I’m getting my illustration portfolio together and I’m finding some wacky crap from back in the day. Here is a character designed for Smurfits those money hungry corrugated board swines. There was a whole series of this cardboard lad doing things like working in a lab and a kitchen, I’ll post them if you want to see them. I drew this with one pen, scanned it then coloured it in Corel Photopaint. Up until 2 years ago I used Corel for everything which was ridiculous. It really stunted my day job career not knowing how to rock Adobe.
Here’s a nutty one, a CNN piece about Stephen Thompson’s McCain comic. Thompson is the best Irish artist out of all us, it was on his recommendation that I bought the Cinitiq. Horribly talented bloke
On my walk into town from the bus stop I would pass a real estate agents and most of the time there was this lad around the same age as me with an enormous, bulky head sitting in the window. He looked like a fired up young go-getter, with that big bastard cranium bursting with sales leads and anecdotes from the time he met the Kaiser Chiefs. He disappeared for a week and I thought he must be gone on holidays but no, he’s gone and is now replaced by a fat girl
Just to see him prattling along each morning made me laugh out loud. I’ve known many people like that over the years, mostly through working with them. Happily vacuous and square. He probably listened to Spin FM and owned 5 different after shaves. I’ll miss you, you crazy looking cunt. With your big noggin teetering along as you waffled on about how you closed the deal on the apartment on Brunswick Street and your little legs flailing about when you heard something wacky and outrageous on Gerry Ryan.
It’s amazing how much of a rut you get into going to work. I invent names and back stories for all the people I see on the bus each day. And I’m sure they have a few for me. Greasey mac Slime, Bed head McNulty etc. I aways draw little pictures of them in my diary and it’s funny shit,
Wiggedy wiggedy wham! Lashed through my comic in record time this year. I promise to spend the whole day and do it bigger and in colour next year while body popping. I forgot to take pics, here’s a shitty one
I found one my favourite clips the other day. When I had this on VHS I wore the tape out rewinding it. Nozin’ Around, a painfully spot on parody in The Young Ones of yoof tv from the 80’s. Everything in it is funny. Every time I see or am involved with a contrived attempt to connect with the kids I think of Nozin’ Around.
I’m not a fan of Ben Elton on camera but this is his finest work. Check out the Professor’s little spaz fit when he cracks the joke. The whole thing is perfect and so fast paced.
I was looking back some of the old Twisted Tales I’ve done and was surprised to see that I don’t completely hate my artwork. There’s usually a 3-4 month retrospective window where everything you’ve done looks shit. Or maybe I’m just not getting any better!
This story was done in an odd style, lots of grey tones and cartoonish faces but it holds up, there’s a fair few ropey panels of course but a lot of it is good. Man I can’t even look at MBLEH anymore, thankfully I’ve sold most of them but I’ll be giving away a couple hundred of them as part of Free Irish Comic Day this October. Ah well, if there was no MBLEH there would be no Amperduke so it was worth it just for that.
After I posted about my surprise attack on my nutsack a few weeks ago, Erok penned a tune to commemorate the event of my daddybag getting ruptured. I’m touched (not in the gay way) and honoured (in the gay way) that people go to the effort. Check out his blog here and the song here
Grinding and winding, popping and locking it’s way back to Wood Quay for 2, count em, TWO days this year, It’s the annual Kings of Concrete festival organised by the sterling fellows at Micromedia; the shams responsible for polluting 100’s of locations with scalding hot globs of The Shiznit.
Last year was deadly but this year looks to be even more deadlier with tonnes more events, comps and activities. It’s a family friendly event so bring the kids, there’s something for everyone, there’s too much to take in at times, lads on ramps, girls gyrating to the beats, weirdo’s playing hackysack, fantastic graffiti demo’s, some clown drawing a big comic, ollie competitions….loads of things. Everybody is welcome, except the people I’m avoiding, you know who you are so don’t show up.
Yeah I’m down with the kids, I’m going to bust my fokking moves ragga style and trip into an ill two step checka checka one time. Visit the myspace page here
Here’s the video from last year
And here’s the comic I drew last year. I’ll be doing another one on the Sunday.
I was a bad skateboarder, only realised that I was more into decorating decks after a couple of years of dicking around. It’s like William Burroughs, reading about his life is fun but actually reading his work is horrible.
So that’s the 26th and 27th July, Wood Quay in Dublin.
Being woefully out of touch with the modern world, it takes me a while to hear about things. Seamus Brennan passed away a few weeks ago and I only heard about it now. I know nothing about his politics but I was always eager to see him on telly. He was tiny. I remember he was on Prime Time and his legs were dangling off the side of the chair like a 6 year old. I drew a comic about him.
I made him cry according to this article.
Here’s the comic. Notice the credit is Bob ‘Liam Lawlor’ Byrne. He’s also dead. The curse of The Shiznit……
That article is wrong about what The SHIZNIT means by the way
Again, I had no grudge against him. Everybody thinks I just hate every public figure and it’s not true, I like Pat Kenny,Gay Byrne and Dave Fanning. Compared to tools like Hector and every lame presenter on Irish television they deserve their accolades. Joe Duffy and Paddy O Gorman are still fucking clowns of the highest order though.
