hear you ask? What on earth does any of that have to do with road safety?

Hush, you!

Artwork reproduced with the kind permission of Sandwell District Council - an awesomer District Council I defy you to find.

...and then two come along at once.



I've just posted my first entry on my official blog on the DFC website. I'll be posting all sorts of funky bits n' bobs there while Mo-Bot High is on its break, so be sure to check it out. RSS feed handily included over on the right of this very page!

There I was having to work late on a Friday night and feeling all sorry for myself, when what should pop into my inbox but a notification of this...
Garen Ewing draws a Mo-Bot. That's pretty much made my week, right there.

Seriously, how great is that?

Why not have a go yourself?

As I mentioned, a recent comics project was half set in a videogame-type world , which gave me an opportunity to try something I'd been wondering about for a while - "digital painting". Here is my first attempt, a quick test run on one of the character designs.


...look, it was a first effort.

Garen's A-Z of Comic Strip Characters is just about the coolest thing I've ever seen.

Just wanted to mention that.

Here are some character designs I did as prep-work for a recent comics assignment. The story was about a bunch of regular normal kids who spend a lot of time playing in an online sci-fi videogame, so there are two versions of each character - the 'real world' one and their online avatar kinda thing...

It was a fun project, as I got to use a very different style on the 'videogame' sections, and got to have a stab at doing a bit of digital painting, which is a new thing for me.


Maybe I'll post some of the comic pages up here in a bit!

Here's how!



It's kind of the abbreviated version, I left out all the stuff about gradient overlays and clipping masks and using about 1,000 layers in Photoshop, as I wouldn't want to scare the kids.

This is available as a download on the DFC website. If anyone has a go, by all means send me your efforts!

Thanks to everyone who's gotten in touch to say nice things about Mo-Bot High, my story which finished its initial nine-week run in The DFC last week. I'm enormously glad that people seem to have enjoyed it, and don't worry, there's plenty more to come. I'm hard at work one Season 2 as I type... actually, I'm not hard at work, I'm pootling about writing this blog. Obviously.

I should get back to work.