The GagaMan (n) Is In.

Tea N Crumpets is now thegagaman.co.uk

2012-01-22T20:52:00.001Z

Howdy howdy howdy. If you follow me elsewhere such as on Twitter and my more frequently updated Tumblr page, you may of seen me talking about re-branding my website. If not basicilly I've wanted to ditch the maketeanotwar and Tea N Crumpets branding for a while and just now I did it.

I am going to kind of miss it, plus some things like my current business card still have that domain on them, but the domain is still valid for another year so it'll still be usable until it expires. One of the reasons I wanted a change is both maketeanotwar and Tea N Crumpets do not bring up the website straight away on Google. Lots of companies have made t-shirts and the like with Make Tea Not War on them that show up first and the address doesn't really mean all that much anyway, it was just something catchy.

Now I'm going with what I am best known as, simply thegagaman. While this does bring up quite a few links about Lady Gaga supposedly being a bloke plenty of my stuff shows up too.

The new home page features a new version of my logo trademark thingy that used to be mainly associated with Manga-Gaga, which I put together in Illustrator recently. I'm looking to build some new up to date pages for the site in the near future. Got quite a few interesting things coming up soon, including new animation so watch this space in the coming week or so!

Art Summary 2011

2011-12-19T13:09:00.002Z

Art Summary 2011: AKA the year I finally got the hang of Illustrator and never turned back. Not quite as active of a year for art or animating as last year, but still a pretty good one and in a quite a few cases the art lead to great things, like prizes!

Note: these are placed under the months I was working on them, not when some were published some time later.

January: Started work on Next Film festival Ident, which was done and released by March. Not a lot of illustration, just the odd doodling.

February: A few illustrations, one for a collab that never happened and another a Valentines card which was also my first proper go at using Illustrator in years. was mainly working on the animation at this time.

March: Completed and released animation online. Also discovered some older animation of mine in print. Did a new Animals Packing Heat and a new bloggomic, but not much else.

April: My animation for the film festival got featured in a bunch of local newspapers! Made a big Rabbids pic for Stacey's birthday. Done a few doodles including another bloggomic.

May: The film festival was this month with quite a lot of exposure for my animation in printed form and shown at every screening! Put together a 10th anniversary picture of Manga-Gaga as a timed exclusive print and a new Animals Packing Heat for my first comic village table at MCM in London, which went pretty well and I even did a couple commissions there. Joined Tumblr at this time too, which admittedly I use a lot more than here now.

June: Had my Rabbids art printed in the official magazine, which was nice. Sonic's 20th Anniversary and Summer of Sonic were this month so I put together a series of illustrations to sell as prints for the event. Also started a favourite characters meme which I never got around to continuing.

July: Not a whole lot. Did a Darkstalkers fan art, a new bloggomic and the odd doodle.

August: Worked on and entered a Rayman origins art contest. By now had really got used to Illustrator. Took some sketches from last year and inked and coloured some of them up, including turning one into a daft GIF. Also two bloggomics.

September: Was one of the two top winners on the Rayman art contest, which got me a trip to Eurogamer and a copy of the game! Designed a new business card and made another animated GIF art.

October: Despite the next MCM Expo being on the way at the end of the month, got struck with artists block, so much so I tried to force myself out of it by asking peeps on Tumblr to suggest stuff for me to doodle. Got my flow back a bit when at the expo however which helped out for the next couple months.

November: Worked on and entered a Sonic CD art contest. Inked a few doodles from a while back and put together a Gumball fan art with Sharpie pens.

December: Was one of the 50 Europe winners from the Sonic CD contest! Did three card designs this month (just one yet to be released). Also did a dumb sonic run animation and inked some dumb xmas comic I sketched last year.

Xmas Card 2011

2011-12-18T12:49:00.002Z

Seems like a good time as any to post this years Christmas card. Done in Illustrator and Photoshop, I swear I can’t live without those anymore.

Happy whatever you celebrate at this time of the year!

Dumb Santa Comic

2011-12-18T12:47:00.000Z

Bloggomic - Suitcase

2011-10-26T12:33:00.001+01:00

New bloggomic. This happens semi-regularly. No I don’t go on holiday a lot but weekends at Stacey’s require a suitcase fulla clothes and bits.

MCM Expo this coming weekend! See you there!

2011-10-24T12:53:00.000+01:00

MCM Expo is under week away, starting this Friday! We now know where our table will be so look for us in this top-ish (or bottom-ish) corner if you’re going! We both have quite a chunk of new stuff to offer (especially Stacey) so come have a butchers! See more details about it here and of course at the official MCM website.

Eurogamer Expo 2011 - Game Impressions

2011-09-28T13:52:00.000+01:00

We played quite a lot of the games on show at the Eurogamer Expo, or at least a majority of the ones we were interested in. A lot of the games that were getting huge queues like Skyrim and all the first person shooters were not on our interest list (that's right, boo at this man) so excluding the PSVita we didn't have to queue up much. Here's what i thought of the games I checked out.

Sonic Generations - They had both Green Hill and City Escape to try out on both PS3 and 360. I was told these were quite old builds most likely from E3 which would explain why the PS3 version still had a bit of input lag and looked a bit fuzzier than the 360 version. Still, had good fun with it, especially City Escape act 2 with the batshit truck with saws chasing after you! Of course I am a wee bit bias when it comes to Sonic games mind, at least I have been since they started getting good again last year. I don't think Stacey was all that crazy on it (as someone who mainly only played the Mega Drive and Dreamcast Sonic games) but I think that was mainly due to the input lag of the PS3 version which is understandable. Hopefully that will all be fixed by launch which according to staff already has been.

This is very much a game for Sonic fans first and foremost, I'm not sure how people who haven't played the series for years will react to it, but as far as I'm concerned it's got Mega Drive style gameplay as well as Sonic Unleashed/Colours style gameplay which while somewhat simplistic is quite the roller-coaster ride.

This is gonna be a looong post, so more after the jump.

Rayman Origins - The reason we were even here for the most part thanks to the contest, and because Stacey is such a fan we obviously played this quite a lot. There we were three levels, or parts of three levels for all I know, and due to one of the 360s crashing at one point we saw that it was a demo from E3 so again quite an old build. It was very slick and pretty though, and played wonderfully. The game allows for up to 4 players but they only had 2 player machines set up, we were told however there will be 4 player set ups at MCM next month!

When we first played it in 2 player it felt a bit sloppy, kind of like how multi player in New Super Mario Brothers Wii did, but after a few gos of it on out own and together we soon got the hang of it and kept discovering new moves and secret paths. For example we found that one of the triggers held makes you run faster, and you can use this to run up walls, even directly upwards. Comparisons to that Mario game are defiantly going to be made: right down to how when someone dies they float about to be revived by the others, but I honestly enjoyed this far more than that game. Once it clicks it is very smooth and feels just right which for a game that requires such accurate jumping about is a must.

Tin Tin - Based on the upcoming game, this other Ubisoft platformer of the expo was an odd one, not really sure what to make of it. Unlike most platformers based on kids movies this one was 2.5D and very old school like, which would have been awesome if it didn't look so weird, like it doesn't know if it wants to look realistic or like a cartoon so it's somewhere in between, though that might be more the fault of the movie it is based on. Controls were a bit strange for some of the puzzles and without instructions popping up on screen you'd never figure out the button combinations on your own first time. It was kind of awfully funny looking, if that makes any sense. makes a change from the usual licensed platformers at least. There was also a Playstation Move airplane stage but I didn't get around to trying that.

Joe Danger: The Movie - A sequel to the superb (and at times hard as nails) Playstation network game Joe Danger, this time it will be released on Xbox Live Arcade as well which is good as the more people that get to play this wonderful tribute to retro gaming the better! Not much has changed for the previous game: it looks the same, sounds the same and plays the same, except this time you have lots of different vehicles to ride instead of just a motorbike, all of which have their own attributes and slightly different controls. There was a mine cart, rockets, Skis and many more. if you didn't or couldn't play the first game you defiantly check out this sequel when it hits, especially if you enjoy old school score based games.

Awesomenauts - Right next to Joe danger was another PSN/XBLA game which had some rather neat 2D cartoon graphics and was a 3 vs 3 online combat game with all sorts of different character classies and weapons. I played it with two other guys who I belive may of been the developers and wasn't doing very good at it myself but still had fun with it. The shooting controls were almost excatly like Metal Slugs which is always a good thing though the shop items didn't really make a whole lot of sense, the way they were worded anyway.

The Indie Arcade - There was some really intriguing games in here, although I didn't get time to try them all. I think my favorite was probably Fotonica: it was a wireframe first-person platformer/racer of sorts that used just the one button held down for running and letting go of that button to jump. it just felt right if that makes any sense, like what the platforming in Mirrors Edge should have felt like. It was really satisfying to reach new heights on the scenery and you could always 9well, almost always) tell where you were going to land.

Another game I played a bit of was Pinapple Smash Crew which reminded me a lot of Cannon Fodder and someone had named one of the players in the games 'JOOLS' which is beautiful. It had chunky pixel 3D graphics with fantastic explosions though the controls took some getting used to I guess. Really Big Sky was a really pretty shmup but it was actually quite difficult to distinguish the enemies and the bullets from the background, that and there were odd moments where there were no enemies for ages. Maybe I just sucked at it, haha.

These Robotic Hearts of Mine was a simple pixel art based puzzle game that soon become fiendishly difficult and definatly a goodun for the old brain matter. There was some other iPad jewel puzzle versus game but i can't remember the name of it and it's not on the Eurogamer Expo site! I really wish I had got around to playing some more of the games here, and the others on the website also look fantastic.

Super Mario 3D Land - Was expecting good things from the Mario galaxy team and it was indeed rather good. While I'm still not sold on the 3D screen, mainly because of how you have to hold it at a specific angle otherwise it illusion is broken, but the game was a neat blend of both 3D and 2D Mario platforming elements with some interesting camera angles that actually befitted from the 3D depth, though there were times when I ended up walking behind platforms by accident.

They had 3 levels and a boss to try out and while the level design was interesting I found the controls of Mario a little stiffer than in the Galaxy games, and the button placement for the run was a bit awkward. Otherwise it looked superb and certainly one of the better 3DS games so far.

Mario Kart 7 - Only played this for a short moment. It's Mario Kart, what else is there to say? There are now hang-gliding and submarine parts which seemed like an odd inclusion but at least they are trying some new ideas. I'm not as big fan of this series as most mainly due to the random luck of some of it but I'm sure it will be just as good as previous entries. had to turn the 3D off for this though, didn't really help me at all.

