Saturday 29 December 2012

A Little Birthday Blog

Did you enjoy Christmas? Well don't stop celebrating yet because there's one more thing to enjoy! No not New Year, shut up, tomorrow's my birthday! Jesus asked if I wanted to do a double party but I said let's both have our moments, one for the righteous lord and the other one for Jesus. We have different friends anyway, plus our dads got into a fight once.

As excited as I am for my birthday, I will be 28 and that's weird. Why? Well there's this thing called Club 27. See, an unusual amount of artistic talent died at the age of 27. Thus they were immortalised as brilliant tortured geniuses. Jimmy Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin… That's creative genius of course, not the useful kind. So all this year I've been thinking to myself "If I want to be one of those hyper-cool artistic geniuses, I better start living dangerously. Maybe I should start having sugar in my tea?"

There was also the small matter of doing something genius… I like my cartoons and comics but they're not quite up there with Purple Haze. Oh that’s the other problem of course, Club 27 is full of musical talent. A cartoonist might seem out of place. Maybe I could hand out the Pringles or something? On the plus side, at least my talents won’t be vastly over-rated by mourning fans. I'd much rather have everyone alive know me for my crap! Wait, what.

Seriously though, this is a really weird transition. Back in college, things were music-centric. I was going to add 'for me' but I reckon it's like that for everyone. You're young, you're making new friends and you all want to be vastly cool, and alongside the newest names in music (that you all swear you knew before anyone else) the old names are circling round. You grow up with them, they're known by everyone and there's idolisation going on. Perhaps, to a horrible extent I don't approve of, Godhood. Even if you don't like them, they're cemented in musical history. And now I’m gonna be older than those people? It’s weird. How can I be older than Gods? And still feel vastly uncool.

10 minutes. Time for some tea and a spoonful of- no, no I can't. Tea is meant to be refreshing, not a sugar hit! The bouncer of Club 27 knows my I.D is fake and that I've got a bottle hidden in my sleeve.

Well, it's time to find other people to idolise. I hear Stan Lee turned 90 yesterday? Okay. He'll do. 

Saturday 22 December 2012

Comic #12, Sketch and Inks



Here's the sketch and inks for the 12th comic of The infamous Five!

Remember last week when I said I wanted to avoid drawing the entire cast in a small panel again? Well I drew the entire cast in a small panel again. I had no choice! There was a lot of dialogue and even though they're just sitting, I don't want the characters stuck in one pose for a long time.

Panel 3 was fun to draw, because it wasn't drawing someone acting out their dialogue. It was just Ant getting Elliot's attention. I'd like to have that more, humour based just on how a character is posed.

As I mentioned on The Infamous Five website, this was the LAST comic of 2012! It'll return next year, however this blog will remain active with sketches, stuff, whatever I'm in the mood for. It'll actually be good just to draw miscellaneous things for a while.

Friday 14 December 2012

Comic #11, Sketch and Inks


Here's the sketch and inks for #11 of The Infamous Five! The 3rd panel was probably the most challenging as when I usually draw the whole cast, it's on a panel stretching across the whole page. This one had to be smaller to fit everything else. I managed it, though I'd still like to avoid doing that again in the future.

That said, the first thing I actually drew here was panel 6, where the logo is tormenting Lee. I had a specific image in mind and I wanted to make sure I got it right first before tiring myself out on the other stuff.

I really like Elliot in this one though. Him tearing off his shirt looks more dramatic than I thought it would, and he hasn't had enough opportunity to be silly yet.

Saturday 8 December 2012

Comic #10, Sketch and Ink



Here's the sketch and ink for the 10th comic of www.theinfamousfive.com!

So far in these comics each character has had at least one panel all to themselves and I wanted one for spikey-haired Lee to complete the set. I finally got to do it in this one, although it ended up weirder than I imagined.

Sunday 2 December 2012

Twitter



I hit my hundredth tweet over on Twitter! Or at least I will, when I tweet about this picture. Twitter is quite the phenomenon, becoming an unexpected platform for free speech. Or at least it was, until people started getting arrested for speeching freely.

Despite the number I don't actually tweet much, using it only to announce some new art on this blog or over at The Infamous Five website. So basically that means I go on Twitter to tell people to get off Twitter.

That's not what people want. Not really. Twitter isn't popular because people can finally talk about all that war and corruption they're angry about. It's popular because it brings you closer to the people you admire more than anything ever has in history. Your favourite actors, your favourite singers... No more of that spraying your clothes black to hide in the tree with the binoculars, celebrities are now directly on on YOUR friend list. Sending messages directly to YOU. But you don't care about their tweets for a new movie or song, you know, those things that got you interested in the first place. You want to know what they're doing! What they're thinking! To Hell with those slow gossip magazines, you've got Hugh Jackman just a click away about to tell you he's off to the beach! And look! He even instagramed a picture of himself in his trunks. All for you.

And not just that, celebrities LOVE that instant attention from a mass audience they start telling you their every meal, their every private thought and crazy mood. It's hot gossip direct from the source! Even newspapers report what these people say on Twitter as NEWS. But you had the celebrity's tweet on your feed first, and you know what? You even get to be a part of it. In fact, you have a new dream. You don't want to write a short story or learn guitar. You want to be retweeted by Stephen Fry. Every day you'll tweet him but does he ever see them? You hope so, you yearn for his attention the same way you used to yearn for a lover's caress.

And I can't give people that. Well I can give them a loving caress, but what I mean is, I'm not gonna tell you what I'm thinking. My thoughts go into writing like this. And I'm not gonna tell you how I'm feeling 'cos my feelings will go into a drawing like this. And as for photos of me at the beach? Well, maybe one day.

I'll keep using Twitter and the people who follow may have noticed me trying to loosen up about the whole thing. But Twitter wants to be it's own thing. You don't just 'say' something, you 'tweet' it. Your idea, your joke, it becomes a 'tweet' and that seems like a waste. I can't even bring myself to hashtag 'gnarlee' it just feels so tacky. Imagine it with anything else.

@shakespeare Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo? #horny

@churchill We shall never surrender. #bringiton

So yeah. There are my thoughts on Twitter. It was 2961 characters more than Twitter would allow. The one solace I can take from this, however, is that it'll probably be replaced by a new fad called 'Zabloot' or something. "I just got a Zabloot from Gnarlee! I can't wait to Zableet it to all my Zablaaters."