My studio was plagued by flies last week, but they were all dopey and slower than normal. So I managed to smush a fair few in the air. They also sat more still for photos. Here is the last bang of the season, these two were porking on my desk for about ten minutes but check out fly number three on the keyboard peering down at them. He sat there waiting for his turn.

Click for larger version

And while I was at it I took a pic of the new set up. This wasn’t staged, I just happened to have  the ipad and wacom going at the same time. Fucking Batcave over here! No, on the weekends I have everything turned on. During the week it’s just the mac and then all day Sunday I go nuts drawing.

I just noticed the blog categories are missing from the right hand side. Well here is an illustrated blog about me killing flies and that big wasp thing

The Cult of Lego by John Baichtal and Joe Meno is a new book that covers the history of Lego and the many offshoots of the medium. Packed full of photos and details I never knew about our beloved bricks. And they gave Amperduke a full page so it MUST be good!

Get it on Amazon right here

I had the pleasure of working with Terry for about a year, I used to colour and adapt his illustrations for use in the giftware industry. I would constantly be amazed at how many ideas he could knock out on any given theme, subject or brief.

Although we talked regularly on the phone and through mail ( He sent me some gold material for The Shiznit that was just *too good* to use ) I never met him face to face as an adult. I met him as a kid before and even then I was puzzled at how he could draw that fast but still be precise and inject so much life and energy.

Lew Stringer posted some of his older comic work and some more info about his background.

I have a tonne of his original sketches here that I will dig out and scan. But here is my favorite Terry Willers original piece, I found this in my flatbed scanner nearly 2 years after I left the company. What a surprise it was. This is an original and it is so sharp and clean.

Rest in peace Terry. He was a different breed, not found today with all our dopey digital antics, all he needed was a sheet of paper and a pencil to create his magic.

I think that kid has gammy arms

Here he is with some leg

Chilling out in a distinctly Moroccan setting

The inside pages, all three of them are corny. Mostly illustrations of historical costumes. If anybody has any scans of Sugradh etc, the Irish magazines they forced us to buy in school in the 80′s, please drop me a line.

Here’s a clip from the television show from which it all comes from. I like him, he’s cute.

And the official song

“Son, when you’re working in people’s houses. DON’T steal money or jewelry. Steal the cd’s, the first thing you go for is the cd’s”

I never stole anything from the houses I worked in. The only time I was ever tempted was when I was installing a fish tank in ‘Celebrity Chef’ Conrad Gallagher’s house. I was all psyched up to go on a bonanza but he was cool. No attitude at all. I got more static from middle class women who wouldn’t even give you a drink of water.

So my big, fat, stinking, sweating delivery man’s glass of water…

I looked at him dead in the eye and said no. What a dick!

“No you can’t have a glass of water because I’m a paranoid maniac” was the message.

But in reality I just worked my reverse Manuel on him “I no speaka Spanish! Me know nothing”. Man it’s great to keep that up your sleeve, to suddenly just pretend you don’t understand what’s being said or going on. I reckon I can get one more year out of it.

So he left. And instead of opening the iMac I dug out my extendable baton and put it on top of my bedside locker. I’m armed to the teeth generally. I’m from Tallaght.

To be continued in Part 4 of Switching to Mac from Pc

I’m sure I saw them before back in Ireland. I was always a Smurf nut and we would always find similar figures like Astrosniks and those little clowns with the white faces. But obvious cash in aside, the book is actually good. The artwork is great, all the vehicles and space ships are top notch.

They never made it to animation but there appears to be a fair array of figures and books, click here to see an overview, some manufacturer was cheeky enough to run off a few in blue.

The Sniks Smurfette. The masked dude is her boyfriend and currently on his way back from a space mission

A nice shot of the Snik city. Check out the barbed wire and guns!

Here the baddy uses a flame thrower. Papa Smurf just used poncey spells

These are the normal Sniks/Smurfs

And they have dogs...which look the same as the Sniks really

I ripped off the Smurfs too. I designed a series of Leprechaun figurines and I made one Sleepy, one Brainy, one Hefty etc.

The Sniks even go as far to copying the way Smurfs speak, adding “Snik” in place of other words. But as I said, far from being a heartless rip off, the book is good. It’s the only one I’ve read this year.

I’ve scanned some more odd Spanish gems I’ve found.

Some nutjob has documented every error in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons. Which were made in Dublin by the way.

He has disabled embedding so check the comments below to see one. There are 200+ on his YouTube channel

The whole thing is alien to me now, getting a bus everyday, wearing a coat and lugging around all my gear in my backpack. Now I wake up, put on a pair of shorts and sandals and don’t leave the house for days at a stretch.

I have this image set as my desktop background to remind me how lucky I am. I took it one morning probably around the same time as the bus pic. Kilclare in Jobstown…

Note the green, white and orange painted bricks on the left hand side, this was the house of a big Sinn Fein supporter.