Kid Icarus - I never really liked the original NES game but this new entry is an entirely different beast, with only really the title and main character in common. I liked the flying segment I tried as it reminded me of Space Harrier though the controls for aiming with the stylus meant you were only gripping the 3DS with one hand while also moving the character with the thumb-stick. Would be afraid of dropping it! wasn't quite so keen on the ground combat,a nd again the 3D didn't really help so I tuned it off. It looked alright anyway, with very nice graphics.

Playstation Vita - well this was an odd way of presenting Sony's upcoming hand held. This was the only thing we queued up for and when we got to the front they gave you a card with a random game on it to try out: I got Littlebigplanet and Stacey got er...a snooker game. They then partnered up with a staff member who would tell us about the system while we were playing it. It was a slightly awkward experience and if I'm honest while the handheld was impressive (especially the screen) LBP was just..LBP again with nothing to really distinguish it from the PS3 one other than the touch screen controls for gimmicky bits.

The rear touch pad didn't work, at least with this game, as I was expecting; while the tocuh screen on the front works as you'd imagine the back one had a cursor pop up on screen and you had to drag your finger about rather than just tapping, probably because you cant actually see what you're tapping otherwise. It was...odd. maybe other games will implement it better. So for now not entirely sold on the system although that probably wasn't the best game to try and impress me with as LBP has always been something I've been a bit indifferent towards (neither love or hate it).

Anarchy Regins - Fun new multiplayer beat 'em up from Platinum games of Bayonetta fame. They had four systems set up linked together with online play and there were a lot of characters to try out: I tried out both a big blue transforming robot guy and a fat pig/lizard type bloke. We sucked at it but it was great fun jumping about lobbing folk lift trucks at each other and doing all sorts of crazy moves. We've needed more Power Stone like combat games for a while so this will fill that hole and I will be defiantly checking it out when it's due out in January.

Saints Row the Third - I didn't get around to playing this myself but did watch Hannah play quite a bit of it. Let's just say this game was er...classy. never really taken notice of this series before but it's essentially Grand Theft Auto but much, much sillier. You could customize your blokes costume with all sorts of weird garments like huge animal heads and cheerleader outfits then run about the streets randomly beating up people and stealing cars, not sure if there was an actual aim to it or if it was just some sort of free play mode. Best of all, or worst depending on your opinion, was that one of the weapons you could pick was a long, pink dildo to whack people with. Yes, as said: classy. It was a good laugh though and I'm sure it'd make a great rental.

The House of the Dead Overkill Extended Cut - A port of the Wii game from a couple years ago which I loved, and not a lot has changed here except for the HD graphics and apparently some extra levels twhich were not playable here. There was only one level to try out and admittedly it was probably one of the least interesting in the original game but still fun enough, though a big chunk of the level was cut from this demo to save time I guess. The boss you could fight, the Screamer, somehow took a lot longer for everyone to beat in this version, maybe because every time you missed the creature you would get a dragged out scene of her clawing out of the screen as such and screaming at you, hands swinging towards you. I take it this is a gimmick for when you play it in 3D.

It played as well as a light gun should though I would rather play it with the Move controller on it's own rather than it connected to a big silly gun attachment that they had which I found made it more cumbersome. Interesting note: excluding a level in the Tintin game this was the only Playstation Move game on show, yet that was still more games than there were for the Wii at the show: Zelda Skyward Sword and...that's it I think.

I think that will do. There were some other games but these were the highlights for me really. For example I did give Journey a go and while it was darn pretty I had no idea what to do and there was no staff about explaining how to play it. i'll shut up now. Videos coming later today with any luck!

Eurogamer Expo 2011 - Summary

2011-09-25T19:46:00.002+01:00

So the first half of the prize I won from Ubisoft and RaymanPC occured over the weekend: the trip to Eurogamer Expo in Earl's Court, London! We already had tickets pre-ordered a while back for the Saturday so we had those tickets changed into Thursday ones so we could be there a total of three days and meet up with a friend of Stacey's who was also celebrating her Birthday!

The place was huge and luckily not as overly packed as other expos we had been to, and we had no trouble getting onto the majority of games we wanted to try out. The most popular games by far were Battlefield 3 and Skyrim; a good thing we weren't interested in those then! Boo this man, they say.

Read the rest after the jump!

I was a little disappointed that there appeared to be less games here then there was at GAMEfest in Birmingham last year (which we didn't go to for obvious reasons of it being far far away from us); for example the 3DS version of Sonic Generations was absent as was Mario & Sonic at the London Olympic Games which is odd considering well..this was in London. The layouts were also not quite so fancy as the ones I saw photos of there. Still, there was plenty to check out including some surprises. I will post about the games we played and what I thought of them another time.

One of most pleasant surprises was the massive retro gaming section set up by the Replay Expo guys which takes place in Blackpool yearly. Darn, too far for us again. Here there were dozens of classic computers, arcade machines and consoles including not one but two Vectrexs, a BBC Micro with a new indie game on it and best of all a 10 player set up of Saturn Bomberman! This was the 2nd time I had seen this game set up this way since the Game On exhibit a few years back. I'm a bit of a retro gamer more than anything as you know, so we spent a good chunk of our time there.

The main game that we came to see was of course Rayman Origins as it was the first time we got to have a go at it, and it did not disappoint.We also met up with the guys from Ubisoft who had arranged the contest to thank them and have a chat with them; apparently all the art entries were passed around by e-mail to a lot of people from all over the company to vote on their favorite, including the actual developers of the game including quite possibly Michel Ancel, creator of Rayman! Commence high pitched squeals of joy.

The Friday night was when we stayed in a hotel just a short walk from the event; we checked in in the early afternoon after being at the expo for a few hours, and after we went to a Wetherspoons pub in Westminster for some dinner and a cocktail we popped back to the hotel to watch some Million pound drop and sleep. We also had breakfast there the next morning before checking out and heading back to the expo for the third and final day of our journey, of which was Stacey's day to shine in her Betilla the Fairy costume which she had improved from the last time she wore it at MCM!

There wasn't all that many cosplayers at Eurogamer, at least certainly not in comparison to MCM but then this was a different kind of expo all together I suppose. The costume went down well with quite a few photos taken although a few people thought she was dressed as a Zelda character! We also met with Raygirl, the other winner for the contest who had also stayed at the hotel with her sister and hang with us for a good chunk of the day playing more including an epic 8 player game of Saturn Bomberman and many of our favorites again. We head off back home about 5-ish, feet sore and tired but so glad we went. Good times!

Will post more here about the expo soon including impressions of some of the games and even some videos I took when I get time to edit them together! For the time being check out all the photos I took here!

A winner is me. Blimey.

2011-09-14T18:38:00.001+01:00

Ubisoft have been rather lovely to me lately. First they printed my rabbids art in the official fan club magazine, and now this!

The above art was my entry for a contest run by the Rayman Pirate Community, which is not a website for people that burn CD-Rs of Rayman games but rather the biggest Rayman fanbase on the net. I made this quite a few weeks back but i didn't want to reveal it until the results were in which were today and what do you know..I won! I was one of two top winners, the other being a friend of ours Hanna! I gotta say I'm pretty gobsmacked!

The top prize was a trip for two to the entirety of EuroGamer Expo which is on next week from Thursday to Sunday in Earls Court in London. This includes travel and a hotel! The prize also includes a copy of Rayman Origins and a goodie bag full of bits and bobs. Cor!

This was all done in Illustrator, excluding the character colour and some of the background colouring and effects which were done in Photoshop.

The crazy background took a lot of experimentation in both Photoshop and Illustrator and I'm really pleased with the result. Would you believe it started out as being based on the Ubisoft logo! Also I finally discovered how custom brushes in Illustrator works so the line art is much more natural looking than previous attempts in the program. All in all I really enjoyed working on this piece more than anything else I've done this year so far and I think aiming for a deadline and entering it into a contest helped a lot.

Update: Full details have been sent to me by Ubisoft, we're going to be there on Friday and Saturday.

QR Codes!

2011-09-01T14:13:00.000+01:00

Well here's something I've wanted to try out in quite some time: QR codes! I've set this one up so I can get it printed on my new business card which I will start designing sometime soon in time for the MCM Expo in October.

So anyway here they are! They both link to the same page which has links to a majority of my web links, my e-mail and other things. One is just a smaller version with a shorter URL. I have yet to get a QR code reader on my phone but friends on Twitter tested them and said they worked so there you go!

Attending MCM London Expo in October!

2011-09-01T14:07:00.003+01:00

Just to let you guys and girls know that me and Stacey will have a table at the MCM London Expo once again on October the 28th-30th. same Gaga time, same Gaga place! Well roughly, not sure what table we have excatly yet but I'll let you know as soon as I know!

We will have all the same wares we had last time along with a bunch of new prints and maybe more! For reference:

Large badges (Lucy lolly and make Tea Not war designs): £1
Small badges (10 designs in total): 50p or 12 for £5
Lucy Lolly DVD: £4
A4 prints: 70p or 5 for £3
7 X 5" prints: 50p each or 12 for £5
8 X 6" prints: 70p each or all 3 designs for £2
10 X 8" print (make tea not war): £1

The 8X6 prints include the Manga-Gaga 10th Anniversary print from last time as well as a few new ones including another piece that will debut at the Expo, which I haven't decided on yet.

Will also be doing on the spot commissions again, sketches for £3 and inked for £5. You can also 'order' art to be done after the expo and sent to you with these rates:

Sketch £3
Inked £5
Inked + Photoshop colour £10
Vectored (Illustrator) and Photoshop Colour £20

and if you want more than one character on a picture each character will cost you less.

I hope to see you there again or for the first time! :)

Bloggomic - Zoo

2011-08-23T20:11:00.000+01:00

New Bloggomic. Both these things did happen (except the lemur talking part anyway). The latter was a show where they showed off some animals and the lemur just took a mooch around the audience and walked right under us!

Btw yes I do mainly post on my Tumblr account now but I haven't forgotten about this blog entirely!

Bloggomic - Mike Pollock

2011-07-13T15:58:00.002+01:00

Better late than never I suppose. In case you're wondering what this is even about check out this post from Sega Memories.

Manga-Gaga 10th Anniversary

2011-07-01T12:32:00.001+01:00

From one anniversary to the next! This time 10 years ago was when I started up my first website and my first and last webcomic Manga-Gaga, though when about this time 10 years ago is a bit foggy.

You see, I actually have no clue when the website started, all i know was it was sometime around summer time in 2001, and the comic didn't start on the website until the autumn I think. This is what i get for not dating the earliest posts on the site!

The comic and website ended in 2006, so it was only actually going for 5 years, but it's been 10 years since I had a crack at a webcomic which started out as mainly in jokes for friends online and eventually grew a plot of some sort. It was pretty much nonsense from beginning to end, but people enjoyed it and I had fun writing it even if some of it is kind of embarrassing to look back at now.

