Hello everyone,
Well Thursday night I was one of the lucky stall holders at Auckland Zinefest / First Thursdays. As it has been previous years that I have attended this event, it was a lot of fun!
I arrived early, and had enough time to quickly set up my table and grab a bite to eat. My table mate was Sam from Rooster Tails Comics. Which was rad. Sam is a great guy, so it was nice to catch up with him.
It was a busy night. If you came out to same hello, thank you very much for braving the wet weather. I was fortunate, packing in, and packing out of the Zinefest I was able to get from the car and back dry, however during the Zinefest it really poured. Thankfully plenty of people were out for the Zinefest and the festivities on K Road for First Thursdays.
I met new people, and old friends and bought a heap of reading material. A lot of love and an all around positive vibe, what more could you ask for?
Thanks Auckland Zinefest / First Thursdays, for another great event.
If you are wanting to buy the new book, but we’re not able to get to the Zinefest, don’t worry, it will be available in my store very shortly.
Thanks for reading,
Marc
New ActionMan Adam print comic – Things Change
July 27th, 2012 | by Marc
This post has been a long time coming, but I finally picked up my newest print comic from the printers on Wednesday. I’m really happy with the result of it. It came out great. A part of the reason updates have been taking a while has been because I’ve been putting extra time into compiling this new book. It’s a very time consuming process, so it goes without saying that I am happy to have it finally completed.
This new comic is titled “Things Change”. It’s most of last years content including all the earthquake stuff, hence the title of the book. It’s making it’s debut Thursday next week, at Auckland Zinefest / First Thursdays. You can find more information about that here. I’m looking forward to finally getting it into peoples hands!
After the Zinefest has finished I’ll make the book available for purchase in my online store. I’m looking at my options for a digital book, but that might be something different, as I never did a digital book for “First Impressions” either. Maybe I need to do a large digital book? Once I find a way of compiling the color pages, and what format might be best for iPads or things like that – then I’ll proceed with that. If you like physical books though, I’ll be able to add sketches with orders – which I can’t do digitally.
I’m excited to finally be able to get this new comic out in the world!
Thanks for reading,
Marc
The NZ Film Festival is on at the moment, and with it some awesome indie and foreign films have arrived for audiences around the country to go see. I caught my first flick last Friday. It was Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson.
If you like Mr Anderson’s stuff then I recommend you check this flick out. If you’re not aware of Wes Anderson’s movies, then you should be checking them all out including this one. They’re generally quirky, offbeat and fun films to watch. Moonrise Kingdom was no exception. I enjoyed it immensely. So much so that I made some fan art of Sam Shakusky. I hope you like it.
Thanks for reading,
Marc
Auckland Zinefest 2012 / First Thursdays – Appearance
July 24th, 2012 | by MarcHey all,
I thought I should tell you that I am going to be at Auckland Zinefest / First Thursdays on August 2nd. I think you’ll find if you check your calendar that is actually not too far away. Not this Thursday, but the one following. I’m excited. I’ve attended the last two Auckland Zinefests and they’ve always been a great event. This year should be no exception, but it will be a little different. This year the Zinefest is a part of First Thursdays – a community-conscious collaboration of artisans and art lovers whose ultimate goal is to showcase new and exciting talent in the fields of visual arts, music and performance.
All this activity and fun is going down Thursday the 2nd of August, throughout K Rd, but if you need to find me specifically I’ll be in St Kevin’s arcade from 6pm to 9pm. I’m not certain yet if I’ll be publicly selling any comics elsewhere this year, so if you’d like to come say hi, talk comics, all that stuff. Please do!
I’ll have a new book to sell, and this will be making it’s debut that night. I’ll post about this soon.
Hope to see you there!
Marc
Some Adventure Time fan art. I loved this episode, it was called “Another Way”. It made me laugh a lot, so I thought I’d draw some art.
If you have children, and you are not watching this cartoon with them. You’re really doing them, and yourself a great disservice. It’s amazing. There is also a cool print comic available from Boom comics.
