My Latest Magazine Cover - FT 258 Out Now.

Have a head full of cold so I'm taking a few days off as I actually forgot to breathe through my mouth this morning and nearly suffocated - that's how spaced out I am right now.

Haven't posted anything for a while so here is my latest Fortean Times cover which was completed a couple of days before Xmas and is just appearing on shelves now. Yet again my father modelled for the 'evil' hands of the Illuminati - I don't know if it's down to my rubbish painting or the varnished cover but his hands look more waxy and less realistic than the doll's. I was having a lot of problems with monitor calibration during the painting of this so maybe that's it or maybe Etienne airbrushed them a bit - dunno.

I also had a very nice email from a fan this morning and as a consequence of which my old Jebus illo is now available to buy as prints from Imagekind.

Straight to DVD....Do not pass go. Do not collect £££'s

So the DVD is out, a year after the Premier at Raindance and despite screening at just about every film festival in the world and picking up some big name fans like Tarantino and John Landis it never did get a proper release. I assume this is down to the fact that the distributors blew their wad on promoting Lesbian Vampire killers - serves em right. Because it didn't get even a limited art house release none of us get the deferred part of our payments so everyone is skint and back at the drawing board.

Apparently John Landis saw the film on the strength of the poster and now has a copy in his B-Movie poster collection - if true then this represents the best compliment I'm ever going to get.

The DVD has actually been out for a few weeks now but I've just been too annoyed/depressed/busy to post this until now. I had to buy my own copy from Amazon (Grrr) and if you are keen to help me earn literally pence in royalties then hurry on over there - while stocks last (seriously they only had one left in stock this morning).

As you can see from the above photo:

My monitors obviously need calibrating
My office looks super clean thanks to Canon Lenses.
I now have fat hands!

Whoever added the review quotes to the cover is being a bit economical. The full quote from Eyeforfilm.co.uk reads, 'The requisite gore is no match for Braindead but there’s enough style and aplomb to give this the makings of a minor cult classic and a suitable addition to the rotting canon.' While the Twitchfilm.net 'superb' quote actually reads, 'Liz Smith is expectedly superb as Johnny's senile mother, providing some perfectly timed laughs, and Dunaway is an other worldly presence, managing to make the most of a largely clichéd role.'

Fortean Times have also just posted their own review here. I can't really argue with it, having just seen the film myself for the first time I reckon 2 stars is about right. I am not that happy with the way my comic strip transitions look but then that's mainly down to my inconsistent drawing style from panel to panel. I can console myself that during the comic strip transitions the speech bubbles are voiced over by the cast, which means that I wrote some words that Faye Dunaway said in a film - should probably have asked for a script credit as well :)

Not a great surprise though to see that someone forgot to include me in the technical credits; for comic strips, storyboarding or concept art. Instead there's a huge department head style credit in the opening titles that just says 'Illustrations by', which is pretty impressive but also pretty meaningless to most people (even most illustrators) - this also means that I probably still can't qualify for an IMDB entry.

Life on hold .....Rewiring in progress....

Rewiring is underway and already behind schedule - no surprises there then. Currently reduced to checking my email once a day via a dodgy old laptop in a plastic tent in the spare room. I am not having fun. Normal service will be resumed......I have no idea when.

FT252 cover is out.

The August issue of Fortean Times is out now, although I wouldn't recommend browsing it in WHSmiths as there are some gross photos of people with various things impaled in them on pages 4-5. FT seems to have strayed into NUTS territory this month.

The more observant of you may notice this is yet another cover to feature a guest appearance by my dad as model - hair by David @ Sweeney's, Jacket by Boden, styling by accident.

Post Birthday Sulk.

The post birthday sulk has begun. Actually it started about halfway through my birthday due to what is known in aviation accident investigation parlance as an 'event cascade'. I woke up deaf in one ear, then managed to slice open my gum on a particularly sharp peanut, which then proceeded to make one side of my head swell up. I then found out that the house is going to be rewired at some point in the next month which will mean no leccy so no work for several weeks, the last time we had the builders in both my computers died from shock. I have no idea how I'm going to get all this work done in time for October and every time I think about it I get a blinding headache that feels like someone is driving an icepick through my left eyeball into the back of my skull. This may also be an indicator that I need a new eye test as everything seems blurry now even with my reading glasses.

