On Sunday, Jonathan Cape released ‘Shorties!’ their free eBook of the best of the Graphic Short Story Prize, an annual contest in which the winning entry is published in The Observer and the creator receives £1000. The collection contains the winning entries from the first 5 years of the prize and a selection of other entries chosen by none other than Bryan Talbot. I was very pleased when they asked to include my 2007 entry ‘Spilt Soda’ in the book. I can’t tell you how surprised, pleased, thrilled and honoured I was when they asked me if I would design and illustrate the cover. I have to thank editor Alex Bowler for taking such an interest in my work.

You can read ‘Shorties!’ online, download an iBooks version for your lovely tablet or print out the whole thing HERE.
Alternatively, you can read it all on The Guardian’s website here.

I told you November would be a busy month!

As a bonus, here are my roughs for the three ideas I sent to the editors:

Click for larger image.

Now that the self portrait exhibition at Orbital Comics in London (which I wrote about here) has finished I thought I’d show you what I sent along for it. Sadly I didn’t get to visit the exhibition but Sarah McIntyre has a fair few photos from the launch event and here’s a photo taken by Mike Leader of my piece in the exhibition itself.

This is my entry and it made it into the 24 Honorable Mentions/Runners Up! I was never expecting it to win, I knew the casual approach wouldn’t enthrall the full panel of judges, but I was very pleased to see it place so highly, joint 3rd in the runners up, making it joint 6th overall!

The first judge Vito got it right away “A teenager could very easily make this one. It’s fluid and freemoving (is that a word?) and looks…well, comfortable! I like this one a lot!” While the second judge Rachel said “The web-patterned socks are kind of adorable, and I kind of want a pair. The pants, however, are completely unacceptable.” Which led to a discussion about whether they were jeans, sweat pants or “yoga pants”. For the record I saw them as slim, not skinny, stretchy jeans, the type with lycra in the cotton. Maybe America hasn’t got them yet? The next two judges liked it too, getting the broke kid from Queens angle and one judge, Ron, gave it a 10 stating “Hands down my favorite… it feels very New York-y to me, in the best possible way.” Whether the judges loved it or not, they all seemed to see the humour in it and appreciated my modern take on the New York teenage superhero. Thanks for all the kind words, folks!

Process

Steve Ditko’s costume design is so bizarre and yet familiar it has become as iconic as any other. It was a real challenge to invent a new costume while still keeping it recognisable as Spider-Man and changing it enough from the original so it wasn’t simply a tweak of Ditko’s design.

I scribbled down as many ideas as I could. I wanted to keep the fun, friendly character rather than making him more like a spider or making him “edgy” so I chose the bright blue of the ’60s Spider-Man and a slightly magenta red to compliment it. I coloured my ideas with markers as I drew them. I’d mentioned on Twitter that I was taking part in redesigning Spider-Man and received a request, nay, a dare from Joe List to draw Spider-Man with cowboy boots, a tiny stetson, cufflinks, a fox tail and a bluetooth headset. I obliged.

Looking over my sketches I was torn between the casual, baseball jersey idea (New Yorkers love their baseball) and the full-on, spandex superhero costume with the black gloves and webbed armpits. I decided that the latter design was still quite close to Ditko’s and many other entrants would probably go that route, so I opted for the casual, hipster Spider-Man. I think the science nerd Peter Parker would dress in cooler, more fashionable clothes for his smart talking, fearless alter ego.

Click for larger image.

I tried a few colour ways which gave me the idea of including an alternate design with a hoody for the amusing Ben Reilly Scarlet Spider costume. For the final image I threw in an ’80s black and white suit version too. I also took some time to tweak the traditional webbing pattern, having it emanate out from his wrists and chose the organic web shooter method over the mechanical. I dropped the loose, v-shaped belt aspect at this point and the DNA strand inspired Spider logo.

For the pose I wanted something very athletic but also very Spidey that clearly said ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’. For the final image I chose one of Andrew C Mace‘s fantastic photographs of NYC for the background, as I really didn’t have the time to draw a NY cityscape. And here it is, the main redesign. I expect I’ll get a call from Stan Lee any day now…

Friendly Neighbourhood Spidey! Click for larger image.

