The GagaMan (n) Is In.

Werehog Vs WereRabbit

2009-12-20T13:54:00.002Z

Sequel to [link] , which is why Mickey is the in the corner.

This crossover makes even more sense than the previous, doh! Oh well, this time i wanted to try and draw the Werehog in full and the colours in the previous pic are all wrong because my monitor was set up too dark before (might fix that). The background is a bit of a bodge job but oh well. Coloured up the characters on a livestream.

Snow!

2009-12-18T15:15:00.005Z

Normally when we get snow it's sometime stupid like February, March or like last time in 2008...at the start of summer! Bitterly cold but fun to walk in when it's soft! This morning I had a quick go at doodling something on the roof of our kitchen..

..and made a little snow Guuaaff, which fell and smashed into pieces seconds after taking these photos..

Once Upon a Time in Antarctica

2009-12-17T12:22:00.004Z

The best Penguin/Gangster pun I could think of, sorry.

Done for the pure fun of it, drew feathers (from the Wrong Trousers) and Pingu in Flash on last nights Livestream, took them into Photoshop and messed about with it a bit. The gun shot texture came from [link]

Pingu takes the right piss sometimes.

It's Dug!

2009-12-15T13:32:00.004Z

From that film Up! I drew this up as a birthday card for my mum (just changed the happy birthday text to a quote for here) as she loves the film, and bought herself a talking Dug soft toy to add to her talking Pixar toy collection that sits on the shelf behind me in this study room!

MAKE TEA NOT WAR 2010 (Poster Remake)

2009-12-09T11:52:00.004Z

A remake of this: [link] for several reasons:

1) The original used a font, this time I wanted to use 100% original text drawn especially for it.

2) I redesigned the tea bloke. No odd censor bar anymore and he hasn't been knocked up in ten minutes flat this time. He's going to have a bigger role on the new website.

3) Tea N Crumpets Version 2 should hopefully be ready for around March 2010, which is when I'll be at the UK Web + Comix Thing in London, so I'd like to sell this as a print there.

So far I'm not 100% sure if this is final, I need some Critique on it so I can get it as good as I can. I re-drew the hand holding the mug a hundred times but I'm still not sure about it, and the area to the right of him (where the E of Tea and the N of not are) seems a bit bare. I have a alternative two-tone version below, to see which one peeps prefer.

EDIT: Added a .co.uk to the box he's standing at. Does that make sense or will people think the address is AF.co.uk?

The TV Show: Watch this 9 times (at least).

2009-12-07T15:03:00.005Z

I'm not one to just slap someone elses' Youtube video up and call it a day (not too often, anyway), but this really deserves all the exposure it can get if you ask me. I've watched it multiple times just to take it all in, so much is crammed into 3 and a half minutes and it's an absolute riot. The music is funky as as hell too. I love how each scene has it’s own main colour, so when they all start to crossover it’s clear which is from where even if it’s moving so fast. While you're at it check out the directors website, some sweet illustrations and more films there.

23 today. Holy moly.

2009-11-30T19:20:00.004Z

How did that happen? I thought I was 19 about a year ago! Where did those years go? ;_;

Oh well, here's something that made my day. Stacey drew me a Lucy Lolly pic, and it is awesome. So very, very awesome.

Dear Lucy Lolly by ~StaceyW on deviant ART

Also got some sweet presents:

The Pingwings DVD from the Dragon's Friendly Society. Early 60's Oliver Postgate series set on the grass by his barn starring early-clanger like penguins. You just cannot go wrong with good ol' Postgate, bless his soul.

Some DS games including the elusive My Japanese Coach. May as well see if it motivates me to learn even a small hint of the language considering how many Japanese lanuage games I seem to own. So far though it's just making me hit gohphers on the head that are holding words up like 'Kamikaze' and 'arigato'. Hmm. That's only within the first fiver minutes though, so we'll see. Also Little Red Riding Hood Zombie BBQ. Does that sound badass or what?

Also the Simon's Cat book from my sis, some Sonic toys, a nice sonic wallet to replace my battered up Zim one, some shirts yadda yadda yadda. You're not interested in this stuff, are you?

