Angel: After The Fall 4 Variant Cover

Pencils and inks by me, colours by Lisa Jackson.

Angel You Muppet

Reminds me of those cool old-skool Jim Lee covers where it would be two halves of two different character's mushes fused together down the centre. Back when comics were comics, and men were men, dammit

The Angsty Avenger

Just finished this sketch of Captain Forehead. It's the prize in a competition being run by one of the local comic shops here in Dublin to capitalize on the new Whedon Angel book. So what's the big deal with this? Well I draw a LOT of pictures of Angel(come on, he IS dreamy) and I usually use a lot of reference. Basically half the time I just copy the face from a picture from the show and then make up the body and clothes etc. I've done a lot of Angel sketches at cons and the like, with varying degrees of success. It's harder to get the likeness without ref obviously, but they do come out looking a lot more like actual drawings with a bit more life and character to them. Or as Nick Roche would often ask, 'Why are you drawing Ted Danson?' Bastard. So the reason I'm quite happy with this one is because I did it off the top of my head, and I think managed to produce a pretty decent likeness. And it maintains the elusive 'look, it's actually a drawing!' factor. This may not seem like a big deal to anybody else, but it matters to me goddammit. Might stick it in the upcoming 'Ecclectic Micks' jam sketchbook I'm doing with the other Irish boys for next years con circuit. I know that Dec is doing an Angel piece for that bad boy, so that'll be very cool to see.
Moondog AAWWWAAAAY

Does Whatever a Spider Can...

Howdy-hey.
I'll be finishing up on the book I've been working on for the past while next week, and I just wanted to stick up a panel from one of the pages. This hairy li'l fella is about the only thing I can show without actually spoiling anything, since as far as I know IDW still haven't actually announced the book and I don't wanna jump the gun. Had fun drawing this, as bugs are just put together so well, fantastic design there, nature old chum. Next week I start work on a short story for an Irish magazine scripted by none other than the mighty Bob C. Byrne! That should be fun, as I LOVE his stuff and really wanted us to work on a project together. Yes, that sounds wankey, no, I give nary a rat's arse. Then, on the 1rst of January work on my next series for IDW begins, and its a doosy.
Holla

Angel: After The Fall 3 Variant Cover

Hey y'alls. Pleased to report that the new Angel book is selling like gangbusters, IDW's highest seller ever in fact. Also nice is the fact that its actually very good, Brian's script is bang-on in terms of the voice and tone of the show, and personally I'm a big fan of Franco's art. You'll have a job on yer hands finding the issues with my covers as they're only available in the states and have a relatively small print run. These covers are pretty tough to execute, as the people coming up with the concepts aren't thinking about em from an artistic standpoint, just pouring as many cool ideas as they can think of into a paragraph description. Then I gotta try and marry all the elements and fashion some sort of decent composition. Fun though! Really glad to be involved, truth be told. Anyhoo, here're the B+W and coloured versions, colours again by the lovely Ms. Jackson.

Been a while...

Hey guys, it's been about a month since my last confession....
So the second annual Dublin Con. It was utterly fantastic. I got to sketch and sign for my five or six 'fans', go for slap up meals with top-drawer proper artists, and spend more time with the Ecclectic Micks(tm Steve Thompson). I got to sit down for half an hour with C.B. Cebulski, Marvel's go-to talent guy, and a helluva fella to boot. Got some very positive responses, all my fingers are crossed... makes typing this pretty difficult. C.B. was just a real salt-of-the-earth type of guy, really well-travelled and worldly. He donated much of his time and drinking money to myself, Thomps, Will, Dec and Nick, and for that we give thanks, nay, praise. Bang-on fella. And then there's Jim Lee. I've met my artistic hero, and lo, it was good. Whatta normal guy! Well, except for the outstanding ability and high-rolling lifestyle. Jackie, Marney and Dave got talking to him, and as a result I scored a full-page Nightwing drawing in my Hush hardcover. That really did make me even happier than I thought it would. Probly because Jackie went above and beyond as usual to make it happen. I got to sit down with Jim and his lady Carla for a drink or two and shoot the breeze, which was probly my favourite hour of the con. I've gotta thank John and Dave Hendrick for putting on such a show, and for really going out've their way to make sure that the Irish boys were a significant part of it. It really was the best birthday I've ever had(and I've had feckin 30) and the con I've enjoyed the most.
Oh yeah, the pages above are the Nightwing/Elektra sample that I drew to show around at the con.