The banana plants are doing well though.

Pre-Birthday week begins!

As usual it looks like I'll be up to the moobs in work on the 4th and melting away in my office as a heatwave arrives - hellish.

Just wrapping up a cover for Fortean Times, and then its back to the top secret storyboarding project which now must be done by October so that David and Rik can tout it around the US.

Some good news today. Firstly it is now so hot in my office (even with the dehuffalator going full blast) that I am able to grow bananas from seed in here.

Also cheered to get a royalty cheque today for sales of my dog skeleton model - made years ago for a vet advert and it still manages to earn me a few quid each year.

Brief update to show you I still care...

No Cannes this year as the director has broken his ankle and can't fly.
This means that the deadline for the boards etc, has moved to September, and more time means more work as the job expands to fill the time slot. I have just finished the first sequence of 45 shots and have decided to have a day off as I've been living on 4 hours sleep for the last two weeks and woke up the other morning with black rings around my eyes - thought that only happened in cartoons but apparently not. I looked like Kung Fu Panda.
Just heard that Tarantino saw our film Flick at the Memphis festival and likes it so much he wants a meeting. Don't get too excited, these things never seem to come to anything.

Just a quick note....

Still bogged down in the storyboarding project that I can't talk about except to say that instead of a few scenes done in time for Cannes (mid May) it's now all the key scenes by July (which may sound like ages in hand drawn storyboarding terms but when you're doing it all in 3D it may as well be tomorrow teatime).
Small update on the prints front, had a few probs with uploading images in the last few weeks but have now managed to get a few of the most requested old (and new) Fortean Times illustrations online with all three printers so you can now order prints or cards or massive canvas thingies.

For Aus/NZ and other places downunder

For Us/Canada

For UK/EU (not much uploaded yet as it takes a few days for things to be approved and I get charged to upload images so it may be a while before some pix make it onto this site http://www.easyart.com/academy/alex_tomlinson

FT 248 Flying Snakes Cover Feature

Here's the cover illo for the latest issue of Fortean Times (FT248) which seems to be reaching subscribers as I type. Dead space at the top of the composition is to account for cover layout stuff, like the Logo etc. The actual print version I think is a bit less saturated and overlaid to make it look aged, as are the three illos in the feature, only seen a proof pdf so far but the whole feature layout looks good and hangs together well.

The feature is a collection of reports and eyewitness accounts of flying snakes in the US in the late 19th Century. Most of the reports are of non-winged snakes that just seem to be floating, like this one of a snake appearing out of the clouds to attack a Missouri River Steamboat. The bottom spread is a conflation of several stories of flying snake sightings over farms, I went a bit Little House on the Prairie on this one and they decided to drop the foreground snake from the final version, which is a shame as it it took hours to model and rig the character.

Forgot to mention.....

I was asked by Fig at the AOI to supply some pix for a book she is writing to help students prepare their portfolios for specific areas of illustration. I'm apparently in the chapter on film posters and storyboarding. Anyway, I've had to sort through tons of old stuff and dig out some pix and came across my old storyboard pdfs for Flick. So here is a short sequence from the Dancehall Scene, which is possibly now only in black and white as it's part of the pre title sequence (very James Bond).

Misc odds and sods....

It looks like my mate Paul http://twitchhiker.wordpress.com/ is going to make Campbell Island after all as he's already got to San Francisco and has managed to wangle a ticket to NZ on Monday. He still needs more sponsorship for http://www.charitywater.org/ so whataryouwaitnfor?

Have finished the Wild West Flying Snakes latest cover feature for FT248 and will post pix when it is decent to do so, ie once subscribers have started receiving their copies.

BTW I think I now officially own part of of a farm in Kabul thanks to http://www.kiva.org/ I reckoned that if this bloke got his micro loan to develop his land he'd be less tempted to grow opium. On the other hand if he does decide that opium is the way to go hopefully he'll pay me back with loads of AK47's and smack.