The last week I've also been moving from my small old bedroom to a bigger room in the house. I had been in that room since we moved into the house when I was about 1! I have no idea how I got all my stuff in there, it was rather claustrophobic but now I have enough room for all my junk including that bulky Mega Drive rotating stand thingy and even a new double bed I bought. So comfy! :3

Gagaman art by Xyionan

2009-11-18T14:55:00.003Z

DuskTurnout Round2 - GaGaMan by =xyionan

What a nice surprise from my mate Xyionan! Here's his own design that puts me in a rather different classic Mickey Mouse type get up, and even has me in colour on one half and black and white the other! I guess my rambling about that Epic Mickey game while watching one of his Livestreams' influenced this design. :)

Art Archive on Livejournal

2009-11-17T23:59:00.005Z

I noticed Stacey had a rather nice massive archive of her old and new art up on Live Journal, so I thought I'd have a go at that too! Why not? They give you 1GB of space for images which has been a lot more space than I expected, and I've been uploading tons of stuff over the past week, going mainly by year but there is also tags for things like fan art and some projects like Lucy Lolly. Furthest back I'm going is 2002 for now, might do 2001 as well though. Been finding and scanning some stuff i either forgot I did, didn't finish or pulled from DeviantArt ages ago. Incoming self indulgent history of how my drawing has gotten less and less frequent over the years!

2002. Ah bless! High school, mainly using MS paint, big time into anime, and getting my first computer at home. A lot of my spare time this year (and some of the next) was spent on a fan game called Sonic Switch which got a little too ambitious in the end (so in turn was never completed) but had a lot of my first experiments in animating on a computer for the first time, long before I discovered Flash. My Interwebs alias at this time was 'Manga-Manic'.

2003. Discovered Photoshop! College begins! My website Manga-Gaga was my main focus, as a lot of the art will show, and there was some other things like art I did for a fan game called Chaos Control by a friend who went by the name of MJ2 (and is apparently now a professional Basketball player!) as well as a planned game spin off to the comic Gagapow. Still mostly animu/Sonic stuff here then. This is the largest folder of stuff so far, funnily enough.

2004. The year my art started to shift to pretty much how it has stayed since, all goofy and silly, with the anime style stuff on the side. was really enjoying mucking about with paints for backgrounds and using this paper that I've never found out what it's even called that has a nice texture for inking biro onto.

2005. Darn, what was I running on this year? I don't think I've ever been as active drawing as I was in 2005, there's quite a bit of variety of stuff here and typography dominating images became a thing with me for a bit. This was the year my final college project Tea N Crumpets began 9and starting Uni was also this year) so I wanted to really boost my portfolio. Was also really quite giving this year: lots of gift art for friend's birthdays on DeviantArt.

2006. Animation started to take more of my time than before for Uni and in my spare time so the illustrations start to slow down a bit here. Not much to say as it was a pretty event-less year in this area..

2007. Again, not a lot of individual illustrations here as my main focus was animation projects like the Howdooyoodoo and Lucy Lolly, so a lot of it is concept art and sketches from those.

2008. Lucy Lolly was pretty much the first half of this year, and the other half was er...not a lot. Yikes, my drawing productivity has really gone down the drain by this point..

2009: Where we are now and hopefully some more will get in there before the year is over. Again I have an excuse in that most of my drawing energy went into Cool 2 Chil which as I've mentioned before was around 800 or so inked pages.

God dam, why did I just write all that? I could of just linked you to the page and be done with it but I ended up with this long rant. Ho hum!

Rush Rush Rally Racing art for DCJY

2009-11-11T19:27:00.004Z

Check out this art I did for the guys over at the Dreamcast Junkyard for the latest game to be released on the system. This was Tuesday Night's livestream. Click it to go over to the DCJY blog where you can download it as a wallpaper is various sizes (don't normally put my art out online as big as the biggest wallpapers of this. In case you're curious about the game you can read up about it here.

Tea N Crumpets is back online!

2009-11-10T23:28:00.003Z

Just a quick update to inform you that Cosmic-Hero.com is back up and running meaning Tea N Crumpets (and Manga-Gaga) are back up too, hooray! Thanks Ace for sorting that out! Just need to re-update Tea N Crumpets as the back up used is missing the most recent update. Will get onto that in a short while.

