Mega Mecha Monkey Masterclass, PLUS Recent Rovings Round-Up!

This week's Phoenix Comic is out today, and it features the first of Art Monkey's brand-new MEGA MONKEY MASTERCLASSES - comic strips where the sketching simian has started a comic but left it up to YOU the reader to finish off the salient details! Check it out in this week's Phoenix - available from these fine vendors - and you can download a big version of the strip as an activity sheet, FOR FREE, from Art Monkey's page on the Phoenix website.

Along with, indeed, ALL the previous Art Monkey activity sheets! We're up to 17 now and believe me, there's loooooaaaaads more to come. Look, here are a few:

 

Get sketching and you, YES YOU could be the proud recipient of Art Monkey's Top Banana Award! Which looks a little something like THIS:

Hey, while I'm here: I've done a couple of workshops in recent weeks and completely failed to blog about them, so I'd just like to say a big thank you to Buff Baughan and Tam Weaver at Storyfest in Hartfield, where I recently spent a glorious sunny day in a beautiful village teaching a bunch of awesome kids how to make comics. And got JAM. And also to Judith Merryat Team V and Rachel Smith of Oxford's Natural History Museum for inviting me along and making me so welcome doing some recent workshops at the museum. (Said museum is genuinely one of my favourite places on Earth, so it really was a thrill to get to hang out there and teach kids about drawing and making up characters amongst many of the very artefacts that inspired my work on Pirates of Pangaea.)

Look, here I am with one of the groups. YEAH. UNDERNEATH A T-REX.

 And here is some of the absolute nonsense we were making up...

For a half-dinosaur half-Mr Bean likeness drawn from memory of what Rowan Atkinson looks like, I have to say: I am pretty happy with that.

And a final thank you to Ross Fraser at the Phoenix who was a huge help at these events; organising, taking these photos, and folding post-it-notes really quite beautifully.

Lots more school and library workshops coming up over the summer which I will, no doubt, competely fail to blog about here. If you're a teacher / librarian / bookshop owner and would like me to come teach how to draw Dinosaur Rowan Atkinsons and suchlike, you can find some more information about my workshops on my website. Thanks!

T-Rex Rampage!

Hello! Contrary to appearances, neither I or this blog have actually died, I've just been a bit busy drawing all manner of delightful things for The Phoenix. Case in point: the above, which is the cover to ISSUE 19, out this weekend! Somehow we have rampaged all the way through to the PENULTIMATE EPISODE already, so I thought I'd spend the next week blogging the  odd bit of behind-the-scenes stuff to whet people's appetites for the finale!

So, to get us started: that cover itself! HERE IS HOW I DRAWED IT, from rough all the way through to finshed colour version! It had an unusually smooth gestation, this one, so you won't see many major changes on the way through, but thought it might be fun to check out anyway...

 

Go grab your copy now! Available as of tomorrow morning from branches of Waitrose as well as all these fine vendors, and of course by subscription!

More dinosaurs next week. PROMISE.

 

Magnificent Multimedia Mobots!

My week was made last week by my friend Steph, who was awesome enough to send over these pictures of her niece Lily's school project. The assignment was to make a model of her favourite book, and Lily went for...


Woop!
This three-dimensional chunk of pure awesomeness was made by Lily and her friend Matilda (both aged 10) - Matilda made Asha, Lily did the cover drawing and they collaborated on the frankly fantastic model mobot. (Check out the RIBBONS!) Anyway, I think we can all agree this amazing effort gets an A plus! An A DOUBLEPLUS, in fact. Awesome job, Lily and Matilda!


BONUS MOBOTS! Just when I was getting ready to post these pics, girls' comics aficionado Jo Bevan (of the Bring Back Bunty blog) posted this shot of a cardboard mo-bot expertly constructed by her daughter for World Book Day!



I know all too well how much time and effort goes into making one of these bad boys, so can only say a huge GOOD JOB, Bevan Jr! A pluses all round!