Quick update - too busy to chat...

Things are pretty hectic around here right now, as I've got a cover and two illos for the next issue of FT to sort out over the next week. I'm also expecting a ton of storyboarding work to turn up any minute as the Director and Producer of Flick have asked me to board out some scenes for their next project which they will be taking down to Cannes again this year. Once the script and shotlist arrives I expect to be chained to this desk until mid April.

In the meantime why not wander over to my mate Paul's website http://twitchhiker.wordpress.com/ and support him in his attempt to hitch all the way from Newcastle to New Zealand in 30 days, using only twitter. At the time of writing he's 5 days in and on the tarmac at Schipol about to fly to JFK - you can even check his progress using google latitude. It's all in aid of the charity Water, who provide safe/potable water for people in the developing world. Go on sponsor him you tight gits, better than sponsoring those z list celebs who are walking up Kilimanjaro for comic relief - obviously nobody told them it's classed as gentle stroll and not the daring mountaineering ascent that they seem to be spinning it as.

Got to go get back to rendering flying snakes in the Wild West.

We are sorry, but none of your paintings can be returned...

Sad to hear that TV's art pioneer Tony Hart has died. My first taste of success was seeing one of my paintings on telly in the 'Vision On' Gallery when I was about seven. Listening to the Gallery Theme music again reminds me of PVA glue, sugar paper, round-ended scissors, the smell of felt tip pens.....mmm..... I think perhaps they should build him a giant Papier-mâché sarcophagus out of all the paintings they couldn't return, he was a god after all. Or perhaps I should stop sniffing Sharpie permanent markers.

Quick update...I'm not stopping....

Just a quick update as I haven't posted anything for a while due to being busy doing more stuff that I can't talk about yet. I have, however, discovered that my backup drive wasn't fried after all - just the power supply/brick shaped thing, managed to get a replacement and everything back to normal on that front.

After the dizzying success of selling a print I've found yet another online-on-demand printer, this one is based in Oz. So I've also uploaded the same three illos to see what happens on that side of the world.

Sold a print at last!

Well my experiment with online printers has finally started to show some progress as I can report that I've just sold my first print! Wehay! After I uploaded the Malta Gladiators pic to Imagekind I also found a UK based service Easyart and have the same 3 test prints on each service to see how they compared. Very surprised to see this morning that some mug - I mean extremely insightful and discerning art lover - has bought a medium sized print on art paper. I am apparently the lucky recipient of £8.09p commission. You can't see, but trust me, I'm now doing the little Snoopy dance of joy.

Post cleanup fallout...

So after the cleanup comes the fallout.

The bad news is that for some reason one of my backup drives now seems dead. It worked fine last week and now refuses to turn on - it has all the comic strips and posters for Flick on it - I feel sick. I think 90% of the stuff on it is double backed up elsewhere but sods law states that something seriously vital was on it and nowhere else.

On the plus side, while I was cleaning everything up I came across a sketch I'd done years ago, in fact it was last century - god that makes me feel ancient. It's a view of Suilven (Sula Bheinn) in Sutherland - actually its a white house and some manky sheep with Suilven in the distance. I'd forgotten how much I liked it so decided to redo it in Painter. Quite chuffed with it overall so have decided to upload it to one of my on demand print galleries and see if it sells.

Prints for sale at Imagekind

Office cleanout defies the laws of physics!

Have spent the last couple of days cleaning out my office/studio/workroom/citadel of ultimate chaos, as it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on work while surrounded by creaking mountains of old books and the rustling of sheaves of papers covered in illegible scrawl. I realised that my workspace looked like the lair of some deranged psycho serial killer, and that I ought to have a bit of cleanup before the rustling papers started telling me to do bad things.

