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Warped Comic Kickstarter

Posted on February 24, 2023 by BandOfOne

Sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter launches HERE.

Warped is an all ages comic strip about a doomed spaceman and his robot sidekick. 

Our hapless hero explores strange new worlds, has troubles with transporters, fun with flags, and encounters a variety of alien creatures. In the course of these mini episodes our spaceman hero dies in almost every single strip. Hence the name Warped – both for its sci-fi connotations and its allusions to a sense of humour. 

I am putting together a printed comic book collection of the first season of Warped Comics. It will be 32 pages, softcover, 260x170mm, in full colour. It will be printed on lovely recycled natural paper which will give the comic a vintage off-white finish which I’m very excited about.

Warped is a spin-off from my Jack Astro Comic. It’s a completely stand-alone comic strip so no prior knowledge of Jack Astro is necessary but it does broaden the canon if you’re familiar with the original story. There is an idea in that book where an infinite number of Jack’s are sent to an infinite number of galaxies in splinter dimensions via the aptly named, Infinity Drive. Warped explores what happened to all of these alternate Jack’s. 

I will be printing some extra stock of this book to take to comic conventions, but the kickstarter will be the best price so backers who help make it happen also get the best possible value. 

Sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter launches HERE.

Burton SFFCon

Posted on February 20, 2023 by BandOfOne

A big thank you to everyone who came by the table on Saturday at Burton SFFCon. It was a really nice event and well attended. Angeline Trevena was a gracious host and kudos to her for organising such a quality little convention.

This con was the first time I’ve offered sketch requests and a lot of folks came out with pretty obscure (to me) choices which were fun to draw. 

A few of the pre-prepared sketches sold but mostly people were excited to commission something and enjoyed watching me sketch it for them while they waited. 

The last few weeks I’ve been in training for these quickfire sketches. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve probably seen the daily flow of fan art gracing my feed. Despite the practice it was still a daunting experience on the first sketch. It was really a lot of fun once I got going and the reaction from people was totally worth a bit of terror 😄

A few folks with great taste picked up Jack Astro too. At the next con I might have a new comic to debut if the Warped Kickstarter goes well. More news on that soon!

I’m looking forward to returning to Burton SFFCon next year.

The Beatles, Get Back: Honing Your Creative Instincts

Posted on February 10, 2023 by BandOfOne

In a previous blog post I explained a lesson I learned about setting deadlines from The Beatles: Get Back documentary.

The second lesson I found whilst watching the series is the idea of Honing Your Creative Instincts. 

As a creative individual – even if you’re not a Beatle – give yourself a project that you are making, be it a song, a story, a film, a comic, a poem, it will hone your instincts and you will make better decisions and better creative projects the more you flex that skill.

If you know the album Let It Be, seeing the process of the band slowly gestating a song is fascinating. They are searching whilst they play things over and over. They obviously know they are missing something – be it a lyric or the right fill, or a structural element to the song. Their instincts are telling them the jigsaw is not fitting, and because they have written so many songs they are able to trust the process and know when they have locked into the “right” thing.

George Harrison makes a comment in the film about the fact that their songs always continued to develop as they played them live night after night. What was on the record was not the best representation of a song in the early days. They needed that incubation period to develop it. That is an interesting difference between live performance versus a static art like film or illustration. It’s also something The Beatles avoided later in their career by giving up live performance. This let them treat the record as a static work of art in itself. It’s interesting comparing that to today’s climate where streaming has diluted the importance of the album. And live performance is now a band’s primary means of making a living. But I digress. 

Start a project and begin honing your creative instincts!