Where The Wild Things Aren't.

Same subject as last post

2007-11-30T17:31:21Z

Only time for a quick one - hi, how is everyone? - but I just wanted to say this is a damn good week to buy the Beano too, as I have not one, not two, not six million and twelve, but FIVE pages in this week's issue. Oh yeeeeaah! My two-page Minnie is in there, along with a two-page Ratz and a Johnny Bean. Never again will I pwn teh b34n0 in such a manner, so get it while it's hot!

Never Be Without A Beano

2007-10-24T10:13:31Z

Not the current issue, at any rate. For, yes, this is the week that the mystery strip I've been working on since March finally makes its entrance. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Johnny Bean from Happy Bunny Green", charming tales of life in a cosy rural idyll and the little hoody bastard who ruins it on a weekly basis. It's a departure in format from normal Beano strips, but I think it has loads of potential - well, I would say that, wouldn't I? Plus, this week's Beano has a free Halloween kit with a glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton, so there's really no excuse not to buy it (unless you're frightened of skeletons or things that glow in the dark).

(Website's updated too)

That's my name there on the contents page, right under Tom Paterson's. Certain readers of this blog will instantly know how cool that is ;)

meats_of_evil @ 2007-10-07T23:55:00

2007-10-07T22:56:18Z

Too late in the evening for a long post - got a comics convention coming up next weekend, so expect something juicier after that. In the meantime, I've updated my site with quite a lot of new stuff tonight, so go have a snuffle through all that. Oyasumi!

Oh my Gawd, they're breeding

2007-09-18T20:20:27Z

As Oscar Wilde once put it, to have one blog is unfortunate, to have two is just plain geeky. Yes, I have made the momentous decision to attempt to rend my brain asunder and post all comicky news and views in a dedicated blog, retaining all other business on this one. The reasons for this are manifold - no, actually, there's just one. I want to be able to link to a blog on my website, but my LiveJournal one doesn't fit the bill (too much personal and non-comicky stuff on here that I don't necessarily want everyone to see). So, add this URL to your Bookmarks:

panelbeat.blogspot.com

I'll be putting up my first post, about the Comics Festival I just returned from in Spain, in the next few days.

Another site update

2007-08-28T22:29:19Z

Just a few new images, plus info on con appearances. Actually, I've been doing loads more artwork lately than I'm allowed to post on the site, but it'll get there eventually. A notable thing I've just finished, which I can't add yet but will when it's published, is a Les Pretend page for the Beano. Yes, my first crack at an established Beano character - quite an honour!

In other arty news, I spent a glorious day at a place called Compton Verney in Warwickshire on Sunday, in the company of my life drawing class. We drank wine, ate grapes and sandwiches, basked in the sun... and found a bit of time for painting and sketching too. A most civilised day out. The weekend before that, Tim and I went to Whitby (seaside town up North - we go there every couple of years). It was the beginning of Whitby Folk Week, which is basically an excuse for British people to get together and be even more eccentric than usual. Like doing folk dancing, for instance. Dr Who-themed folk dancing...

Marvellous.

Finally, famous Brit comic writer/artist Bryan Talbot has just released a book of crazy stories about famous figures from the comics industry (involving such hot topics as nudity/fist fights/skeletons/Finnish people/drunkenness/insane fans/drugs - oh, and a Klingon drinking coffee). It's a bloody funny read whether you know anything about comic creators or not, and it's illustrated throughout by my erstwhile boss Mr Emerson (who appears in two stories, one involving Russia, nudity and a carrier bag). What more incentive could you need to pick up a copy

... from Amazon.com?
...from Amazon.co.uk?

This is your brain on Kokoro Scan

2007-08-11T10:47:14Z

Watch. Love. Never, ever get the song out of your head.

Back to life, back to reality...

2007-08-05T20:15:49Z

Soul 2 Soul - whatever happened to them?

Actually, what I mean to say is, back to Britain, having been on holiday to Austria and Germany last week, as I believe I mentioned in my last entry. A tremendous time was had by all (ie. me and Tim), and much pig-meat was consumed. Never in my life have I visited a place where the locals were so intent on consuming pork (and as an interesting aside, I saw more Muslims in Vienna than anywhere else I've visited in mainland Europe. Go figure). I've no real inclination to go into detail about it all here - I'll let this photo sum things up:

Yes, that's a litre of beer Tim's got there in that glass. No wonder he looks so worried.