EDIT: Sorted.

Last night's GagaTelly Animations

2009-11-06T14:47:00.007Z

The first Livestream last night went down a treat! It lagged quite a bit for some people, but I was presently surprised how many popped in to watch and we had a good laugh! Either way the animating I did was all made up as I went along and the three GIFs above are the result.

The one on the left was the first one I did, a bit cruddy as I was just warming up from not animating anything in Flash for a while. It was christened 'iBuySausage' by someone in the chat for some reason. The one to the right was next, of Vince from Rex the Runt because there's a toy of him by my desk. We had a laugh moving it to lip sync, which ended up with this insane moment:

Finally this one above. Look at that chin hair! It grows in REAL TIME.

Tea N Crumpets is down.

2009-11-05T22:55:00.005Z

Just so you know, the website is currently offline due to some arsehats hacking Cosmic-Hero.com, which as you may know has been hosting us for some years now. Looks like it's either down temporarily or pulled completely to wipe out the hacked forums, so I might have to find a new host, but we'll see.

GagaTelly! (Live Streaming channel)

2009-11-05T14:26:00.003Z

Yep, I've set up a live stream channel for some reason. I'm planning to do some stuff on there possibly tonight, so you can watch me draw and animate on me computer, if you're that bored and wanna chat or something. I would also like to stream some video game playing but I haven't quite got my webcam working completely on the laptop yet. When not live (like now) it's playing a bunch of my animations, which is kind of pointless as you can just watch them on Youtube but whooooooooo shut up.

EDIT: Going live any minute now, and probably every other night from 7pm (British time) too, so head on over!

Random Sonic Comic Strip!

2009-10-27T16:01:00.004Z

I have a bunch of doodles in a sketchbook for what was going to be a Sonic spin off comic for Manga-Gaga. I liked this one amongst them so I decided to re-draw it up in full. Ah, it's just like when Manga-gaga first started all over again (when it wasn't a series a such, just a bunch of daft comics I uploaded to the site for the fun of it.

Booked for UK Web + Comix Thing 2010!

2009-10-25T15:27:00.002Z

I've visited the event two years running but for next years event on March 27th I now have a table reserved to sell my wares there! Got lots of planning to do, but the kind of things I'd like to produce for the event (and in general) are:

Prints, badges, maybe even posters and that kind of stuff.

DVDs of some of my animations. The Lucy Lolly DVD is almost ready so I could get that printed, and I'll throw some of the other films on it too (the ones I can get away with like the Howdooyoodoo, Fujis and RabRab).

Maybe I could also aim this to be the lanuch of Tea N Crumpets Version 2. If I can get it done in time that is.

Either way this should get me to pull my finger out and start making some new original stuff, so stay tuned!

London MCM Expo, yesterday.

2009-10-25T11:32:00.009Z

Drew this on the train journey there.

That's right, an anime convention of all things! Well, it was also about video games, sci-fi, comics and other geeky things, but mainly anime. Weird that I never went to one of these a few years back when I was really big into the stuff so after a while of being out of the loop a lot of it went over my head, but I went because quite a few friends of mine were gonna be there and it was a fun day out. Shame I didn't really plan anything too well so I had to find peeps when I got there, most of which I didn't find in the end but I did bump into Euan and ShinKosai, and Stacey manged to find me too, so it was all good.

If I was to go again, I would defiantly pre-order the tickets, darn. I arrived at 11am and was stuck in the loooong queue for about 2 hours. Still, one of the odder queues I have ever been in, what with big lump of the people queuing dressed up ("cosplaying" if you wanna get weeaboo): I saw an awesome Tom Baker Doctor Who, a giant Pac-man suit, for some reason lots of gender swapped Nintendo characters, lots of elaborate Gothic dresses, and being an anime convention...lot's of ladies leaving little to the imagination (so many short skirts where to look agahsahjhj)! Many were holding up signs saying 'Free hugs!', too. Not that I'm complaining, or anything. It was no where near as bad as I feared, you know, like this..

Aliens!

Zombies!

Rabbit girls with carrots shoved up their arse!
(Ok now I'm just pretending I don't know who she's dressed as. She's from this.)