Angel: After The Fall

Hey guys an gals, as I was saying in a previous post, I've been tapped to provide retailer-incentive(ie severely limited edition - 1000 copies each) covers for the new 'season six' Angel book starting in November from IDW. Terribly excited about the whole thing! Since the first cover has found its way onto the IDW message boards I figure its cool to post it here. Black and white by me, and glorious technicolor courtesy of my delightful colourist, Lisa Jackson.

Birthday Do(or don't)

Ahoy-hoy, my 30th birthday looms heavy on the horizon, and I'll be marking the occassion with a get together in Ron Blacks of Dawson Street on sat the 10th of november from eight in the pm. Everybody I know is invited, and if you're an attractive female who feels the need to attend even though we've never met, well feel free.
Yes, I'm that old.

Birmingham

Howdy-hey,
Off to the Birmingham Con tomorrow, looks to be a great line-up involved. Possibly the biggest Irish contingent at any convention I've ever attended, with Myself, Thompson, Lisa, Fran, Deckard, Will-I-Am, Bobert Byrne and PJ Holden heading over. Most've us are on the same flight to, so should have a few yuks. Have a couple of meetings with editors scheduled, mostly British cos the feckin dollarydoo exchange rate is murderin' me. Oh, got another new Angel gig too, I'll be providing alternate covers for the whole new series, yay! Still can't tell folks what other capacity I'll be involved in, but soon I reckon. Anyhoo, here's a few Dredd pages I just did, there should be more but this is all I had the time to finish. Its weird, I had a bundle of 2000AD stuff together for dredd-ref, but nearly every artist draws him quite differently. All the costume elements remain, but proportions and stylistic elements seem to be totally left up to the given artist. Which is cool. I wanted to go for a kinda Blade Runner type vibe with my version. Still can't figure out how the hell he steers that goddamn bike...

Subcon

Had a good larf at Subcon '07 in the Central Hotel on Exchequer St. last Saturday. D-to-the-Shalv arrived over from Scottyland on the Thursday night, and we continued our examination of the life and times of Dr. Henry Jones Jr. with a screening of 'Temple of Doom' in the media room. And lo, it was good. On Friday we did a bit of work, me on my last day of Strangeland(yay!) and Deckard witha big fat Frankenstein deadline. The Thompsons called over for merryment and political intrigue on Friday night, and Dec stood Will up. So Saturday happened, and after a delicious Starbucks(tm) corporate breakfast we got to work signing and sketching for the many(really - I'm surprised too) fans(ie nerds). As usual, Thompson's sketches were way better than anybody elses, cos he actually draws with much more dynamism when he doesn't give a rat's arse about the end result. But the unlucky few that had to make do with a sketch from myself, Dec, Will or Bobbo seemed to walk away happy enough. So the day flew by because of the many people interacting with us, which was great fun. We sat on a panel in the evening about the Irish comics industry, where Dec told people about some award he'd won(the one I didn't manage to...) and we generally gave him a hard time about it. Then off to Wagamamas for a delicious, and yet, nutricious, meal. And then, the Drinking. Met Nick Roche properly for the first time, He's the other Irish kid playing in IDW's sandbox, and he's a great fella. Hope to see more of him in the future, beginning with the big Dublin City Con next month, which we're both guests at(somehow). Also caught up with Simon Furman, who's just the nicest bloke ever. Cheers to Rob Curley at Sub City for putting the whole thing together, it was ambitious and a big success. So all in all a great day, myself and Thompson marvelling at how much Will and Dec are like the new us. We'll let ya figure out who's who. Actually, in reality, they're a bit more like And and Dec, but sure there ye go....

The pic(courtesy of Will) is, from left to right: Jackie's thumb, Dec, Thompson, Lisa, Ev, me and Williard. Thanks to the girls for their company as always, making us look a lot less like the geeks we are. Especially Declan. Especially Declan.

Joseph Dredd

Been working on and off on a Judge Dredd sample in my spare time(cos I sure have loads....). Here's the splash page inked up. I posted the pencils for this bad boy here a while back, but due to my complete lack of webby acumen I have no idea how to make a lil' link to it. It's in here somewhere.