I illustrated this as an exclusive print for the MCM Expo because i knew a few peeps that were fans of the comic when it was around were going to pop by to my table, so I thought this would be a treat.

It was actually quite fun to draw these guys again, including some in this picture who were never seen in colour before. I can still draw a majority of this lot from pure memory.

Also, before anyone one accuses me of stealing poses (which I admittedly did do from time to time with some of the old MGGG art) this is a intentional parody of this FLCL illustration: [link] At first I was going to do a more obvious spoof of a End of Evangelion poster but I thought this was more appropriate to the tone of the comic (read: bat shit nutty).

So yeah just wanted to see if I could still draw in this style again if I never needed to. I don't think I will be going back to making webcomics any time soon or ever though, I'm not really much of a writer, I prefer to just do the drawing side of things.

Happy 20th Birthday Sonic the Hedgehog

2011-06-23T00:55:00.000+01:00

Don't normally plug a post from my other Blog Sega Memories here, but this time it can double as a art blog post. Sonic the Hedgehog, quite possibly the biggest influence in my life from a creative stand point, is now 20 years old since the first game was released. These started out as doodles in a sketchbook from last year that I decided to try a hand at vectoring them up, for me to brush up on my use of Illustrator. I finally think I'm starting to get used to it now, though I still have a long way until I figure how all the best tools and that.

Published art in Rabbids Magazine!

2011-06-21T15:58:00.001+01:00

Remember this art from a few months back? Well lookie where it has shown up!

In the official Rabbids fan Club Magazine! Not once but twice in fact, if you count the smaller image on the contents page!

I’ve known it was to be printed for around two months after I e-mailed them the art, but wanted to keep it a secret from Stacey so it’d be a surprise when it arrived! :P

Favorite Characters Meme (Part 1)

2011-06-15T22:33:00.000+01:00

Wanted to have a crack at this for a while after cotton gravy rocked it so hard with this.

Plan to add more to this in the near future, but for now here's my first 10.

The meme says 'can you guess my favorite characters?' but I'll tell you who they are anyway.

Row 1 -

Chuck D.Head - Decap Attack
Arle Nadja - Puyo Puyo
Felix the Cat
José Carioca - Saludos Amigos / The Three Caballeros
Chuckles - Toy Story 3

Row 2 -

Zig - Zig and Zag
Mojo Jojo - The Powerpuff Girls
Wario - Wario Land / Wario Ware
Seaman
Nanny - Count Duckula

MCM Expo May 2011

2011-05-31T22:30:00.001+01:00

So this MCM was me and Stacey's first crack at having a table at the comic village as opposed to just visiting, and we had a great (and knackering) time! Being there for the entire three days from beginning to end was a first, and while we didn't get to mooch about as much (at least one of us was at the table at a time) we still did a bit of shopping and checked some stuff out.

(Yes the exclusive print was a Manga-Gaga related one, will upload online soon)

Sales wise it was pretty good and we've learned a lot about what we can do to improve our tables presentation for next time and what other kind of bits we could sell. Friday was pretty much dead quiet (as pretty much expected) seeing as only people with a full weekend pass and the day off to go went. Saturday was crazy busy (again as expected) with crowds flooding the aisles, while Sunday was slightly less busy but still plenty of people buzzing about. We were just in front of the ever popular Simon's cat store and opposite Jess Bradley's table so we were in good company. :)

Aside from selling prints (Meerkats with Mini-Guns being by far the most popular) badges (the big make Tea Not War one was bought the most) and DVDs, we also both did a few on the spot commissions for people which is another first for us in a way. Stacey did a painting of a Pokemon for a friend of hers and an anime character for someone, and I drew Wonchop's Monkey character for him and someone else asked me to draw Tintin riding the wolf from Okami, of all things! I kind of struggled at drawing the latter as drawing wolf characters, especially with only a small iphone screen reference is not something I do often but I think he liked it (I hope!). We also both an art trade with Euan, who drew me this great art of the Fuji's while I drew his character.

One of the highlights was getting this Stimpy toy signed (on it's butt, I might add!) by the characters voice actor Billy West. Stacey took it for me along with a DVD of the Rayman TV series he also voiced for so i didn't get to meet him myself, but still happy with this though as usual it was a bit pricey at £15 an item so I could only justify getting one thing done, as I also had a Samurai Jack toy to get signed from Phil Lamarr but decided not to.

I also bought Philippa Rice's A Cardboard Life book and a Simon's cat dinner tray my parents wanted while Stacey bought some French imported rabbids toys and Destiny Blue's magic Sticky Toffee Pudding lip balm! It's the best smell in the world.

Cosplay wise we didn't really see as many as usual because we were at the table most of the time but we did get a few walk past like an amazing Pan's Labyrinth one, Gum from Jet Set Radio, a Lemming (Amiga represent!), Edward Scissorhands, Earthworm Jim and a rather good Sonic costume. Stacey came in her Ly costume for just the Saturday with her new improved tail though it kept falling out which led to me having to help her shove back in again quite a few times! Master Jakeman popped over dressed as the Riddler and many other friends of ours from College and people we know from the Internet popped over for a chat, so all in all fun was had by all!

Been posting quite a few bits and bobs over at my Tumblr of the event including some short videos and more so go to it!

MCM Expo is this weekend! Comic Village details

2011-05-25T11:07:00.000+01:00

Just received an e-mail letting me know that our table at the MCM Expo's Comic Village is B-10, which is on a corner near where Simon's Cat is, next to Liam Shalloo and opposite Jess Bradley!

What I will be selling:

Large badges (Lucy lolly and make Tea Not war designs): £1
Small badges (10 designs in total): 50p or 12 for £5
Lucy Lolly DVD: £5 (£4 if you spend £5 or more)
A4 prints: 70p or 5 for £3
7 X 5" prints: 50p or 12 for £5
8 X6" Exclusive print (not yet online): £1

A teaser of the exclusive print.

Will also be offering on the spot sketches for £3 or an art trade.

Commissions will also be open, order them on the day and I'll work on them after the expo and e-mail them your way.

Commission rates:

Sketch £3
Inked £6
Inked + Photoshop colour £10
Vectored (Illustrator) and Photoshop Colour £15

and if you want more than one character on a picture each character will cost you less.

Hope to see you lot there!

Bats with Bats

2011-05-16T14:34:00.002+01:00

So here we are, number 12 of the Animals Packing Heat series. Yeah, this one is rather daft but then so are the others so why not? Although 12 was my minimum target for these I'm still going to continue making more when I get ideas for them. The intention was to get some calenders printed up to sell at MCM Expo but so far I haven't found a cheap enough place or way to do them, so for now I'm doing prints in 7 X 5".

Also check out my Tumblr for a WIP GIF showing before and after the clean up.

Oh god now he's on Tumblr.

2011-05-11T22:58:00.000+01:00

So yeah.

Don't worry, this doesn't mean I'm giving up on this blog, I will still be using this for my main long articles and my latest art and animations. The Tumblr is mainly going to be used for quick and daft stuff. So far I've slapped a bunch of concept sketches from the Film festival ident on there. If you're a tumble-ler (?) please pop on over and follow if you like!

More Film Festival 2011Promo bits

2011-05-10T11:57:00.000+01:00

So yeah there were some other bonuses to the Film festival this year in terms of exposure. For starters, there was these free bookmarks that were scattered all over the screening locations. One side had a screenshot of the animation and the other has three. Very cool.

Best of all though there were t-shirts! They were selling them at £10 a pop though from what I heard they didn't sell many so I guess they won't be doing that idea again. Still, look at that it has a screenshot from the animation on the back of it! Ooh!

..and here's the front with the festival logo. Ooh.

Busy working on getting stuff together for the MCM Expo at the end of the month, had some new badges arrive in the post on Friday and I'm working on some new art to add to the big order of prints i will be sorting out soon. Keep an eye on my Twitter for the latest about it when I'm not rambling about other things.

Southend Film Fest Animation Article in Local Paper and on websites!

2011-04-19T13:24:00.001+01:00

Been quite the exciting day! Thanks to Lauren Fuery and Dean Newman from the South Easet Essex College, and Mike Miners from the Southend Echo, an article about me and my work on Southend Film Festival animated ident has been published in the local newspaper today. For starters, check out the cover!

Eeee look! Me gorilla is right there at the top of the cover! And as you open to page 3..

An almost full page article! Just above something to do with The Only way is Essex lol. Click it and you can probably read it all if you want. I'll be scanning these too. How's that for exposure?

But that's not all, a shortened version of the article can be found on the Echo website and a longer (it's in the top 10 most read articles of today!), slightly different version of the article is also up at the South East Essex College website, with the rather excellent title of 'Southend Film Festival goes ‘Gaga’ for animation celebrating town’s landmarks'! Haha!

So yeah, pleased as punch! The actual festival starts on the 28th April, of which I will be attending the Gala Night, oooh!

UPDATE: This article has now shown up on the cover of another local newspaper, the Yellow Advertiser!I don't have a copy of the paper itself but there is a digital copy on their website which I have print screen below.

What's more there is another website with the article, and below is a scan of the article out of the Echo.

MARIO AND SONIC LONDON OLYMPICS

2011-04-14T16:31:00.000+01:00

So placeholder box art for Mario & Sonic London Olympics was leaked. Will buy day one if this happens.

Page Fulla Rabbids II

2011-04-12T17:11:00.001+01:00

This was my card for Stacey's Birthday, but it could also count as a 5th anniversary pic of the Raving Rabbids. I went with this for Stacey's card due to the huge collection of Rabbids toys she has collected ([link]), many of these in the pic being based on those with others based on some of my favorite mini games from the series (well actually that last one is torture haha).

While the games have been a bit of a mixed bag (Travel in Time in particular was complete rubbish but I loved Rabbids Go Home) the quality of the toys has been really nice, in fact I'd probably grab a few had Stacey not already be collecting them, though i do have a custom one she made me of myself

Dogs

2011-04-05T16:40:00.000+01:00

This is a regular occurrence when with Stacey on weekends, particularly when we go to car boot sales where just about every other person is walking a dog of some sort. A little while back we ended up watching Crufts on the telly as well. Yeah, Stacey loves dogs, and a lot of other animals as well. I haven't had as many pets as she has had over the years so I guess that's where it comes from. :)

Crocodiles with Crossbows

2011-03-31T23:28:00.001+01:00

First Animals Packing Heat of 2011, and it's number 11! Had fun drawing this one, in particular because I've been in the mood to draw something scaly after going to see Rango, and I had been sitting on this idea for a few months now but was busy with the film festival animation.

Just one more and I could make a calender out of all of them. Would anybody still be interested in that if I could get some printed for the Expo? Either that or I could make one of those one-and-a-half year calenders with even more designs if I could get them done in time..

Me and Stacey @ MCM London Expo Comic Village this May!

