Well just got back from seeing "Confessions of a City" at the Crucible, certainly an interesting but very nicely done performance, albeit one I nearly missed seeing as the amount of tickets where smaller than planned (only 80 a performance) but due to a literal last minute cancellation I got to see it,

was a play designed to show off the Crucible theatre now it's been redone and is based on true stories from people who lived in Sheffield, taking place in 5 different parts of the theatre including the toilets, the restaurant, backstage, under the stage and finally on-stage with actors doing the scenes around you, seeing a friend of mine make his entrance via the fireplace next to the sofa I was sat on was one of the more interesting bits,

shame it's only on tomorrow as well but given the demanding nature and the 3 performances a day I can understand it, but it was well worth seeing,

In other news tomorrow I get to look at a possible house looking for someone to move into the attic room, heres hoping it goes well,

 Well this friday I'm off to London for another part of the monthlong endurance run of stuff that is October.
the weekend will consist of seeing The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre, a day and a half selling comics at the London MCM and then sunday making it back to sheffield to see Eddie Izzard at the arena, 
should be good material for the mini-book of convention journals I'm working on, just hope insomnia doesn't strike like Birmingham,
wish me luck

Well the Con is over, and despite the night before the con (getting an early night to get up for an early train) involving insomnia, vomiting, hallucinations and possible food poisoning (don't ask) I managed to make it to the con where things went pretty well, not as many problems or weird stuff as usual (but still enough to tell stories), and even though the last of them happened literally in the last minute as a result of me shilling like mad, I made my 50 sales.

I also got a pair of sketches of the heroine of 'My Name is Chipmunk' by a pair of artists (images below the cut) which was nice, so my thanks to Philip Jackson & Jimmy Bott for those, anyway con is over so now sleep beckons 


( Click for pics )

Well this weekend will involve the birmingham international comic show where the first 2 issues of 'My Name is Chipmunk' will be on sale (issue 3 sadly four pages from completion) and the current goal is to sell 50 copies over the weekend, wish me luck.
PS anyone have stuff they want me to look out for?

well that's annoying,
an anime convention I knew was on this month and was trying to learn the date of I learned to be tomorrow, meaning I've had to very quickly book a half day at work, find train times to leicester and cancel a trip to the cinema for friday night, but on the plus side I may be able to sell a few copies of the comic and do some networking, we'll see,
just hope this doesn't go as oddly as some of my convention experiences

Tomorrow at 8:30 the showroom is showing Ip Man, a well reviewed kungfu movie starring Donnie Yen, I'll be going to see this, anyone else fancy seeing it?

just in case anyone is interested, the outdoor performance of The Taming of the Shrew will be taking place on wednesday 8th of July on the Dore village green starting at 7:30pm, don't worry I'm not in this so you can spare yourself my acting, it's free to watch so if you can make it come along, the number 30 bus takes you pretty near

Well that's a relief,
What with the spain trip yielding less writing than planned it seems I'm actually a little ahead of my goal of writing the equivalent of twelve 24-page comics by the end of the year, it seems finishing off a 36-pager having gotten back along with the 8-pager I did while in spain (the one I was still finishing on the flight back to England) has put me nearly onto 7 out of 12, which is nice, will have to try and get another 8-pager done before the end of the month to nudge it all the way before July, then I can try and do the comic I was supposed to write in Spain without fear of rushing, after that comes the fun part of deciding which of the next bunch of unfinished works to try and do next, joy of joys.

Some of you may recall me mentioning that a figurine of the heroine of 'My Name is Chipmunk' was being made by a mate of mine in the states? The condition being that in exchange he would get free copies of the comic and he could enter it in the 'Wonderfest' model contest.

well out of the 501 entries he may not have won first prize but:




I'd say thats nothing to be sniffed at, don't you?

 well the bristol con was pretty entertaining and profitable apart from a few minor hiccups (and one upchuck)
the experience was fun and I got to meet some good folk, 
but most importantly I had a bloody good sales run, 
36 comics during the day and have only just finished sorting the takings with the profit being between 82-99 quid depending on if you count the takings from the non-con sales I collected the same day, 
not too shabby I think, 

 lets see, just under 2 weeks ago I started working on the first issue of the fantasy comic I had come up with while bored at work, what started off as a collection of random notes and 3/4 sentence character descriptions soon turned into the setting for a series,

Deciding to flex the writing muscles a bit I planned to do each issue at twice the size of the usual 24-page comic scripts I write, so I began my usual 'layers' approach to writing.  During my lunch-breaks I began planning the page-by-page breakdowns and had them done in the space of a day or two.