And that's not all, folks! Not content with gadding off to the Teutonic regions, next month I shall be attending the Avilés Comic Festival in Northern Spain - in the company of Mr Hunt Emerson, no less. Should be interesting. Well, the festival organisers are paying for our hotel and meals, so if nothing else it's a cheap break^_^ But before that, I have to do an entry for the Manga Jiman competition and the Observer's Graphic Novel competition, and still find time to actually do things that earn money. Oh, and I have a pitching session with a comic publisher this coming Thursday. Wish me luck, I'm hoping to finally secure a print home for The Sinistors ;)

I am still alive!

2007-07-21T16:41:58Z

Despite rumours to the contrary. It's been a while, hasn't it? I doubt anyone will be surprised to hear that I've been very busy with drawing various things, attending various seminars, and travelling to London to watch various Japanese Ska bands (well, no, just the one of those actually:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJZgUpzqAyY&mode=related&search=

We saw them in a MUCH smaller venue than this, only a few hundred people - but as you can see, in Japan they're popular enough to fill 10-15,000 capacity venues. w00t! Finally, a Japanese band that hasn't already disbanded by the time I find out about them (yes, I'm looking at you, Modern Choki Chokies).

This is only really a short entry to say I'm off to Austria next week to escape the miserable weather we're having in Britain right now, to eat pork, and to spot a wolpertinger. Ooh missus!

Oh, and I updated my site yesterday, so take a look at a few of the things I've been up to since the last entry. I HOPE by the time I next write in this journal, my new Beano strip will be running. Fingers crossed...

meats_of_evil @ 2007-06-02T12:36:00

2007-06-02T11:46:53Z

Yay, just made my first sale to MAD magazine! They're undecided yet as to whether I will get to draw the thing in question or not - I have to get some sketches prepared by next week, so they can see how I'd interpret it. But regardless, I still get paid for the idea itself, so w00t!

Actually, I'm busy busy busy right now - I've got eight Beano annual pages on the go (the 2009 annual - yes, they plan that far ahead!) and of course the weekly strips themselves. Also, an old animator friend has just been in contact expressing an interest in us working together on something. I expect great things from this chap, as he did this, which is a minor work of genius:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGlEZ6iDrJE

I also have a t-shirt with a picture of some meat on the front. So all is good.

Bristol Comics Expo, innit.

2007-05-14T17:42:58Z

A busy weekend, but a good one - no, a great one, I think. Tim and I arrived at the convention hall at 9.45 on Saturday to set up the Midlands Comics Collective stall - next thing I knew it was about one in the afternoon and I was wandering back from the con hotel with a cup of tea and a Bounty in my hand, having just given up an increasingly futile quest to find Shelley Bond (an editor from Vertigo - more about that in a mo).

Many stalls to visit, including an increased presence of indies and self-published titles - always good to see - and many interesting bods from the industry to meet, including the luvverly Jamie Smart (premiering "Fat Chunk", the excellent minicomic for which I did the "Toy Parable" story a couple of months back), who is much taller than you would think he is, Mr Bryan Talbot (promoting his jaw-droppingly good "Alice in Sunderland" - buy it!), Glenn Fabry, and so on and so on. I held off on the inevitable spending on the Saturday, largely because I was too busy either manning the stall or wandering around chatting to people. Oh, I also picked up my comp copy of Accent UK's "Zombies" anthology, for which I did the "House of the Dead" story (you remember the one - it's on my site, anyway). Looks good. I'm undecided as to whether to put something in their next one, "Robots" - not a very inspiring subject for me...

So anyway, evening came and we found ourselves in a huge group of StripSearchers, MC2 members and the odd comic artist (well, Hunt and John McCrea, as usual) having a chinese meal and swapping rude jokes and anecdotes. Then, upon returning to the hotel bar with some members of the gang, I found myself conversing with the mentioned-several-posts-back Lew Stringer (yes! I met him, finally! He, too, is luvverly!), and a jolly nice Viz artist named Paul Palmer. We basically agreed that a)we have the best job in the world, and b)we'd been drinking a lot. The evening wrapped up for me at about 1.30 (following a long, very inebriated conversation with Hunt about mad aunties and...er...not sure), at which point the comic artists had already almost drunk the bar dry. It's very dangerous letting people who work alone from home out into a social setting...