2011-03-28T12:39:00.000+01:00

We have been up on the comic village page for a while now but now it's 100% confirmed and paid for: me and Stacey will have a table at the Comic Village at this May's London MCM Expo, selling bits and bobs of our art! Not much else to say right now but hope to see you there anytime from Friday 27th may to Sunday 29th may! :)

Lego Land

2011-03-23T20:53:00.001Z

The first new Bloggomic since er...November? Ouch. Still, doing this got my drawing mood setting in again.

Anyway this is what happened while i was snapping photos of that student accommodation for the Film festival animation. Not seen in this comic (as I didn't have room and am lazy) is the other two skinny old blokes that were walking along with this guy, praising him up with giggles and 'yeeeah's. It was equally frightening and amusing at the same time, and they didn't even hang around to see how i would react, off they went as soon as they appeared.

The majority of people in Southend despise this building.I mean really hate it with a passion. Hopefully they'll find the animation of it funny, and I hope the hand full that do like it will too.

Southend Film Festival 2011 ident

2011-03-17T22:13:00.001Z

This is what I was teasing about earlier! Been working on this the past month, though blink and you might miss it! It's an opening ident for this years Southend Film Festival which takes place from April 28th to 2nd May.

The White Bus were so pleased with the Ident I put together for them last year that they asked me to produce one for this year too, and this time I gave them a far more ambitious piece featuring well known locations in Southend such as the Kursaal, the Park Inn Palace Hotel (one of the locales used for screening the festival), and the recently built controversial Student accommodation block, which was the main inspiration for this animation!

This will also be screening over in Sopot in poland for their film festival, as Southend is twinned with there. They're both sea side resorts you see, and they both have crooked houses though their one looks far cooler than ours, though ours is much much older, haha!

Cool 2 Chil art in print!

2011-03-15T12:17:00.001Z

Well this was a nice surprise. Walked into my local library the other day and in the youth section there were these pamphlets all over the place of Cool 2 Chil, with screenshots from the animation I did for them all over it along with a link to their youtube account where it can be viewed.

Not sure how long these has been about as I don't really visit the library often enough but cool none the less. tempted to put out the pencil tests on my youtube account although you can see some of them in the credits of the film.

What do these places have in common?

2011-03-09T11:48:00.000Z

..other than the fact they all reside in Southend on Sea?

Answer coming soon!

THE NUMBERJACKS ARE ON THEIR WAY

2011-02-07T15:51:00.000Z

First art of 2011, and I actually drew these somewhere in the middle of 2010, doh! Was intending to do every single character from this show but for now here's four of them.

For a while last year me and Stacey kept watching episodes of this Cbeebies show called NumberJacks, namely because it is both hilariously bad and hideously creepy. It's about a bunch of CGI numbers with freaky faces that live inside some secret base inside a sofa and solve NUMBER PROBLEMS which seem to involve the same four or five people being tormented with dodgy jump cuts of their stuff being multiplied or grown big or something. Here's the intro: [link]

These are normally solved by jumping into the Brain gain (which honestly looks like a boss from Space Channel 5 to me) and basically just zap lasers at the problem until it's reversed. Oh and the problems are caused by some of the scariest TV creatures EVER such as the Puzzler (who looks like Simon Pegg if he was made of bubbles and THE SPAWN OF SATAN): [link]) and SPOOKY SPOOOON [link] their theme tunes are just something else.

So anyway pretty quick-ish colour job of the four characters I did draw up. maybe I'll expand on this at a later date.

Tea N Crumpets Update: Top Bar and Gallery

2011-01-20T21:43:00.000Z

The last couple days I have been giving Tea N Crumpets a bit of a make over. It's still not the completely revamped version 2 I want to eventually get around to, but it's now in a state where I'm happy with it and can update it easily.What used to be a full front page telling you that Ver.2 was under construction (which is barely even true as it's been so on and off) there is now a top bar of sorts with links to the profile page, this blog, the old website and now a illustration gallery which is a quick way of checking out some of my art without having to rummage through DeviantArt or the LiveJournal archive. This has been put together thanks to this handy dandy program.

Also check this guy out on the front page at the moment. If you saw me nack at the Comix Thing last year you would have seen this guy on badges, but this little animation of him has been siting on my harddrive since sometime early last year so i thought I may as well make some use of it. maybe I'll set this front page up to display random animations at some point. Also if you are on any of the other pages and want to get back to the front page with this guy on, clikc on the 'N' in the Tea N Crumpets logo.

A Summary of my 2010.

2010-12-30T13:54:00.002Z

Well what do you know, another year is almost over, and what a year it was! Here's a not so brief look at what 2010 was like for me.

The top #1 absolute highlight of the year ever in the world:

Stacey! <3

My year would not have been anywhere near as brilliant if it wasn't for Stacey. For this reason alone I have been more happier this year than I can even remember in a long time. Hate to get corny on you lot, so I'll leave it at that. :)

The MCM Expos (May and October)!

Seeing as MCM Expo was in a way the first time me and Stacey met for longer than a few minutes back in October 2009, I guess you could say this convention holds a bit of a special place for me now. Of course it also helps that Stacey finally got to do something she's always wanted to and dress up as her favorite Rayman character (and another one for good measure!) and the cosplaying really is the highlight of the place after all; to be fair the stands, shops etc are just the trimming that doesn't really change all that much each visit. A shame I didn't get around to do any cosplaying myself as much as i would of liked to, mainly because I couldn't get the bits I needed like a big collared shirt to complete a Harry Hill outfit. Still, fun times were had!

Alton Towers!

Been a while since I've had a holiday of any kind, so a long weekend at Alton Towers with my parents and Stacey was great fun because it was both a theme park and an area of the UK I've never been to before. It wasn't what I expected in a good way: the park is within the most beautiful forests and grounds I've seen in ages, nothing artificial about it. The hotel was also quite nice, though not perfect but for the money it did it's job. Oh, and there was a Sonic ride there, so that's a bonus. Speaking of Sonic...

Summer of Sonic!

Much bigger than last year and just as fun, though the location wasn't the best mainly because it was so hot in there. Still, they really pulled out all the stocks despite everything, and even Stacey who isn't really a Sonic fan as such enjoyed it too. It was an exhausting, exhilarating day and I really can not wait to see what they do for next year! All my articles and videos about the event were over at Sega Memories.

Animating:
I'll be honest, I didn't get as much animation done this this as I would of liked. There was the Southend festival Ident in March that went down a real treat and the jelly Christmas card in November but there was next to nothing in between that. I guess I kind of lost the spark for it for most of this year. No matter, because at least my..

Illustrating:
..was really quite active and buzzing this year. The last few years I had been really slacking in this department but not in 2010; I started off the Animals Packing Heat series and generally had a lot of fun drawing mostly non fan-art related things including some blog comics and other bits and bobs, so certainly a lot of fresh portfolio material.

Blogging:
Quite a good year for blogging here on my personal one, with more posts than the last few years, though many of those were rather quick short posts and there was two months when I didn't post anything here . A bit slacking on Sega Memories and the Dreamcast Junkyard but luckily they didn't go dormant thanks to Barry and the other DCJY bloggers. Mind you, I did do quite a lot of Summer of Sonic coverage and kept mostly up to date with the Dreamcast announcements so that's something.

Gaming:
2010 was all about retro revivals and lots of short fun downloadable games. I've never really been into long dragged out games but there were so many great arcade style games this year I was rarely without something to look forward to. I think my Playstation 3 got the most use this year, though I also spent a lot of time with the Wii and Dreamcast too and a bit of DS (mainly for Peggle lol).

One highlight was watching Stacey create her own little games and music in Wario Ware DIY. I only recently got around to grabbing that game so I haven't made any myself yet but I'd like to if I get time. Overall favorites released this year were: Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, After Burner Climax, Joe Danger, Space Invaders Infinity Genre, and Sonic Colours. Still a couple to catch up on too! Worst game I played all year? Probably Raving Rabbids Travel in Time: even at £10 I felt ripped off, and I enjoyed the previous games. Couldn't of got rid of it faster.

Cinema-going:
It always helps to have someone to go with to a cinema so that's another area where being with Stacey meant I went out to the cinema far more than I have in previous years. We saw The Princess and the Frog, How to Train your Dragon, Toy Story 3, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World and I believe that was it.

Would have also loved to have gone to see The Illusionist, A Town Called Panic and Mary and Max but the only way to have seen them would of been at the very few screenings they got in parts of London so we missed out. Oh well, I will catch them on DVD (already have in the case of Panic). Would also go see Tron Legacy but I don't wanna bore Stacey with it and don't really wanna go on my own.

Some disappointments:
Still not being able to land a job was the lowest part of the year I guess. I did a course up in London for a bulk of the year which helped out a lot and got me two work experience placements which went well, but other than offers for freelance work with no pay I haven't had much luck in this department.

Another disappointment was probably the Web + Mini Comix Thing, which I probably expected too much from but it did feel like I put a lot of work and effort in only to sit at a table with barely anyone even looking all day. I thought maybe I'd have more luck selling what I made online, but not a sausage. If anything it's a kick in the butt to get better at what I do more than anything else. I am still considering getting a table at MCM Expo next year though, as it's a much bigger convention for more than one day for not much more than Comix Thing was.

TL;DR Edition:
Fell in love, went to Alton Towers and some conventions, did quite a bit of drawing but not enough animating, still not in work but everything week of this year was made all the more brilliant thanks to being with Stacey. DA END.

For comparison check out last years summary.

ポストマンパット Postman Pat Transformer

2010-12-29T14:34:00.002Z

As soon as we spotted this toy in the Argos catalog, me and Stacey knew this was the GREATEST TOY EVER. There is a Fireman Sam one as well!

So for Christmas for a laug...no, FOR GREAT JUSTICE, I got Stacey one and this (below) was her Xmas card. Yes, we're bonkers.

I made it to look like a box from an old Japanese tin toy box (see this post I made about my love for these from a few years back), they always have such cool artwork on them.

This was also a bit of an experiment at drawing in photoshop with no line art, just a sketch underneath to work with. Was quite fun to do, may do this technique again some time! The font was drawn up in Flash using this video as a reference for writing Postman Pat in Japanese. Hopefully I haven't drawn it wrong and it translates to Poopman Pot or something!

But that's not all! Just yesterday we decided to mess around with the toy using the stop motion feature of the PS3's EyeCreate software, which lead to the nonsense you see below.

Stacey animated the really smooth arm bits and the pelvic thrusting. The green card was an attempt at green screening but it didn't really work too well so I didn't bother. Music is from the Postman Pat game on the Amiga.

Ok, here's my real Xmas Card for the year..

2010-12-25T01:00:00.025Z

Ok so here's the real one that I've been sending to family this week. Spent far too much time tinkering with this in Photoshop. It has some faint textures from close up photos of snow I took a few weeks back. See if you can recognize all the characters! Some are from this year, others haven't been seen for a while!