So when I finally got in the place at 1pm-ish it was packed to the gills and massive: never been to a convention this big before. Lot's of stores et up selling anime tat, including one or two dodgy hentai stores (how much of a virgin must you want to be forever to buy a full body length pillow with a naked anime girl spread across it?), but there was also a lot of up-coming video games to play test, a big stage where at the end of the day the cosplayers pranced about on, and some cool stuff like the Ghostbusters car and a Back to the Future Delorean. There was signing booths with Tom Baker and Craig Charles which were a bit of a rip off: you had to buy tacky expensive merchandise before you could get anything signed. Meh, I'm not that fussed about a signature.

The stuff I spent my cash on. was tempted to buy more but I emptied my wallet!

Quite a lot of the anime distributors like Manga and ADV were about selling wares as well as Neo Magazine, and Helen McCarthy who was signing copies of her new Osama Tezuka book, which was one of many things I bought while there along with the 'To Infinity and Beyond!' Pixar book which was surprisingly cheap, and some brilliant Sega themed t-shirts, a cheap DVD of a film I've never heard of that looks interesting, and a poster for an ace Wii game coming out soon.

All hail the Ecto-1. Coolest car ever (the Delorean is a close 2nd).

I didn't get many photos but if you want to see a nice batch of some of the cosplayers check out Stacey's Flickr folder. Even though I'm not a big fan of anime like I used to be, it was a lot of fun and next year maybe I should live out this comic I did a while back for Manga-Gaga..

MAOAM

2009-10-23T15:03:00.003Z

I don't why the packaging of these sweets has been getting complaints..

Maybe a little NSFW, perhaps? Haha, would this be considered Rule #34?

I know, this is old news (See this article if you don't get it) but I've been sitting on this sketch for a while, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

These sweets are darn yummy btw. Must be all the love that goes into them...

Sorry!

Huhuhuhheheheheuheuheuhehuhuhh

2009-10-22T17:09:00.004Z

I had a sudden realization yesterday: I have never, ever drawn Beavis & Butthead. This had to be rectified. These two are so fun to draw! Easily two of my favorite cartoon characters of all time.

This image even has a sort of story so it's not just a generic portrait: Halloween is coming up, and Beavis wants to be Frankenstein's monster. Commence stupid plan involving a lot of pain on Beavis' side, as always. Next would be chucking green paint on him, but Butthead picks up a bucket of acid instead. Go on, you can map out the whole episode in your head, I know I can!

Can you believe I grew up as a kid watching this? Pfft, I turned out just finnuooopaoopkkalllupp what was I saying?

Topical Comic, Oh my!

2009-10-22T17:05:00.004Z

Postal Strike + Hotel Mario = this thing. Pretend it's a new issue of Manga-Gaga or something. I like making quick comics without the pressure of it being a weekly routine on a website. Mind you, that did keep me drawing a lot.

Cool 2 Chil Concept art and other stuff

2009-10-21T14:39:00.010Z

Now that Cool 2 Chil is online for all to see, I can show some bits and bobs from the development of the film here. =)

The very first brain storming sketches. Most of these are a bit pants.

Experimented with a whole bunch of styles until I grew to like the character in the top right corner. At first I was going for a simplistic cut out look, but ended up with more organic, traditional characters instead.

From here the sketches are more or less a lot like how the characters looking the final film. This was all before we had a final storyboard down, just tossing ideas around.

A colour chart for the main characters of the film. There was a bit of a mess up at first with the names of the two kids, so right up until the recording session they were known as Robert and Ralph.

EDIT: I found another page of sketches I hadn't scanned yet. The animation didn't come out quite as bouncy as these doodles but maybe that would have been too distracting anyway. I did keep the football idea though, not sure if it really works but it was fun to animate that bit.

You may of noticed the pencil tests at the end of the film in the credits. I might gather all of those up and upload them to youtube later.

'Cool 2 Chil' is online & DVD launch night.

2009-10-19T18:35:00.005Z

A film I animated for Connexions here in Southend is now up on Youtube. You may of seen bits of this on my show-reel and maybe saw my posts here talking a little about it. In case you were wondering I also did the voices for the two bullies, lol. Right at the end in the credits you'll see some of the pencil tests I did with my Playstation Eye while working on the film. Thanks for uploading it, Terry!

