Location, location, location!

on August 12, 2023 at 10:45 am

All the outdoor location photos I took for the different issues of Fenton Hud all from around London and I have strong memories of taking them even though in some cases they’re a few years old! I could tell you even from what small part you see in a panel where I took the picture!

Up until this issue the indoor shots just made up but with this one I tied things more to places I’ve been here in London or references to my own personal life.

The opening panel with Fenton was taking on a back street in Soho. It doesn’t link to the following panel which is from some work that was getting done (it’s finished now but I still have no idea what it is) next to Vauxhall Bridge. Man, unlike the Soho pick that was nice and simple the Vauxhall Bridge shot required me pressing my camera up against some fencing and then zooming in. It was awkward and the weather was kinda nasty but I’m happy with the result.

Actually, that panel is two shots put together. Heston’s destroyed building is from Vauxhall Bridge but the pavement is from Cheapside and taken from the first floor balcony of One New Change.

The coffee shop that Tabitha is in was made up but also linked to my time when I worked as a barista (I loved that job and still do even though that was well over twenty years ago!)

The bar that Cuddles is at is a mash-up of the Kings Arms on Poland Street and Retro Bar on George Court (just off the Strand). The dimensions and spacing are made up but certainly both bars were used for inspiration.

As a side note (and not related to location) the final panel from Tabitha’s arc shows her mobile’s lock screen image which was a straight copy of a panel from page 21 of Issue #1 (the page that gave you Cuddles’ backstory). I liked the picture and I figured why not reuse it?! It’s always good to recycle!

More soon! Bear hugs!

Okay, this was a fluke(!)

on August 8, 2023 at 6:36 pm

Okay, so this is a quick one but I wanted to mention the layout for issue #3. See, I mean what I say when I don’t plan things and when it came to doing three story arcs in one issue and wondering how I’d lay it out I realised that, duh, I already set it up back in issues #1 and #2 with the three panel opening page!

This totally cemented how the book was going to look which was great! Again, I was absolutely crazy lucky with this! You’ll notice that this was the first time I had a subtitle to the title and also the first time a title was used three times across the issue (seriously, there’s a lot of 3’s in this issue!) but otherwise each book has the same look.

I will admit there was a plan at times to maybe have three vertical panels on a page but I decided against it as this book was confusing enough to follow!

But yeah, I was really happy with how this turned out! Was it… meant to be?

More soon! Bear hugs!

The Bechdel Test, Pacific Rim 2, and Fenton Hud Issue #3

on July 22, 2023 at 2:37 pm

Welcome to my first commentary on issue #3 of Fenton Hud – Member of F.A.C.T.

Now hey, don’t worry! You can still read the issue at ISSUU (for free!) so please do check that first before reading this blog!

Okay, so I want to start this off with explaining where I got the idea for the issue and having three separate stories and it oddly enough came from the release of Pacific Rim 2 from way back when.

You see, I enjoyed the first film but read there was a lot of problems with the second one, partly with killing off the character Mako Mori (um, spoilers!). She was a cool character in the first film but as important (maybe more?) she was written in such a great way although it failed the Bechdel Test. What’s the Bechdel test (because I didn’t know)? Well, it’s a measure of the representation of women in film (and other fiction). To pass, the story needs to have two women speak to each other about some other than a man. I mean, that should be easy, right?!?*

Now, this was cool and it was something I really wanted to try out in my books. The thing was, there was only two female characters in Lloyd and the Bear who had any amount of story time and neither were in the same issue (so far)! So I kept the idea in my head and knew I’d use it at some point and when I started working on Fenton Hud I realised this was the time to try out the test! I admit, I’m not sure if a comic book counts for this test but I wanted to give it a go none the less!

So yeah, this is how I came to doing three individual storylines and Tabitha was going to start a conversation with another lady which would then add some extra layers to her past.

Now I know I say I don’t plan Fenton Hud (and I really don’t!) but as things were coming along and I was working through the pages my initial idea with the reveal during Tabitha’s arc was that Maya would actually be Heston in disguise! I realised though that this would then void the test so I went and did a few changes.

My follow up plan was to have Maya as a stalker but then I figured that was a disservice and also blurred the lines a bit so I went and made more changes!

And I’m happy with how things turned out! Tabs has a new friend (as you’ll see later in the book, Maya is in the background of the funeral scene – more of that in a later post) and I think I did well following the rules of the Bechdel Test!

So um, thanks crappy Pacific Rim 2 for teaching me something I didn’t know about!

PS. Heston ended up being the barista with his back to us on the second panel in page 3. Since Maya got Tabitha out of danger he pegged it which is why on the first panel of Page 7 you have the other Cup-Cup staff looking confused as their new colleague has walked out on them! It’s not a big thing but I just liked that I had a background story in place!

More soon! Bear hugs!

*I’ve come back to this as I’m seeing an article that says the Bechdel test isn’t actually I thing. Now is it or isn’t it? I don’t know but I’m just happy that it inspired me to push myself creatively – so that’s cool!

Things are coming together!

on May 7, 2023 at 9:30 am

I’ve mentioned before the plans for issue #3 of Fenton Hud are three individual stories that show on each page side by side and should be read individually. It took a bit of work but by page 11 things start to tie together and then the final panel of each story on page 13 looks like this!

Which is great from a planning point of view but then I also know the following page is the big reveal and after that… at least one member of the team is going to die.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t plan this series but obviously the death bit is kinda set in stone but how they die (and the severity) keeps changing with what happens on the run up as I put the pages together.

It’s a weird journey and I’m enjoying it!

More soon! Bear hugs!

I’m an idiot.

on February 24, 2023 at 7:58 am

And I’m pretty sure I’ve used that opening title before but hey, it’s true!

So I’ve been getting myself bogged down with a couple of pages of issue #18 of Lloyd and the Bear. I say bogged down because although I enjoy putting the pages together I was really struggling to get all I needed to say on to the page within the available space.

And then, once I was happy with that I made a serious mistake and rather than plan out a page (or pages) at a time I just picked random panels and drew them and it wasn’t until I patched it all together did I find it was a mess. Either panels didn’t flow or in some cases looked too similar. I wasn’t happy.

Anyways, here’s how three pages were originally planned to be spaced out and how it ended up;

Quite a change! I’m happy with how the pages ended up (although crikey, for a LatB book that sure is a lot of word balloons!)

More importantly though, I realised that I got in to bad habits by not planning out a page. You see, I’m switching back and forward with my work on issue #3 of Fenton Hud and with that I’m only working on an isolated 3rd of a page as I tell individual stories (check the Fenton Hud posts for more on that!). That kind of planning (or lack of it?) doesn’t work here which is why I’ve fully sketched out the latest page I’m working on and really happy with it.

Planning is good. Geez, if you know me then you know I like to plan so how did I forget that?!?

Anyways, back to work! More soon!

Bear hugs!