Wherever you celebrate it or not, I hope you all have a great Christmas holiday. Thanks to everyone that visits and follows my blog, DeviantArt, Twitter, Facebook, whatever! I hope to bring lots more animation and illustration your way in the new year, and with any luck I'll keep this blog up to date! :)

Elephants with Axes

2010-12-24T21:19:00.002Z

Last Animals Packing Heat image for the year, that's Ten I managed to get done: just short of the 12 I was planning but I'll be making more throughout the new year too!

GagaTelly Drawing Livestreams in Several Nutshells

2010-12-21T22:31:00.000Z

I have wanted to do this for quite a while: upload some of my livestreams sped up with music to show quickly some of the art I have done during them in Photoshop and Flash. I baced up all my livestreams from the website ages ago but now i finally have the means to make these FLV's into videos so I've started work on putting stuff up on Youtube. Well what I can anyway, some have chunks missing where the stream broke up quite a lot during broadcasting.

I have three up so far, with more to come. First up here's a drawing done in Flash last year of Pingu and Feathers McGraw from The Wrong Trousers as gangsters. Why? I can't remember either but here it is being drawn in Flash. I use Flash rather than Illustrator to draw vector art because I just prefer how Flash works and can work faster in it.

The next two (above and below) are both pictures that were inked and scanned, and the livestream was of just the colouring them up. The above is another pic with a Wallace & Gromit character in it: the WereRabbit with the Werehog from Sonic Unleashed having a scrap. Again this one is from last year. The below one is however from this year from sometime in June.

Will have more very soon!

Seeing as Tron Legacy has just come out..

2010-12-21T12:42:00.001Z

Here's an old animation of mine from 2006 that I made for the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as...Syfy. Hmmph.) It seems to have ramped up in popularity on DeviantArt lately (it's now the 2nd most faved animation of mine on there, just behind the Fuji's) most likely due to the release of a Tron sequel in cinemas, of which I may go head out and see at some point though opinions about it seem to be mixed. Ought to be worth it for Daft Punk's soundtrack alone mind, that's a match made in heaven right there.

I posted quite a few blog posts about the animation back in 2006 which can be found here. I still have that Archos MP3 player they gave me as a present! I would really like to dabble in stop motion again sometime..

Note: when I say Legacy is out I mean in America, turns out it's not out here in the UK for another week or so, doh!

Jelly Christmas Animation is online!

2010-12-15T21:48:00.000Z

Last month I did work experience for two weeks with the guys at Jelly-London, who gave me the task of animating a sick and twisted Xmas card for them. I produced concept sketches and a quick storyboard within 3 days of being there then animated it in roughly six days.

It was complex to put all the characters into one long Rube Goldberg machine like cycle but it was also great fun and got a some laughs from staff passing by. I also recorded all the sound effects myself in about an hour and a half of sitting in a empty room with nothing but final cut pro and a mic. :P

The video is now up on Jelly London's Vimeo account for all to see! I'm quite proud of how it came out considering it was done in under two weeks! :)

Lettuce!

2010-12-15T20:31:00.000Z

Made this as a birthday card for my mum. She went on holiday last month and swam with manatees and fed them lettuce, so why not draw one? Makes a change from a Disney/Pixar character I guess. She liked it so that's what matters. :)

My Christmas card for this year..

2010-12-14T19:14:00.002Z

...

Not really, I drew this way back in 2001. My real Xmas card for this year is still being worked on.

She's not even holding the bloody tree..

Snakes with a Tank

2010-12-13T23:17:00.000Z

This one is waaaay overdue. I inked and scanned it about two months ago, just didn't get much time to work on it, so it's been an on and off thing for a while. But yeah, here it is.

MCM Expo London October 2010 - Highlights!

2010-11-07T20:31:00.001Z

Finally here's some Bloggomic's to sum up some highlights of the expo that were mostly not captured on film or photo. Obviously Stacey's Rayman costumes were a top highlight, growl! <3

The guy in the Dragonball Z get up, my the name of Jake Broster who is also studying Animation, noticed my Make Tea Not War badge funnily enough when I was taking a photo of him with a gang of other DBZ cosplayers. He even wanted his picture taken with me! Some other girl in some kind of gas mask also said she recognized me but said nothing else so I'm not sure if she was serious or not. It's a bit hard to know what to say when someone knows you from the Internet, haha.

The Bananas in Pajamas were probably the most bad-ass costumes we saw the whole weekend (yes, I am not joking) and at one point we saw them walking down to the storage rooms of which I franticly rummaged to get my camcorder on to film this rare moment of TV coming to awesome life, but just missed it, so here it is in comic form instead.

I played a few games with Internet mate Frobman who bumped into us later on the Saturday, including Marvel vs Capcom 3 which he had already tried out a good three or four times (you only got a short time on it after all) and somehow i mamged to beat him, mainly by spamming Chun Li's kicks and bashing buttons hoping for the best! We also tried out Kirby's Epic Yarn and Donkey kong Country returns as both had co-op platforming goodness.

Ok, the Mayor from Nightmare before Christmas costume was probably the most bad-ass we saw (or it's a tie anyway) because at one point a friend called out 'Hey, 180!', some shuffling happened within the costume and the head twisted around! Amazing!

MCM Expo London October 2010 - Tour Videos!

2010-11-05T12:22:00.005Z

On the Sunday of the Expo I decided to do a sort of tour of the whole place to upload to youtube, which I've managed to cut down to two 14 minute videos. The first one is here and the 2nd one is here. To be honest the main reason to go to MCM is the people more so than all these stores that mostly sell a lot of the same stuff, but you also get to try out some upcoming games and of course there is the comic village, which I may be considering joining in on myself in May next year..

I also have not one but two Bloggomics about the expo coming up this weekend.

MCM Expo London October 2010 - Video!

2010-11-03T22:16:00.001Z

Well this sure did take a long time to upload (due to being in HD with my new camcorder)! Here's a bunch of random clips taken over the two days we were there. I also took about 30 minutes worth of footage touring the whole place on Sunday, though I haven't got around to editing that together yet.

MCM Expo London October 2010 - The Swag

2010-11-02T14:53:00.000Z

Here's most of the bits and bobs I brought back from MCM Expo this weekend..

-The 2nd Simon's Cat book (signed by Simon Tofield himself!) and a Simon's Cat t-shirt (they sold out on saturday but got one early on Sunday)

- A bunch of cheap DVDs including a 6 for £5 deal on MVM's store (they had all but one volume of Paranoia Agent there, on the same store the box set was £25!), some £1 DVDs and £5 Blu-Rays from the Manga Video store.

- Twizzlers! Stacey got me these from the American import shank store, shame they only had Cherry flavor and these small packs of them, whenever my family goes to America they bring back big boxes of the Strawberry ones!

- Some more prints from the ever ace Jess Bradley! The Prince of the Cosmos running into Bomberman is especially cool!

- Stickers, badges and postcards from various other comic village artists.

Not pictured is a commission ordered from Mooglet P Bear for a sculpture of Stacey's Mable Rabbid, and professional photos taken of Stacey in both of her costumes on prints which will be online later in the week on Cosplay Portrait! There was also free goodie bags which we got on the Sunday (they ran out on Saturday when we got there), which were mainly full of Gundam and other anime DVDs as well as the usual leaflets.

MCM Expo London October 2010 - Photos!

2010-11-01T19:49:00.001Z

Hey there, as you may know me and Stacey went to the MCM Expo both days of the weekend and we're utterly pooped! I will be typing up articles about it soon along with a video or two, but for now you can check out all the photos I took over at this Flickr set (they are also on facebook). There's lots of crazy cosplays in there and of course Stacey in both of her awesome costumes too! Enjoy!

MCM Expo in London this weekend!

2010-10-26T13:34:00.000+01:00

As you know me and Stacey have been to the MCM Expo twice now and this weekend will be our third time there, only this time we will be there for both Saturday and Sunday! Why? because Stacey has not one but two costumes! On Saturday she will be dressed as the nymph from the Rayman origins Trailer..

..and on Sunday she will be in her Ly the Fairy costume again, this time with a better wig and lipstick! :)

Stacey in her Ly costume back in may (left).

Sadly I still haven't been able to get any kind of costume together myself: I would love to go as harry Hill sometime but you wouldn't believe how hard his trademark big collar shirt is to find! The fact that he apparently has to get them tailored made himself says it all.

Either way I'll be taking a lot more photos and probably some video too now I have a spiffy new camcorder! I'm also looking forward to maybe trying out Marvel vs Capcom 3 and buying some cheap Blu ray's from Manga video. Good times!

Unkletom

2010-10-26T13:09:00.002+01:00

A collection of over 250 animations (and growing) by a 64 year old man in his spare time from looking after his 72 year old wife. He also has 8 blogs. The people of Youtube never fail to amaze me.

Jessy Dog

2010-10-25T20:13:00.000+01:00

A tad silly this one but this is pretty much true to life, except for the whole Rocky cat talking part of course. Make too many comics like this and people will probably think I want to be the next Jim Davis. Jess sure is a funny little hairy lump though.

Eczema (again)

2010-10-21T22:33:00.002+01:00

Always has been and probably always will be the bane of my life. When I feel all those horrible white clumps of the stuff on my head under my hair I can imagine it'd look like the moon surface. So here it is complete with moon related cameos! I guess having a laugh at it is all I can do when every cream and shampoo I've tried has failed to even calm it down for a minute, hmmph.

And yes I've drawn about this before. Don't worry the next one will be more light hearted.

Cloud Formations

2010-10-14T12:57:00.001+01:00

Yep, another comic based on a train journey. This happened sometime in the summer I believe. What I couldn't illustrate here is how the alligator was looming towards the plane, haha.

Video Game Elitists

2010-10-12T23:36:00.001+01:00

This is to all you angry forum posters out there that spend hours arguing about who's opinion is the right opinion on a much talked about game coming out.

This comic was originally going to be a specific game in particular (you can probably guess what it is if you've been reading my tweets!) but then I realized just about every video game conversation has people like this spitting acid everywhere because I presume they have nothing better to do than say...play a game they DO like with their spare time.

Of course even I've been guilty of this from time to time, mind, but I tend to rarely get involved in heated 'debates' on message boards anymore. Rather I waste my time reading them. Natch.

I have another Animals Packing Heat sketched up but I'm busy on some freelance work at the moment so you're gonna have to wait a bit for it. How am I making these comics then? While I'm on the train of course! I seem to be really comfortable with drawing on my lap now a days, even if the seats have a table I sometimes prefer drawing on my lap. Odd.

Most Embarrassing Train Journey Ever.

