It Is A Circle Blog

An update then, because we promised we would.

 Things are always slower with paperwork than I want them to be, and dealing with bureaucracy is always a headache… We decided this week that rather than imagining we are dealing with the faceless, nameless, rather inhuman feeling notion of borders control people, that we would instead call him Kevin. (Inspired by a friend who was told that if she gave the nameless evil in her cellar a name, it would no longer be a nameless evil. Good logic).

Kevin holds the hoops for us to jump through, but we have to guess where they are, and exactly how to jump. Does Kevin wish to see impressive dives and wild gymnastics? Or will just stepping through the hoop in a quiet, understated sort of way suffice? We don’t know. All we can do is be honest, and hope for the best.

It is, quite frankly, terrifying, knowing that our futures lie in the hands of random officials. At least for a while. I remind myself that border control people are not there to keep us apart, they are there to dot Is, cross Ts and maintain standards in box ticking.  All we have to do is stick with it, and eventually, we should get things sorted. But right now, it’s all a bit intimidating, to say the least. It probably doesn’t help that we are two bohemian people with odd circumstances.

The subtext is there in older posts and more explicitly other places online. I’m inclined to be clear. I said before that having spent a week together, we need to be working at the same table. It is more than that. Much, much more. The creative work is not merely something Tom and I do – it’s an essential part of who we are. Without inspiration, we neither of us get much done. Together… we can do all sorts. Shared creativity is much more powerful, because of how we relate to each other.

What started many years ago, with me getting drawn into an idea for a webcomic, is a love affair that has turned my life upside-down in the most amazing ways. Tom is my life, my world, my inspiration. As soon as we can get this all sorted, we will marry.

Tom: Is there anything about dead voles you would like to share with our readers?

Bryn: *Hides face in hands* well, there’s two things with dead voles. My cat used to reliably bring them as birthday presents, and for a while, I used deceased rodents (voles and others) to try and gain the favour of a lad I was after. As chat up lines ‘I’ve got a dead vole, want to come back to my house’ is… um… probably unique.

Tom: To be fair and balanced, I should mention that I once had a first date that involved a non living seal.

Bryn: Hmm, I think you’re going to have to explain about the seal…

Tom: The date was for a seal rescue operation… turned out to be more of a murder investigation, dreadfully romantic. Accent on the dreadful. Also used to have a mafia-cat who would line up the bird heads…sobering sight first thing in the morning. Ok we have established that we both have history with and fondness for cats, regarding the other important members of the animal kingdom, Bats or cephalopods, you must choose one! (pressure!)

Bryn: The obsession with bats is older. Goes back to being ten (ish) Batman obsessed, fascinated by them. I did some bat conservation in my teens. Baby bats are the cutest things imaginable, and seeing a bat colony fly out at night is an awesome experience.

Tom: Have never seen an entire colony, only a few at dusk.

Bryn: Rare experience that… whole colony, was incredible. What do you suppose the wallpaper in Hell looks like?

Tom: One theory is that it may be orange, I suspect though that it is most likely gingham, with adverts. (Also there is no such thing)

Bryn: Hell? Not in a Christian understanding. But it’s a good metaphor. It is what we do to ourselves, and to each other.

Tom: Yes. Have a saying about that. Wallpaper exists though, I’ve seen it! Ok…some lovely person has decided to bring you breakfast. We assume this person is not only lovely but telepathic as well. What’s on the tray?

Bryn: Coffee, orange juice, grapes. Hot buttered crumpets. Actually I’m quite easy to please, so long as there is coffee, the thought of anything on a tray is delightful. What matters most is the presence of said lovely person. Why are you the death of cheese?

 Tom: Well it has to do with Cheese…and the death of it…and…umm…my name. Which is the death of the cheese… and if I become more specific, the whole sense of vague threat (to..cheese) goes right into the toilet. Also… it was all of the words I knew in French at the time. I can now say suitcase and cat!

Tom and Bryn

Hello people, (and others).

There’s a lot of my personal life that doesn’t find its way onto social networking sites, or blogs. I’m quite a private sort of creature, and so is Tom. But, there are changes coming that are going to have some very visible effects on the webcomic, for a start, and other places too. So, explanations seemed to be in order.

We’re going down to one page a week with the webcomic. This is not a creative issue. It’s not loss of inspiration or energy, just that there are other parts of our lives that need some time and attention for the next couple of months. We ask you to bear with us, while we get things sorted.

Those of you who know us personally are aware that Tom and I have been collaborating across the Atlantic for quite a few years now.  Thanks to the internet, that works fairly well. But nothing like as well as sitting at the same table. Having spent a week together, it became very apparent that we need to be together in an ongoing sort of way. Moving Tom across the Atlantic is going to require some time and effort (there’s the wings to build for a start).