In the process I managed to fill the spare room entirely with junk; old PCs, huge manuals for software I no longer even have installed, CD racks (which only seem to effectively quadruple the amount of space each CD takes up), 4 bin bags of shredded paper scrawl, 10 years worth of National Geographic and two 6ft stacks of books that were bought as reference for odd illustration jobs that have never been needed since (eg canine anatomy), I even found an atlas with countries that no longer exist. You would think that jettisoning all this stuff would free up acres of new real estate in my office, but no. It would seem that the sum total of free space I have managed to reclaim is .... 8 inches of one bookshelf. How is this possible? Is there some sort of Tardis type effect going on in here? I was looking forward to basking in the warm glow of smugness that comes from sitting in a newly tidied office to get me through the next job, now I'll just have to resort to coffee and nicotine lozenges - again.

The first rule of pitch posters is...

You don't talk about pitch posters.
The second rule of pitch posters is... doh!.
Anyway the reason for lack of posts recently is that I've been tied up doing a pitch poster for a film that I can't tell you anything about unless and until the film ever gets released. Pitch posters are used in conjunction with the synopsis and sometimes even a script to sell the film concept to blokes with cigars and suitcases full of cash and are never meant to be seen by anyone who doesn't smoke cigars and carry around suitcases full of cash. They are meant to illustrate the feel of the film, give an idea of genre and generally get people excited and intrigued enough about the project to give the producer the suitcase full of cash. They rarely see the light of day because A) they are top secret until people have actually paid to see the film and B) because by the time the film actually comes out - assuming it even gets commissioned and then makes it out of development hell and onto the screen, they bare no resemblance to the finished film product. Anyway that's what I've been doing, nuff said.

Some day my prints will come..

Got sick of being badgered for prints over the years and so have finally decided to try out a few online, on demand, printers to see how it all works. As a test I have uploaded my tribute to Airfix box art (and the Malta Gladiators) Valletta Victory (I know, had to come up with a title on the spot) to imagekind which I think is a division of cafepress in the US. Still looking for a European or even UK on demand printer as I hate the idea of having to pay import duty and most of the people who have asked for posters seem to be based in Belgium for some reason (I guess they're probably Belgians then).

The imagekind setup is very straighforward, you can set your own mark-up and receive payment via paypal which is great for lazy gits like me. As long as you upload an image which is large enough then shoppers can pick anything from a greetings card (not much call for 'sorry I shot you down in 1940' but you never know) right up to a massive stetched canvas giclee print. I'm currently too poor/tight to order a proof for myself so we have to wait and see what feedback - if any there is.

Spot the Difference

As promised here's the Jeane Dixon illo as it appears on the cover of the latest issue of Fortean Times (FT234 Dec 2008). As you can see it has changed a bit from the original illo, not that I'm complaining as I long ago came to accept the fact that covers get jiggled and tweaked in the process of changing the layout as stories and features are dropped etc. And it should be noted that the original is reproduced as a full page facing the feature article inside, so everybody is happy. This is merely posted as a cautionary tale to student and aspiring illustrators not to get too attached to an image if you work digitally, don't be surprised if it changes by the time it gets to print.

Jebus is reborn!

My Jebus illo (Jesus/Buddha), originally commissioned as a cover for FT (183 May 2004) has been reborn on the cover of KING OF TRAVELERS: JESUS' LOST YEARS IN INDIA by Edward T Martin. This is the book that inspired my best top Hollywood pal* Paul Davids' new film Jesus in India and has been reprinted at Lulu to coincide with the release of the film in the US.

* OK so 'best pal' is probably overstating things a bit but we do correspond from time to time, so there.

He's written the theme toon, he's singin the theme toon..

Apparently this came out months ago but as I've only just found out about it I'm going to pretend its news. Richard Hawley who arranged all the music for our film FLICK, and also has a cameo appearance as pirate radio DJ Bobby Blade, has brought out a special limited edition single of the soundtrack song 'Rockabilly Radio', which just about hits the spot perfectly.
You can hear it here.
http://cowbell.fm/track/72571-richard-hawley-and-the-feral-cats-rockabilly-radio
Or try to buy it from here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rockabilly-Radio-VINYL-Richard-Hawley/dp/B001BDEY3Y

Image for illustrative purposes only and may differ from the actual product.