2010-10-06T16:45:00.000+01:00

Another comic sketched up while on a train, based on another train journey that actually happened quite a few years ago now, but I felt deserved a comic anyway.

MANtis Fly.

2010-10-03T22:00:00.001+01:00

Saw an image of a Mantis Fly in a big book of Animals Stacey owns and it instantly made me think of this, so I drew it right there on the spot before the thought passed. Gave it a quick slap of colour for the fun of it.

Puppies with Pop Guns

2010-10-01T12:37:00.000+01:00

#8 in the Animals Packing Heat series.

The most cuddly and marketable (probably) of the series! What would an animal calender be without puppies? To keep things interesting i made each puppy a different breed, though I may of made some mistake with their ears and tails looks for those breeds but never mind.

Peggle.

2010-09-30T19:38:00.001+01:00

I'm sure I mentioned this drug...sorry, game once before on this blog years back when I first played the PC version. Well, I still haven't cracked the habit, thanks to a Nintendo DS version which meant I could play it anywhere and now the downloadable Playstation 3 version went for sale for just £3 the other week with a multiplayer online mode and just to make my addiction worse...TROPHIES. These buggres basically mean I have more excuses than ever to try and wipe the floor with every single level.

But yeah, this is also the most frustrating game ever. I'm not the kind of person that gets so angry at games that I start lobbing the controller and breaking the screen, but I do swear a LOT when playing this game. Especially when you're aiming to beat a specific score to beat the stage and the ball you shoot decides to avoid almost every peg on it's descent it makes me rage, lol.

I do sometimes get so wound up I just quit playing to do something less stressful, like cutting the red or the blue wire of a bomb or something. But then the games boogly eyed critters whisper in my ear "come back for another few hours...you will make progress THIS time" and like the sap I am I do.

Oh btw, a new Animals Packing Heat is on it's way!

Southend on Sea.

2010-09-28T12:05:00.000+01:00

Dedicated to those noisy bastards that especially in the summer never shut up. and wake me up in the early hours of the morning. I called it Southend-On-Sea because....lol I dunno.

Cloud background was a photo i took just outside my bedroom window with a few filters slapped on it so it looks a bit more hand painted-ish....which is pointless now that I've told you it's a photo.

Two of them are indeed bonking, something that I did actually see more than once on top of a house near where I live, the bloke was flapping his wings and shouting like a nutter while the girl just sat there occasionally blurting out an unenthusiastic 'ow'. LOL TYPICAL MEN AM I RIGHT GIRLS?

And yes I'm fully aware Vuvuzela jokes are now officially out of date but sod it, seagulls are just as obnoxious sometimes. I had fun drawing this though, I guess I get some gratification from drawing something I can't stand, haha.

(Yeah if you've been to Deviantart or wherever you will have already seen this, just giving the blog an article for it. I drew this back on July the 29th.)

Excuse me, but your son is SUPER FLY

2010-09-27T22:46:00.000+01:00

Dedicated to some awesome kid at a wedding party I went to a few weeks ago. He could out dance Napoleon Dynamite any day of the week, I wish someone filmed him. Been ages since a made a over produced, flashy filter-y Photoshop thing like this, I got a little carried away but I had fun. The quote if what I said to his parents, no kidding.

TRAINS.

2010-09-27T15:24:00.001+01:00

This is something that has wound me up so much the few weeks I put it into comic form, doodled this morning on the train funnily enough, rather than say tweeting about it. Doesn't seem to matter how early I leave to get a train, or where in London it is, over and underground, this happens. I got to a job interview late last week because not one but THREE trains did this to me. I know I could just look up the times and leave extra early, but yeah, still annoying.

Other dumb train habits: sometimes skipping Romford, sometimes not; usually skipping it when I want to go there, so I have to change that slow Shenfield line, or not skipping it when I don't need it. FFFFF.

M ickey House

2010-09-17T20:08:00.001+01:00

One of Stacey's friends discovered quite possibly the best account on Youtube bar none, that by the name of Shankargn, featuring 101 videos of pure gold. The above doodle was inspired by this work of art below.

Also check out Johny Johny, Goosey Goosey and the 'sheep' in this one. Woooow.

Swordfish with hammer VS Hammerhead with Sword

2010-09-16T11:57:00.000+01:00

#7 in the 'Animals Packing Heat' line up, decided to go for something a little different with this one.

Metal Hawk

2010-09-06T23:06:00.000+01:00

So down the sea front near where I live there's this arcade that has some retro games at the back: Space Invaders, Track & Field, Ms. Pac man, and the Simpsons (this has been here since my childhood if I recall) but the highlight is this Namco machine called Metal Hawk. It's 30p a go, all in Japanese and moves and rocks about when you play it, but best of all, it blasts out this music throughout:

So every time (and I mean every time) me and Stacey pass this arcade I HAVE to have a play on it, even though I suck royally at the game, and can just barely fit in the machines seat, so I look like a right tit. But man, that music...

Koalas with Katanas

2010-08-30T21:29:00.001+01:00

Been a while since I've done one of these eh? Still aiming for a minimum of 12 if I can. This is the 6th so I'm half way there, and I have another one in the works.

Where have I been?

2010-08-26T18:17:00.000+01:00

Not on this blog that's for sure! Most of my online updating has been on Twitter because I've gotten lazy like that. So what have i been up to since I last updated here in.... 1st of June? Christ.

One weekend in July me, my parents and Stacey spent the weekend up at Alton Towers (Flickr photostream here), which turned out to be cheaper to stay in one of their hotels than we expected. It was good old fun it was! never been to this park before (or any British park for years in fact) but I loved how it was all amongst a real forest and a real old estate (as opposed to a built-to-look-old thing). In the end I think my favorite ride there was Air, we ended up going on that twice. They even have a new Sonic ride there now (or rather an old ride with Sonic art slapped onto it) which of course I had to write all about on Sega Memories because I'm like that.

Clearly though, THIS was the true highlight of the trip.

The weekend after that me and Stacey popped up to London to meet a bunch of guys I known from DevinatArt, some whom I've met before and some all the way from the Netherlands! We popped into a Sherlock Homes museum on baker Street which was pretty spooky with all the wax models. After that we moseyed about near some old war boat and then popped into Forbidden Planet. Roger even made a series of animations about the day, including a very accurate portrayal of everyone oo-ing and ahh-ing at Stacey's artwork!

Summer of Sonic (Flickr Photostream here) was near the start of August and this was just amazing, they really outdid themselves this year! Even Stacey enjoyed it and she's not really a Sonic fan as such. Again articles galore and a bunch of videos were posted over at Sega Memories.

Also at the start of August I did a two week work experience placement with an animation studio in Soho. First time I have been in a proper animation studio environment, but it was over so quickly I kinda miss over. Tell you what though, I have another placement with another London studio in November, and am currently working to get one between now and then too!

I've also been drawing quite a lot lately, so for those who don't regular DeviantArt I should get around to posting them here, shouldn't I?

MCM Expo May 2010! Whoo!

2010-06-01T22:17:00.005+01:00

About time I wrote about my time at the MCM Expo last Saturday! Sadly I didn't cosplay as Harry Hill because I couldn't find one of those big collared shirts but I have an even better idea for October anyway! :P

Here's a quick comic I did the day before I went: The last panel didn't happen of course, but the first two did! <3

Well not a whole lot to say about the event itself: it was mostly the same as last October in terms of content. Lots of anime shops selling mostly overpriced plush toys and whatnot, a few celebrity signing booths (which this time didn't appear to have said celebs locked in a cage like with Craig Charles last time, you didn't have to buy shit just to talk to them), a bunch of gaming stuff including a Nintendo booth which we didn't get around to checking out. In fact this time all I bought was a copy of 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' on DVD for a fiver.

Look, a Sonic! And no, they're not his wings, that'd be odd!

To be honest though this place is more about the people than anything else, the cosplayers especially. Along with the usual Mikus, Narutos and Final Fantasy characters we saw a lot of excellent and genius costumes from Ace Ventura to Cookie Monster to the Green Giant and more. Didn't get a whole lot of photos but I've put some of them up at Flickr and Stacey has stuck hers up too (we have some of the same shots from slightly different angles lol). Theres hundreds of photos if you search for Mcm expo on Flickr and Devart though.

Stacey as Ly (left) and Raygirl as Rayman (right)!

Speaking of Stace she has been working on her costume of Ly the Fairy from Rayman 2 since January and she was wearing it on the day! What was extra cool was one of her Devart friends Raygirl went as Rayman on the day, so that's a duo of Rayman characters! Shame there was no rabbids about this time! The Expo was on for two days, and Raygirl also went on the Sunday as Danger Mouse! Lots of people loved Stacey's costume and took photos, in fact I wish I took more myself! :)

So yeah not much to say other than it was good fun again if a little too crowded and stuffy, maybe we should go on a Sunday next time. I wonder if I can pull off this costume idea I have haha.

Lucy Lolly @ Last Friday Shorts, TAP Southend on 28th May

2010-05-24T16:46:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. This Friday in Southend TAP is going to be screening Lucy Lolly (and maybe more of my shorts if they can fit them in) for the Last Friday Shorts screening from 7.30. Click on the image above for more details on where to find TAP.

Southend Film festival is go!

2010-04-27T16:47:00.001+01:00

So the Southend Film festival started yesterday, with the first movie screenings starting tonight with the Ladykillers at 6:30 at the Central Museum gallery which I'm gonna be checking out.

I'll also be going to the Student Short film review at the South Ease Essex Collage on Friday and the short film awards on the Monday at the Park Inn Place Ballroom amongst maybe some other screenings too. The latter should hopefully feature a animated film I helped out a little on. And yes, my ident will be played before every single screening! :D

You can find a whole list of what's on during the festival, what times and where on the website.

Tea N Crumpets shop Online! Lucy Lolly DVD and badges for sale!

2010-04-20T18:24:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to set this up since I came back from Comix Thing, and now I've finally got around to it: the Tea N Crumpets shop where anyone can buy the Lucy lolly DVD and any of ten badge designs! I'm only taking payment by Paypal at the moment, and hopefully the shipping methods are not too confusing.

In a nut shell: if you by the DVD, the postage for up to 10 badges is included in the price of the DVD. If you however want to buy badges but not the DVD, you need to add the badge shipping option, which again is for up to 10 badges, and they can be which ever designs you want, just add one to your basket, press continue shopping, then add another etc until you've got what you want.

As for the prices: the Lucy lolly DVD is £6, the large 59mm badges are £1 and the smaller 38mm badges are 50p, and shipping is £1 for the UK, £1.50 for Europe and £2 for anywhere else in the world.

London Zoo Photos and Videos

2010-04-12T19:57:00.005+01:00

Over at my Flickr account (which I haven't used since 2007!) I've uploaded some photos of some of the creatures we saw last Saturday at the London Zoo, though I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked as my camera died after just over an hour of being there, poo! Not a problem though as Stacey took a bunch of photos and will posting some over at her Flickr too.

