the banal pig

Ugly Monkeys 2

Posted on April 20, 2013 by banal pig

You may remember this strip that I did for Comical Animal ages ago, Ugly Monkeys:

I wanted to develop this further with the hope of getting it in a kid’s comic, so I roughed out another story, also featuring another horrible looking monkey, the Aye-Aye. As it seems to have come to nothing for now, here’s the story in rough (i put the old one above so you could imagine the finished version).

I like these characters, and how they’re a bit downtrodden but they support each other, hopefully I’ll get a chance to do something else with them at some point.

Posted in all ages comic, monkey comic, ugly monkeys | Leave a comment

‘Lucasing’ Untitled Ape

Posted on April 14, 2013 by banal pig

So i’ve been thinking about Untitled Ape’s Epic Adventure as a whole, (as you may have noticed from recent posts), and i’ve decided to mess about with it a bit. It was originally created in chronological order, as i was writing and drawing it as i went along but the trouble with this is twofold- 1) the drawings end up being a bit shit as i’ve developed as i’ve gone along, and 2) it doesn’t allow for retrospective changes in the story as a whole, and connections between points in the story that make it satisfying to read.
Ergo, i’ve decided to ‘Lucas’ (i.e. go back in and tinker with a previously released version) some of the bits that stick out as weak and plot and dialogue that makes more sense given that i now know the end of the story. So here’s the first results below, i’ve changed Untitled Ape’s previously rather squat body to a more streamlined version as i’ve come to draw it, and i’ve changed some of the dialogue to make his motivation a bit stronger.

Lucasing- use it in a sentence today!

Posted in lucasing, untitled ape, untitled ape's epic adventure, untitled cat | Leave a comment

Space Wars and Dancing Food

Posted on April 7, 2013 by banal pig

So, here’s another one-hour commission, some dancing food from Ellie Jahnz for her brother Simon, employing my old coloured pencil technique to add a bit of colour in there, and i’m really happy with the results.

Also, here’s my space wars colouring and activity book, as far as i got with it anyway. I had a few weeks last year where i bashed out these pages in a frenzy and then ran out of steam with it. please have a look and let me know what you think..

Posted in colouring book, one hour drawing, space wars | Leave a comment

Commissions!

Posted on March 18, 2013 by banal pig

While I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front, I have been beavering away on a few commissions. Here’s the first of two commissions from Bob Turner, a Dr Strange:

And an Incompetent Shark in HD:

Those were a couple of one-hour drawings, and I’m still open for commissions if you’d fancy one to your own particular tastes.
Meanwhile, Ben Matlock asked me to do something a bit more elaborate in celebration of his favourite south american president, Jose Mujica:

I must admit I’d not heard of old Jose before, but he’s a cool guy who donates 90% of his presidential wages to charity.
Anyway, let me know if you’d like something knocking up!

Posted in dr strange, incompetent shark, jose mujica, one hour drawing, original comic art | Leave a comment

Another New (Old) Thing: The Banal Pig Book of Little Stories and Big Puns

Posted on March 9, 2013 by banal pig

Disclaimer- no comics within. While i was on a pdf tip, i decided to put together a little collection of my old writings. I’ve been re-reading Slowly Downward by Stanley Donwood, and it reminded of these stories of mine inspired by (and very derivative of) his book. It includes my ‘Round (Someone’s) House’ bits, plus some other things that i thought weren’t too embarrassing, so please have a look if you’ve got ten minutes to waste.

Posted in puns, short stories, the banal pig book of little stories and big puns | Leave a comment

Banal Pig’s Royal Assortment for free!

Posted on March 9, 2013 by banal pig

Here it is! As I only ever printed twenty copies of this (and i ruined a couple of those due to cackhanded folding and stapling), i’ve decided to make it available to the billions who missed out and put it online- I’m trying out Issuu for this purpose, and on first impression it seems pretty good.
The comic itself features the all-new ‘Vampire Weekend’, a very simple premise for a strip that took far to long to execute, ‘I’m Off’, a strip originally for Comix Reader 3, the infamous ‘I Yeti’, and ‘The Internet’, the strip i did for OFFlife #2 which i’ve tweaked and changed the colours on for this publication. Yet another gift for you from Banal Pig Comics, enjoy!

Posted in banal pig's royal assortment, off life, the comix reader, vampire weekend comic, yeti, yeti comic | Leave a comment

Untitled Ape In Progress

Posted on February 18, 2013 by banal pig

Good chevening pig lovers!