Then came the next layer of scripting each pages panel by panel description, nearly all of which was done during last weekend, turns out taking my powerbook to a coffee store without wifi and writing until the battery ran out was a surprisingly effective way of writing...although there could just be something in the drinks.

then came the trickiest part to any comics writer; dialogue.  Normally this is what trips me up but seems this week I was fortunate enough to not have any trouble with that, which is worrying considering that while writing this I had to A) come up with a fantasy version of a dirty rugby song, B) a magic spell cast as a math equation and C) a page-long conversation between a pair of zombies only able to speak by going Grruurgh!   ...I get some odd ideas at times.

Yet despite these I managed to get 12 pages done during the week when I could, then since work pretty much forced me to take the day off Friday & today where spent doing the same as last weekend so over the space of 2 days I've managed to do about 36 pages.  The final script is now 84 pages long on Word and the word count currently clocks i at 14,610.  Frankly I'm just impressed I managed to write the equivalent of 2 complete comics in the space of 2 weeks, now if only I could keep that level of productivity up at all times.

Am sure it'll need redoing and proof-reading and other such things but for now I think I can just enjoy the satisfaction of getting it done, yes?

Well talk about a productive weekend, 

After spending the last month struggling to do write a 12 page comic which I eventually stopped before doing dialogue due to the trouble I was having on it, I somehow manage over the course of the weekend to script out all 48 pages for issue one (of three) of a high fantasy comic, if dialogue goes as easy I'll be impressed.

Guess it goes to show what happens when you simply turn off the Internet connection for a dozen hours or so.

On another note the occasional babysitting has led to us starting season 2 of the Tick, about a third of the way through now, the fact I get paid just makes it even sweeter.

 

 Well this has been a busy week,
got my new business cards printed for the London con, 
had the auditions for the next Company play, can't do it but good to see new people turning up,
babysat for the neighbours kid who not only did I introduce him to the greatness that is Speed Racer but I also got paid to watch it, 
tomorrow I head up to Leicester for a mini-comic convention I've been looking forward to for a few weeks, 
sunday is undecided but may involve sleeping all day to recover, who knows,

 well issue has been fully drawn and lettered, can send it off to the printers once some last checks are made, I'd go into more detail but frankly my brain is fried,


( click to see cover )</div>

Well that was somewhat exhausting,

was on a bit of a roll and managed to complete the dialogue for my latest comic script, a 36 page 'widescreen' giant robot adventure whose inspiration can be traced all the way back to the dubbed videos of Getter Robo & Gai-King we used to find in poundland when I was a kid,

Ah good ol 'Starvengers' & 'Formators' with your brightly colored boxes and covers stolen from transformers toy art how I remember you well,

Nostalgia trip aside this means I'm now ahead on my writing goal for the year which is nice, but also means I have more time to work on the lettering for issue 2 which has now only 1 page a cover left thanks to Mr Sangalang pulling a blinder when it comes to speed on the last few pages,

The question now is one I face every time I finish a project and that is what to write next? After a load of giant robot smash and bash action I suppose I should try something different and do something a little more subtle & dramatic...that or the idea involving a wrestling match with the devil...

On another note an interesting thing I found recently was this tale someone has spun on the web about an interesting idea of a rock magazine interviewing a supervillain, its an intriguing little story I'd recommend a read of:

banter-latte.annotations.com/tag/interviewing-leather/page/2/

And now back to the plotting board

'Tis a rare event when both my parents ask the same thing of me, I suppose this time it's because it involves something both of them hold dear to their hearts, Morris Dancing.  No before you ask they didn't ask me to join Sheffield City Morris, the prospect of trusting me with a hanky let alone a wooden stave should be enough reason to know why, frankly I think Hansworth Sword Dancers wanted to pull off some sort of covert folk-dancing based assassinations when they tried to recruit me, however I digress, what they wish for is for as many people as possible to go to the following website;

morrismovie.com/

click the petition link and try and get this morris dancing mockumentary a wide release, cheers

Well page 22 has been inked so 2 more to go and we're there, also I finally decided on the cover  so that's one less thing to worry about.

On other writing elements I managed to get a tad further on my 'write 12 comic scripts by the end of the year' resolution which works out as 1 a month, due to the technical issues at the end of last month I was a bit behind on the January project  of a trio of 8-page comics but managed to get them solved at the start of the week.

After that I had a roll and managed to dig out an earlier script I had begun plotting and have set to work on that and just this moment managed to finish plotting all 36 pages of this piece, the way I write being to work in layers, starting with a summary then a page by page breakdown, then I script each page describing the panels, after that I go back and write the dialogue.  This one is me trying something I've been toying with for 2 years, all you need to know is one page features a classic super-robot style giant robot performing a German Suplex on a cthullu-esque monster, yeah I'm afraid its another one of my deep intellectually profound pieces again, ah well.

