2ombies - The Ringmaster's Trick (2010)
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| The Ringmaster's Trick, page 2 |
The Ringmaster's Trick is a four-page horror/comedy, and features in the Accent UK Anthology 2ombies (the follow-up to the Zombies, in case you hadn't guessed). It was written by my older brother Stephen Michael Lowe, and based on a scene from a play entitled Dave and Jeff Versus the Evil Bloodsucking Zombies from the Nth Dimension, written by Ste with Mark Distin and Danny Greenhouse and produced in 2003 under the banner of the KOBAL Theatre Company.
I could just reproduce the whole comic here - it's short enough and I'm still really happy with the artwork even now - but obviously, I want you to have to go and buy it, although the plot is probably quite self-evident. (Zombie clowns and violence!) The artwork was pen-and-ink, shaded with ink wash, which turned out to be so much quicker, richer and more satisfying than computer shading that I heartily wished I hadn't already started shading Kane Mesmer in Photoshop. So, lesson learned, for me at least.
It's a trade-off: if you transfer plain black-and-white to the computer, you can tinker about with it forever until you get it right, and never have to worry that you'll ruin the drawing itself - you can always go back and restart it. But if, like me, you love the texture of ink, charcoal or paint on paper, you feel as if you're missing out. This is not to say that there are not massively talented artists out there who get incredible texture and work entirely in digital media - obviously there are, in abundance, and better than me by far - but I'm not one of them. I just love the good mistakes, the dry brushing and ink spatter, that take a drawing out of your hands and give it a life of its own that can surprise you. (That's the good mistakes, as opposed to bad mistakes, where you cock up a drawing entirely by sneezing with the brush loaded, or leave the page on a table for the cat to pee on.)
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| The Ringmaster's Trick, page 3 |
All text and images copyright © Marleen Lowe / Accent UK Comics - please do not reproduce without permission
Colour version please! :)
ReplyDeleteMaybe. Eventually. *sticks tongue out*
ReplyDeleteI did try (as you well know, Mr Anonymous) but it was taking forever and I had other, more pressing pages to draw, so I was unable to continue. And trying to add colour to that much black-ink bloodspatter is no easy task...!