Stacey even got some videos which are up on youtube of us having a laugh while staring at creatures like the owl faced butterfly (where she does her best Cooking/Gardening Mama impression)..

and a clown fish. Hear me doing my automated 'silly voice'.

Birthday pic for Stacey

2010-04-12T12:37:00.004+01:00

It was Stacey's birthday yesterday, and for the weekend I popped over to her house and went to the London Zoo, which was ace. May post some photos and stuff later.

This is the main art from my card for her, which is a parody of the James Pond 3 art (see [link]), but not the whole card itself which was designed to be laid out exactly like the box art of the Mega Drive version, and was even stored in a Mega Drive box!

Robo is Stacey's James Pond fan character. Had a lot of fun putting this together entirely from scratch to look as close to the original as possible. And yes, I'm a fat green frog because I had to change the frog into something, lol.

Hot Coco and Choccy Biccies

2010-04-05T17:01:00.003+01:00

Long overdue Count Duckula fan art. Loved this cartoon to bits as a kid (right down to owning figures and plush toys of the characters, which I still have), and love it to bits now too (thanks to every episode being released in a nice DVD box set). I still think it has some of the cleverest writing I've ever seen in a cartoon. had a lot of fun drawing this; I wanted to get as many characters in as I could, even those daft clock bats that only popped up to crack a bad joke every once in a while.

Mr. Blobby

2010-03-31T13:35:00.003+01:00

Only those who know of true fear know of Mr. Blobby.

Triceratops with Rocket Launcher

2010-03-29T16:43:00.004+01:00

Oh and before I forget this is the Dinosaur themed pic I made for the Comix Thing, which is also the 5th in the 'Animals Packing Heat' series. At first the rocket launcher wasn't shooting off but it looked a bit bland so I added those effects in as well as a babby Triceratops, daww.

More Comix Thing photos!

2010-03-29T16:35:00.003+01:00

..taken by other people! Within this flickr folder of photos taken by Keo (who had a table for his comic Moo & Keo there) is a snap of me and Stacey, check it outl!

and here's one of the Tuke next door to us (and Stace peeking over)!

Thanks for taking the snaps Keo!

UK Web + Mini Comix Thing 2010, yesterday.

2010-03-28T10:42:00.010+01:00

So yesterday was the Web & Mini Comix Thing, and as you know for the first time I had a table set up myself there. Stacey tagged along to keep me company: hopefully it didn't bore her too much but she killed some time by doing some awesome watercolour art which people looking around kept peeking over to watch ("Is that Count Duckula? I loved that cartoon!").

Posters stuck up on the wall behind us, and one of Tukes massive posters. Also dragged the old Make Tea Not War boards from 2005 with me, lol.

Also I booked my table right next to my mate Tuke who was in his usual spot for the third year running selling his ace Genma Visage comics, and I also got to meet Wonchop, Xyionan and some other people who recognized me from DeviantArt, so that was cool.

I did pop around to see some of tables (My Cardboard Life, Squid Bits and Life Ain't No Pony Farm) and got all these bits and bobs but otherwise I didn't really look around much because obviously I was there to sell things!.

The anthology was a bargain this year: just £2 and it has a lot more pages than last year, and look! A couple pages with my art in it! A bit lazy i know: I did start to draw up a Dinosaur themed comic but...it stunk. I did however make a new Dinosaur related Animals Packing Heat image for it, I'll be uploading that online soon.

Setiing up was the most fun part: tons of badges, Lucy Lolly DVDs, and a portable DVD player set up running me films.

Unfortunately I think it was a bit of a quiet day which is a shame. A lot of people were saying it too, so it wasn't just my store that was lacking in customers, though it did get a bit busy about 1-2pm. This probably may of had something to do with the weather not being all so great though in that University hall with no windows all day we couldn't tell either way.

More badges, and prints, lots of prints!

A few prints and badges sold but sadly the Lucy Lolly DVD didn't really gain much interest at all. Either way I made just about enough money to pay for being there so it could of been worse. Oh well, or the more to sell online! I'm looking to set up a small paypal shop here soon-ish, and I'll ship anywhere, so if anyones interested keep an eye out!

Some people walking about took photos of us and the store so if those pop up online somewhere I'll link over to them, as I didn't really get any photos of ourselves bar one of Stacey, but lets just say it was an excuse to get that sombrero out again!

Comix Thing: 2 days to go..

2010-03-25T13:35:00.003Z

Oops, I forgot to do one of these yesterday! Oh well!

Just a bit more info on the DVD, with a photo of the inside. Each DVD comes with a free sticker of a random scene from the film and has all the DVD's contents listed inside the case. The disc art is set within Lucy's stomach! I've tried to make this as slick as possible but have also put in in a nice thing case so it won't take up too much space on your shelf. There are even commentaries for four of the five films!

Comix Thing: 4 days to go..

2010-03-23T12:03:00.003Z

..and this time we have big badges! There's just these two designs but there are plenty of them to go around! The make tea not war image text had to be completely re-drawn to fit the circle and I got this cute little drawer to store them in.

Comix Thing: 5 days to go..

2010-03-22T20:48:00.003Z

..and here are some badges! There is 8 designs of these lil' badges in total, including one based on something that will be part of Tea N Crumpets 2. These were great fun to design and I'm really pleased with the results!

Comix Thing: 6 days to go..

2010-03-21T12:57:00.001Z

Another photo of some of the stuff I'm taking with me..

Prints! I have 11 designs in all, one of which is exclusive to the Comix Thing! The 'Animals Packing Heat' will also feature in this years Anthology. As much as I would of liked to have come up with a unique comic for it, I didn't come up with any great ideas as my comic writing skills are rather rusty. :E

Comix Thing: 7 days to go..

2010-03-20T20:08:00.005Z

Gonna post a photo of the stuff I'm taking to sell every day running up to the event next Saturday at Mile End in London. As you can maybe tell I'm really looking forward to this, being my first ever convention table thing like this.

First off, the Lucy Lolly DVDs! I probably made far too many of these but I can always sell any left over another time (maybe even online). Oh btw, the winners of the Lucy Lolly Fan Art contest have been announced over at DeviantArt, so copies of the DVDs have been put aside for the 5 who won. Glad to finally get these DVD sorted out as I started working on it sometime in 2008 and put it off for ages, but doing the Comix Thing has kicked my arse to get it done! There's around 22 minutes of content in total, so I hope people think it's good value for money!

Lucy Lolly Art Contest: Voting time!

2010-03-08T11:13:00.002Z

So the entry stage of the Lucy Lolly art contest on DeviantArt lasted a lot longer than originally planned so people could get their entries in on time, and now with Comix Thing looming it's time for members of the website to vote for their favorite. If you're signed up to DeviantArt, go check out the entries and vote!

Speaking of Comix Thing, I'm getting everything ready for it now including hundreds of badges, DVDs of Lucy Lolly and prints. It's very close so I gotta hurry!

Southend Film festval ident

2010-03-02T18:23:00.005Z

The Southend Film festival website is now live so I can talk to you about this piece of animation I made for it, which can be found on the website's front page.

I worked on this between December and January using Flash and Premiere Pro as I often do. The latter program was used for the odd visual effect but also to soften and add a little grain to the flash animation (of which you sadly cannot see in the video online) so it didn't look too flat.

You may recognize the character that stars in this: it is a re-design of Reet, who for the last 5 years has sat on the front page of Tea N Crumpets, only now he is completely green and has eyes! The simple background scenery is made up of parts of the festival logo. It was a fun project to work on, I particularly enjoyed making all the squishy sounds for it!

Po's Unexpected Relatives

2010-02-26T16:50:00.005Z

Inspired by discovering the bargain bucket films Little Panda Fighter and Way of the Panda/The Prodigy. I'm sure you've seen this kind of thing before: Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks puts out a movie, and all the cheapo animation firms from Brazil or wherever attempt to cash in with a similarly themed film. These are rarely subtle, with titles like Ratatoing being probably the most obvious, and films like Little Princess School bordering very dangerously close to copyright infringement city, but bless them for trying anyway.

The panda films were particularly interesting as their's not one but two knock off films out there, and one of them is by "some guy that worked at dreamworks". Smooth!

Meerkats with Mini Guns

2010-02-21T20:57:00.003Z

4th in the 'Animals Packing Heat' series. Would like to get at least 5 of these made though 12 over time would be excellent as I could design a calender out of them (as a few peeps have suggested). For the Web+Comix thing however I'm just going to do these as prints for the time being.

First ever (proper) Valentines day!

2010-02-15T13:38:00.005Z

So yesterday was both me and Stacey's first Valentines day ever so I wanted to make it a fun day out for the both of us, and after some mishaps with the trains on her way over, that's exactly what it turned out to be!

I took her to the cafe in Marks & Spencer's that does this huge hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows and we exchanged gifts while we were there. Stacey knows me so well, look what she got me!

She also made me this amazing card, all hand painted like she does so well!

In return I got her a box full of her favorite chocolates (the anonymity of Formspring came in handy finding what those were, haha!), some of the Rabbid toys she collects, and my card which was also hand drawn!

So some time after that we went to see the princess and the Frog at the cinemas, which was a pleasantly surprise as it was actually really enjoyable! I say that because I don't normally like the princess Disney films much, that and this film went through a lot of political bull, but this one had plenty of really good characters that had more substance and personality than even a lot of the characters in the oh so popular 90's films like Aladdin. The Prince was, probably for the first time ever, more than just a cardboard cut out/ piece of eye candy for the girls to pine for: probably helped by the fact that him and the film's 'princess' are frogs for a bulk of the movie.

The single thing that sold me on seeing the film was the massive Alligator, and he didn't disappoint, and there was even the odd scene in the film (which I won't spoil) which showed Disney have finally realized again that you need a MIX of emotions in a film, not just happy happy happy throughout. The songs weren't it's strongest point but they were ok, and the great animation in some of them more than made up for them (especially the first song which goes all retro 50's style on us).

I'd say go see it though if just so Disney will get the hint and make more films like this rather than say...Chicken little (and I'm not even just talking about the whole hand drawn over CGI debate here). For the first time in ages (since maybe Lilo and Stitch?) I can say this is a DISNEY movie. In a good way, I mean.

After that we popped over for a meal at Pizza Hut, and by about 6-ish she had to make her way back home. It was just brilliant, just like every day I spend with Stacey is. I just love making her feel special, it makes me so happy to see her smile.

Eek, better get back to planning for Comix thing!

Ducks with Nunchucks

2010-02-08T16:05:00.006Z

2nd pic in my 'Animals Packing Heat' series, which I hope to do quite a few of over time.