The webcomic will come out every Monday, with a Christmas special on Friday the 25^th. The Hopeless Vendetta will continue on Fridays, with guest artists joining in, and hopefully guest authors next year as well. Tom will be crossing the ocean early in 2010. We’ll keep you posted.

 Hugs to everyone

 Bryn and Tom.

This isn’t a collaberation, in the usual sense, but it would be fair to say that without Tom, there would be no Servant of the Forest – a fantasy/erotica novella, now available from www.loveyoudivine.com

Back last summer, Tom and I discovered skype. Having been working together for about four years, we’d not at that point talked, or met in person. Hearing each other’s voices brought us closer, allowing us to share and create in new ways. Tom assures me that he does not have an accent at all. I sound a bit like any stereotypes of English farmers that you might have, with a touch of pirate. Arrr.

Through the summer, I spent a lot of time with his voice in my ear, his companionship at a distance, and my life changed as a consequence. I wanted to write about it, but not in a way that was about what we were doing. So, I turned to a fantasy setting – one I’ve used before, a prisoner of war facing torture and death, reaching out with magic in desperation. She makes contact with someone, able to hear his voice, but little more. The voice in her ear keeps her sane, and alive. From there the story took off in its own way, with action, strange magic, and a passionate love affair.

Servant of the Forest is dark fantasy erotica. (And before you ask, it was written BEFORE we met, do not read this as autobiograpy! There are things I am not going to share.) I often write with an audience in mind- usually one person I want to offer the story to. It helps me focus. Copper Age material has always been written very much for Tom, and is different from what I do the rest of the time. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see how writing in other genres and settings for him worked. The answer would be, very well. Writing for him makes the whole process flow, and takes me to all kinds of interesting places. Sharing the process of creativity is great, and so encouraging. I shall be doing that again.

The cover and title both came from my good friend Sarah Morton. Many thanks to her.

mooning goblin!

I spent a week with Tom in America. It was brilliant. We get on tremendously well in person, and then some. (When I can get the pictures off my phone, I will post some here). There was plotting and planning, and rather a lot of painting, and I must confess far more time devoted to not really workish things!

One of the upshots of our week was this mooning goblin. Tom drew him, I did the colour, then Tom did highlights and putting into computer. It’s the first instance of our working on the same piece of paper, the first of many, I hope. It was great fun to do, although a bit scary – faced with a page and Tom’s lovely drawing on it, holding the paintbrush and praying that I didn’t make an embarassing mess of it.

I’ve left Tom with a text based thing to play with, so there’s all kinds of possibilities. He’s great fun to write with. I’d love to put words and art onto the same page, at the same time, no forward planning – would be crazy and a lot of fun.

We very much need to be working in the same place… and there are moves afoot, and as specific details emerge from the chaos, we will very likely share them. In the meantime, some of the Vendetta art is becoming an album cover, and its all go.

There’s been an Awakening book signing tour, and I was going to be cunning and post BEFORE it happened, but my life is a shambles (its a shambles in a good way and I may even explain here at some point, but not today.)

Awakening is a dark, zombie ridden comic of much style and creepiness. Written by Nick Tapalansky, illustrated by Alex Eckman. I liked the look of it so much that I bought a copy. It is superb, I can’t recomend it enough. They’ve been out signing books, and if you want to catch up with all of the gruesome detail, do pay a visit to http://truthinfourcolors.blogspot.com/?zx=fe6be5912868b01c

Follow @Awakeningcomic on twitter to keep up with them.

If you need some undead delights to make your halloween experience complete, do have a look. You can order Awakening from Amazon and other such places, and it really is a tremendous piece of work. I am a big fan.

Having done a bit of grilling other people, Tom and I decided we’d have some fun and interview each other. So, a whole heap of random things you probably didn’t know about either of us…

Bryn: Tell me, what is your favourite kind of fish?

Tom: umm…um.. Think of fish pretty much in two categories. Favourite sort would be… alive!
Salmon are apparently good for wisdom and such. Aesthetically, I like the very deep sea ones all pale and big eyes with glowing bits. What are your favourite sort of tentacles?

Bryn: Would it be terrible of me to say… the ones you draw? Especially the cup full of tentacles. That rocks. Are you ready for the zombie apocalypse?

Tom: Yay! (Soon all will know the cup of tentacles…) Zombie apocalypse… believe I will be participating, yes! Mothra Versus Neil Gaiman… who wins?

