Hey bwoyz. Not one for entering design competitions but the Vormator challenge is really interesting. You are given these shapes and using them only you create a design.

The original Vormator deadline was December 1st but they’ve just moved it back to Jan 1st so there’s still time to rock a number.

I’ve seen 3 submissions from other artists and they are all 100% polar opposites of each other, one of them missed the point I think as he used the shapes hundreds of times to make up a pontilist landscape. Simplicity is what its all about. Or maybe not, I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see how the big names handle it.

Here’s my one.

Started with the lad’s beard and took it from there. Still struggling with Wordpress text formatting and all that.

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Last Monday I left the house to go to work. I was still reeling from the very recent break up from my girlfriend of nearly 6 fucking years. Jesus even typing it hurts. For the previous 6 Mondays I left the house facing the terrible weather with a smile, knowing that soon I’d be made redundant from my day job and could lie snugly in bed with her listening to the rough wind and rain outside. But now the biting cold and wind was just that. I have to move out, find somewhere to live, somewhere to work and spend Xmas alone. To say I was depressed would be a little bit of an understatement.

I always choose to walk across the field instead of using the footpath. Probably saves me around 2 minutes but I like it. And that day I felt it was fitting to walk alone in a dark field, I lap all that shit up.

The wind pushed me back and I forced through it with same childish thoughts that I’m a German soldier retreating from Russia that I always get. Don’t ask, I just do.

At the bus stop the usual young school kids were there acting the bollix and messing about, they seem like decent kids and I always like to hear what they have to say to each other. One of them took the chance to use his coat as a wind sail and fly a few feet. The wind was that bad. But the kids were still having a laugh compared to me and my fellow grim faced adults. The girl was eating a pack of Meanies. I thought ‘that can’t be a healthy breakfast’ but then I realised I was having a cigarette for mine.

She was laughing and I was miserable, thinking of just going home back to bed when I felt something like a cold kiss on the cheek.

It was a Meanie that had flew out of her hand . It was stuck to my face. Nobody saw it. I opened my mouth and in it flew. And it made me laugh. And I knew that there has to be hope in all this horrible mess.

Boo fucking hizz-oo.
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Thanks to Lucy for telling me about the review of my book in The Village. I’m completely immune now to good and bad things said about my other work but this is nice:

Robots Don’t Cry. Written and illustrated by Bob Byrne. O’Brien Press €5.95 Aged 8+

Robots Don’t Cry is number 15 in the O’Brien Flyers series for young independent readers. Like other books in the series, it is instantly appealing with its comic-book format of large print, excellent big pictures and a narrative that is easy and exciting to follow.

Bimbot, the robot hero, has been thrown out of the treehouse gang for being a crybaby and, as any self-respecting child of five will tell you, robots don’t cry.

Poor Bimbot strays into the big, dark wood to try to recover from the shock of his rejection. Here he encounters characters who restore his confidence and eventually lead to acceptance by the treehouse gang.

Obviously the story can be taken as an allegory of boys being bullied and shamed by their peers because they don’t conform. Maybe there is a growing trend recognising that, in an age of increasing on-line interaction, messages can be best transmitted through machines. After all, recently in Cars we had vehicles acting out a tale of smalltown life. Or maybe Bob Byrne, the author of Robots Don’t Cry, has realised that to engage young readers in a story of rejection and redemption, a non-human victim can be more effective than human stereotypes. Excellent stuff.

Oh lah dee dah, yes there was alot of contextual psycho-mapping done in the research for this book or maybe I just love drawing cute robots! He has loads of Inspector Gadget style stuff inside his little robot body that wasn’t included in the book. Oh Bimbot, at least you still love me.
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Mad busy, last week in work and loads of other messy crap has popped up. Thanks to everyone who stopped to yap at the convention on Saturday, nice to meet you all. This is the first go at using Wordpress so excpect all manner of wrong stuff happening. It’s like a new pair of runners, I’ll have run in the grass and kick stones to scuff them up before I feel comfortable. I have no idea what all them little symbols are down the bottom.

Here’s a new comic I done yesterday as part of another Beano submission. And you KNOW it’ll appear in a Shiznit if they don’t want it.

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Years and years ago, possibly 1999 I was at a party and standing in a kitchen in Rathfarnham while this lad was telling me about how a girl he was sharing a house with had an abortion. I didn’t really beleive it at the time but he said she was given a little plastic fetus by the ‘counselling service’ to try guilt her. I asked someone else and they too had seen a little plastic fetus.

I decided I must have one to add to by bogey toy collection and while I thought it was funny ( I kept thinking of the little Made in China on it) I knew it was a sick thing to give a confused, vulnerable girl. The ever and increasingly brilliant sex.ie covers it and also has a two part audio documentary about abortion in Ireland,

second part is a bit weak but still essential listening. This country is fucked!This isn’t the place to debate abortion but just as a reminder of how although we like to think of ourselves as a modern and enlightened we are still living in a Catholic state.

The Angelus. Nuff sed.

I use a Wacom tablet to draw alot of stuff these days, the Wacom Cintiq is the Holy Grail of tablets but it’s around 2000Euro. Here it is:

Was on the ImagineFx site during the week and found a link to this dude who made his own Cintiq. And here it is. Cost him £80 to make.

Fack.