Sunday. I was one of the few non-hungover people, which was lucky for me since I finally got to see Shelley - who looked at my portfolio and asked me to send her ideas and sketches for possible MINX titles. Ohhhh yeeeaaah! I also had interest from some publishers who might want me to do a 2-3 page illustrated biography of Edgar Allan Poe (sweet!), and a new inking/colouring gig lined up. So all in all - yeah! Woo! Comics rawk! Oh, if you'd like to see some piccies from the weekend, one of the Comics Collective guys out together a little slideshow - chekkiddout (under Convention Appearances):

www.comicscollective.co.uk

Site updated

2007-05-09T16:45:01Z

A bit of new art (including swanky new Gilbert & Sullivan)! An opportunity for purchasing things! Um, that's about all actually. Now I have to go - I have a Comics Expo to prepare for...

Rub the belly of the capitalist piggy!

2007-04-29T22:33:35Z

Buy my stuff! Repeat, buy my stuff! Or not! But at the very least, go and have a look at it. Not much up yet, but it's a start - expect new designs to appear on a regular-ish basis.

http://www.cafepress.com/laumart

Ratatouille

2007-04-23T08:18:58Z

I'm really looking forward to the new Pixar film coming out this June (or, if you're stuck in the UK like me, this October - bah! Disney might as well hand every animation fan in Britain a coupon saying "Please download this movie illegally"). I never did see Cars, because every time I saw a trailer I thought "I'm just not engaged with this. They're cars. They're freakish. Give me organic things, darmmit!" But Ratatouille is a whole different animal. Just in case you're not as familiar with it as you ought to be, here's the hi-res trailer:

http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/ratatouille/

And a neat little making-of clip, which demonstrates yet again how Pixar are such elegant problem solvers:

http://progressive.totaleclips.com.edgesuite.net/100/b10070_b2z.mov

OK, so there's a few more lazy French stereotypes than I'd like, but hell, it's a great concept for a story, it looks amazing, and it's directed by Brad "The Incredibles" Bird. I say, bring it on!

People: the drawing thereof

2007-04-22T15:29:29Z

Is this the first update for April? I do believe it is. OK, since the last entry, I've spent Easter on the east coast (appropriately), been to Barcelona with Doctor Tim, and (yesterday, in fact) went to a cartooning event in Shrewsbury, a nice little market town not too far from Brum. There's not much to say about the first two, except we ate, drank, walked and shopped, all of which are far more interesting to do yourself rather than hear about other people doing them. The cartooning event was fun, though - saw loads of cartoonists whose work I was familiar with, including Steve Bright (drew Bananaman for the Dandy until very recently), Pete Dredge, Noel Ford, Clive Collins (brother of Phil Collins, or so I'm told - gawrsh!) and Steve Best. Steve Bell from the Guardian was there too, and I was rather chuffed to hear that he told Hunt he's a fan of Ratz... he he! Nice! Speaking of which, since Mr Emerson is very busy at the mo, I'm getting to do another page by myself this week. Expect to see that on my website shortly.

In the evening, as is customary for comic artists, we all piled into a pub and started drawing each other (well, piling into a pub and drinking is MORE customary, but we did that too). Now I'm not much good at drawing real people in real surroundings, but I'm told that it's important to learn how, 'cos then you might get hired to do caricatures at events, like weddings and such. Here's my current skill level - room for improvement, but not entirely piss-poor for two-minute drawings with no pencil roughs underneath.

Then, when I'd drawn all the people nearby whose faces I could see clearly, I progressed to something a little more typical of my ouvre:

And a good time was had by all (also, Hunt draw a great pic of Tim that makes him look like some kind of evil pixie. I'll scan that sometime). Now, I've got a chocka few weeks coming up - I want to set up a Cafe Press store linked to my site, and I've foolishly volunteered to put together a mini-comic for the Midlands Comics Collective in time for the big Comics Con in Bristol (which is a scant three weeks away). Plus, I have new Beano art(aside from Ratz), and new Gilbert and Sullivan, to do ASAP. So why am I still here? I'm off to make a start on some of this stuff! Keep checking back here for news on the Cafe Press situation, by the way...

Never be without a Beano

2007-03-26T09:38:57Z

Well, normally I'd let you get away with it. But this week's is the one with the Ratz page that was drawn entirely with my own fair hands (the spider one - you can see it on my website, but this version has colour and words and stuff). So if you're in the UK - blimmin' well go out and buy it! Actually I should've announced this days ago, as there's only two days before the next issue comes out. Never mind. Go! Shops! Now!

