Comic Book Funny

Well, the Hamlet backgrounds are DONE! And have been safely delivered to the wonderful people at Allen & Unwin so they can have them professionally scanned. I also had a fruitful talk with A&U's super-designer, Bruno, to nut out the techno-mysteries of Photoshop modes, colour profiles, scanning and printing. It's a great relief to get these things sorted at the start of a project (well, it's sort of the start - if you call a year's worth of preparatory work the start...) rather than in a state of nailbiting-will-this-work?-horror at the end.

Gatsby was my Photoshop initiation, and as such I had no idea of what kind of pitfalls might open up in front of the innocent scribbler accustomed to nothing more technical than the angle of her steel nib. I did lots of things the long, hard way, and probably took a couple of years off super-editor Jodie's life with the "surprises" that arose when we tried to get my electronic files ready for print. It all worked out in the end, of course, but neither of us needs to go through that kind of suspense again!

So with the backgrounds under my belt, I'm really really looking forward to painting actual characters - in fact, to painting anything that doesn't involve thousands of tiny repetitive patterns, dots, circles, tiles...

In other news, some of us comic types are showing off at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, in a series of panels, live scribbles and exhibitions. It's called Comic Book Funny, it's on for three more Saturdays, and it's free! Here's a short article about it from The Age, featuring Comic Book Funnyman extraordinaire and organiser-of-the-show David Blumenstein, along with this little Bug. Note how I am laughing hysterically in the photo while David just looks cool.

Details for Comic Book Funny:
Saturdays 29 March, 6 April and 12 April - 4pm
Bella Union Bar
Trades Hall
Cnr Victoria and Lygon Streets
South Carlton.

And here's what David says about it:

Stand-up comedy is lovely, but it’s got a Twilight Zone-style mirror world which lives on paper and feeds on ink: the world of the underground cartoonist.

Australia’s vigorous community of independent comic book makers spend their days as clerks, shopgirls, students, teachers, ad artists, animators and telemarketers. By night the spotlight drops onto their drawing boards and their pens and brushes come out to play.

Their work is angry, scatological, satiric, whimsical and just plain funny.

Comic Book Funny is a series of free events presenting the often hilarious, occasionally touching and always purchasable works of Australia’s funniest comics auteurs -- the print analogue to the rest of the Comedy Festival.

Drop by the Bella Union Bar at Trades Hall each Saturday at 4pm and you’ll meet a few more talented cartoonists. See their wares! Ask them questions! Drink with them! Admire their ink-stained fingers!

Featuring Australia’s best and funniest cartoonists: Gerard Ashworth, Neale Blanden, David Blumenstein, Bernard Caleo, Pat Grant, Nicki Greenberg, Ben Hutchings, Dean Rankine, Glenn Smith, Ross Tesoriero, Andrew Weldon and more!

David Blumenstein and Ben Hutchings will be podcasting local comics talk and general silliness during the festival, at http://www.nakedfella.com/blog/.