Speaking of which, tonight was the launch of the DVD of which the film has been released on. The disc is provided in a resource pack about young carers that is going to be sent out across schools all over the place, which is nice!

The event was at the Focus Youth center just a walk away from me, and upon walking in these posters with a screen from the film where everywhere! A cuppa of tea, some cake and a chat later and we were called into a cinema room to watch the DVD! Cripes!

Before that there was some powerpoint nattering about the Young Carer's and the club and whatnot. A majority of the audience were from Schools and it was all about getting them aware of the needs of these young chaps that look after their disabled or ill parents. I found this re-working of my art on one of the slides particularly amusing..

Either way the film went down a treat and it's going to be spread about for many to see so I'm rather pleased! :)

Drunken Cartoon Monster Brawl

2009-08-11T14:27:00.006Z

Made this last week but forgot to post it here.When I finished it I was thinking to myself how pandering to Internet fanboys this art is (like it ticks all the boxes on the fan service list, a crossover fight scene etc) but I spent quite a while on it and don't feel so awkward about it now. For reference here is Mickey's last short film Runaway Brain and the Sonic short film Night of the Werehog.

I think I've already stated my love for this Mickey cartoon before. I remember seeing it as a kid at the front of A Goofy Movie in cinemas and thought it was the coolest thing ever. It's such a twist on what we're used to seeing of Mickey Mouse, who ever since sometime in the 40's turned into a dull boring character, but before that had just as much as Goofy and Donald. Watching this now it still feels like they finally got Mickey's old character back, though obviously with a modern touch. The references to The Exorcist, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson, Snow White and Steamboat Willie are a treat too.

Night of the Werehog is another case of a favorite character of mine getting a monster make over, and while playing as the Werehog in the latest game was hardly a great deal of fun (more to do with bad level design and the length of said levels more than the idea itself, IMO), this short film they put out is pretty neat. Judging by this maybe Sega should stop making Sonic games for a bit and make cartoons like this instead, as they clearly have the talent in that department. Personally I don't mind the werehog character as much as others moaning about him, he just reminds me of My Pet Monster in a way.

Showreel on Youtube and Vimeo

2009-08-09T22:25:00.004Z

Now you can catch the new showreel on Youtube and Vimeo in HD, if you like! I would put the file up on Tea N Crumpets at this quality but Ace (hosting the site) would kill me! :P

Tea N Crumpets is 4 Years Old: Big Update

2009-08-08T13:27:00.006Z

Well Tea N Crumpets has been online for four years now and in that time it...hasn't updated a whole lot. Well, there has been pages added for newer animations like Lucy Lolly and some pages went through several slight revisions, but otherwise it hasn't really changed much since it was first developed in 2005. Going in to edit the files for me now means I have to set my mind back to how i used to put stuff together in Flash, as I've improved and streamlined how I put things together now compared to back then.

So as I've been saying over and over again for years I'm working on Tea N Crumpets version 2, only this time I actually have started working on it and have one of the pages made and ready! In fact because this is for me the most important page, I've uploaded it today as a sort of preview of what to expect from the new website!

The 'Profile' page is replacing both the Showreel and Information pages from before, which were so out of date it is actually kind of embarrassing. On this new page you get a short blurb about me, links to all my Internet homes (Youtube, facebook etc), and a section where you can browse my Portfolio (the new one I put together for New Designers), a new showreel (the website didn't even have last years one up, let alone this one!) and my current (needs work) CV. This has been designed to be very easy to update whenever it needs it.

You'll see animation in the showreel and Portfolio you probably haven't seen before, including scenes from 'Lost in the K Hole' and 'Cool 2 Chil' which is that film I told you about a little while ago that i had been working on for months (both are traditional pen animation). I'll be uploading the showreel in HD to Youtube and Vimeo soon. I even designed exclusive fonts for the website this time, do you like them? I want to make the new version 100% my work, so that means no sound effects from old Mega Drive games either!

Oh, and in case you didn't figure out what to do on the page, you drag the crumpet/muffin/pancake onto my tongue. :P