Inner city blues

Evening chums,

You may have noticed (or equally you may have not) but I've designed the poster / flyers for this year's Birmingham Beer Bash.  It promises to be a top wheeze and do feel free to buy me a gentle ale should you see me there cowering in the corner.  I don't get out much you see.

Anyway, if you're one of the weirdos who like seeing the process for these things then I shall attach pencils and finished poster below.

Hurrah for beer.
RT

Reindeers are better than people

Some daft mini comics for you chum.
RT

Blimey!

It's been a while......

(The Angels Wanna) Wear My Red Shoes

Evening chums,

A gentle note to inform you that my well-I-think-it's-amusing-comical-strip, Grace's Imaginary Menagerie will be making it's triumphant return to the always splendid Aces Weekly next month.  It'll be appearing in issue 15, starting on March 2nd.

If you've not yet checked out Aces Weekly then shame on you!  You're missing out on a super, super digital collection of comics fun.  Go there now, and tell them that I politely sent you.

(Don't forget, you can also grab my comics through my comicsy store here)

RT

Time of the season

Evening folks,

I'm quite determined to use this blog a bit more to promote my work in coming months.  Looking through it, there seems lots of mildly interesting content, but precious little in terms of finished pages?  Let's put that right shall we....

I'll paste a few selected black and white pages from various bits and pieces what I've done in the past year or two for your collective perusal....

First off, one of my fave pages from Rol Hirst's super 'Too Much Sex and Violence'

Then a selection of pages from my on-going work on the 'Grinning Mask'....

How's that?
RT

Black Sheep Boy

Once again folks, I have returned from Thought Bubble and feel compelled to say how absolutely super it is.  I have just spent a weekend surrounded by some very inspirational people and really can't compliment the organisers and volunteers enough on putting together what has (for my money) got to be the UK's best comics show.

If you've never been before, then you really owe it to yourself to get along next year.  I can't quite frankly imagine how the team will top this year's event, but nonetheless I'm confident that they will.

Can you tell that I had a super weekend of it?

(Obligatory photo of my table before the show)

I was happily debuting the 4th issue of the Grinning Mask which seems to have gone down very well with the comic buying public.  If you missed it, then I've updated my Comicsy store where you can order stuff and read freebies PDFs.  Go seek.

Amongst other scribblings over the weekend I was jolly chuffed to be asked to do a commission of that super character the Shadow.  Being rather unsure how to tackle this one, I actually did two piccies - a comical version and a more serious one.  See if you can tell which is which and then go and visit the comic art gallery where these now hang in pride of place amongst some other very talented artists.  Do take a browse and see the fantastic body of work that is being collected here.....

(If you're interested in commissioning me, then do get in touch at theboytaylor at hotmail dot com)

A great weekend, and here's to the next one.....

Your chum
RT

Happy Shopper

What ho chums!

In honour of the recent Free Comic Book day, I've updated my digital comics store over at the very lovely Comicsy site with freebie digital downloads of a couple of my comics.  That's right, you can believe your ears....

Pop over there now and grab some free comics why don't you?  I'm not planning on ending the super sale any time soon.

Your chum
RT

Brand new, you're retro

A quick note for you chums.

You can now buy my splendid comics from Comicsy - hurrah for small press fun.

Form an orderly queue now.

RT

To the gangsters with pens...

What ho chums,

In all the excitement of Autumn approaching, I very nearly forgot to mention that the Empyre pitch is rapidly nearing completion.  Hurrah.  This will be winging it's way to semi-interested people very soon.

Empyre chum Adam Bolton is also excited for he is heading to the New York Comics Con where he will be revelling in the launch of his 'Where's My Shoggoth' book (wrote by Ian Thomas).  Do go and buy a copy of this super kiddies / Lovecraftian book.  I said that you would, and you wouldn't want to make me a big fibber now would you?

In other news, I've recently discovered the mightily splendid Procreate for the iPad.  If you are in any way interested in creating comics and own one of these infernal devices, then I strongly suggest that you make haste to grab an 'app' (I believe that's what the kids say?) of Procreate and a stylus pen - although it is surprisingly easy to use with your bare digits.  This is about as close as you'd want to get to a version of Photoshop on the iPad and is super-duper to use.
I've been tinkering with it for about a week, and really believe that I could put together a snappy comic with it - without having to trouble my drawing board.  From a screen resolution point of view, I think that I may struggle to get more than 3 or 4 panels to a page, but this may be down to my chunky scribbles.  It will be interesting to see the paper print quality of some of the stuff I'm putting together, but for a web comic it's truly great.  I only need someone to put together an IOS version of Illustrator and I might never turn my PC on again (only joking my trusty machine)....

I'm toying with the idea of a BIG digital project at the moment, and will attach a couple of quick jpegs from my initial scribblings.  This page and a half took me about an hour to put together - all without having to leave the comfort of the settee.

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.
RT

Sleepy time time

Ahoy chums,

Colouring-in stuff for you this week.  I recently submitted some pages for a paid superhero comics job (which I didn't get by the way), so I thought I'd post them here.  They may well end up in the gallery section of the trade paperback yet, but I'm sure the author won't mind me putting them on my mighty blog.

A cover test and a page for you, the two delicate readers of my blog.  It was an interesting pitch though, and all good practise in meeting a tight deadline.

(Do you know?  Even if I do say so myself, that's a nifty hand what I have drawn on yellow/blue suited chap in the cover test)

In other news, I shall be having some piccies published in a forth-coming collection of poems for children.  'Born to Giggle' is compiled by Ian Billings and features a very loverly cover by the equally loverly Hunt Emerson.  It's all to raise money for Save the Children, so dig deep.  I'll let you all know when it's piblished as well as published.
   

 

Phew and indeed phew.

RT

Messy, messy pencils

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that I'm a bit of a messy penciller. This doesn't make me a bad person though.

Yep, this week has been yet more pencils for my comic (the very same comic which I could do with coming up with a title for).
Despite being a messy penciller, I'm nothing if not methodical. I know folk who jump about a script, tackling pages in any old order. My preferred method of working is to pencil an entire story start to finish before even thinking about the inking. I'm afraid that readers of this blog may have to put up with a couple of weeks of pencils therefore before they get to see any inky stuff.

As well as the comic, I've been doing some painting as well as dipping into my sketchbook. I'll post some piccies of the painting when it's safe to do so, but for now I'll post a quick sketch of the Creeper. I plan to ignore the slightly dodgy anatomy and use this for some much needed inking practice...

Until next time chums.....

Another week.....

.....another post.

Right then, so what have I been working on this week then?

I'm currently working on a comic of my very own which I'm hoping to get together in time for the British Comics Show. There's going to be a few late nights ahead to get it together, but if nothing else, I'll be a few pages better off in my portfolio.

Anyway, it's all scripted and laid out, and I'm currently wading through pencils.





Fun, fun, fun eh? I'll post more stuff as the weeks progress...

As a final treat this week, I'll post an inking sample to balance up the pencils. Yep, it's everyone's favourite mutant. These are my inks over Joe Ward's pencils, and is my first foray into digital inking using my Wacom tablet. As test pieces go, I'm quite chuffed with it.



Once again chums, any comments criticisms etc will be gratefully received.