I’ve been beavering away on finishing writing Untitled Ape’s Epic Adventure, and i’ve got a pretty solid idea now of how it’s gonna pan out. Here’s a few sketches of what’s in store for our boys…

I’m more or less ready to start on the rest of the story now, I’ll still be posting it for the time being, but the intention is for it to be a book which will have extra stuff that isn’t in the webcomic.

Kind Regards

Stevo x

Posted in untitled ape, untitled cat, webcomic | Leave a comment

Colouring In- Process Special!

Posted on February 10, 2013 by banal pig

Whatson, process lovers?
A few people have expressed an interested in how i colour my artwork using photoshop, so I’ll tell you. Firstly, I’ve got to say that I based a lot of my technique on these fantastic series of posts by Dustin Harbin, so have a look there for much more technical info than you’ll find here, as mine’s a simplified version of that. Let it also be said that I am by no means a photoshop expert, and this is just the way i’ve found (via a lot of trial and error) that seems to work ok and deliver decent results. Anyway, here’s my ten penceworth.

I used to use the most straightforward way of colouring line art, which is to scan the black and white art, and have that as the background and then simply create a new layer with the properties as ‘Darken’. This means the colour layer sits behind the line art it’s pretty straightforward if you’re doing a simple colour job, and I’ll still use this technique occasionally if it’s just a quick colour job. The downside of this is when you need to keep coloured layers separate as the image gets more complicated, you need to split everything up. So-o-o:

1) Lineart

Taken for granted at this point you’ve scanned your image and you’ve got line art that your happy with, you can extract the line art from the background by going to Select> Colour Range and clicking on an area of black (it should be fairly easy at this point to separate the black from the white, but if you have other colours on there you need to experiment your fuzziness to make sure you don’t any phantom greasy looking ghosts in there). Your line is now highlighted, so liberate that bad boy by opening a new layer, then go to Edit> Fill and fill it with the black in the bottom right corner which is apparently the blackest black. If you then open another layer and fill it with white (and move your line layer above it) you’ve got the two things separate, and you can get rid of the original background (I usually keep it until near the end anyway just in case of any disasters though).
The above image shows those two layers from a page 3 of I, Yeti, which i’ll use as an example cos it’s got loads of colouring on it.

2- Background Colour

Although I don’t stick rigidly to what goes on in these layers, and keep tweaking all the layers til it’s finished, I like to get started by getting as much colour into the background as possible as a rough colour guide. My best friend here is the gradient tool, which i use loads, even if i paint over it all, it seems more natural than a block of flat colour, particularly in skies and that. I’ll very rarely use solid colour, and i’ll then start to add texture using a normal paintbrush at about 50% opacity, and blending these by selecting the semi-opaque colours again to get an increasingly light tone. I’ll also blend by increasing the brush size, but decreasing the opacity to about 20% to subtly blur it a bit more. I don’t use a special brush or anything, just the standard at 100% hardness. I’ll work from photos a lot too, and usually I’ll take the colours directly from the source via the eye dropper thingy, although with jpegs this can sometimes be a bit hit and miss.

3- Foreground

So the foreground objects will naturally sit on top of the background, but still underneath your line layer, and the colouring technique is largely the same. Fun fact: I based the yeti’s colouring on a polar bear. If there’s different layers to a background, i might stick this in the foreground too, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the other elements i’m colouring.

4- Special Effects

The fire and it’s glow (bottom 4 panels) was a bit of a pain in the arse to get right. Same thing again though, semi opaque brush tool to build up a blended effect.

5- Snow

Unusually, i had a layer on top of the line art for this one, to try and capture the blizzrd effect of the snow in panels 9 & 11. I selected the text on the line layer using the magic wand in panel 9 though and deleted it from this layer so the text wouldn’t be obscured.

with this last one you can see the layers and how they’re ordered- it’s usually a good idea to label them but i don’t always (layer 5 is the snow layer).

Obviously this is a technique that works for me, and as i am a painter at heart, i like a rougher painterly quality. Hopefully there’s a bit of insight here though, and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions (not super-technical ones please) and i’ll endeavour to answer them.

If you want to see the complete I, Yeti, it’s here, and you can even buy it as a set of 2 prints here.

Posted in colouring on photoshop, process, yeti, yeti comic | Tagged process | Leave a comment

Stevo’s Bigg Review of 2012

Posted on January 4, 2013 by banal pig

At the end of 2011, I was considering my position as a comic artist and maker after a poor showing at Thought Bubble 2011 and a general creative rut that can happen when things are a bit shit, plus the fact the fact that after all the hard work I was putting in, I was barely breaking even. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

“I’m going to take a step back from everything for a bit, not worry about the scene and what other people are doing, and try and recharge my appetite for this lovely genre which still hasn’t seen its potential realised. i’m probably gonna do a bit more drawing for drawing’s sake, maybe a bit of painting (the recent posters are possibly evidence of me cheating on comics a bit) and soak up a bit of proper culture, not just off tweets and blogs”.

