Monkeywiz

I know I’ve not posted for absolutely ages and so I expect no-one will even read this or be affected by it, but the site might be down on and off whilst I upgrade Wordpress.

Saw this old post a little while ago, about Jim Lee sketching on the back of a door in a comic store, which was recorded and later edited together and narrated by Jim Lee, but it looks like he only ever got as far as making parts 1 and 2. (more…)

…and bought Leopard for my MacBook!

Not at all necessary but there’s a few cool new features (like coverflow and the folder stacks) and it’s all shiny and new, and I’m a sucker for new gadgets and toys, and this at least has stopped (well delayed) me buying yet another whole new computer.

Don’t you just love it when your boss gets into work on a Friday morning and tells you that as it’s been a really busy couple of weeks we’re all going to knock off work at about half one and go bowling, have a couple of drinks, some junk food and then leave for home about four.

It’s a hard life.

Part two is here, or check out my automatically updating Heroes, Villains and Artists page.

They also have these episodes available to download on their site

It’s known far and wide that I’m not the best at drawing and painting (I’d still have trouble keeping between the lines in a colouring book) which is why I asked Jamie Noguchi if he wouldn’t mind designing and painting a couple of my penguins for me.

Everyone’s favourite Angry Zen Master and artist on the excellent Erfworld, he’s lived up to form and done a bang up job producing these really cool little fellas, cheers Jamie.

Last weekend I attended the second annual Birmingham International Comics Convention (I know, I didn’t realise there’d been a first either, thanks a lot to a friend of mine who told me about it, you know who you are).

I had a pretty good weekend overall and managed to get out of there spending hardly any money on comics/graphic novels etc, and even managed to snag a few free sketches/signatures from a few luminaries of the comics world.

As I pre-ordered tickets I got entry into the launch night the evening before the show in a pub in Birmingham and found myself sat at a table with Bryan Talbot and Jordan Smith with Mike Carey and lots of other ‘names’ milling around within arms length, but I found myself a little shy that evening (uncharacteristically so, especially with a couple of pints inside me) and decided to let them all talk to people they knew instead of bothering them, before retiring fairly early (not the cheapest bar I’ve been to).

Getting to the show late the next morning, I just managed to get in and get a seat for ‘Comic Artists Flip Out’ which had Alan Davis, Staz Johnson and Mark Buckingham at the front of the room sketching whatever they felt like on A1 sketchpads (and taking requests and answering questions at the same time). It was great fun to watch professionals knock out such good pictures in such short order, and the really good part was that everyone in the audience got a raffle ticket before they started and as soon as a sketch was complete they called a number and whoever had a ticket ‘won’ the sketch. It turns out Mark Farmer was sat in the row in front of me and won the first completed sketch which just so happened to be an Alan Davis Batman, (I was gutted to say the least, but then I actually won a Mark Buckingham sketch myself).

Later on after queuing for an age I got to talk to Dave Gibbons who was a genuinely friendly and chatty bloke. As I knew Dave was going to be at this event I thought it would be fun to try and make something to take along and get signed, but as I’m still not very good or fast and only had a limited amount of time to work on anything I decided to use one of the penguin cast-off’s I had lying around from the penguins I make for my fiancée I made a couple of ‘Rorschach Penguins’ gave one to Dave to keep, and he was more than happy to sign the other one for me as well as do me a little personalized Rorschach sketch and sign all my copies of ‘Watchmen‘.

After a bit more wandering round I just managed to catch Mike Mignola before he went off for the first of his Q&A sessions of the weekend and gave him a ‘Hell Penguin’ custom I’d made and got him to sign one for me too. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get into his incredibly popular talk that day, but did manage to catch the ‘Darkness Calls‘ talk the next day as well as see the Q&A session with the incredibly talented and unassuming Kevin Nowlan who later on did a quick Wasp headsketch for Susan and a Jack B. Quick for me.

My only regrets from the weekend were missing the Adi Granov and Esad Ribic talk and the Matt Hollingsworth colouring master-classes and that I didn’t manage to get more sketches and signatures, but then there’s always next year.

I can’t think of anything that happened in September worth mentioning so I’ll jump right into October.

On the 6th me and a bunch of friends from university got together for the 10th anniversary of when we started uni.
We visited several of our old haunts, reminisced about old times, drank a prodigious amount (but as we’re all over or near the 30 mark now decided it was best to leave off the shots and drinking games we used to play back in the day) and stayed out late dancing to music that was a hit in the 90’s and buying kebabs on the way home (and not entirely unusually dropping mine on the floor before managing to eat it) and then getting up at the crack of checkout (as we were visiting from all over most of us stayed in a city centre hotel) before going for a huge breakfast and another pint before stumbling off home to rest before having to go back to work on Monday.

Now lets hope it’s not another 10 years before the next one (although I do need a bit of a break first ).