So this is weird. Like many people I get email notifications about stuff. One popped into my inbox from Indiegogo. One of the items on the email was about a new home camera security system. Looks pretty awesome but I was struck by the shape. Remind you of anything? Pure coincidence obviously. Not only that, but the name too. Then I scrolled down the page and saw the following image. Spooky eh 😉
You can check out this awesome little device on Indiegogo HERE
I have had a ‘shop’ on here for a while but with only a few items. I recently posted on Facebook and Twitter that there are some prints now available. Thanks for all the interest in these. But… as soon as I mentioned it the whole thing crashed and burned and disappeared and was unretrievable. “I’m an artists Jim, not a web designer!!” Anyway, been poking about a bit and have now completely redesigned the Shop to be a Store (because when I tried to call it a Shop again it just kept disappearing!)
So, welcome to the STORE. We have Prints AND Books. Take a rummage through and see what takes your fantasy. This is all mostly stuff that I sell at conventions including the new re-inked, re-coloured version of the Transformers characters playing a game for the Universe. Now called ‘High Stakes‘.
Enjoy.
A
Today is ‘World Mental Health Day’ and I wanted to share something with you.
I have been an ‘artist’ for as long as I can remember. A Comic Book artist, a Concept Artist and now a Storyboard Artist. But in spite of thirty years drawing stuff I consider that I have only produced one piece of real ‘ART’ in my life. This…
So what’s the difference? I consider that all my other work is basically Illustration or problem solving. I love it and it uses the skills I have accumulated over the years. In it’s own way it is ‘Art’ but the piece above is something else. It comes from somewhere else.
20 years ago I had – for want of a better term – a ‘breakdown’. I won’t go into the reasons why but suffice to say, I shut down. I felt it impossible to engage with my life, my work, my relationships and ultimately myself. At that point I was referred to a counsellor and over the course of a year I looked at what it was that had me disengage from life. During this experience I produced this piece of art. What makes it very different from everything else I do is that it was completely spontaneous. I didn’t think about what I was doing. I had a very vague image in my head that I needed to get down. The image was in no way clear. Like it was in a fog or behind an obscured pane of glass. More of a feeling I guess or a half remembered dream. I found bits and pieces of board, metal, nails and paint colours that I just picked up intuitively. The black spilling over the edge of frame was intuitive. The white border on the top right side of the piece was intuitive. As was the placing of the nails, the small key (that I just happened to find) that hangs on the edge of the frame in the top right corner, the sections of wood that I used to make the frame etc. And the small square of vellum tacked in the middle on which I wrote a poem. The poem just fell out of my head and onto the paper. It is tacked onto the board back to front. And I knew, intuitively, when it was finished. I took it to my next counselling session. Now here is the thing that is absolutely key in this. My counsellor looked at it and asked me if it was ok if she said what she saw in it. I agreed and what she said to me was incredible. Everything that she described made perfect sense. It was clearly what was going on and I hadn’t even seen it. From that point on my journey back to myself began.Â
So why am I telling all this? Well as I said, today is World Mental Health Day. I know from personal experience what it is to feel that pain. I also know what it is that makes the difference. The counselling gave me the opportunity to be really heard. A chance to say and express absolutely anything, with no fear of judgement. With that in place and the love and support of my wife, family and friends I was ok. So on this day and after please consider that anyone who you know or encounter that seems to be dealing with something only needs one thing to help them get back to who they really are. They need to be heard. Listen to them without judgement or agenda. You don’t have to have answers, or fix them or tell them what to do. Just authentically ‘hear’ them. If you do that you will be making a huge difference to the life of someone.
As the drawing of the panels slowly creeps forward on the new book, I thought I would pause and see what they might look like coloured up. As many of you will know, when I ‘coloured’ HORIZON I used a particular style that I had developed while working as a concept artist in the games industry. This time around I thought I would use a similar process but simplify it a bit. My intention is to make OXYGEN a colour book. HORIZON was deliberately cool in its tones and deliberately black and white for most of it. I didn’t want to have colour interfere too much with the subtle emotions of the piece. OXYGEN is a slightly different feel. I want very vivid, almost surreal colours for this one. I am sure you will see the Moebius influence on this. I was always open about the influence that Moebius had had on HORIZON and it is showing through on this book too. It feels like such a natural way to go with it and a very natural way for me to work. Flat slabs of colour with a few gradients, highlight and shadows. Anything more would probably over decorate it.
This scene seems to be the test piece that I have used for a couple of things now. It feels good to me. Might even offer it up as a print. Let me know your thoughts on that.
AW
So ‘Jeff the Chef’ was no more. All those years of nurturing this character and all his friends was changing. We had lived with Jeff for a long time. We had spoken to friends and family many times over the years about how Jeff was one day going to be on TV. But now, it wasn’t going to happen. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that our little show had now found a home was AMAZING! It had finally happened and we were over the moon. But also, in some way, it wasn’t the character that we had come to know and love that was going to get his big break. But then, it’s all made up after all. So the search started for a new name.
I am sure you can imagine how hard that was. Seems like it should be easy, but think of another name that rhymes with Jeff. Go on, try. I know, right. there aren’t any. The closest that we ever got was the name Stef. Which would play well in Scandinavian countries, but in the UK it would seem a bit, odd. Talking of odd, we even played with the idea of changing gender. Not us. The character. If he was going to be called Stef, why not make him female. Stef works well as a female name in the UK. I even did a load of designs. So our chef character was going to be female, the child? could be a boy I guess. And the organic farmer friend was going to be a trendy hipster male type character. Yes, there are drawing for this. Might post them at some point. What was also interesting about the gender thing was that way back when the BBC didn’t want a male. So maybe (even though we were now with Channel5) female would be a good move? All those thoughts and then…. STOP!!!!!!
We were going back on the work we had done for many years. A lot of conversations had been had about the power of the father-daughter single parent setup and it worked well, and we were about to throw it all away for the sake of having a name that rhymes. So if a rhyming name isn’t available, how about a bit of ‘alliteration’. So. A name that starts with a ‘shh’ sound. Ready? Go!
First and obvious one is Sean. but as we all know, that has been used on a certain woolly character. Other possibilities are a number of Biblical names, but that wouldn’t travel well. The next obvious and widely used one is (drum roll) SHANE! So, those lovely people at HoHo took it for test drive. they tested it on focus groups and all that kind of stuff and it was a winner. Not only does it sound good, it is also a name that fits well with the Chennel5 audience. It is a name that they are familiar with and a name that is pretty cool 🙂
So we had it. Shane the Chef. Somehow, right as it was it was still a tricky one to get comfortable with personally. Then, a great little bit of advice from Helen at HoHo. She suggested that I do a search and replace of all files and folders on my computer. That way, when I go to open any folder with stuff to work on it will say SHANE and it will be that and nothing else. Good advice. I guess that opening JEFF folders to work on Shane would be like going through a dead man’s wardrobe 😮 And sure enough, for me, he quickly became the Shane that we now know and love.
