Le Jardin Secret

"Description Demure Events proudly presents Le Jardin Secret - a Burlesque evening like Northampton's never seen before!! Saucy Burlesque dancing, twisted circus acts, magicians, ventriloquist performances, singers and dwarf presenters! We are also going to be holding a charity raffle in aid of Macmillan Cancer Trust with some amazing prizes lined up! You certainly wouldn't want to miss out on this one of a kind evening!!"

Here are a series of adds for Demure Events, for 'Le Jardin Secret', where I played the role of photographer and designer. The event is on the 23rd of February, 19:30, at Sazarac Bar, Northampton - come along if you can!

At last - a new blog!

I'm sort of ashamed of myself when I realise my last blog update was back in January. So much has changed in such a short amount of time and I'm not really sure where to start. When I think back to the start of this year I think straight away of Insomnia Publications. That bright ambitious publishing monster, that seemed to be snapping up talent left right and centre, and I was slowly becoming more and more of a part in that process. 

As I said in my previous post, along with Alex Willmore and Matt Gibbs, I had just been appointed Sub Editor for the company. It wasn't a paying job, but for the small amount of work it was supposed to be, and the experience of doing it, that wasn't an issue.

Well, to cut an ugly story short, Insomnia Publications ceased trading on June 30th 2010. All the creators tied to Insomnia then entered the ordeal of trying to reclaim their novels, and thanks to the CBA, we managed :)

So where am I now?

Well Kronos City has now been signed to Time Bomb comics. We found a new home and are so pleased to see it well looked after!

Quarantined has some exciting news of its own, which I will be bring to light soon enough ;)

And rather than being the Sub-Editor for Insomnia Publications, I'm now Editor in Chief for The Sleepless Phoenix, whose first anthology, Survival Stories, was released last weekend at BICS. The Sleepless Phoenix grew so organically out of the death of Insomnia Publications, it's strange to think about what it has become and where it might one day go. With Survival Stories a huge success, smashing all my own expectations, talk has now turned to the next anthology for The Sleepless Phoenix, with new team members on board to lend a hand. 

So, that's my year so far, hopefully more good news to come :D

Sub Editor

I've just started my new job as Sub Editor for Insomnia Publications. I'll be reviewing all art submissions for the company, along with Alew Willmore, and Matt Gibbs who will be reviewing all script submissions. I can't wait to get started with it!

For more info about it, catch the redeye

Dredd

I've been trying to improve my style recently (maybe adopt a new one too) so have started to find new artwork to experiment with. Not entirely sure who the black and white art is by (sorry) but I was quite pleased with what I managed to do with the colour.

Doodle Planet

I've been working with a new style recently, so I decided to take a picture of myself and a group of friends at Chester's Doodle Planet and have a practice.

How To

The how to from Alex and myself!
Hi folks! We thought we'd post a blog outlining the Kronos City art process. Above is the base of operations for Lauren and myself. On the right hand side is our lovely little Macbook which I use to view the script and find the odd reference image. (Also, note the lovely comic page by Nigel Dobbyn hanging above my desk - a continuing source of inspiration for me).

Anyway, on this side of the desk I take Andrew's script and from that make a quick sketch (too shameful to picture) to plan composition, flow etc. Once this is done I rough out the composition on the actual page. Once I'm happy with the sketch, I neaten it up with a mechanical pencil, scan it and zip it over to Andrew for approval (see below image).

In this instance Andrew had a few ideas about the page.

"Can you add in a couple of different shapes, like hexagons and rhombuses, rhombusususes, um, rhombi? Apart from that, this is good to go!"

Good idea Andrew - the page looks much nicer for it! Pictured below is the inked up version complete with background shapes!

The inking is done with a Pentel Pocket Brush. This lovely little brush pen was reduced from £12 to £6 and I LOVE IT! It may not be the most expensive brush pen in the world but it does the job just fine! It's really nice to use - much nicer than the cheap disposable brushes I used to use at uni! The finer details like the bubbles and shapes are done with a 0.3 and 0.1 fineliner.

Once the page is inked, I usually scan it, arrange it on the digital page and then Lauren does her thing. This page however is set under water and the colouring technique for water in Kronos City is a little different than straight forward digital colour. At this stage we need to take a trip to Staples - which is actually really far away! Here we get the page photocopied onto heavy weight matt paper. This is so that when Lauren adds the water colour the ink doesn't run.

I'll hand over to Lauren to talk about the colouring.

In Kronos City I used two different styles of watercolouring, messy and neat. In this scene Sally is fully in the water so I use a style that I hope shows this. It's done in the same way that the first few pages of the book are painted, as here all the images are formed from the water. In other scenes the Kronos water is just part of the images, for example page five of Chapter One, so the water colour is quite neat and contained.
When it came to this page, I already knew what colours I would be using as this page preceded a scene I had already coloured. So the blue and yellow? So far I've been told that the Kronos City colour seems to be brown/red. As this scene and the ones after are set after a huge storm I decided to give the next seems some fresh colours, to show how a storm can really change and cleanse things. I like to layer up colours to create more depth in the picture, which is something that can be seem in the bubbles and shapes in the water.

Back to Alex.

So there we have it, from pencils to coloured page!

And on that note, I'm off to pencil page 6 of chapter 3.

By for now,

Alex x

Another Week, a little more work :)

This has been quite a good week for work. I began by getting those greyscales, I mentioned the week before, by Monty Borror, all finished. I'll post a page or a panel of that soon when the company has released it. While it was nice not to have to worry about colours, I really did miss them, and was more than happy to get back to Kronos City and begin work on Chapter Three!

This Chapter is looking even better than the last! There are some brilliant scenes that really let me play with and explore the colour possibilities. I feel like each page could stand in a gallerey and classed as a masterpiece by itself, and while that may be a little big headed, it's a brilliant feeling.

Team Kronos City and I have now launched the 'How do you see Karl?' non-competition. Here are the details:

'Recently Team Kronos City decided to compare their characters. Everyone sees a character differently so here are our versions. Here at Kronos City, we'd also like to see your ideas of Karl, which will be published here on the 20th of November, just before the Thought Bubble Convention where they will also be on display. Here's a description of Karl:

'Karl is a vampire, but one of the Donor Movement ones so he doesn’t hunt. He’s actually kind of anorexic, and doesn’t really eat at all. He’s about as threatening as a kitten wearing a top hat. He’s tall and very, very skinny. He wears very tight black t-shirts and jeans, so tight that you can practically see the bones through them. He has a cute button nose and tiny fangs. Vampire eyes are bigger than human eyes, and very expressive, but they are totally black, no whites or irises, and the pupil is a white dot. He has very pale white skin and pronounced cheekbones, and black spiky hair that looks like he spends far too much free time on it in the mornings and far too much money on hair product on it. He moves very gracefully, almost effeminately. He has pointy little ears.'

Please send all your pictures to kronoscity@googlemail.com, along with your name and any internet contact details you'd like us to link to. Hope to see the interpretations!

Hope you get involved!

I began work creating an avatar for the blog of Gareth Edwards. I tried to do something slightly different with this one, using the selection tool rather the pen tool. I was a little worried when I began as I wasn't sure if it would all go horribly wrong or not, but once I finished I knew I had nothing to worry about. The technique worked really well, and is definitely something I'll have to continue playing with. As soon as this avatar is finished off and sent I'll be sure to upload it.

Overall it's been an exciting week as I've been about to get back to what I love, colouring.