If you would like to have a crack at making your own cardboard mo-bot - they take a bit of doing but they're worth it in the end! - you can download a FREE kit to do so from the Mo-Bot High Wesbite, right here: http://www.neillcameron.com/mobot-high/cardbots.html

Meet The Pirates: Bosun William

Here is the second in a regular series where I'll be offering a peek into my sketchbook at my designs for the stars of The Pirates of Pangaea (appearing weekly in The Phoenix, go subscribe kids! It is I-ain't-even-foolin' GREAT). This week we are saying a big Pangaean hello to Bosun William, or Master Bosun, or simply The Bosun to his friends. Rugged, stoical and heroic, he is Sophie's only protector amidst the dinosaur and pirate-infested scarinessfest that is Pangaea. So rugged, stoical and heroic in fact that he can wear a ponytail with a bow on it and still appear rugged, stoical and heroic.

More pirates next week!

Meet The Pirates: Sophie!

Here are some development sketches of Sophie, our hero in The Pirates of Pangaea - a strip I am currently collaborating with my good friend Daniel Hartwell on for The Phoenix Comic.

Sophie is from a fairly wealthy English family but, following the death of her beloved parents, has been shipped off to the new world, to stay with her uncle Silas, governor of the British colony on the mysterious lost continent known as... Pangaea!

Anyway, we hope you enjoy her adventures. I won't say any more for fear of spoilers, but man, there is some stuff that happens. Some stuff.

More piratey sketches next week!

The Phoenix! It fliiiiiies!

This weekend saw the launch of the first issue of brand new weekly comic The Phoenix! Which, uh, I may have mentioned already. The above is an early / alternate version of the issue one cover - in the end, we decided that it looked a little too 'apocalyptic' and went for the blue-sky background used on the final cover. I thought I'd post it here, not least so you can see the nice pterodactyls I went to all the trouble of drawing even though I knew perfectly well they'd be covered up by the (admittedly lovely) logo.

Anyway, Saturday was a preposterously lovely day from start to finish, beginning with the fact that I got to stroll up the corner shop and see my work featured on the cover of a well-known national newspaper.

AND have ginger beer, too.

Saturday was also, of course, the day of the launch party itself - a brilliant and hugely fun event held at the super-exciting new Story Museum in Oxford. (Can't wait for that place to open properly, it sounds like they've got such exciting things planned for it). I had a really lovely time and caught up with so many comics-creatin' (and comics-readin') friends old and new, that I couldn't remotely hope to cover it all here. M'colleague Sarah McIntyre posted lots of great photos and a write-up of the day over on her blog, so why not go read that and feel just like you were there? But without cake.

I have stolen this one photo of Sarah's to post here,
not least because it is the one photo taken of me in
like the last 2 or 3 years that I actually quite like.

If you haven't seen a copy of the Phoenix yet, you can read the preview Issue Zero IN FULL and FOR FREE over on the Phoenix website! And then go subscribe. C'mon, you can get five weeks' worth of awesome comics for a tenner. A TENNER. Give it a whirl!

Anyway, huge thanks to everyone who's said nice things already about both Pirates and How To Make (Awesome) Comics - seeing people's drawings and completed HTMAC 'exercises' start to flow into Phoenix HQ is already one of my favourite things about 2012. Not least this collaborative masterwork - script by my marvellous nephew Lex, art by his wastrel father:

That's pretty harsh, Superman.

Ready To Launch!

I'm snatching a 5-minute-break from drawing rigging (OH MY GOD THE RIGGING) to wish you all a Happy Phoenixday Eve! Yes, tomorrow is Official Launch Day for the brand new weekly comic featuring pirates and dinosaurs and bunnies and monkeys and space aliens and robots and, oh, ALL KINDS OF GOOD THINGS. There's still time to subscribe in order to get the first issue, so head to the Phoenix website for a bunch of tasty subscription options, or you can pick up a copy from Waitroses nationwide and select independent children's bookshops. (Full details of where you can buy it coming soon to the Phoenix website! One would imagine.) But seriously, go subscribe.

ALSO: just announced is that you may wish to pick up a copy of The Times newspaper tomorrow, for a free 8-page Phoenix pull-out featuring, oh heck, all kinds of fun stuff - not least a special BONUS How To Make (Awesome) Comics strip! The Times is available, uh, pretty much everywhere. In shops and stuff?

Join me next week for the start of a regular series of blog posts featuring behind the scenes peeks at pirates and dinsoaurs AND helpful annotations for Professor Panels' illustrated lectures. Uh, if I get all this rigging finished.