I believe this one was suggested to me by Sonicmark while I was colouring Kangaroos with Flame-Throwers on Livestream. I did originally plan to colour these two in the basic white and orange fashion but decided to go with the colours of a mallard instead, far more interesting.

Artwork wise there's a hint of Nigel Kitching influence in this one which I hadn't noticed until after I scanned it, mainly in the way I've done the eyes.

Hyenas with Grenades

2010-02-06T15:14:00.004Z

2nd pic in my 'Animals Packing Heat' series, which I hope to do quite a few of over time. Not sure how the idea for this one came about, but really enjoyed drawing this. I re-drew bits of this in the sketch phase countless times before I was happy with it, with some help from Stacey along the way.

More (eventually) on the way!

Another daft self portrait kind of thing.

2010-02-01T21:34:00.002Z

Another ID thingy for DeviantArt, and another excuse to spoof Lady Gaga (this image to be precise). I actually struggled to come up with 'hates' but I guess that's because I'm in such a good mood lately. Man, three blog posts in one day! I should have some more art finished off and ready to show later this week.

THIS MONTH I HAVE BEEN MOSTLY PLAYING.. (Jan '10)

2010-02-01T14:24:00.000Z

A new feature about video games for this blog, seeing as not everything video game related I play would suit the Sega and Dreamcast blogs I also write on. These were the games I played most over January. I tend to have splurts of focusing on one console every month or so, and it's been mostly my PS3 getting time put into it this time, all thanks to buying a bunch of downloadable games.

Fat Princess
So over Christmas the Playstation 3's online store had a bit of a sale, reducing a few games I would have bought already had they not been over a tenner. Also, Zavvi have been selling the £20 online store cards for £16, so I saved even more then. I had played a demo of Fat Princess before and really enjoyed it so for £8 I decided to give this a shot. So far I've pumped quite a lot of hours into it and grabbed the odd trophy.

The online is really quite clever and for the most part works rather well. Up to 32 players can be playing at any one time (split across two teams) and you can jump into a random match at any time. Each team has a castle with a cute little princess inside and the aim is to capture the other teams princess and rescue your princess then hold onto them until a timer runs out. The title of the game comes from the fact that you can feed your captured princess cake which will make her fatter, thus harder to pick up!

You can play as many different classes, a swordsmen, archer, priest (to heal your teammates), worker (to construct enhancements to your castle and upgrade the weapons), fire magician and a few others. There are many different strategies you can take and some matches can go on for ages if the teams are well balanced. This game defiantly gobbles up a lot of free time, and the cartoon violence doesn't get old too soon. Will probably pop back to this one every so often for months to come.

Trine
The other game I downloaded for £8 (but normally cots about £15) was this rather lovely sidescrolling puzzle platformer which reminds me a lot of the Amiga game Fury of the Furries (no, not those kind of furries). You play as a thief with a grappling hook and bow + arrow, a wizard who can levitate items and make square and bring like objects, and a swordsman who er...uses his sword and you can switch between all three of them at any time (unless any of them have died of course).

It's a beautiful looking game with lush scenery. The voice acting and narration throughout was nicely done and while the physics and platforming isn't always perfect I've enjoyed this much more than I did LittleBigPlanet. The controls on the PS3 are intuitive after about ten minutes getting to know what everything does, I especially like how the controls for the thief's bow and arrow works. You can also buy this on a disc for the PC, there is no Xbox Live Arcade version yet though. Either way it's well worth a look IMO.

Bomberman Ultra
The third game I bought that was technically about a quid considering the PSN card was cheaper than it's actual value. I've always dug Bomberman games and I own one for almost every system I've got, so it only makes sense to have one sittin on the PS3 harddrive too. This one has two main draws that seperate it from the rest: a customizable Bomberman (well, to an extent) and online play. To be honest though, the online didn't seem all that good: very laggy with characters popping about all over the place and twice it actually crashed the PS3.

Also while the levels and play modes were decent I actually think the Wiiware Bomberman had better and more, what's more the online play in that was smoother when I went back to compare. Also the Thopies for this game are a bit ridiculous: dress your Bomberman as a cowboy a beat an online player who is also dressed as a cowboy?

Tatsunoko Vs capcom for the Wii popped in the post this week, so I should suspect that'll be one of the games on next months article!

So I've gotta get this off my chest already..

2010-02-01T12:52:00.004Z

Ok, so I don't tend to post personal life type stuff on this blog often (it's more a keep-up-with-projects-I'm-doing kind of thing) but sod it, I just cannot contain myself. January was the happiest I have possibly ever been in my life: so incredible I can hardly describe it. I should think the icons just under my related links is a good enough clue as to what I'm talking about! :)

I don't know how many of you reading know of Stacey, you may of noticed a link to her blog along the side or remember this awesome Lucy Lolly fan art she did me on my Birthday last year (see above). Well anyway we've known each other online for about 5 years via DeviantArt, thanks to having many similar interests and both enjoying each others art (Stacey's a crazy awesome painter, go check her stuff out).

Well funnily enough about a year or so after we met online she popped up at a car boot sale I was selling junk at, of all places, and said hello. This wouldn't be the first time we'd bump into each other at this same car boot sale either: over the years it happened quite a few times if I recall. Small world and all that.

So fast forward to just last October: a bunch of mates recommended I go check out the MCM Convention in London and said to look out for them as they'd also be there. You might remember my blog post about the event, which was rather fun, but I didn't really have much luck finding many of my friends. At least bar three, one of which was Stacey who came running over and gave me a big hug. So that day was the first time we'd hung out for longer than a few minutes, and it was a great.

So I've known this girl for yonks, met her a couple times by pure luck, and chatted endlessly online, so I decided to e-mail her and see if she wants to hang out again some time, along with this daft pic above (which is a sort of response to this art of her as a Raving Rabbid). We did plan to go up somewhere in London just before Christmas though that fell through, but in January I took a train up to her place and a week later she popped down my way. Both times we had a great laugh playing games, drawing together and showing each other our art. It's just amazing how much we have in common and how well we get along.

That same night long after she had gone back home and I was just about to log off from chatting to her online all night she confessed her feelings for me, which knocked me clean off my feet to say the least! We met again twice this weekend, and now we're officially dating! :D

The bottom half of this pic is how I felt just last week.

We've been pretty quiet about this online because you know what people are like about "Internet relationships lololol", but we only live a short train journey away from each other and have met quite a few times now, so this is far more than just some DeviantArt crush nonsense across the Atlantic or something. I hate to go all mushy on you guys but I'm absolutely smitten and over the moon! 2010 couldn't have started any better! :)

BALLHOG

2010-01-28T17:58:00.001Z

Had a quick go at Sega's Draw a badnik challenge. Why not? Check out my article about this whole kafuffle over at my other blog Sega Memories.

New blog layout?

2010-01-28T16:44:00.003Z

Don't mind me, I'm experimenting with a re-design of this blog. It's currently a W.I.P, though if people end up hating it I can come up with something else/change it back to the old design. Is it too cluttered?

ChewTV On the Spotlight Article

2010-01-27T14:18:00.008Z

Those lovely chaps at ChewTV has just posted a short but sweet article on me over at their website, go give it a peek!

Lucy Lolly is also up on the website, which has already has a lot of views and a nice review from a Mediawhizz09:

"I thought this is a very inspirational film. The makers clearly know what they were basing it on and how they were going to do it. I like this film because it is basic yet at the same time complex. The story line is clear and the animation is wonderfully made."

Thanks again guys!

Lucy Lolly Contest on DeviantArt! Prizes!

2010-01-14T12:53:00.004Z

So after much, much delay I will be releasing a DVD of Lucy Lolly this March in time for the UK Web + Comix Thing. The DVD will include:

* The film itself with scene select.
* The animatic Storyboard
* Pencil tests
* Concept art and background art slideshows
* Four extra films: Rabrab, the Fuji's, The Audio Show and Mousetrapp
* Also looking to include some commentaries, either as subtitles you can read under the film or voiced, I haven't decided yet.

I'm also planning to make a 'The Art of Lucy Lolly' book that will come with the DVD, that will have early doodles, concept art and the storyboards.

Another extra I would like to include is a fan art slideshow, so I've set up a contest over at DeviantArt. Head on over to this journal post to read the rules and see what you could win if you enter. Everyone that enters will get their art featured on the DVD.

P.S: If anyone wants to enter that is not a DeviantArt member, please host the art on a website like Photobucket or Tinypic and send me the link and I'll include it with the rest (entries will be linked to in the DeviantArt Journal).

Kangaroos with Flame-Throwers

2010-01-10T19:57:00.005Z

This was inspired by part of this game review I did for the Dreamcast Junkyard last year.

I've also had an idea that I might go through if people like this and would wanna see more like it: a book/comic called 'Kangaroos with Flame-Throwers and other animals packing heat." that I could get printed and sell at UK Web + Comix Thing. It'd be about 10-20 illustrations like this one with no story or anything, just for the pure fun of it.

With this in mind I want this to be as good as i can get it, so critique of the layout, design, colours, how I did the fire etc would be appreciated. This would be the front cover of the book after all.

Art Clokey 1921-2010: Photos from Exhibit in 2005

2010-01-09T20:21:00.012Z

Darn, looks like we've lost another veteran animator, though he had a good innings at 89 and went peacefully according to sources. The guy is one of the biggest names in clay animation, with his first experimental film Gumbaisa winning him a pilot and eventually a long running series of the surreal adventures of this chap to the right of you.

Now being a Brit I wasn't really exposed to his work as a kid like most have been America over the last 50 years: I only actually learned of and saw episodes of Gumby (a character much like our Morph, only Gumby has been around far, far longer.) on a trip to the Moving Image gallery in Queens, New York a few years back. They had an exhibit running of Gumby full of sets and character models as well as screening of some of the films and lots of old merchandise to see. I did write a bit about it right here on this very blog, but only showed you one photo from there. So it only seems fitting to show you the rest of the photos I took. Big times fans of the series who couldn't go to the exhibit might appreciate them at least. Some are a bit shakey though, sorry about that (click to enlarge).

From what little knowledge I have of the Gumby series, I believe all of the sets and models at this exhibit were from the Gumby movie that came out in 1995 (and can be found on Youtube).

On the exhibit they also had a quick demonstration with a guy showing how stop motion animation is done (naturally aimed at kids). The Gumby models they made and used were not quite as slick as the ones above, haha.

And look at all this merchandise! I'm still surprised this never made it over here, unless I'm mistaken and they did show it here once.

and this place even had the costume Eddie Murphy wore for his Gumby parody on Saturday Night Live!

GO SEE THIS MOVIE.

2010-01-09T16:06:00.004Z

IT'S GONNA BE AWESOME.

Can't wait to hear Kirstie Alley as the voice of the hot pink car!