The above is a detail of a something I drew up for this:

I think the poster is pretty self explanatory but you can click the image to have a nosey around Orbital’s website or say “I’ll be there” on the Facebook event page. I’m really hoping to make it down at some point during it’s run to see other approaches to self portraits from all those talented folk mentioned above.

And not content with being in one London exhibition I’ve sent some work along to this:

Yep, as well an exhibition in a comic shop there’s one in a record shop too! It’s been put together by We Are Words + Pictures and Sean Azzopardi. The other exhibitors are none other than Marc Ellerby, Jamie McKelvie, Tom Humberstone, Sean Azzopardi, Kristyna Baczynski, Francesca Cassavetti and John Cei Douglas. I have 8 pieces of music related artwork in the show, 7 comics and one illustration.

So, if you’re around London in the month of September and you like comics or music you have a very good chance of seeing some of my original work. And one’s a big drawing of my head! Who wouldn’t like that?

Richard Bruton over at Forbidden Planet International, wrote a hugely positive review of The Everyday Collection Four.

I was asked to contribute an illustration for Hype Machine’s Zeitgeist 2010 rundown of the top 50 Musical Artists of the year. I drew one of my favourites, The National who ranked at number 3. I’ve added this illustration to my Gallery too.

As part of Dan Berry’s wonderful ‘Snapshot Interviews’, I was interviewed over at his blog The Comics Bureau. Many of the comic artists and writers he interviewed were asked the same questions, so it’s interesting to compare the different backgrounds, processes and views on the current UK scene.

One of the Dan’s questions was “What does your workspace/studio look like?” so instead on describing it I took some photos of my studio in my new(ish) flat. Here’s a Flickr slideshow of them all.

I was also asked a single question as part of Avoid the Future’s One Question Interviews. On the back of my story in Solipsistic Pop 3, the question was about the influence of video games.

Speaking of Solipsistic Pop 3, since it’s launch at Thought Bubble Festival last November, I have completely neglected to promote it here on my blog. Well, if you’re a regular reader you should know by now that SolPop is the foremost anthology of UK comics talent. Volume 3 has an all ages theme inspired by the comics of our youth, The Beano and The Dandy etc. I have a 2 page autobiographical story drawn in a Beano style called ‘The Best Day of My Life (So Far)’ which opens the book, after Marc Ellerby’s wonderful Chloe Noonan cover comic (concluding on the back of course). I’ve put page 1 of my story in my Gallery.

The book got numerous reviews back in November, of note are the FPI review and Paul Gravett included it in his ‘Great British Comics Now’ feature saying my story was “A strong opener” and “…warm without being sentimental.” All 3 volumes of Solipsistic Pop are available in the SolPop Shop.

I’ve redesigned the site a little bit and added a Blood Blokes section with a fancy preview  of issue 1 which will be coming out sometime this year. I’ve also added a few recent illustrations to my Gallery, the complete 6 page comic ‘The Tears of Tommy Cooper’ from Solipsistic Pop 2 and a few pages of a Lego Pirates comic I did for Lego and Kickers.

This came about through We Are Words + Pictures who organised a comics workshop at Legoland Live last Summer. Myself, Kayla Hillier and Mike Leader were paid to go to Legoland in Windsor for 2 days one sunny weekend in July and encourage kids to draw comics. It was awesome. There’s a full report on the WAW+P blog. After which I added extra story and activity pages and coloured it all, ready for kids to download. Though now it’s finally done I’ve not be told where online Kickers have put it! I could write a whole other blog post about the back and forth involved in dealing with two large companies at the same time, but I won’t. Instead here’s a photo of the Lego I just had to buy for reference and one of me at Legoland (more photos at the WAW+P blog).

“Aarrrgh, me hearties, we’re tax deductable! Aargh!”

I think that about covers it for all the 2010/very early 2011 news. Thanks for reading my humble blog and I hope you enjoy all the work I’m planning on unleashing in 2011.

4 of 4 character portraits from my upcoming comic ‘Blood Blokes’.

3 of 4 character portraits from my upcoming comic ‘Blood Blokes’.

2 of 4 character portraits from my upcoming comic ‘Blood Blokes’.

Number 3 next Monday!

1 of 4 character portraits from my upcoming comic ‘Blood Blokes’.