It's been a while.

2007-03-02T18:29:37Z

Hasn't it? My gosh, but hasn't a lot been happening. OK, so I thought when January was over I could chill out a bit, you know, bake some cakes, make a start on my novel and all that - boy howdy, was I wrong. Let's quickly review the events of the month, shall we:

- Putting together my mini-comic
- Finding a printer and getting said comic printed
- Having a birthday
- Preparing for the NY Comic Con
- Doing new portfolio pages for the NY Comic Con
- Going to the NY Comic Con

And the usual stuff besides that, you know, the Beano work, life in general...

So, those of you whose addresses I know will naturally get copies of Comic Pie (so the mini is named - don't ask me why, pies are just funny), and the rest of you will have to settle for seeing the cover on the front page of my website. It's been up there for a couple of weeks actually, I really should've got round to announcing that fact on my journal. But I didn't. Oh well.

The Con was grrrreat, as was dear old NYC itself - although a complete contrast temperature-wise to when I went last summer, since it snowed some of the time. I showed my portfolio to people from Vertigo (actually went out to dinner with a Vertigo editor and his writer and artist cronies - sweet), MAD magazine, Archie Comics, Slave Labor and TokyoPop. All of them liked my work (or, let me put it this way, none of them said they didn't), although of course in this business in order to get a gig you have to be prepared to play the waiting game as to when the right project comes along for you. Still, I have sown the seeds, so I'll keep sending all these people updated sets of artwork on a semi-regular basis (as all good little comic artists are advised to do by their sensei), and see what fruits they bear.

Speaking of bear (tenuous link here), I'll have a page in "Fat Chunk", the new comic being put out by the lovely Mr Jamie Smart of "Bear" fame. For those of you who've never read Bear, it's a comic about a teddy and a cat, and features lots of blood, faeces and cake. It's VERY VERY funny. Expect to see Fat Chunk premiering at Bristol in May. Also, I'm most likely going to have a new strip starting in the Beano before too long - a kind of spin on the "rotten tales for little kids" genre of entertainment, inspired (so sayeth the ed) by my Strawberry Shortcake piss-take from early January. I won't be writing it, but I will be drawing it all by myself. Yay me! I've also been allowed to draw and ink a Ratz page on my own for the first time too, so I'll alert you Brits to the week when that appears.

Gosh, I think that'll do for the moment. I am happy - things are progressing well in Meats Land^_^ I'll be putting up some photos from the Comic Con very soon on Flickr, so keep your eye on either my website or this here journal to find out when that happens. In the meantime, this should give you a good idea as to the general tone of the thing.

Voting of the Doomed

2007-01-31T13:37:27Z

Look, 30 comics on and I'm still alive! It's been a funny old month, but looking back on all the strips I'd say it's been a worthwhile activity - I've got some good new characters and ideas to play with from that lot and, more importantly, I have enough material to compile into a mini-comic. Yes! (Hopefully) in time for my trip to the New York Comics Con on February 22, I'm going to put the best strips into dead tree form to give out to unsuspecting editors. Question is, which strips are in and which are out? Obviously I need to concentrate on good artwork, but I don't want to miss out some sketchier favourites. So, these are the definites so far (remember, I don't need 22 strips, just 22 pages to fill - so obviously, say, yesterday's would count as two pages).

- The Happy Land of Fruitopia
- Cat & M.O. mouse
- Capybara (split over two pages)
- Stupid things I believed
- Fun with herpetology
- Entertaining five year olds
- Poe
- Christmas with the horsemen
- Jonathan Science
- Justice Lunch

And on the "probably but not 100% sure" list:

- Occam's razor
- Pope Squad
- Duck & Plover
- X-13's Shaggy Rat Story
- Fight Crab
- Cupid

Any thoughts? Anyone got favourites not on the lists? I would include Forbidden Fruits, but the punchline sadly won't carry overseas and I don't want to change it. Remember, I need to fill 22 pages in total. Cheerz m'dears! And thanks to everyone who has supported this little endeavour in various ways, you've done a lot to keep me motivated in my weary moments^_^

meats_of_evil @ 2007-01-22T13:17:00

2007-01-22T13:20:55Z

For those of you who are curious about the adventures of the people in the House of the Dead, I've uploaded the remaining three pages (plus re-uploaded the first three, with speech balloons) to my site, along with a bit more Ratz stuff. Yeah! How's everyone liking the strip-a-day? I tell you, the Poe one nearly killed me - very stupid to attempt that one in a day (although I must confess, I wrote it on the Thursday, so I only had drawing and gathering reference material to do on Friday. Ha! ONLY had to do those things! Yeesh.) Also, I'm thinking of going to a comics convention in New York in February. A little impromptu, and a little expensive, but could be a good career move...

