Anybody seen BARAKA? Watched it over the weekend and it rocked my world. Absolutely inspiring, depressing and thought provoking.

So here are some more ancient sketches, rather than call each post Ancient Sketches Number 134 or whatever, I’ve decided to name them something odd to see if people are searching for these terms.
Leave me alone.

From 1999, I was so lazy then. I took a job in a bakery working 8pm to 8am 3 days a week telling myself I’d have loads of time to work on comics. But no, I smoked dope and beat my dick like it owed me money.

Not too ancient from 2005. This will be a great comic when I figure out what I’m doing, have tonnes of it written but I really don’t want to be described as having done a comic about elves in a mystical Dark Crystal knock off world.

1998, a prototype Amperduke in some kind of stiff, badly drawn trouble.

Hewwo fwends! I finally got my PC reformatted and can now use my scanner and printer. 6 months after I bought the thing. So last Saturday I scanned in loads of crap, 563 pages to be precise and now you’re going to be regularly subjected to the archives.

View the larger file of this here

One of my early attempts of computer rendered and lettered comics. This crappy printout is the only copy of it. 1998

1997

1997

I’ll expand on the above soon. A nutty story how I was stopped and searched by the Garda and I had 2 dead mice in my pocket. The pricks broke my glasses.

Fuck it.

I’m sick of it. It’s over. Enough with wasting of zillions each year on a lame duck. I’m sure by now you have received your ‘Preparing for National Emergencies’ handbook in the post. I got mine and read it on the jacks,fancy graphics and great print job. It got me thinking about how much of a waste of tax payer’s money it is that the government don’t own a largescale dedicated printing house and bang out all these things themself and not put it out to public tender. Then I get to halfway through the booklet and it turns into Irish and it was good thing that I was sitting down. On a toilet. So I could crap with hate and puke in the sink.

I would love to be able to speak my native language. I wish everyone spoke it. But nobody speaks it. I don’t know why, we study it for what? 15 years in school? Jesus Christ. My secondary school, Saint Aidan’s in Tallaght was so fucked up that certain students were deprived of certain subjects. There were three tiers, The Brainy, The Okay and The Gicknoids. Only the top tier were taught French and Science, the others got makey-up ones like Technology. They were deprived of key subjects but of course they got to do Irish. We all did. Waste of time and resources. Especially for kids who could really do with a bettter education.

The government pushed for Irish to be to recognised as an EU language? It cost the EU 30 million Euros in 2007. All government literature and street signs have to be translated into Irish. For who? I couldn’t find it online but I remember hearing a lad on Marion Finnucan pushing for the removing of Irish from schools and he said that there are more deaf or blind people in Ireland than Irish speakers. That’s a killer. Nobody speaks or understands the stuff. Yeah I know there are thousands of people who speak it, but does it warrant spending all that money? There’s a county hall in Tallaght and it says
‘County Hall Block 6′ in massive raised letters on one side then it has the same in Irish on the other side. I know how much that shit costs. It’s criminal.

I understood a few words but have no idea what this ad is about. How much does all this crap cost the State?

I have friends who pursued learning Irish after leaving school, really embraced it and they will pay the cash to send their kid’s to an Irish school. Fair play to them. They’re footing the bill. So let’s remove Irish from normal national schools. If you want to learn it you can choose to. But it shouldn’t be compulsory. It has no practical worth. A fair percentage of school children are non nationals now so it’s pointless teaching them a useless language.

There’s a few good points about it all boards.ie. A recurring point is that in the 13-14 years of compulsory learning, very few become proficient but in 5 years of French or German you can nail the language.

So fuck Irish in the ear. It all comes down to pride I suppose but I have no major pride about being Irish. There I said it. The Potato Famine nearly wiped an island surrounded by fish. We have no culture, drinking doesn’t count as a national culture. Our world embassador Bono is a fucking gaylord. Irish children’s televison was woeful. People die in hospital waiting rooms but there’s enough cash to translate Power Rangers into Irish for TG4. So many things.

Here are some new doodles. Man I was buying a Wacom Cintiq yesterday, filled out the whole thing, ready to pay 1200 Euro with paypal but at the final step it wouldn’t let me pay because my account is frozen until I provide anti-laundering info. Yes, I have that much cash in my paypal. No, when you hit over 1000 clams in payments you have to validate your account.

