Thursday 26 March 2015

Improvised Comic Update, March 2015

A quick update on the Improvised Comic is due.

Short version - it's going well.

Longer version - it's going rather well.


And beyond that, a few fun facts:
- I'll be using a split page layout that I've employed elsewhere
- It contains a documentary about the origins of the Universe, the Big Bang, Dark Matter and planetary dynamics
- This isn't really what the book's all about
- the top half of the first 28 pages are complete
- the bottom halves are almost done too
- a few sample bits of art will be appearing on this blog over the coming weeks
- this is (at least) the third complete rewrite of the material
- it's working out rather nicely

(Photos by Alan & Julie Walker, costumes by Kate Reid, starring players of Kendal Community Theatre, and attendees at LICAF 2014 who wandered through the door...)

Tuesday 24 March 2015

Ipad Sketches 1

Courtesy of Procreate and an Adonit JotPro pen - also part of the improv comic (no, it's not all cross-hatched photo-realism)





Sunday 22 March 2015

On the Water

WARNING Prose Fiction: contains no pictures (except the ones in your head)

A short piece of writing I did a few weeks back for my local writers' group. If you're in the Stroud/Cirencester area, come and join us!

The men’s tents face the land, the mountains and the deer. The women’s face the sea. That’s how it is. I grew up mending the nets of my sisters, and came of age on my first visit beyond the shallows, to meet the Goddess “Strong Flow”, who guides us to the fish moving below.


She was ginormous, like a great rock, smoothed and weathered by age, each leg disappearing into the deep. Her head turned slowly, acknowledging without looking, because that’s how goddesses and people treat one another.


Her little sister, “Storm Tooth”, wasn’t so polite. Hiding behind the rocks, she peeped out, wild eyes and hair, staring at me and pointing into the inky water, making signs of death. She was made of flat rolls of clay, slimed with seaweed and cormorant shit.


“Does that mean my boat will go down?”, I asked, but I was shushed. Mara, a bit wild like me, and a few years older, patted my arm. “Storm Tooth is a jerk,” she said. “She does that to everyone first time. Pay no notice.” And so I didn’t.


I went out on my first boat, alone. I saw things out there. I didn’t sink, and the one who came back looked and talked like me. On the water, we become water, as my people say. The women anyway, the men have their own sayings.

Mara’s underwater now, in Storm Tooth’s cradle. She’s blessed with not seeing the loggers, the big boats and the roads. Ah but the sugar tastes better than life itself. Some still fish in the bay, although the catch is smaller now, and misshapen. Strong Flow doesn’t visit often. Mostly the men drink fire, their huts facing the land, and we women spin the sugar, our huts facing the sea.

Tuesday 10 March 2015