Thought Bubble 2011 round-up

I’ll be honest, I would have been happier if Thought Bubble had been Saturday-only; Sunday’s emptiness put a downer on a good weekend. However, we sold a fair few copies of our new comic, The Moon of Endine (now available in our online shop, as well as in Leeds at Travelling Man and Forbidden Planet), and some of our year-old graphic novel Boys Don’t Cry.

If we hadn’t been there on Sunday we wouldn’t have met Brian Gorman (and he wouldn’t have bought a copy of The Moon of Endine). Sadly I rolled in rather late to the conversation, having had a bit of a break in the Royal Armouries to look at the fencing swords, but Mark reliably informs me that I missed an enjoyable chat with a purveyor of fine anecdotes. Who also happens to be doing a graphic novel about Joy Division – what’s not to like?

I also indulged my geekier side and in a quiet moment asked a bemused Dr Geof to sign one of his physics cartoons from long ago. Yes, I did cut a cartoon out of Physics World and keep it for several years. Yes, I did used to read Physics World.

I saw some amazing art by Kev Crossley, and met a few people who’d bought and enjoyed Boys Don’t Cry either at or since the last Thought Bubble, which was reassuring, to say the least. One of those was Lani Irving who does rather snazzy embroidery and unique artistic books; I’ve also just noticed she said some lovely things about us on her blog <blush>.

The Librarian, who was in attendance on Sunday, found and purchased a publication called The Green Bean that mentioned libraries, and was very, very happy. I got lots of random ideas for stories and comics that may never see the light of day.

See some photos from the day at Flickr. I’m off to drink more tea.

 

Putting a comic together using Scribus

A guest post from OneMonkey: lettering guru, editor, publisher, salesman and all-round comics linchpin here at Ostragoth.

I get to do most of the technical part of putting our graphic novels and comics together.  Most recently I’ve finished preparing the print-ready pdf for Moon of Endine.  I was initially going to use OpenOffice for the page layout as I’d done before, but once I’d generated the pdf there were some odd visual artefacts in the pdf which I’m sure were just antialiasing rendering problems in the pdf viewer, but which I didn’t want to risk being visible in the final copy.

That’s when I remembered a dtp package I first played around with on Linux many years ago, but never had real occasion to use.  I soon had the excellent open-source desktop publishing programme Scribus installed.

I spent a couple of days learning how to use it and putting together the Moon of Endine using Mark’s artwork and Jacqueline’s script.

With the exception of one minor niggle (greyscale pngs being imported in the rgb colourspace – I thought by exporting everything to a greyscale pdf the black would be uniform, but apparently not.  The black for the text and text boxes of the comic is different from the black of the artwork, but I can live with that – it actually looks quite good in the context – I’ll know for next time to keep a closer eye out for that) everything went well.

I will be using Scribus more in future.

The wrap-round cover of The Moon of Endine, as put together by OneMonkey

He has in fact put together our cartoon mini-comic The Episodic Adventures of Bentley the Rabbit in Scribus this week.

Available in Leeds…so far

Our new comic The Moon of Endine arrived from the printers (and rather good it looks too – thanks, Inky Little Fingers) and is already available at the Leeds branches of both Forbidden Planet and Travelling Man. As I write, it isn’t in our website shop, but just as soon as OneMonkey has some spare time (in between putting together our other new comic, which is a cartoon – quite a departure for us) it will be there, so do check back soon if you’d like a copy and don’t happen to live within shopping distance of Leeds.

And don’t forget we will be at Thought Bubble next weekend, in the Royal Armouries hall. Hope to see you there.

Announcing The Moon of Endine

Earlier this week, amid tea and chocolate digestives, the Ostragoth trio (that’s us) finalised our new comic, The Moon of Endine. All we need is OneMonkey to finish lettering it, and it’s ready for printing; when it is, it’ll be available to buy from our online shop and of course at Thought Bubble in Leeds in November.

It runs to about 40 pages, and is all in black and white (I know Boys Don’t Cry was almost entirely black and white, but it did have occasional hints of purple). Mark’s gone for a more traditional approach this time, hand-inking the pages before scanning them in, instead of sketching, scanning, then inking on computer. Much fun was had making black splats with brushes, apparently.

The story is set on a frontier planet: tight-knit communities, subsistence farming, and werewolves. Not that surprising perhaps when the moon’s on a decaying orbit and slowly dominating the sky.