Not long after this, I decided to pack in my rubbish office job and see what would happen if I tried to be a full time creative, and with the support of my partner we said we’d give it three months and see what happened.

The break from comics and the freedom to follow my creative whims meant that I was raring to go in January, and luckily I got a couple of jobs doing copywriting which provided some actual money as I tried to work out how to turn my comics and art into a living (I’m still working on it, let me know if you know how it’s done pals!- ed) and I came up with a few ways of trying to monetise my skills, setting up an animal portraits business and advertising a one-hour drawing service for £20, both of which had a bit of uptake without ever coming anywhere near paying the bills.

My other intention was to try and get some illustration work, and to this end I spiced up my illustration site, and also paid a large amount of money to join the AOI, but to this day, I’ve not had any genuine interest from potential commissioners, so that’s a bit shit, but I don’t really know what I could have done any different.

So three months into the experiment, and I was doing alright. I was still in the honeymoon period of having a list of things to try, and the copywriting was more or less paying the bills, leaving me enough time to draw things in the afternoon. LACF4 took place at the end of April, and I wanted to make a new comic (I hadn’t done one since Chris Sandwich in May 2011) but with my new business head on as a freelancer I wanted to make something that was cheap to produce but had a bit of substance to it.

This necessity was the mother of Christopher Wren- In Search of Excitement, a comic created from one piece of A3 printed both sides, that I could fold myself without staples. I’m really pleased with how it turned out and how the unfolding of the paper has its role in the telling of the narrative, and the format meant it was possible to have two different endings, another possibility suggested by the unusual format. This went down pretty well, and LACF4 was the best attended and most lucrative of the five Leeds Alternative Comics Fairs that me and Hugh Raine have hosted.

The free time I had allowed me to explore a lot of new ideas, and during these glory days I worked on a number of projects including Banal Pig 5, aka the Banal Pig Apocalypse, where a nuclear explosion throws our pals from the BP universe into chaos, with hilarious consequences (I’m about 12 pages into it currently), The Space Wars Colouring and Activity Book (19 pages complete) Monsters Of the Schwarzwald (just the 2 pages). I also actually finished some things, including this Star Wars painting (which I also turned into a print), stuff for Comical Animal and this animation, which i’m pretty happy with:

So, three months became six months and the honeymoon period was over, slowly but surely the copywriting jobs started to decrease, but I thought I’d use my free time to put together an entry for The Observer/ Jonathan Cape/ Comica Short Story Prize. I’d entered a few half-arsed efforts before, but I basically spent the majority of September to make my entry ‘I Yeti’ as whole-arsed as possible, and I felt I had a decent chance. Pig lovers will know what happened next, a creditable 2nd place, a lot of exposure and by the time it came around a very welcome prize of £250. More than the money though, this piece of recognition has given my freelance year a point, and it’s satisfying to have something to show for my efforts- I was seriously considering jacking the whole fucking thing in if I didn’t get anywhere, as I was getting pretty disillusioned with all my efforts coming to nothing.

The exposure from the competition provided a welcome boost to my coffers, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to keep me in bread and water, and in December I had to return to exactly the kind of irrelevant and uninspiring office job I had left at the beginning of the year. We also did another LACF, and i printed a very small run of Banal Pig’s Royal Assortment, a collection of recent stuff and although the fair wasn’t the worst, it was pretty disappointing in terms of sales and attendance.

So what have I learned in my year out? Firstly, it’s really fucking hard to get people to pay you to do something that you like, even if you’re (>ahem<) good at it. I’ve also decided to stop making small press comics for the foreseeable future- my experience over the last seven years has been that the small runs of comics I’ve made have taken a long time to sell, and there is such a small profit on each comic that it really doesn’t make sense for me to do it anymore. I was happy to do it for the love in the first few years, but I can’t see a viable business ever evolving from this.

My strategy therefore is to focus my efforts onto a big project, namely a book version of Untitled Ape’s Epic Adventure, which I will be working on this year and will hopefully be taken on by a publisher. I will also be looking to put other stuff online for free, as if I’m not making a profit anyway I may as well cut out the middle man. Hopefully, at some point I can go back to freelancing, but I’ll have to do a bit of earning actually money first, and hopefully I’ll find something where the remuneration actually reflects my skills and the effort I put in. Ha ha ha, i wish! Happy New Year Pig Lovers! xxx