With a bit of luck the dialogue will flow on this like the last few projects I've done, failing that well I have a good 3 weeks, but would like to keep going, since this was a 36 page beast and am working off of the idea of using 24 pages as my Basis I can always work on a 12 page job next as something lighter.

Guess this good writing is the karmic upswing from last weeks computer nightmares, time will tell,

Good News - 24th Birthday on Tuesday.

Bad News - had to baby-sit for neighbors.

Good News - essentially got paid 10 quid to watch Cannonball Run.

Bad News - cannot think of a good way to move to next bit of Good News.

Good News - got a new power book as a gift.

Bad News - my old iBook's hard drive died JUST as we set up to transfer the files (literally just, did it as we plugged the two together).

Good News - had backed stuff up onto my external hard drive.

Bad News - hadn't backed up anywhere near as much as I thought.

Good News - was able to recover everything in the end and get it onto the new one, everything now works.

Bad News - well, nearly everything.

Good News - only 2 programs don't work.

Bad News - they are the 2 programs I use for making the comics.

Good News- I can get the two of them sorted as long as nothing else happens.

Bad News - the fact this list is even here should suggest why I am not optimistic.


Now that's out of the way onto other stuff:
Comic is now onto page 21 of issue 2 with page 22 being pencilled at the moment, I'm finally starting to get ideas for the cover to issue 2 as well.


Printer is sorted for the March con, just gotta get the programs sorted so I can edit issue 1 and get started on the pages for issue 2.

The goal to get at least 1 full comic script a month written hit a snag due to the computer trouble but as I'm currently working on some 8-page comic scripts I can also count 3 of them as a full comic so just need to finish one more of those off so I'll be sorted for January.

My friend in Florida whose gonna do the figurine has finished his latest figurine so should hopefully be starting work on this sometime soon, last one took him 3 weeks so with luck I'll have some photos to show & take to the con along with a folio of scripts (since I only have 2 comics to sell I need to pad the table a bit).


The play is over and done with, and went pretty well, we made a profit this time (usual goal is to try and break even and make some money at Summer) AND got a very good review in the Sheffield Star which was nice.

The only qualm I have is that for some reason one of the other 'front of house' volunteers kept having a go at me, first for something along the lines of how when I'm the upstairs doorman I have to be sat upstairs and can't come down at all the moment we sell a ticket upstairs, which by the way is bollocks since A) I asked the duty manager on the rules and B) my Mum's department at the university runs the theatre so I have the rules drilled into me anyway.

Amusingly the next night she had a go at me for not bringing down the money I'd made selling programs, as tempting as it was to ask her how I was supposed to bring down the money if I wasn't allowed to come downstairs the play was already on so didn't want to make a scene.


In other news: Snow is cold.

 Well it's been decided that while Steve is running Spelljammer I'll be running the next game, clearly I didn't learn from last time, 
anyways i'll be using Savage Worlds to run a series based off a series I love which is Phil & Kaja Foglio's Eisner award nominated comic book of Adventure, Romance & MAD SCIENCE!  that is Girl Genius, a steampunk/gaslamp fantasy series that can be found here:

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/  &  for those wanting further information can loo here: http://girlgenius.wikia.com/wiki/The_Department_of_Almost_Certainly_True_History
no need to read the whole archive to play the game, there are 2 radio play podcasts on the comic site if you just want a quick intro to the world of the series, 

those interested let me know, we have time of course but it never hurts to be prepared,

Dan

 had a bit of a clearout yesterday including sorting the ol' comic collection, a task that means as well as having my floor back I was able to check the remaining copies of issue 1 I had left, 
out of the original print of 50 issues, I have 9 left
as I recall thats:
10 (2 lots of 5) given to the Sheffield Space Centre to sell
10 given to Jim to sell at Patriot Games (the sheffield and huddersfield branches)
16 sold at the Leeds convention
3 sold to people from work (one of whom being Rusty)
1 traded for a comic of equivalent value
2 given away
which means I wound up getting an extra copy when I got em printed, bonus.

Also a friend in Florida in exchange for copies of the comic is going to create a figurine of the title heroine from the comic as long as he gets to enter it into the model contest at Wondercon in May, now as this will mean free advertising for me I see no reason to object to this, so even better.

The inks to page 20 have been done and page 21 is now being worked on, so give or take a month and a half issue 2 will be fully drawn, providing I can come up with a cover idea and get it lettered without any disasters taking place.

Well we'll see how this proceeds as we go,
Dan