Here's my latest cover for FT issue 243, Jeane Dixon, White House Psychic (and Mike the Magicat). I think its probably OK to show this now as subscribers seem to be receiving their copies already, although mine has yet to arrive. This is the original illo but due to the cover layout changing at the last minute the finished comp may end up looking a bit different, this is what happens when you work digitally and send artwork in layers. I think the actual cover will end up having an alternate version of JFK, I ended up doing about 3 different versions and lost track of which one they used. This is the one I prefer as it's based on a badge from the 1960 campaign and so helps with the whole 'psychic predicts JFK win and subsequent assassination' theme.

When my copy arrives I'll post a scan of the cover so you can play spot the difference at home. It was painted in Corel Painter X, although its so tight at this size it looks quite photographic (which may or may not be a good thing).

For some reason I starting thinking about Joseph Cornell and his boxes of found objects when I was working on this. Now when I look at this illo it reminds me of a cross between a Cornell box and the fortune telling machine 'Zoltar Speaks' in the film BIG, which makes me laff.

If you're interested here's a link to some blurb about Cornell and a slide show of his boxes. http://americanart.si.edu/collections/interact/slideshow/cornell.cfm

KIJK! A fistful of Euros.

When I heard that a Dutch magazine called KIJK (published by Sonoma Men's Magazines) wanted to use my old Illuminati illo I thought 'Ding Dong! I've cracked the euro porno market'. I was therefor slightly disappointed, when my courtesy copy arrived today, to find out that KIJK means 'look' and is a fairly innocuous popular science mag. However, with the pound tanking against the euro I should end up getting paid slightly more than I was expecting so Dank u wel.

Here Comes The Sun (Boca Raton)

Once again The Boca Raton Sun has topped my unofficial 'clients who pay up quickly league table', by turning around an invoice (for re-use of the Popobawa; Batman of Zanzibar illo above) in just 18 days.

These Floridians may only work on a small 'supermarket tabloid' but they could teach some of the big companies a thing or two. Mentioning no names, but there's a Californian company who are currently on 102 days and counting.

More press for Flick

Here's another review and some more press about the film:
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?film_id=14631

An interview with David and Faye.
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/feature.php?id=570

If I were a cynical person (which I am) I'd have to say that this 'Faye goes totally Tonto' interview sounds like a setup to hype the film a bit more. What annoys me most is that the whole interview seems to be more about the interviewer than the subject. Whatever happened to rule one; the reporter must never become the story? Blah, blah, blah, Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo journalism, blah, blah.
It seems to have got people talking anyway.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/07/celebrity

Latest illo in the current issue of Fortean Times

The latest issue of Fortean Times (FT 242 November) is out now. I have a spread on pages 44-45, illustrating a feature on the kugelblitz, attempts by various countries to harness the phenomenon known as ball lightning for use as a weapon. Rush out and buy a copy now (or not, I don't get paid extra if they sell a gazillion extra copies this month).

BTW. For anyone interested in planes or 3d modelling. The aircraft is a B-47 Stratojet which I had to model from scratch in C4D. I had intended to just buy a readymade B-52, but none of the model libraries had anything quite right or cheap enough. In a moment of madness I stumped up for a model of the B-47 only to find when I downloaded it that it didn't really work close up. So I ended up out of pocket and had to do the whole thing from scratch myself. Serves me right for trying a shortcut.

Flick gets its UK premier at Raindance 2008

The film I’ve been working on for the last 4 years (give or take a year as my memory seems completely shot) finally got its UK premier last week at Raindance 2008. I haven’t actually seen it since the rough cut so have no idea what it’s like, but people do seem to be saying positive things about my comic book transitions – which is good. The word cult is being used a lot which is encouraging as that means DVD sales and I have points (well a point singular) so if they sell enough I may actually qualify for a check now and then. Faye was on Jonathan Ross a couple of weeks ago promoting the film and they hinted it was due out in the New Year. They showed a still of my poster – well the second version which is landscape and significantly different to my original. Waiting for David, the director, to ring for a chat so will know more about the eventual release date soon hopefully.

I’m also waiting to read some reviews. The first one I’ve been able to find is here.http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/raindance-film-festival-review-flick/