I've attempted to write this twice before, only for LJ to eat the damn thing when I attempted to put the cover image in. Can't be arsed to let it do it to me three times tonight, so suffice to say, for those who understand and/or care, the latest Midwinter Comics Retreat Comic is done!
And people wonder why I don't post more to LiveJournal? Sheesh!
- Mood:
annoyed
Well, some of you may be aware that a bunch of small press comics folks including myself have made a pilgrimage to a holiday cottage in Gloucestershire for the last few years in the cold of Winter, and spend a long weekend eating good food, drinking and socialising, and somehow, over the course of time, making a comic. The results of these weekends we put out under the banner "The Midwinter Comics Retreat" They rarely make a lick of sense, but there's a streak of insanity running through them that folks seem to enjoy, despite the fact that most of the gags rely on a lot of pop culture references and in-jokes between the participants.
In 2004 (IIRC), we produced The Seven Faced Badger of Doom!
Next up was Twelve Go Nuts in Gloucestershire.
Then was Hellspoon! which came out in a white heat period of just over a month, where Selina and I went to two conventions, produced a new issue of Violent!, two issues of The Girly Comic, wrote two novels (totalling around 160,000 words between them) and did a Midwinter Comics Retreat comic which we turned around in less than a week from start to finish, so we could sell it at the inaugural Birmingham International Comics Show. And then, we hibernated! : )
Last November, we had discovered the Comic Life programme, which lets you make photo-comics really easily, and decided that we'd incorporate an element of dressing up into proceedings, mixing live action and illustrated comic pages in The Fiend In Five Dimensions.
In hindsight, we might have bitten off more than we could chew, and several pages remained in a state of quantum flux for many months, until a critical mass of the original participants met up at last weekend's Caption convention, and sat in the bar, determined to finish the beast off.
After the best part of the last 24 hours assembling and tweaking pages written by two main writers and interpreted by a multitude of different artists, some of whom follow a script page to the letter, and some who "take the scenic route", shall we say? It's an interesting way to work, certainly, trying to solve continuity problems on the hoof, where characters appear in panels of pages before they are introduced into the story, and the like! Any continuity gaffes are usually circumvented by the disclaimer that the cottage where we stay (and which forms the main location in each story) is built over a rift where reality is a bit wobbly, and which manifests in all kinds of little (and large) ways.
With four of the Midwinter Comics Retreat comics under our belt, you'd think that by now we'd have given up any expectation of them making any sense at all, wouldn't you?
At the tail end of November, we'll be doing it all again, though I suspect we'll be scaling back the distractions a tad this time!
- Mood:
exhausted - Music:Hard Day's Night
Anyone who was planning on submitting illustrations, short comic strips or articles on the theme of "Timewarp" for the Caption Programme/Exhibition/Auction, this is your final call. I'll need everything in hand by no later than July 25th to give me time to finalise the Programme and get it printed. For the Programme, I'll need black and white/greyscale illustrations A5 300dpi tifs or jpegs.
We've had some great pieces so far, with more coming almost daily, and the promise of more, but there's always room for a few more! You don't have to be coming to Caption to take part, though of course, we'd like to see as many of you as possible at Britain's longest running comic convention.
Plug over! Get scribbling! : )
- Location:East of Eden
- Mood:
busy
- Location:The Pit of Diminishing Weekends
- Mood:
sick - Music:James: Millionaires
Just to keep interested parties abreast of developments as we continue to move towards August and the 17th annual Caption comics convention in Oxford, here is the latest flyer for Caption Timewarp.
We've just confirmed a few more guests for the Timewarp, with representatives from classic magazines Escape and Deadline as well as a veritable golden horde of creators involved with brand new weekly kids comic The DFC.
Welcome aboard to Nick Abadzis, Rian Hughes, Ilya, Paul Gravett, Garen Ewing, Kate Brown, Sarah McIntyre and Neill Cameron. (All guests appear subject to work commitments). More information about Caption past and present can be found at http://www.caption.org.
We're also still after contributions of illustrations, comic strips and articles for the Caption Souvenir Programme, on the theme of Timewarp, which will need to reach me by the middle of July at the latest.
