Last night, I wanted to see if a concept I had for making an object appear in mid-air in stop motion animation (to look like it's falling, flying, or floating) would work.

I'm imagining it's a pretty standard way of doing it, but I wanted to see if I could do it.

After the break, I've included a step by step "How-To" guide for how I got the ball to look like it was in the air. Click "Read More" to... read more.

Here's the video:

 I've been playing with the stop motion editor again...

Having made one claymation video, months ago, I was initially just messing about to re-familiarise myself with the controls of it. The photograpy took around half an hour. Then I ended up getting quite involved in adding titles and redoing the sound and so on.

​More on how I did it, after the vid:

Here's a heads-up: I will have a stall at the Bradford  Steampunk Market.

It's part of the Leeds Steampunk Market, which I visited a couple of months ago at Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills.

This time, it's at the Bradford Industrial Museum in... Bradford! Click here for details of where to find them. 

It runs from 10 - 4 on the 4th and 5th of March and I will be selling on the 5th.

​The last one was a great event with lots of great stalls and steampunk merchandise on sale from illustrations, to jewellery, to LARP props and more. Plus, there were some really fun things happening such as Coffee Jousting! Yep - that was a new one to me!

​I'm entirely sure this one will be too! Plus, I will be there!

If you come, don't be at all afraid to dress up for it! You won't be alone in it.

The other day, I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted to incorporate a little of Medusa Dollmaker's style into mine and also wanted to try colouring from greyscale first with layers of colour over the top, a method I've read about but never tried. And since this occurred to me on the day before the Presidential Inauguration, I thought I'd draw President Donald Trump.
I've got to be honest, I regretted this last decision as it meant I then spent an inordinate amount of time looking at him, but to paraphrase Magnus Magnusson, "I'd started so I'd finish..."

Nearing the end of the pencils stage, I decided to add laurels but realised I'd not left enough room on the left of the page for a laurel, so added it after I'd scanned the drawing to Photoshop and bumped up the darkness of the drawing.
Then I inked it, concentrating mainly on the outlines. 

When it came to adding colour, I first attempted to simply add washes of colour over the pencils and fiddled with the blending modes. There is a method of colouring where this is the primary means of colouring, but when I tried it, it looked awful so I think I need to have another go at that and see if I can work it out. If anyone has any tips for this method, please do leave me a comment.

So then I used my more usual method of colouring and shading, freehanding directly onto those washes with my Wacom tablet to build up light and shade, using the pencil sketch as a guide.

Then I added in a texture on the metal ring, brought up the darkness on the wall's pencils to allow the texture of the paper to add to the wall, added the stars, a vignette, and a parchment texture over the whole illustration, and a couple of final tweaks such as blending the text in more.

So there he is: Your new President of the United States, Donald Trump.

​What a guy...

I've started a webcomic!

It's occurred to me that we often see superheroes doing great heroics like battling invading aliens and gods, saving cities, and rescuing stricken planes... but we rarely see them in their downtime.

They're people too (most of them), so they must go the shops sometimes, catch a movie, do the housework (those secret hideouts don't look after themselves, you know, and not everyone is lucky enough to have a butler!).

So that is what this cartoon is: Superheroes, doing everyday stuff.

There's only one at the moment, but more will follow...

At the request of Jess, my girlfriend, I drew a print to illustrate a quote by one of her favourite authors, Sylvia Plath.

I'll be honest, I've not read the work the quote is from, but I'm happy with the print.

It was difficult to add a face to the moon without it looking terrifying!

How well do you think I've succeeded?