Re-making Robots!

My comic strip 'Null 'n' Void' which featured in Accent UK's sold out anthology ROBOTS (Andy Bloor cover above) will soon be reborn in the forthcoming Moments of Adventure: Collection Two! I thought therefore I'd share a little of the process behind the development and 're-mastering of the strip prior to it's printing and publishing.

Me being me, I tend to hold onto things so here's a scan of page 2 that I made at the time from my original pencils!

For ease, let's zoom in and concentrate on the last panel:

Next this is the inked and hand-lettered version that appeared in the ROBOTS anthology:

The original inked art was re-scanned and cleaned before lovely colours were added by Moments of Adventure: Collection One collaborator, Aljosa Tomic, (based in Serbia no less!):

The hand lettering was then carefully removed from the newly coloured art:

 Finally, I added computer lettering & effects using my favourite Bryan Talbot Comic Craft font:

And there you have it, what a difference from the original with the colours breathing wonderful new life into the art which hopefully  enhances the whole story. It may all look rather simple but sadly it isn't, I can't speak for Aljosa but my computer skills aren't the best and lettering on top of existing lettering and balloons is as finickity as it sounds. Necessary adjustments had to be made to both the text and balloon placements in the above panel, including 'colour paste-ups' to hide the originals, a process which sadly had to be repeated on virtually every panel on every page of the strip!

Much as I love hand-lettering and placement of it on the original art to form an integral part of the page and story, I no longer use this technique as I know the difficulties it can cause! Plus the flexibility and legibility of computer lettering - once mastered - is really second to none!

We're getting there and I'll look forward to sharing more as the whole second collection of Moments of Adventure is built and ready for release, hopefully reasonably soon! In the meantime copies of the first collection are still available to buy from me at conventions - see list to the right - and direct from the Accent UK website here. 

More Moments of Adventure!

Hee! Hee! Yes a little reveal of the cover of the forthcoming Moments of Adventure: Collection Two, containing four short self-contained comic strip stories featuring Robots! Pirates! World War Two! Scottish GhostHunters & more!

More details to follow but all being well MOA#2 will be released at Copenhagen Comics Festival end of February 2017 and all subsequent conventions and festivals Accent UK attend!

1 Down 14 to Go!

 

Well the 2016 comic convention season is well and truly underway, Dave and Gary kicked things off last weekend with their successful trip down to Maidstone's Demon-Con, (which you can read about on their blogs here and here) and this Saturday we set up at Bolton Comic-Con!

Bolton is a new one for us but being a local one we thought we'd give it a try hearing good things about it's inaugural show last year so we'll see how we get on. You can find out show details on their facebook page here.

We'll take our full range of books but after a stock take we're getting pretty low on some, Zombies2 sold out last year and Who on Earth is Thaddeus Mist? won't be far behind it....

 ....and perennial favourite, Robots anthology is now down to it's last couple of  boxes so will also likely sell out in the first few months of the year. We normally don't reprint - last year's Zombies was an exception - so if you do fancy any of these, best grab them when you see them.    

If you've been keeping an eye on our convention list on the top right you'll see that we've a total of 15 planned at the moment for this year, with most of these already confirmed, so it promises to be a very busy one indeed, hope to see some of you around on our travels and maybe we'll surprise you with a new book or two!

Robot Shorts Blitz Marketing Campaign!

I see that Steve Holder has blown Accent UK's marketing budget for the next decade on his and Dave West's second printing of their quirky science-fiction fun book, Robot Shorts, there's really no escape from it, so the best you can do is catch us at our forthcoming shows or order from our site, you know it makes sense!