Hope to see some of you there!
Jay
http://www.factorfictionpress.co.uk
http://www.caption.org
- Location:The past
- Mood:
chipper - Music:Split Enz: The Rootin Tootin Luton Tapes
One of them smiled down at Loki and then looked up at me: "He'd just fit in my basket..."
Maybe it's just me, but it sounded more like a veiled threat than anything. I wonder if she's one of the old dears whose gardens he likes to do his business...
Jay
http://www.factorfictionpress.co.uk
http://www.caption.org
- Location:With an elevated foot
- Mood:Pained
- Music:Katy Lied
It occurs to me that I haven't promoted the Factor Fiction webcomics on LiveJournal at all, so I'm rectifying that right now.
We've been publishing The Girly Comic and Violent! for a few years now, and have decided, partly through the desire to mix things up and break through the glass ceiling of the British small press scene, but mostly through financial necessity, to take things onto the Intehwub, and have been beavering away for the last few months on our twin webcomic sites, where we're serialising strips from The Girly Comic and Violent! archives a page a day. It's also where we'll be debuting new material as it is completed.
The Girly Comic
Violent!
That's not to say that you won't still be able to buy paper editions any longer. Our website shop will remain open for the forseeable future, selling a range of back issues, at least until we bring the other part of our master plan to fruition. I previewed the cover to The Girly Comic Book Volume 1 a post or two back. It's been a while coming, but I can't wait to see it out there in people's hands. Just got to find all the old files, (some dating back to 2002), give them a spring clean and get them formatted!
In the meantime, I have three pitches to work on for one publisher, two with artists already on board and one with me going stag; final tweaks to Shelf Life prior to handing it over to a printer, and gawd knows how many other distractions, including going back to work tomorrow...
- Location:The Ponderosa
- Mood: moody
- Music:The Ting Tings
is where you'll find my contribution to Adam Grose's Flood charity comic, adapted for yon mobilly fones by John Freeman.
Just in case he hasn't tweaked the header yet, no, I haven't had a sex change and changed my name to "Jaye" ; )
- Location:221B Baker Street
- Mood: busy
- Music:incidental music
Something else I've been involved in recently is the downloadable flood relief comic Flood. I wrote and illustrated (with the help of a little Photoshop jiggery-pokery) a one page strip entitled After The Flood, narrated by Odin's ravens Huginn and Muninn.
John Freeman has, perhaps foolhardily, offered to adapt After The Flood for mobile phone display through ROK Comics. I don't envy him the task!
Conceived by Adam Grose of Clown Press, proceeds go the British Red Cross. More info on the project and how to get hold of a copy here:
http://adgros.blogspot.com/2008/05/flood-a
- Location:Home
- Mood: satisfied
- Music:Joe Jackson: Rain
Here's a sneak peek at what should be the next major release from Factor Fiction - collecting strips from across the first seventeen issues of The Girly Comic in a shelf-friendly perfect bound edition, under a gorgeous Dez Taylor cover. Further down the line will be The Girly Comic Book Volume 2, collected strips from Violent! and Crazycrone: The Lee Kennedy Collection. And tomorrow, the world!
The Girly Comic Book Volume 1 will, all things being equal, debut at the Birmingham International Comics Show this October.
- Location:In front of t' tellybox
- Mood: pleased
- Music:Watching The Invisibles
It's been a while since I posted any journal entries here, hasn't it... Here's one of the reasons why!
In December 2006, author and friend Craig Hinton died. Discussions were had about putting together a collection of stories in celebration of his life, and after a little while, the two editors (Adrian Middleton and David McIntee) started asking about for a third person to join the editorial team. In the past, I've been involved in a few such projects, or fanthologies as they were dubbed, so after some consideration, I came aboard.
Craig was a huge fan of comics, and it must be said, I know quite a few comics bods, so it seemed the obvious role for me to take on designing the book and getting an illustration for each story. Fast forward many months, and we're almost there. We're just awaiting final approval from Craig's family, and we can get this baby out into the world, with all profits being donated to the British Heart Foundation.
