Factor goodies!

My good friends Jay and Selina of Factor Fiction Press have had a busy time of late putting out a couple of hardback collection books that I'd like to mention. The first is The Girly Comic Book 1 and it showcases strips from the first nine issues of The Girly Comic started and edited by Selina back in 2002. Weighing in at 278 pages this is an impressive tome of work and features a list of small press and industry professionals that should keep the most doubting comic reader happy. The mix of stories and art makes this a collection of varying tastes but each of them deserves their place in the book, personal favourites for me include Garen (Rainbow Orchid) Ewing's 'Sword of Truth, Romance and Fate', 'Surreal School Stories' by Terry (Sleaze Castle) Wiley, 'Simple Simon' by Williams & Ford and 'An Open Book' by Eales and mpMann. But there are many gems in this book and it'll keep you reading for a good few nights.

The other book I'll mention will keep you reading for considerably longer as it is a staggering 624 page tribute to author Craig Hinton who sadly passed away in 2006. I'll let the text from main Shelf Life website do the talking here:

Shelf Life is an unofficial collection of illustrated fiction inspired by the Doctor Who fiction of Craig Hinton, and dedicated to his memory. All profits will be donated to the BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION.

Craig, who passed away on 3rd December 2006, was best known for his Doctor Who spin-off works, which included the novels The Crystal Bucephalus, Millennial Rites, GodEngine, The Quantum Archangel and Synthespians, as well as the Excelis Decays audio play. He is known as the originator of "fanwank", a term based on the overt use of continuity references in his stories.

Such was the love and affection felt for Craig in the world of Doctor Who that many of his friends and fans felt the need to do something special to remember him by. The result of that need has now been realised in the form of Shelf Life, which contains stories and illustrations from people all around the world, writers and ordinary fans alike.

With so many contributions, and so many breakthrough writers, and with each story accompanied by full-page artwork, it has taken the best part of two years to bring this project to fruition. With slipping deadlines fluctuating between his birthdays and the anniversaries of his death, we're finally in a position to make our tribute available.

I only received my copy of this book a couple of days ago and so as yet can only comment on the production of the book and the art inside but needless to say I'm looking forward to reading it and glad that a quality product that this book is is a fine tribute to Craig and a lovely way to raise funds for a good charity. This book and The Girly Book are lovely products, both are hardback and of superb quality. There are some brilliant accompanying illustrations to the stories in Shelf Life and of particular not for me are the works of D'Israeli, Roger Langridge, Vince Danks, Emma Vieceli and honestly loads and loads more.

You can get ordering information for both of these books at Factor Fiction's website or by clicking on the links I've created throughout. One last small point I will mention is that I made a very small contribution to both of these books. In The Girly Book I drew, what seems a very long time ago now, a strip written by Selina called 'Kissability' and I also drew one of the illustrations for Shelf Life. So if you have no sensible reason other than they're both great books and one of them is for charity then you could always go down the route that you have to buy them to see my work!

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Merry Christmas!

Its Boxing Day already so I hope you all had a great Christmas Day and are relaxing with the family and a pile of sweets. Its been a few weeks since the 'SuperMarr' strip ran in the Radio Times so it should be fine to show you it all now. It appeared in a 'Review of the Year' article and my brief was simply to draw the strip as I saw fit from this supplied script.

Britain From Above was one of the most entertaining and visually stunning programmes of the year. It also gave its host, newsman Andrew Marr, a new action-packed image

PIC 1
Somewhere near Downing Street… (Pic of Andrew Marr doing a piece to camera)
Andrew Marr: “And that was perhaps the most exciting Prime Minister’s Question Time I have ever witnessed. Gordon Brown fighting for his political life as markets tumble across the globe… blah blah politics… blah blah financial crisis…”

PIC 2
But then… (Pic of Marr answering mobile phone)
AM: “Sky-diving from 10,000 feet? No problem!”

PIC 3
Flashy headline: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No its… SUPERMARR!
Pic of Marr’s wonderfully, rubbery grinning face, ears flapping in the breeze. He’s high over a beautiful, sweeping landscape, dressed in Superman style costume with cape, billowing behind him.

In my conversation with the editor he had mentioned that they'd like to see Marr wearing the small helmet he wore in the series 'Britain from Above' while he was doing his sky dive so that was to be added into the final scene. I produced a very quick sketch of my suggested illustration which was approved and then I moved onto the pencil stage. The only thing that changed overly from the pencil stage to the inking was a closer attention to Andrew Marr's face in the last couple of panels. Although he's a well known figure on British television he's not always going to be recognisable especially if he's wearing a costume. Mind you the fact that he has 'SuperMarr' written large underneath him will always help :)

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Merry Christmas, wanna a calendar?

No, it's not too early to start going on about Christmas. When you have small children in your house and they've been singing Christmas Carols since the start of November then as soon as you hit December I reckon its fair game to start going on about it. Our tree isn't up yet though, I'm not that mad.

When your self employed you constantly have to promote yourself and as an illustrator that often includes doing large 'mailings' to editors and publishers throughout the year. This Christmas I've produced a 2009 Desk Calendar to show off my work through the new year and also have a practical use of showing you what the date is next Wednesday etc.

The nature of these things usually means that you end up with some spare and I figured I'd do a post asking if anybody fancied a free desk calendar for next year? If you do you have to do two things, first (and just for a laugh) you have to post in the comments a humorous answer to this question in no more than twelve words:

"I deserve a desk calendar because…"

Then you need to send me your name and postal address to my e-mail. And that's it. This is only for a limited time and while stocks last, this isn't a heavily trafficked Blog site so I should be able to cope with flood of two answers :) This is also only open to UK residents unless if you are overseas you are happy to pay for the postage costs?

Merry Christmas!

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