Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Young Lad Divergence

These appeared on Bob's site way back.



Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Matter 3 Cover

The cover for Matter 3 was originally meant to be a two colour design on white card with the black people overprinting the red logotype (with all white pages inside). After giving up on Matter 3 in its original form I ended up just doing the design in black on red card to save costs via photocopying (for the 'Matter Free' giveaway book).



The inside front cover was to be a red monotone of an empty city street. People without street, street without people, see?



At the time I conceived the cover image I was working in those tall pyramid topped buildings on George's Quay behind Tara street Dart station. The office had a terrific view of the station and the streets behind and I used to sketch the little people down below.



The people part of the design is influenced by those LS Lowry pictures of matchstick men. Also the Louis le Brocquy illustrations of the large groups of people for the Táin Bó Cuailnge.

For the street scene I was referencing a couple of building paintings of Lucian Freud (better know for his paintings of flesh)- particularly the view out the back of his studio done after the death of his father. There is something very glum and desolate about these pictures. Originally I had a much more expansive cityscape in mind which was to be swiped from the style of Stephen Wiltshire - a dyslexic artist gifted with an amazing photographic memory for architecture and a fantastically intricate drafting line with which to realize it.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Timmy O'Tay 02








In hindsight these pages seem very 'Jimmy Corrigan' in tone (if not in execution) - I expect I was rereading the book at the time. Unfortunately there is a flaw in the main 'gag' on the top of the second page where its not clear that Timmy is concealing a jazz-mag in the comic to get a sly look (its also not clear that the mag is soap/shampoo themed). Once again the ending peters out inexplicably. This story was to originally appear in a large format 'Matter 3' along with the extended 'Touched' stuff elsewhere on the blog, hence the 4 stack panel layout.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Timmy O'Tay 01

Here is another page from the hard-drive clearout of old unpublished comics. I'm not quite sure what was going through my head with this one. Possibly the page started with the 'Timmy O'Tay' title which led into the idea of a shampoo drinking loser. Unfortunately it didn't culminate in a suitable punchline. Strangely I thought enough of this character to warrant a revisit and indeed roughed out some further stories - to appear here next.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Wednesday, August 01, 2007