Bryn: Neil Gaiman obviously – as Jim C Hines so wisely pointed out, he is the one Ghostbusters call!

If you could have one word taken out of the language for all time, which one would you banish?

Tom: Hmm… Would not banish any word. (Would like to banish the meanings and context behind the way some of them are used, too frequently). What are six of your favourite words… (and put them in a sentence?)

Bryn: My six favourite words would be… swive, obsequious, numinous, liminal, crepuscular and yes. I cannot see any way of making them into a coherent sentence!

 What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Tom:  Ah… not sure. Would probably be odd combination of things eaten in desperation…Lived on a bar of chocolate one week back in my student days. a roll with butter and sugar. (Was all that was in the refrigerator) Oh… fiddleheads?  (baby ferns) Those might be weird.
What’s the strangest thing you have contemplated eating

Bryn: People don’t count, right? (Depending of course on the precise way in which ‘eating’ was meant there) I’ve contemplated all sorts of things because I’ve heard or read about them. I think the weirdest thing I’ve eaten was ostrich, but a friend of mine ate rat, so that’ probably the weirdest contemplation on my part!

As this was rather fun, we’ll no doubt do it again!

We can now offer you a new way of buying posters. http://www.bdposter.com/category.php?id_category=9 

A couple of weeks ago some very nice French blokes got in touch to ask if they could sell posters of Tom’s work and take his art around European conventions. How cool is this? There’s a few posters up already. I haven’t yet bought from the site, so there’s a lot I can’t tell you (and will let you know when I find out!) but the price is good, and we get a better precentage from them than we do from sites like zazzle.

If there’s anything you’d like to see as a poster – any of the banners, covers of Vendetta art that do please let us know and we’ll make that happen. There will be more images going to that site anyway.

I met Kaylove through Below the Fold – a group of creative folk that Tom hangs out with. Lovely people all. http://www.drunkduck.com/Art_School_Sub_Rosa/ if you want a look at what she does. There’s some gorgeous gender ambiguity stuff going on in that comic.

Bryn:  When did you start drawing comics?

Kaylove: I started my first comic about 3 years ago now, but it was never finished. I didn’t realise how much work making a comic is, haha.

Bryn: That experience evidently didn’t put you off. What inspired you to keep going?

Kaylove: First and foremost: reading comics by others. Especially shoujo manga. It burned a pretty heavy hole in my wallet as a teenager, heehee.  Secondly, having my own idea for a story that I really wanted to tell but wasn’t patient or experienced enough to properly write into a novel-like format.
The only thing I can stand doing for more than a few hours at a time is draw, so comics are the best way for me:3

Bryn: Who are your main influences, art-wise?

Kaylove: Hoooboy… I am not very good at remembering things off the top of my head especially names… on DA I am very fond of ecthelian, kyoko-taide, Dark134 and Clap-san (I know I’m forgetting heaps) (and our good pal Tom ^_^ his work is truly breathtaking). Manga artists… Toboso Yana, Bisco Hatori, Ai Yazawa, CLAMP, Nakahara Aya, Emura… I try to take influence more from real life and experimentation :3 Other artists I like but am not necessarily influenced by…. Amy Sol, Mark Ryden, Kukula, Brandon Bird (drawing a blank again oh jeez)… um Rene Magritte.Hah, im so bad with names XD

Hope I haven’t forgotten anyone hugely important, haha

Bryn: Real life and experimentation? Care to elaborate on that?

Kaylove: I have a habit of staring at clothing folds, pictures in fashion magazines that are lying about at my work/ walking through the shopping center on my lunch break and seeing all the latest fashions (especially the accessories), noticing all the different facial features of people and wondering how I can translate it into my own personal style. As for experimentation, I try to use a lot of different media to find a method that maybe I can become proficient in using… though it’s been years and that has yet to happen XD I guess it can’t be all that bad, but I think I have a problem with consistency.

Bryn: Ok, off at a random tangent then… what kinds of stories appeal to you?

Kaylove: First and foremost, comedy I’m a big fan of most kinds of comedy, except the kind that is aimed at teenage boys (Scary Movie, American Pie etc, haha).  I’m also big on romance and drama, and have a soft spot for the supernatural/ crime stories. I like something will a well structured plot, and likeable, relatable, realistic characters I’m not so much a big reader other than Terry Pratchett novels and manga, due to having a bad habit of having overdue fees and not enough time to read
I love to watch TV shows while I draw though. TV shows give me the most inspiration.

Bryn: Any TV shows in particular? Have you ever dabbled in fan pieces?