Contributors: John Aggs, James Ambuehl, William Andrews, Peter Anghelides, Jon Arnold, Chris Askham, Andy Baker, Allan Bednar, Simon Bucher Jones, Damon Cavalchini, Andrew Cheverton, Peet Clack, Roger Clark, D'Israeli, Jonathon Dalton, Alec Daniels, Vince Danks, Darren Douglas, Stuart A Douglas, Jay Eales, Paul Ebbs, Garen Ewing, Josceline Fenton, Toby Ford, Simon A Forward, Roger Gibson, Brian Gorman, Steve Graeme, Matthew Griffiths, Allan Harvey, Steve Hatcher, Craig Hinton, Laura Howell, Mike Juniper, Tim Keable, Andy Lane, Roger Langridge, Robbie Langton, Andrew K Lawston, Jen Leavesley, Yishan Li, Marvin Mann, David McIntee, Chris McKeon, Ant Mercer, Mark Michalowski, Adrian Middleton, Fiona Moore, Mike Morgan, Jim Mortimore, Bevis Musson, Peter Neville, Lee O'Connor, Daniel O'Mahony, Kate Orman, Caroline Parkinson, Paul Peart-Smith, Stephen Prestwood, Pete Rajski, Graeme Neil Reid, Natalie Sandells, Rachel Simpson Hutchens, Dale Smith, Oli Smith, Rachel Steffan, Alan Stevens, Daniel Tessier, Christer Van, Emma Vieceli, Nick Wallace, Dave Whittam, Terry Wiley, Dave Windett.
More news as and when I have it.
- Location:The Eye of Harmony
- Mood: chipper
- Music:Genesis: Throwing It All Away
- Mood:
hot - Music:Depeche Mode - Precious
I still don't have my jetpack, so I'll have to make do with the Suzuki for now.
It's been a strange few weeks at work, with some bizarre game of musical chairs going on. One of my workmates has been rotated out of the office, and his replacement decided on the day they were due to start that they really couldn't be arsed to turn up after all. So the three remaining members of the team had to muddle along, with the expectation of a newbie turning up at the start of April. Then, we're told that we'll also be getting another half-person (no relation to Simon Bucher-Jones and his "half-children", I'm sure), who would be operating out of our office and doing other duties half the time. Looking at our office dimensions, number of power points and spare desks/ terminals, we were a little puzzled by the turn of events that would take us from being somewhat understaffed to having a surfeit of bods in quick succession. Even more confused when we discovered that the new half-bod had also simultaneously been 'promised' to at least three other departments, despite the outside organisation who were paying for him, telling us he was "ours" in person! In the end, they decided that although he'd be in our office, we weren't to have anything to do with him. Hearing that half-bod would be starting at the beginning of March, we had visions of him taking the vacant desk (the one I had myself as a new bod, a few short months ago) and terminal, leaving our official new bod with nowhere to sit, and no pooter to play with, come the start of April...
With me so far? Okay, I'll wait until you catch up, because here's where it gets even stranger...
One of my other colleagues is job-hunting so she can move nearer to home, so we're vaguely planning for a point where we'll have to swap jobs around again, having already absorbed the workload of our old teammate when he went. "Half bod" has already started, and on his first day, we were told that we get to have him after all. The job that the outside organisation are paying him for, won't be starting until they build a new booth, so we've got him full-time until then at least. "Official New Bod" probably won't be coming to us after all, when April rolls around... but nobody will actually confirm this, of course...
Now we've had the icing on the cake with the news that management are having a shuffle round, and my boss is rotating out of the office somewhere else, completely out of the blue!
Add to this, the invitation for me to think about going on the Hostage Negotiator course at some point in the future, and I see a number of bizarre career possibilities opening up in front of me. With all these doors opening and closing, it's a bit drafty at the moment!
Discipline Lad
Where's my jetpack and holidays on the moon, for starters?
There's a new Starsky & Hutch movie coming out in the Summer, and two Charlie's Angels flicks, and counting...
Personally, I think they've repackaged the 20th Century with a lick of paint and go-faster stripes, and sold us a pup.
Once again proving that there's nothing Selina can do that I can't horn in on... ; P
Discipline Lad
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