I’ve been subconsciously forming an idea for a while which was crystallised a few days ago when I read this article about Alan Moore’s new magazine, Dodgem Logic.

Back in the mid nineties, in the two years between school and work that I charitably refer to as my art school education, I was a huge fan of  Deadline Magazine. It brought together all the things that interested me at that point. There were a few other essentially underground magazines which threatened to go mainstream at the time, such as The Beastie Boys Grand Royal magazine and the Herb Garden, but to my mind, Deadline was the daddy. The inclusion of the comics just gave it another dimension which made it stand out from the more mainstream mags like Select and NME.

Of course, the Tank Girl movie sucked so badly, and crashed and burned so terribly it dragged the magazine down with it, and it left a gap on WH Smiths shelves which has never really been filled again.

The first issue of Dodgem Logic isn’t out yet but it looks like it will be taking much of the same inspiration as Deadline, but tying it around what’s going on in Northampton just now. Moore has hinted that he’d like people to localise the magazine for different cities through an 8 page pullout which will carry local event listings and the like, and I hope someone else picks up the challenge to do that for the central belt, but I’d like to read something which is more tailor built around what’s going on up here.

There’s always been a thriving creative scene in Scotland. Glasgow in particular always seemed to avoid the talent drain which affected a lot of English towns and cities, whereby anyone with the slightest hint of talent would leave for London at the first whiff of success. I guess the A&R men never made it past Hadrians Wall? Whatever it was, it sculpted a supportive local scene which functioned in complete isolation to whatever was going on in the rest of the UK. Exactly like what has happened over the last five years or so in more or less every city in the western world, thanks to Myspace, Twitter etc.

Now there’s an army of  quality bloggers writing passionately to document the latest bands, artists, photographers and writers. The ever brilliant Glasgow Podcart just posted a round-up of some of the best yesterday. Much as this couldn’t have happened without the internet, like Alan Moore, I still like artifacts. Something to pick up, hold and flick through. I accept the idea of producing something on dead trees in this day and age seems like a backwards step but, particularly when it comes to art, it’s more appealing, for me at least, to have something tactile. A physical printed object to hold.

So my idea is this. A magazine which would incorporate music features, short stories, serialised graphic novels and short strips, as well as features on artists and photographers. Initially, it would focus on what’s going on in Scotland right now but it certainly wouldn’t be a chestthumping ‘wha’s like us’ endeavour and wouldn’t automatically kiss any arses based on home postcode.

It would be full colour and printed on the best quality paper I could afford. I want the thing to look so beautiful, you can’t resist picking it up and flicking through it, like a copy of Juxtapoz or Hi Fructose. The sort of magazine you want to collect and keep, rather than throw out when the next issue arrives.

That’s the idea in a nutshell, and now I’m really looking for your input. Please leave comments. How many of you would be interested in reading something like that? What sort of features would you be looking for? More particularly, is there anyone who would be interested in contributing articles or having their work featured? I’m particularly interested in hearing from amateur graphic novelists, or other comic artists but if you are a writer interested in collaborating with an artist to produce graphic adaptations of your work, or vice versa, I’d love to hear from you too so I can get you in touch with each other.

Please leave a comment even if you wouldn’t be interested, so I can get an accurate idea of what sort of reception it might get.

Josh Brill

I was unaware of any of these artists when I drew the Magpie illustration recently but a post on Drawn has just made me aware of the Bird illustrations of Josh Brill, Eleanor Grosch and Charley Harper. Josh Brill’s are particularly gorgeous, but they are all fantastic. I can just imagine having a huge glossy coffee table book full of any of these.

EDIT: I’ll just throw this link of felt birds by Lauren Alane in here too since it kinda fits.

2nd EDIT: Jeez. It would appear there’s a whole subculture of stylised bird illustrators out there. I’ll throw Jojo Yeung into the mix now too

Charlie Harper

Eleanor Grosch

Just a little sketch I made earlier in the week. The view is Mount Vernon park in Glasgow.

It’s been a long time coming but finally, here’s the first few glimpses of artwork for the comic book I’m working on. Neither of them are finished. I’m not especially happy with the way Sam looks. He needs a bit more development stylistically I think, but I’ll be putting the artwork on hold for the next few months, so decided to put up what I have so far.

I really want to learn Illustrator and will persevere with it but the magpie drawing took the best part of a day when I know I could have done it in an hour or so in Flash, so I ended up reverting to Flash to do the character drawing.

The reason I’ll be putting things on hold is that I read about this competition last Friday and have decided to have a go at adapting the script for issue 1 into a TV script. The overall story is quite episodic anyway so would adapt pretty well into a TV drama format. The competition closes at the start of November, which means I might even do NaNoWriMo again this year…I have an idea for it if I find the time!

Great little digital short by Justin Cone

Fantastic piece of handmade stopmotion animation. Be sure to check out the main website of the project for a better quality (but unembeddable) video and a whole load of behind the scenes goodies.

I’ve been working through some tutorials just trying to get to grips with the nuts and bolts of Photoshop now that I have it on my work box. The plan is to use a combination of Photoshop and Flash to produce the illustrations for the graphic novel. Here’s my latest drawing. I can take next to no credit for it since I was following tutorials but I learned a few tricks when making it…

I’ve been playing around with ideas for the design for the site since I’ve never been happy about the fact I use an off the shelf template. Here’s my first attempt…

Photographer Peter Funch sets up his camera in a stationary position on the streets of New York and takes photo’s of the passers by. Then he makes composites of, for example, all the people talking on phones as they pass, or all those wearing red. Sometimes it’s hard to tell at first glance that it’s not just a straight point and shoot crowd scene, but there’s normally something not quite right about them that keeps you looking.

Click either image for the full gallery.

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