Wednesday 20 January 2010

Pages To Turn

Apologies to any of you who may have had issues with ordering any of my books over xmas. Lulu have ordinarily proved themselves to be pretty dependable but I guess all bets are off during the holiday period. A little belatedly, I finally received my own copy of the "That Isn't Funny, You Stupid Child" reissue and I have to say it's a vast improvement over the original edition in terms of print quality and binding.
I'm really getting a kick out of the whole book thing and have a whole bunch of ideas scribbled down for future releases. I can safely say that the reissues of "Mitchells In England" Volumes 2 and 3 are the next in line, which will cover all the old material and get my bibliography up to date.
The original covers for "Mitchells In England" Volumes 2 & 3

After that I have a few new graphic novel ideas, some short stories for children (believe it or not) and a couple of non-narrative concepts. These will be pretty simple to put together as they consist of material that already exists. One I'm thinking of would be a full-colour retrospective of my graphic design and illustration work completed over the last decade. The tricky thing will be going through all the backup CDs/DVDs/external HDs to locate the material, but I know it's all there somewhere.
Two others would both be black and white and thus a lot cheaper to produce. By the end of this year I imagine I'll have enough content to put out a book of collected storyboard artwork that would include the early animated music videos, "House Guest", both versions of "Ground Running" and the handful of animated projects I'm chiseling away at these days.What I've already started work on is a collection of sketchbook excerpts that showcase the gestation of a bunch of projects. Beyond the films these also include layouts and concepts for comics, commissions and projects that never came to be. I'm always fascinated by the published sketchbooks of illustrators and artists I admire, and it may be construed that I'm assuming that others will be similarly interested in mine. In truth I fully appreciate the virtual non-marketability of these more self-indulgent releases, it's more to scratch the personal itch of 'it sure would be nifty to get all this shit into a book'. And of course I can further exasperate my family and friends by extending my product line and dooming them to a lifetime of accepting gifts bearing my name with gritted teeth and forced grace.
I'm aiming to get the sketchbook collection done by June. Here's a proposed cover; title/cock visibility possibly subject to change when it comes out.

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