As a bit of a taster of the stark monochrome of this Western-style tale, here are a couple of panels:

Announcing Ostragoth at Thought Bubble 2011

It’s that time of year again, we’ve just booked our table for the Thought Bubble convention in Leeds in November. It’s running over 2 days this time, and we’ll be in the Royal Armouries Hall. I’ve been having a quick look at who else is going to be in there with us, and I love the style of Jade Sarson’s Cafe Suada.

We’ve started so we’ll (hopefully) finish

This blog’s been untended even longer than my main writing blog, but as well as me getting back into the writing groove, Mark’s pressing ahead with the art for the next Ostragoth publication. At the moment, he’s aiming to have a first draft by the end of the month, but art doesn’t always go to plan. This one’s more of a standard comic length (hence cheaper – doesn’t it sound more appealing already?) and yes it does have a werewolf in it, but this is Ostragoth – you know it’s not going to be that straightforward.

More parochial, and less so

Two announcements, one is that if you’re a member of Bradford libraries, you can now borrow a copy of our graphic novel Boys Don’t Cry (see the catalogue entry for details). The other is that Ostragoth (in the form of artist Mark Pexton) will be at Bristol Comic Expo next week (Saturday 14th May).

I urge and encourage you to borrow Boys Don’t Cry if you can, both to support the library and to make us slightly excited when we see that someone’s taken it out (we don’t get any money, so don’t go thinking that’s why I’m asking. If we were in this for the money, we wouldn’t be in this at all).

For those living further south who are getting tired of all these parish notices about local libraries and comic shops, get yourself to Bristol next Saturday and not only can you buy a copy of Boys Don’t Cry or one of Mark’s prints or postcards, but you get to meet the artist himself. What could be a better reason for attending? (surely not the impressive list of guests?). Admittedly I’m not going along this year, but hopefully next year.

To those of you nowhere near Bristol or Yorkshire, I can only apologise. But have you seen our fine online shop?

Ostragoth ventures south: on sale in Sheffield

In our continuing quest for new audiences, we’ve ventured to comic shops in other parts of Yorkshire, specifically Sheffield. Our literary graphic novel Boys Don’t Cry (why not read the synopsis) is on sale at Sheffield Space Centre – it’s completely non-genre (macabre in places perhaps, but not horror. No scientific or fantastical elements. Just a teenage goth with shallow friends) so it does seem a bit weird in a way, but I’m not about to complain.

One day we might leave the county boundaries, but for this weekend we’ll be sticking around as it’s the Leeds Alternative Comic Fair tomorrow and all 3 of us will be heading along to check it out after lunch.

When is a book not an artwork?

This lunchtime I made a very brief visit to the Artists Book Fair at Leeds University. The pieces ranged from books that documented art projects, to books that were art in themselves (not necessarily having any content or being for anything other than display), to art made out of cut up books and maps (like Deckle Edged), to hand-made paper and cards, to small booklets of the kind I’d expect to see at any comic gathering (A5 or A6 size, coloured paper, black and white printing with fairly simple drawings, illustrating conversations or everyday life or a common saying or poetry) (try Artists Books Online for examples of several types). Where is the line drawn? What makes these eligible for something where the catalogue costs at least £5, and others not? Is it a matter of what you declare your work to be? Word-art seems popular at the moment, so if you market something as thoughtful ‘art’ it gets taken seriously, exhibited, and priced accordingly, but if you call it a comic it’s relegated to specialist outlets and dismissed as ‘mere’ entertainment? Seems unfair, but sadly it also seems true.

The Ostragoth empire expands

Or, if you prefer, we’ve now got the graphic novel (Boys Don’t Cry) in Forbidden Planet in Leeds. OneMonkey quietly goes about his organisational business and then announces these things. Oh, and Travelling Man should have more stock by Friday morning.

Phew! In between all of this, and my ridiculous blogging challenge over at my writing blog (a post a day for a month, how hard can that possibly be? Very, would be my current answer. And it’s only the 9th), I do have a finished first draft of the main follow-up to BDC (which might follow an in-between, lighter comic which is half-written). OneMonkey’s legendary editing skills will come into play just as soon as he’s emerged from the Jeff VanderMeer book I got out of the library.

Ideas are also starting to crystallise for the comic script I’m hoping to write during ScriptFrenzy in April. Watch this space.