'The Film One' now available

'The Film One' is now available to buy in my shop featuring twenty six original illustrations and designs from the likes of Paul Bommer, Lizzie Stewart, Andy Votel, Lewis Heriz, Henry St Leger, Jake Blanchard, Lord Bunn, Josceline Fenton, Stewart Easton and many more. Each artist has contributed artwork inspired by their favourite film and written a few accompanying words for each piece.

I've just spent the afternoon in the garden stapling them all - given the amount of pages it's been a bit of a slog but I battled through like the trooper I am. 'The Film One' is a tome-like 56 pages with high quality greyscale printing throughout on 100gsm paper with a digitally printed thick card cover. The initial run of 300 features Stewart Easton's superb 'Wicker Man' submission on a variety of yellow and orange card.

Thanks again for everyone who kindly took the time to contribute stunning artwork and insight to make 'The Film One' possible. Enjoy!

The Absurd Balloon screenprint

In a flurry of activity before I go to San Francisco I'm trying to get my shop up-to-date so finally here is 'The Absurd Balloon' print as promised at least thee months ago. Initially it was a bigger run but I had a lot of problems with printing so there's only twenty five now. I will be doing a run of the alternative design as featured on Threadless if they choose not to print it (which is looking increasingly likely). Not quite sure how I'm supposed to get printed on Threadless at this point - that submission was in the top ten for scoring for its entire run and finished on a very respectable 3.19 and yet I haven't heard anything. I suppose I could go the cutesy root or throw in some pop culture references but I'd rather stick to doing my own thing.

'The Film One' is all but ready to go to except I haven't found a powerful enough stapler to bind it yet. Any suggestions would be welcome at this point - I considered stapling the innards together and leaving the cover loose like a book-jacket but it's far from ideal. Whatever happens it will be available for sale from tomorrow and once the first hundred or so are gone I won't be able to print anymore until I get back from SF in July. You snooze you lose.

The Film One proto copy

Here's a sneak preview of the proto copy of 'The Film One'. I've spent the Easter weekend attempting to get it printed at various places but thanks to the resurrection many shops haven't been open. Selfish resurrection.

Finally found a place - nice print quality but at 0.08p a side it's a little dear - gonna cost me £2.50 ish for each one and the paper at 100gsm is too heavy for my puny stapler. As if that wasn't enough I exposed the screen on Saturday which I left to dry in the sun only to return to it flat on the ground with a hole in courtesy of a freak gust of wind. It didn't hit the part of the screen with the artwork so I tried a test pull and it came out okay (see pics) but the finer detail of Stewart Easton's terrific 'The Wicker Man' piece got lost in translation. That's one of the limitations of screen-printing unfortunately.

As it is rather than change image I think I'm going to get the covers printed conventionally. This will mean it's not screen-printed but I'm not convinced many people really care that much - given the choice between a poorly screen-printed cover and a pristine laser printed cover I suspect most people would go for the latter.

My mac died last month so I've been compiling all the work for layout on a laptop with a trial version of CS5 which ran out today. All these things are conspiring against me for final tweaks etc but I will be getting it printed tomorrow and it will be available for sale by the end of the week.

Then I'm off to San Francisco for three months leaving my poor mother to deal with sending out orders. I'm nice like that.

Cowboy Brawl!

For my proper job I have to do a lot of repeat pattern work and I'm a bit of a dab hand at it now so I thought I'd apply the technique to one of my illustrations. I may do it again with a half drop - at the moment it's a bit monotonous but you get the idea.

Travis Millard should probably sue...

The Charles Pieman comic strip

Apologies for the lack of updates, I've been in Scotland for a week of altitude training in preparation for the London Marathon. I did a bit of running, drank some beer and did some drawing. Which could explain my rather average running time of four hours and forty minutes for the actual event. My upper legs cramped up badly at the eighteenth mile and I grimaced my way through the last few miles. It was an experience. The jury is still out on exactly whether it was a positive one or not...

I did manage to get a fair bit of drawing done a lot of which needs a bit of refining yet but here's an early draft of a section of comic strip I want to do. It'll be low on dialogue and high on fantastical dramatics all played out by Charles Pieman a deeply unhappy overweight North London local government clerical assistant.

Tons of stuff happening elsewhere too - I'm doing my best to get the zine finished this week so people can buy it by the weekend for my promised mid (!) April release. Had some last minute layout issues and discovered I had a free spread to fill and it seemed a shame to go to waste so Scottish based illustrator Rob Johnson stepped up to the challenge and nailed an ace submission in twenty four hours or so.

The Film Zine - a Satanic taster...

'The Film One' is very nearly ready! Against all odds (my mac died the death of a thousand spinning wheels) and my better judgement (the last one was much more work than I had hoped) it should be available in your local newsagents by mid April. By which I mean it will be available from my online shop and a few other zine friendly outlets.

It's going to print next week and I will start screen-printing the covers soon after. For now I bring you my editorial illustration to Paul Bareham's written submission for 'The Satanic Rites of Dracula' as a taster. Before anyone suggests that the gun is a little on the small side and that I fail at perspective I've been informed it is in fact a Derringer pistol - which my research suggests is a small child's firearm. Also I could do with practicing my pentangles a bit more - mine's on the piss - my misspent youth featured all manner of silly nonsense but unfortunately not as much devil worship as perhaps I would've liked.

Click on the image to see it as if it were closer to your face.