The Infamous Five Squared

Before I got fired from my job - oh, did I tell you guys I got fired? I got fired. Before that, I was standing around drawing. This was not the reason I got fired. It was an art shop. We could, occasionally, get away with drawing. Occasionally. We just had to remember it was a shop sometimes.

We would demonstrate products to customers using a small pad of A6 paper. I'd often nab one of these pads to doodle in during quiet moments, and during one of these quiet moments I doodled one of The Infamous Five. Then I doodled another one. Eventually, I decided it would be a good idea to draw each member of the five, five times.

I stopped thinking this was a good idea by the tenth drawing, but I'd already started so now I had to finish. And here they are.



The goal was that each pose represents who they are entirely as a character, their personality communicated purely by what you're looking at. So that right away you would know the type of character they are. You wouldn't need to read a bio and could tell each character is vastly different to the other.

I didn't want to use too many props, to just work with body expressions. Complete improv using only their nature. Although at one point I got bored and went all in with the props. Ha. Each row has a theme.

1. Infamously Casual - How they mostly behave.
2. Infamous Hand Jobs - The hand gestures they use.
3. Infamous Stand Jobs - Even standing is unique.
4. Infamous Props - The shit they use.
5. Infamously Sexy - I kinda messed this one up...

...with the exception of Ant, the middle guy, who I imagine really would think rubbing his nipples is sexy to others, I just drew the rest in feminim poses. 'cos it amused me.

Infamous Fizz

There really is no better expression of who these characters are then having them burst out of a bottle of booze. Plus, it ends this illustrative trilogy with a bang! Or at least a pop. I can manage a pop. Hre's the previous two if you've missed them:

Infamous Flight
Infamous Puke

I like drawing expressive hands, and that unexpectedly became key to this drawing. I don't think bursting out of the bottle would have been enough to make this interesting, and then each character's hand can express who they are individually. Except for Ant's of course, who nabbed what he perceives as his rightful place, lazing at the top.

I almost left Tony's hand hanging lazily by his side to potray his apathetic attitude but it made the drawing look unbalanced, and it made him seem unengaged and unfriendly. I see him as wearied by the world, not entirely detached. You can still value things, even if you've stopped believing they will actually happen. Like being a professional artist for example. Wheeeeeeyy! Oh I made myself sad. Time for real booze.

Infamous Puke

My first post of 2016! Starting off weird. My thinking behind this piece was just to draw the Infamous Five characters in a way we haven't seen yet. I... don't think we've seen any characters anywhere like this.

Back in September I posted Infamous Flight and said it was one of a trilogy, but couldn't find the time to complete the other two. The great thing about a new year is that you put more effort into shit you want to do, with the intention of spending the rest of the year like that. That attitude usually peters out halfway through January. So I better get the final piece finished before then.

You can read The Infamous Five comic at theinfamousfive.com!

Infamous Flight

Back in June I shared my sketch book, the one I scribbled in desperately whilst my energy was sapped by a "real job". It was a student shop in East London you may recall, and shortly after that contract ended the company that owned it sent me to another one they had in central London. It was nice, but TINY. I had been working in the flagship store and now I'd been sent to what appeared to be the unfertalised egg of a shop.

Oddly, it was in two parts. The second was located in another part of the university. It also tiny, but longer. Like a sperm? How far do I want to go with this reproduction metaphor? The manager did tell me they were planning to merge the shops into one. The miracle of life/retail.

The staff only totaled 4 when I arrived and the number of customers weren't much higher. Summer, you know. Usually the university was packed with rich foriegn students. So even though the shop was tiny, the unversity itself was VERY grand. It made East London look crummy, and I already thought that before seeing this place. It was a real eye-opener to the disparity between rich and poor. Not that I fought the power or anything. I just peed in the shiney bathrooms and ate in the wood-panel walls of the brasserie, a word I don't think I ever quite pronounced correctly. I really enjoyed sketching in that place, and what I sketched were The Infamous Five.

I have a little trilogy of Infamous drawings, all of them as non-sensical as this one. I've decided to colour them all. The third one is the biggest, but the next one is the weirdest.

Infamous Comic #39

Here's the latest installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! The group finally find out why Ant is so insistent on them having a gang name, and what it means for them. Click here to read!

Infamous Comic #39

Here are the inks for the latest page of my comic The Infamous Five, which you can read now at theinfamousfive.com!

The Infamous Five: Suggestions

Here are the sketch and inks for the latest page of my comic The Infamous Five, go read the complete thing now at their website theinfamousfive.com!

Infamous Comic #36

Read at theinfamousfive.com!

Infamous Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary of my comic The Infamous Five! Here are the inks to the 'front cover' I put together for their first storyline. Head on over to theinfamousfive.com to see it in colour and discover the title!

Infamous Comic #36

Here are the sketch and inks to the 36th installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! Visit their website to read today's discussion: Women's Issues. You should probably read the comic before you read any more of this blog 'cos it'll ruin the joke otherwise. See you in a minute!

Welcome back! Did you even leave? Whatever.

This one took a little extra work, as I needed to draw a woman on the front of Ant's magazine. I could have just draw a pair of boobs and been done with it, but I wasn't sure if that was enough. Boobs would have been enough for Ant but I meant artistically, it would just look better if I drew a woman on the cover. Also I think that, even though Ant's dialogue in the comic makes it clear what he's looking at, it'd make the joke work better if you saw what he was looking at too.

Now the magazine was too small to draw a woman directly onto it so I drew them both separately on A4-sized documents and will share those drawings in full at some point. Yeah, I said them and those. I ended up drawing two naked ladies when I decided there should be one on the back cover too. I could have left it blank, it wouldn't have looked bad, but again I just thought it would look better and help the joke if there was just an abundance of naked ladies by the time we reached the last panel.

Okay, they're not entirely naked. I did draw them that way, but I realised it wasn't necessary. I'm not sure magazines even have boobs and bums on the covers. So I put them both in bikinis. And it's a good job I did, because I then remembered I even put that in the funking dialogue. "The swimsuit edition".

COME ON, GNAR.

Infamous Comic 35

Here are the sketch and inks to the 35th installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five!

Infamous Comic #34

Here are the sketch and inks to the 34th installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! Visit their website to read today's discussion: Syria.

Infamous Comic #33

These are the sketch and inks to the latest strip of my webcomic The Infamous Five! Visit their website to read today's pub discussion: Ben Affleck as Batman.

Infamous Comic #32, Sketch and Ink

Here's the sketch and ink to the 32nd installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five!

Infamous Comic #31, Sketch and Inks

Here are the sketch and inks to the 31st installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! Today's discussion is the 'N' word.

Sketch and inks to the 30th strip of my webcomic The Infamous Five!

Infamous Comic #28

Here are the sketch and inks for the 28th installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! It's classic comedy today as the group discuss a dog with no nose. Go have a read.

The Infamous Five #27

The 27th installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! Today the group discuss Television's The Apprentice. Which is on tonight, coincidentally. Except not that coincidentally. I finished this comic a few days ago but decided to wait 'til today. Except not quite waited, I mainly delayed posting 'cos I kept changing the final line.

Infamous Comic #26

Sketch and inks for the 26th installment of my webcomic The Infamous Five! Craig and Tony discuss Justin Bieber.

Infamous Comic #25, Sketch and Inks

Here are the sketch and inks to #25 of my webcomic The Infamous Five!