Private Study

So, I was meant to do this yesterday but I was to tired to do ANYTHING so yeah, sorry.

2010 was a pretty big year for me. finished 6th form, started art college, had lots of friends move away to uni, made lots of new friends through college and comics, did two comic conventions, started this comic, did a few other comics which I printed at home, and lots of other stuff that I’m not gonna talk about for fear of boring you!

2011 looks to be at least as big, although realistically I don’t know if I’ll be able to do any conventions. But anyway, I’ll be finishing art college, hopefully getting into uni to do illustration, I’ll hopefully be producing a lot in terms of comics, and hopefully meeting even more great new people.

As for this comic though, I have some more specific plans. Here’s some resolutions to keep me on track:

Exactly what it says. I am certain I am capable of writing much better storys than the one Private Study has had so far, and so I’m going to. One of the problems was definitely that I’d decided the whole first chapter would be one day. That was a mistake. But mistakes are there to learn from, and now I know roughly how I’m going to start structuring storylines and chapters. Shorter, more concise, and hopefully more effective.

Of course the doodle for this one would be PARTICULARLY rough, wouldn’t it. But yeah, I’m going to work on getting better all round. More detailed backgrounds (probably still quite simple, but then again right now this comic very rarely has something anyone would call a background), I’ll start using shading, I’ll get better at colouring and linework. I’ll just be working to get better all round. HOWEVER this will require some experimentation, so be patient with me.

This and the essay I’m working on are the reasons for the upcoming guest week. If I’m not drawing the comic the night before it goes up, hopefully I’ll be able to spend a bit more time making it look good. And I’ll be able to spend a bit more time asleep, which I really need.

This one IS a joke. I don’t think I’d ever watched that video until sometime last week. But when I did: woah. Short blonde hair. Stripey top. HMM.

The final thing is that sometime this week I will write that Thought Bubble blog post that is over a month late.

NOW. Something you guys could do to help me is maybe occasionally tell a couple of your friends about this comic. Word of mouth is all I really have in terms of promotion, so anything helps.

That’s it! I hope you had a great new years eve/day, and I hope this year goes well for all of you.

Hi! Sorry this has taken so long to do. ANYWAY.

This wasn’t just my first Expo, this was my first con of any kind, so I was pretty anxious about it. Turns out I didn’t need to be, since just about everyone I met was lovely.

This year the expo was also open on the friday, but as I said in the comic posts leading up to it, I had my first college assessment on the friday, so it wasn’t really practical for me to do the friday. SO. Saturday!

On saturday, the tube was pretty messed up, which was annoying. That said, the replacement bus service for the jubilee line was pretty good. Then there was the DLR. I think the main thing to say about the DLR on both expo days is you could tell you were on the right train. Cosplayers EVERYWHERE, not self concious at all, in fact I’d say proud to be there dressed as their favourite characters. That had to be one of my favourite things about the Expo, it was a place where people could go and just be unashamedly nerdy and 100% true to themselves. Over the weekend there were tons of great cosplays, but I had a couple of personal favourites, photos of which are below:

THIS GUY. He is amazing. The amount of detail was insane. There were serious discussions between my table and my neighbouring table about how someone should declare their undying love to him. Alas, we all preferred to be angsty from a distance.

SO. At the DLR station, I met up with my college friend and assistant for the weekend, Ellie! Ellie, if you’re reading this (you’d better be reading this!), thanks again for all the help! Anyway, we went in and found the table. I knew I’d be next to Howard Hardiman but I didn’t know that on my other side I’d have Marc Ellerby and Adam Cadwell. Needless to say I was intimidated. As if that wasn’t enough, in the tables opposite me there were Joe List, Lizz Lunney, Philippa Rice and Timothy Winchester! I spent the weekend in awe of all of them. Also with something of a vacuum in front of my table due to the semi-circle of talent around me.

All was not awful though! I actually managed to make quite a few sales, in fact I sold moooost of the copies of the Dino Girl & Beanie Boy comic that I’d printed (there were almost 50? a bit under that, but still!) and a fair few badges. Didn’t sell any posters sadly, but oh well. I did give out tons of my fancy flyers! Not sure how many worked, but hey. Holla back via email I guess if you’re here cos of a flyer?

I suspect my box of free chocolate fudge helped. The reactions to it were varied… Some ate it then bought a comic by merit of the fudge alone, some would eat it, read the the comic, maaaaybe buy it, maybe not, oh well. Some would eat the fudge and just take a flyer. SOME (well, one person in particular) ate about 5 or 6 pieces of fudge. Then walked off. Then came back with a friend and then ate several pieces each. Then walked off. Then came back again and prompted me to hide the fudge, because not once in all that time had they actually acknowledged anything else on my table or taken a flyer.

Saturday was a bit busier than sunday, but all in all it was fun, and went a lot better than I expected. I made some new comicing friends and got to say hi to old ones. Besides those who I’ve mentioned as being on the tables around me, I met/said hi to… uh… OKAY Luke Pearson, Edward Ross, Lem (who was asking people to draw Dr Manhattan as part of the upcoming Dr Manhattan Project, which I’ll be sure to link to), Philip Spence, Luke Surl, Joe Decie, David Wynne, Seah Azzopardi, aaaaaaand last of all (I think? I hope?) Mike Leader. If I’ve forgotten you, email/tweet me indignantly and I’ll put you in.

I’ll finish up with some more photos. I wish I had one of Timothy Winchester’s Harry Potter costume, but alas the invisibility cloak really messed up those photos.

Anyway, Thought Bubble this weekend! Erk! Blog post for that coming tomorrow or Thursday.

So, remember the post from last week containing a drawing Dan Bailey did of Jamie and Jenn? Well over the bank holiday weekend he went even further and did a full blown digital version of it!

Seriously, anything bad I had to say about this would be evil nitpicking, it is truly amazing and really appreciated. I’m thinking of making the shoes canon as their out-of-school shoes I’m so amazed. Thanks again Dan!