New Year

As the new year rolls into its first week, there is a sense that something needs to change this year. Perhaps that’s true for everyone…you look back at the last year and wonder how it could have been done differently? I don’t know for sure. I can barely remember one day from another a lot of the time.

Much of these few years I have been working as a colourist for an American chap called Doug TenNapel. He writes the story, comes up with a script and way of telling it visually…makes brilliant art – voila! All I do is I colour it in.
You have to be able to look at the original art and come up with a colouring style that will suit it and not overload the lines…think about palettes etc., send things back and forth until they are approved by both the author and publisher and get on with it until its done. I enjoy the projects, and try to do the best on them.

His latest book Nnewts published by Scholastic Graphix (out of a three part series…we’re prepping for the second one this year) comes out soon.

It feels strange to write about it for some reason…I never thought I would be working collaboratively on comic books back when I was a green behind the ears illustration student. It was usually something that was discouraged at university – at least when I was there. And yet it was something I loved and had admiration for, because they were always part of my childhood. I used to pour through Herge’s TinTin stories and the Asterix books…later on Elfquest, the work of Jean Giraud (Moebius), 2000 AD Judge Dredd comics…an early glimpse into seeing how they were definitely not just for children, and how diverse the artwork and style could be. I’m still trying to work through Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä.

Comics are visual story telling – the merger of art and narrative – and the possibilities for how to do them are vast. They can be little gag strips, or fully blown epics. It just depends on your imagination.

Anyhow…if I have to make any new years resolutions this year, it would be to work at filling more sketchbooks up.