Buh??

2007-01-18T10:24:39Z

OK, would someone like to explain to me how the blinking flip this works, outside of your computer reading your thoughts like something out of a Japanese techno-horror movie?

http://www.milaadesign.com/wizardy.html

Two awesome animations

2007-01-15T23:38:02Z

One old, one very modern. I love YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zBbth7Adv8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9D4gGNb06k

meats_of_evil @ 2007-01-09T23:14:00

2007-01-09T23:18:23Z

Woo, nine days in and I'm feeling pretty good about the whole Strip-A-Day thing. I've decided, I'm going to collect most or all of them into a mini-comic to give away at Bristol this year - should make a nifty promotional tool. I've not run out of ideas yet, but I must say I haven't left the house as much as I would have liked to in the last week - oh well! On the plus side, I got an entry in the Forbidden Planet International blog, and an email from a comic artist beloved to me named Lew Stringer, complimenting me on how great he thought my site and the strips were. Again - woo!

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=2379

Happy New Stuff

2007-01-01T23:42:28Z

It's 2007. Whoa. Hope you all had a nice Christmas and New Year's Eve. It's late and I'm tired, so I won't rattle on about mine - suffice it to say, it was fun but busy, and wrapped up yesterday with a combination wedding/baptism for a friend and his youngest kid. Definitely a novel way to see in the new year...

I'm rapidly losing the ability to type, but before I give up completly, allow me to remind you once again of the strip-a-day activity happening all month on my website. I suspect it might kill me, or at the very least make me want to never do a comic page ever again. But either way, I'm going to stick it out 'til the end - late nights, here I come!

meats_of_evil @ 2006-12-18T15:00:00

2006-12-18T15:00:27Z

Another teeny update to my website, for those who are interested. Also, I hereby announce my intent to create and upload a new comic strip every single day in January - I don't have a title for this ambitious activity yet, so let's call it "The lots of strips in January thingy". Any suggestions for subject matter for stories are welcome, although I make no promise they will be used^_^

On an unrelated topic, I saw Flushed Away yesterday. Disappointing, disappointing, disappointing. Weak screenplay and what looked like a real rush job on the animation front (although I acknowledge there were some very funny bits here and there - kudos in particular to the frogs). Here's hoping Aardman finally manage to ditch Dream-bloody-Works before attempting a new film>_

I like to be like the cool kids

2006-12-12T22:50:57Z

So naturally, I got me a ComicSpace page. If you have one too and want to add me to your friends list, stop by why not.

http://www.comicspace.com/LauraHowell

Aaaand... relax. A bit.

2006-12-02T22:12:36Z

Well. It's been a bit weird since the surrealness of IMAF a couple of weeks ago. The week after the ceremony, I pretty much had brain-freeze the whole time and didn't get a thing done except a Ratz page, but since then I've been doing other stuff... drawing a six-page zombie story... more Ratz... you know. Tim has returned from Korea in one piece, with tales of nasty food. The media's also taken a bit of an interest in the IMAF thing - even as I type this, there is an interview on local BBC radio with yours truly, that I recorded on Thursday. TOOOOOOO weird!! Tim's downstairs listening to it, but I can't bear to. I probably sound like a total retard, since I was running on pure nerves the whole time we were recording it. And I know my voice sounds appalling when recorded. So yeah. Weird. I'm going to spin this entry out until the interview is over and I can return downstairs. La la la la la la la...... ah yes, I'm actually going to be working in an office for a while up until the end of the year, doing illustrations in-house for a CD-Rom at Hi8us Midlands (the StripSearch people). That's pretty cool - I'd almost forgotten the heady thrill of fancying a cup of tea during the day and having SOMEONE ELSE make it. I really must get those cats trained better. Shit, that interview's still going on. Why won't I shut up? Whhhhyyyyy??? OK, that' enough spinning out. I'm going to put a CD on or something.