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.

Discuss

This was from the first issue of Morbid Milton. I love it. My first double page spread.I would have loved to see it coloured. But no. I got dicked. BUT I’m reusing it in a new kid’s book so suck it. View the high resolution version here

Following on from the comments in the previous post, here is an 8 page story that I drew of the Morbid Milton character, I agreed to do it for free and it was fun. The colouring job is amazing but the lettering is shit.

This story ran in a mag called Cryptic and I’ve never seen it, wasn’t even sent a copy. Beware of internet collaborations kids. Beware of collaborations in general, people can’t be trusted. I hate working with people on things. My favourite saying is ‘A camel is a horse designed by committee’. I say it all the time.

After this I agreed to draw a 3 part series for a nominal fee, just to get some stuff published in the US. Then the mention of money disappeared and I was held ransom to draw the other 2 issues so I decided to walk and keep the character I designed. The artwork is a little ropey as it was banged out around 2 and a half years ago

Nuff sed.

Here’s a pic I took on Friday, a young knacker came into Spar on his horse, It was nutty.

Found this comic buried in one of my many folders. I like this comic. I drew it on A3 paper and hand lettered it but I gave away the originals for some charity auction.

Yep, The Evil Machine. Although I’ve given up on recycling and am sick to death of hearing about global warming, seeing trees getting chopped down depresses the shit out of me. Where I grew up there was always young scrawny trees planted almost as a taunt to the young knackers who would snap them into pieces. But what got me is that these young trees were supported by a wooden pole around 5 times thicker than the plant. So we kill an older tree to support a series of new trees that will be killed. Sob.

Neh

Hey all, just a quickie to tell you about Cliodhna’s new project

Full details here

Cliodhna lost her Dad tragically last year while a mission with GOAL and all proceeds from the book will go to the organisation. So take a read of the brief and get submitting. I’m planning a 4 pager for it.

Cheers,
B

Just sent off a new 2000AD story. I lost nearly a full page because a file was corrupt and that just wants to make me cry. It’s not the amount of time that you put in that hurts but I always feel that you can never recapture the magic of the original.

I know. Back up your files. I do. But if the file is corrupt, the back up will also be corrupt. I usually save a flat jpeg version of the file as I work but I didnt this time. When I was 17 I worked for weeks on an epic comic called MOTUKA (which will be revamped) and I lost all my colour work because of those shitty Zip disk and The Click of Death. You’d put the disk in and it just started clicking and you knew your work was gone.

I think backing your stuff up online is the way to go. I use removable drives for storing loads of crap and I know it’s inevitable that they’ll malfunction. Man sometimes I hate computers when they start dicking around and question why they just can’t work properly, but then I think, fuck, they work so well 90% of the time that it really is amazing. Same with your body, it’s an awful thing to get cancer but when you think of how complex and fiddley all your bits are it’s amazing that we live so long in relative comfort.

Ahh, things could be worse. Could be a midget being raped by a bull