So I didn’t order the Cintiq. And I was thinking about it all night. Should I or shouldn’t I? They are brilliant but I have no room for it on my desk. I don’t know, maybe I’ll do it later. Look at it:

I’m reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, it’s about why societies collapse and it’s good stuff. I’m fascinated with the world ending. It’s a crazy subject.
There’s a chapter on Easter Island and he asks ‘What were the two guys who were chopping down the final tree saying to each other?’. I can’t stop thinking about that.

There are many reasons why societies choose to fail including the introduction foreign species of animals and plants, I’ve always loved the idea that one small insect can fuck up the entire food chain of an ecosystem. There’s a Groo story where he keeps introducing new animals to eat the vermin but they eat the native animals too so he introduces a bigger one to eat the other ones and so on. Ecosystems are delicate little things and can collapse rapidly. This brings me to a subject dear to my heart, Polish people eating all of our pike.

The massive influx of Polish and East Europeans has brought many changes to Ireland, stone washed jeans are everywhere, weird Polish food has crept into the shops, good looking girls work behind the counter in Spar and shout ‘CUT IN HALF??!!!’ when they make my roll but a serious effect has been the declining pike stocks.

My Dad lives for Pike. Heh, years ago when the internet was new we were putting in things like ‘looking for pike in Dublin’ into search engines not realising that this was paedophile lingo. All his post (Pike and fishing magazines) was opened and tampered with before coming through our letterbox. Funny but scary. And did he stop molesting kids? Of course he did.

Big into Pike. I’m a fair weather fisherman, even a little scared of putting the waders on and catching a big one. They are nasty bastards, they eat everything, they’re just a torpedo shaped mouth that sits happily on top of the food chain. A worthy opponent compared to all the other faggy fish in a lake

The whole idea is to catch them, weigh them, take their picture and then pat them on the bum as you release them back into the lake. But the East Europeans don’t return them. They eat them. Pike is a ‘delicacy’ to them. What? Is all the crap in ALDI not good enough for you, you hungry bastards? It’s wrong, the word on the lake is that numbers are really down over the past couple of years. So cause and effect. The introduction of a bigger predator has messed with the food chain. It’s sad really.

So is this the collapse of society? No, not yet. When the next generation of kids don’t know what a Smurf is, then it’s time to start worrying.

I’m going to start structuring my posts so we’ll have one rant, one art post and one illustrated blog per week. Maybe on Fridays I’ll do the illustrated blog, a little story from my silly life. When Frank can spare the time we’re going to have a new webcomic feature for the Uncle Spunk Nugget comic. I still can’t learn Dreamweaver, I really tried but just can’t.

Here are a few snippets from The Apartment, a new Twisted Tale. I was going to pitch this story as a 28 page book to a US company but manged to squish it into 6 pages with 16 panels per page. I love this comic, it has everything I want in a story; love, revenge, anger, humour….s’all there.

Finally saw Cloverfield, liked it but wasn’t impressed with the Rancor-like monster. I was expecting this lad

Hey piggy wiggy winkles! Just getting over the most agonizing viral infection of my life. The doctor I go to (Dame Street in Dublin) is a clown. Usually when a doctor tells me I’m sick because I’m run down I believe them but I’ve never been fitter, getting regular exercise and eating tons of fruit, so I tell him it can’t be that and there must be a reason why I’m getting the same infection over and over again. He mumbles something and just gives me pills. I think I need my tonsils removed.

So I got through to the short list for the Eagles! Thank you so much to everyone who voted and please do the same again. And of course, spread the word to all your friends and let’s see if we can get a semi-illiterate hack artist nominated as the Best Artist/Writer.

Vote for me here. Vote for Declan Shalvey And Sancho too

Have no new stuff to show so here are some pages from the Freak Show comic I drew a few years ago.

I really like some of these pages but find alot of it cringemaking. It was my first time drawing humans and my first big Corel Painter project. Theres some behind the scenes stuff here

Hey buddies! Here are some doodles for upcoming Twisted Tales. I always include a few sketches with each submission and these are a few of them. I’m using a real sketchbook less and less these days which is probably a bad thing innit? I’ll slap up more during the week.

Here’s one that was lost was in the move over to Wordpress. I interviewed Nicholas Gurewitch 3 years ago. If you haven’t seen his work you are a spa. Alot has happened with the PBF since then, the collected edition is now available to buy here
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There was no info or link to it so I spent a few days searching the net for leads. No joy. But by sheer fluke, a few days ago a friend sent me a link to the PBF Archive; the wonderful fucked up world of Nicholas Gurewitch’s painfully concise and beyond funny comic strips. The Perry Bible Fellowship.