Kaylove: Oooh this is gonna be a long list. My favorite show is “The Mighty Boosh”, closely followed by the Flight Of the Conchords and IT Crowd. Its’ Always Sunny In Philadelphia is up there too. I love Firefly and the X-files to bits, Heroes, just been getting into Supernatural lately too. I like to catch CSI and SVU whenever they’re on TV as well. South Park is another big inspiration, I enjoy Family guy too, and American Dad (though less so, I only watch American Dad for Roger)
I have done previous fanart for the Boosh, FOTC, IT crowd, X-files and Firefly :3 Most of them are attached  to my walls.

Bryn: Cool. What are you long term goals?

Kaylove: emmmm long term goals…
Finish Art School Sub Rosa
Save up for a Cintiq tablet
Finish all the art I owe people
Get a real website

yeh that’s enough I think

Various hostings of my comic:
http://www.drunkduck.com/Art_School_Sub_Rosa/
http://artschoolsubrosa.deviantart.com/
http://artschoolsubrosa.smackjeeves.com/comics/682419/character-profiles/

My own art
http://theplanpony.deviantart.com/

This week I pounced on Lord Shaper for an interview. He very obligingly agreed to being grilled a bit.

Bryn: Sooo, when did you first get into comics?

Lord Shaper: I remember my parents buying me comics back when I was a kid in the 80’s but I’ve been “into” them since ‘91. Btw I do 2 podcasts as well heh.

Bryn: Ooh, what sorts of things happen in the podcasts?

Lord Shaper: www.lordshaper.com/kryptographik is a Comic based podcast which doesn’t deal with main stream comics but looks at the Horror, Scifi and Dark Fantasy genres. Welcome to Heavenside http://heavenside.lordshaper.com is a podcast talking about Doktor Sleepless which is a comic from Avatar Press written by Warren Ellis. Which I need to get back to heh.

Bryn: Ok, I have to ask… why did you pick Lord Shaper as an alias?

Lord Shaper: Going back about 10 years ago I was using Dark Howler which I was influenced by a picture I had hanging above my desk and when I started playing Quake and Unreal Tournament online I adopted the name Lord Shaper which was from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic which was another name for Dream in it. About 2 years later I dropped the Dark Howler name as I was wanting to consolidate my “personas” and stuck with Lord Shaper.

That’s probably more than you needed there!

Bryn: I had wondered if that was it! I will confess that it was part of the reson why I started following you on twitter. Do tell us more about www.lordshaper.com and what you do over there.

Lord Shaper:  www.lordshaper.com originally was a gaming website for the first 5 years of it’s existence and after the boom it had devolved into a forum that didn’t have anyone going to it so I decided it was time for a change and now it has evolved into a blog of sorts with reviews, news and anything else I can think of to put on there.

Also I have been joined by Jason Tudor (www.jasontudor.com) and Amber Love (www.twitter.com/elizabethamber) who are also putting up their reviews and articles and Amber puts up her youtube reviews as well once a week.

Personally I try to update once or twice a day which doesn’t happen at a particular time due to the fact I work shifts at the moment and have to find time to post.

Other than that I also crosspost any podcasts that I I’m on as well so if you were so inclined to see what I’ve been on you can find it there.

Bryn: Cool. What qualities do you go for in a comic?

Lord Shaper: I’ve always been a story based person. Which is the main thing I look for in comics. Mainly these days I read more independent comics which are non superhero books along the lines of what is coming out of Avatar Press (www.avatarpress.net) and Archaia Comics (www.archaiasp.com) which are in the sci-fi/horror realms. I’ve always been attracted to the vertigo style of comics, hence my love of The Sandman, The Invisibles, Preacher and Hellblazer.

Bryn: Arachia… I interviewed Nick Tapalansky a bit back – have you read Awakening?

Lord Shaper: Haven’t read it yet. It’s one that is on my list to pick up which unfortunately is getting longer and longer at the moment.

I’ve also been able to email and twitter back and forth with Nick and hopefully one day I’ll get the chance to meet him.

On a side note speaking of Archaia I actually have a 6-7 page story coming out through them in the Titanium Rain Hard Cover which is in previews this month.

Bryn: That’s rather exciting – is that story as in comics, or prose?

Lord Shaper: It’s a prose story of sorts. There is to be a lot of design within it as it is a series of emails between a couple of people in the form of an intelligence report for MI5.

Kat Rocha and Josh Finney where great to work with as well getting it all connected to the world they have created.

I’m still waiting on seeing the final pages but even though it is prose it is to have a real sequential feel!

Bryn: I love things that poke at the perceived edges of form and genre! Sounds great.

More links below…

www.titaniumrain.net

http://www.twitter.com/LordShaper