
Why not join in the celebrations of Garen's 40th birthday by checking out Rainbow Orchid? It's bloomin' brilliant! Go here for a preview.

I've been on a Robo-Hunter kick lately, plowing through Verdus, Day of The Droids, all the way up to Football Crazy and felt inspired to do a doodle. I've tried to be true to Ian Gibson but do my own version of Sam Slade, Hoagy is unapologetically Gibson - I mean, come on, Hoagy's a design classic (doubt Sam'd believe that) Don't think Gibson's got anything to worry about, but I'd LOVE to draw robo-hunter - reckon Roger Langridge would be a great writer if Alan Grant felt liek a breather.
Bristol came and went, and was pretty good thank you, I got to meet loads of really nice people, including most of the Huzzah boys, and a fine bunch they were too.


There's a new Huzzah in town, this one's Huzzahnoir, and I think the title's a fair clue to the subject matter.
Here's the rough inks I drew the final version from, there's very little changes from this to the finished pencils, but I like to know where everything's at before the final stage. Most people leave a lot out for the final stage to keep things from looking too stiff and overworked. Frankly, I'm not that good and I need to know it works before commiting to finished pencils, or inks. I'm sure it'd drive some people insane and it does mean extra work, but it helps me refine certain details, I find that bits get simplified, and I start 'pushing' the proportions of things and discovering shapes and interesting lines and patterns. Those happy accidents keep it interesting, and without them I think my work can look a bit bland... at least that's how I justify it all to myself.
Here's a scrapped version of the first plate, it's a bit too obvious and cliched. All it suggests is menace, mystery and an attempt at looking cool. Big deal. Then I scribbled a bit of dialogue based on the relationship suggest by Colin's wonderful previous plate and I knew there should be real affection shown between the two characters. This turned out well for two reasons - when sinster folks show love it can seem all the more unsettling, and it gave me the idea of having the globe be a bit more glowing with the light coming through the fingers to suggest a feeling of emotion coming from it. The other change from initial idea was that the bottom plate was not divided into two panels, the second eye socket simply had the second bit of dialogue and a bit of background. It just didn't balance right, so I decided the second socket could be another panel, which was lucky because I think the Munoz-esque shadow looks quite nifty and gives the dialogue more weight.