Even a quick skim through the PBF’s will leave you happily confused and giddy but read them all and you will see a true master at work. The fact that he hits such punchlines in the newspaper strip format is amazing and inspirational.

Bob: How many publications are your comics in now? Have you gone down the self syndication route?

NG: The PBF appears in at least 20 different publications that pay. I share itwith a bunch of college papers too. I’m also very excited that it’s running in my old high school’s newspaper. There’s no syndicate involved in the syndication. The Universal Press Syndicate called me a while ago, but they were looking for something with less violence & no sex.

Was is tempting to try something tamer in the hopes of getting your work toa wider audience?

There was no strong temptation. If I can’t laugh at an idea, I’m rarely inspired to capture what makes it funny. The comics would not come out well.

You work in a variety of mediums; traditional water colours and computer rendering. When you get an idea for a strip do you immediatley know which colouring method you’re going to use or is it decided after it’s drawn?

After penciling a comic, I usually get a strong idea about whether I want the comic to look dirtier, cleaner, prettier, or looser. I usually decide how I want to colour it then.

Have you worked on any longer comic stories other than the PBF format?

Yes. I did multiple long-form stories in college. One involved an elven woman and her serpent lover. I thought it was pretty sexy, but I had some friends that openly abhorred it.

The Matrix sequels were shit. Discuss:

It seems to me that artists struggling to be heard have much more consideration for their audience than artists who have already struck it rich. The Matrix sequels are probably phenomenal (I couldn’t tell), but maybe the Wachowski’s weren’t inspired to let everyone know.

Having a large body of your work available online, your comic archives and short films, what’s your take on the whole file sharing/internet piracy thing?

I don’t mind sharing. Holding back, to me, indicates that: 1) I’m not gonna be phenomenally fucking rich someday, and 2) I don’t want people seeing my art. Both indications would be so very false.

What’s your take on the blog revolution thing? Are there any you real regularly?

Nope. Though I’ll plug my friend/sometimes-PBF-collaborator Evan’s blog because I find it very funny: http://antireptile.blogspot.com/

What was the worst movie you’ve seen this year?

I was pretty stunned by the ending of War of the Worlds. Too call it a bad movie isn’t fair, but it was just…the worst.

I hear ya bro.

Back to your strips, do you draw everyday? Do you work on a few at a time or just the one?

I draw everyday, though sometimes on comics that I don’t end up finishing. I’ve taken to drawing several at a time lately, to take advantage of the clarity one gets from being “away” from a piece for a while.

From the archives, are there any strips that that took longer than the others? In terms of finding the right style or the right punchline? With such limited space you really have to pace it precisely, sort of like a haiku or something.

Of course. Sometimes I’ll work on an idea (after it’s “done”) for days, trying to find the right words, the right frame layout, or a better joke. This often involves redrawing aspects or entire frames.

It’s been said that 20% of the American public believe that the moon landings were faked. What think ye?

I don’t believe it was faked, but even if it was, the nation that can fake a moon landing deserves glory.

Glory indeed. Thanks Nick.

Check out The Perry Bible Fellowship for yourself here where you can also go take a peek at Nick’s short films and other stuff.

Also, read my PBF inspired comics here. Lame but I like them
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Just bought the new Corel Painter 10. Yes, BOUGHT.

There’s no major new features in it but alot of the stuff has been tweaked. Spent all day Sunday dicking around with it between dipping in and out of Call of Duty online.

Spent way too long on this piece but it was worth it because I learned so much. I could do it in a hour now if I had to do it again. Loads of sloppy amateur mistakes in it but good for my first proper stab at digital painting. I gave up on it before doing the wings and the gun but I’ll definitely finish it. Hi res version here

This vulture dude is part of a comic about dueling robots that I’ve been working on for around 6,000 years. If I can crack the painting skills I’ll be pitching it to 2000AD. I just finished up the roughs for 2 new Twisted Tales and one of them, The Apartment, is my best yet.

And here’s another. All naked rat moles should be killed by mini drones for my amusment.

UPDATE: The Vulture pic inspired my da Papa Peanuts to add a glowing green light to his mouth with his top class photoshop skills. Nutty old fokk.