Couple more Pages

A couple more pages from Issue 1.

Strangeland Issue 1

So the first issue of Strangeland was released last wednesday, hopefully its doing well enough. They still have like 5 or 6 copies left in Forbidden Planet I think, not sure about Sub City or the Third Place, so get in there and pick it up! My feelings are still very mixed on the whole digital inking thing, when it comes down to it I just prefer good old-fashioned inks. That said, the production values on this puppy(and all the Fangoria books for that matter) are gorgeous, and have a real glossy, magazine type feel. Here're some of my favourite pages from Issue 1, the art gets a lot better as the series progresses. Or so I'm told, I can never tell. At time of writing, I've 8 pages left to draw on the last book so I'll be finishing right on schedule. VERY excited about what I'm doing next, I'll fill ye in when I'm allowed. Peace out bitches.

The House That Funk Built

Myself and Jackie are having a house built up in Monaghan at the mo, and as part of the payment to the architect firm that helped us design it I was commissioned to draw a two page strip chronicling the process to display in their offices. They high-lariously wanted myself and Jackie to feature in it as a picture-perfect young couple on the go. Here's page 1, I'll be drawing the second once the house is finished. Funny Stuff.
Oh, and I'll stick up some pictures of the actual house soon, it looks amazing.

Batman Animated

These are some bg's I did for my college film, a short in the style of the 'Batman Animated' cartoon show that was made during the nineties. It's by far my favourite cartoon of all time, and my favourite version of Batman ever. I decided to 'homage'(ie rip off) the style of the show in my short, as we could use any style we wanted. I majored in Layout and Storyboarding, so I had a great year of drawing up about twenty of these kind of layouts, drawn in pen and ink and then coloured up in photoshop. I then threw 30 seconds of shoddy animation over it! The stuff is a pretty poor attempt at the brilliance of the actual show, but I did get the odd nice shot or two from it. Now that I look at it, the pan is pretty reminiscant of a bunch of shots from the actual show. Guess I'm easily 'influenced'...

P.S. Nobody besides myself and the college lecturers have ever actually seen the complete short, and nobody ever will!

Costume Party

Another CSI splash.

Crime Scene Investigation

I spent most of last year working on comics for IDW, a great independant comic company based in San Diego, California. I worked for six months on various Angel titles, and the other six months were spent on a CSI series called 'Dying in The Gutters'. It was a cool little whodunnit set in the crazy world of the San Diego Comic Con, written by legendary comics scribe Steven Grant, and guest starred billions of comic pros. Literally billions. There was a lot of work involved with all the likenesses, but it was great fun and I'm forever grateful to Chris Ryall(EIC at IDW) for the gig, my first work in American comics. Here's a few pages, the graphic novel is available on Amazon if anybody's interested.

It's a Strangeland Indeed....

The four Strangeland covers, issue 1 out the 29th of August. Buy seven! Colours by Jason Jensen.

Bacchus

Theses are some character design drawings I did back when I was working in advertising, years ago. They're of Bacchus, the greek god of revelry. A major wine company used him as their little guide through their new product catalogue, describing each wine etc. THey wanted him to look a little inebriated, just slightly like, and to be a fun li'l dude. These were fun to draw cos you normally do the work on-site, and have to lash the stuff out with pens and markers. Not as laborious and time-consuming as comic illustration(well. my ones anyway...). I'll try and stick more of this kinda stuff up as I find it, It's all on the hard-drive of my old, dead G4 mac. God rest it's little white soul.

Good Times....

This is a commission I did for a wedding present, I wanted to do a massive piece featuring a montage of all the bloody great saturday afternoon tv shows that used to fascinate me so... sigh. Back when tv was TV.

The Frost

Me with one of my comedic heroes, Nick Frost, at the premiere of Hot Fuzz. Such a big fan of this guy, hence the ridiculous geeky smile. Thompson reckons this is the happiest he's ever seen me...

Angel Interiors

Some of my interior Angel stuff. Just heard about Mike Wieringo's passing, so no jokes today. Awesome artist and by all accounts an amazing guy.

Angel Covers Inked

Thought I'd stick up the black and white versions of my run of Angel covers for IDW, mostly cos as usual I don't really like my coloured versions so much. Cept for the Issue 5 cover, can't find the inked version a that one. I'll stick up some of the interior pages at some point too.