Draw Something Pics and a follow up on the NZ Breakers
April 29th, 2012 | by MarcWhile I’m working on this next comic, I thought I would get some more of my Draw Something pics up for a laugh. Sometimes it is fun to go off on a tangent, or do a quick sketch in that game. Often times you can be struggling with a comic, and Draw Something can be a nice way of trying to loosen yourself up. Although I think at this stage I’m currently behind on most of the games I am running again. Doh!
Here are some of the ones I came up with:
It now occurs to me, if I wanted to be more obscure, I could have drawn Nick Fury – who is an Agent of SHIELD. This one I think was a bit more obvious though.
Oh and just as a follow up to my mention of the NZ Breakers vs the Perth Wildcats in the grand final. My team, the NZ Breakers won the championship in front of a sold out home crowd in Auckland. It took all three games to get there, but it was glorious. Back to back. Can they make it a three-peat? I certainly hope so. I’ve been following this team since they began, and there were some very hard years in the lead up to this. It’s so awesome to not just see them win the Championship, but to win it back to back. Man, it makes the road worth traveling. Good work, NZ Breakers!
NBA Playoffs has now begun, so it’s exciting that I can watch even more playoff Basketball.
As always, thanks for reading!
Draw Something and Basketball – it’s all happening!
April 13th, 2012 | by Marc
The comic is still under way. I got started on it late due to a very busy Easter weekend. The glorious weather that weekend kept me out and about with various activities, so it was a late start to drawing this weeks page. It has been started. I’m just getting into the inks. I’ll get it completed over the weekend and up early next week. Hopefully I can get a start on the next page this weekend as well.
Meanwhile, I thought I would post up some Draw Something pictures I got a little carried away on. I’m sure by now everyone knows what Draw Something is, right? If you don’t – it’s basically a Pictionary type of game for mobile phones. The cool feature about the game is you can actually watch someone drawing in real time – though I’m sure this is horrible for all my opponents, as sometimes I take too long and they might still be waiting to guess what it is. Either way, it is fun, and I sometimes use it as a way of just drawing something fun that I would not think to draw – outside of my own comics. If you have access to a phone that is capable of playing the game, it’s a fun game to play against friends.
At the moment I’m right into my Basketball. The NBA has a reduced season thanks to labour negotiations – and while the season started late the same amount of games are being played in a shorter amount of time. It means as a spectator its been fun to watch games essentially every day, with teams turning out for a game over couple of days.
On top of that, The NZ Breakers are in with a good chance for back to back finals in the Australian Basketball League. They won it all last year, and last night I was able to witness them win the first game in a Grand Final series for this season. It’s win two games to claim the championship. They’re playing against the Perth Wildcats, so now they have to back up their first victory and fly to Perth to try and win the championship over there. If that doesn’t work it all comes down to a big game three here in Auckland. Either way, it will be awesome.
Fun times!
Thanks for reading,
Marc
I had some extra down time this week. I decided to use it, by doing some extra drawing. Been playing a lot of games on Draw Something this week. It’s ridiculous, but fun. Hopefully it doesn’t become all consuming though. I have like seven games going, and it could get a little demanding. Ha ha!
Good practice aside, I had enough time to draw another piece in Sketchbook Pro for the iPad. I’m loving this app. It’s great. I can only imagine what results might be achievable on the newly announced third generation iPad with the Retina Display. Looks like you have to sacrifice some layers for the extra pixels, but that’s just a work flow thing you’d have to get used to. It’d probably be worth the trade off for the extra pixel density.
Anyway, I present to you Adam, and a pizza. Yep, I felt like Pizza when I started drawing it. The night I finished, I had Pizza for dinner. Thus the circle was complete.
Thanks for reading,
Marc
Still playing with Sketchbook Pro for the iPad. It’s a pretty amazing app. I mean the amount of versatility you get out of it, versus the cost of the app, talk about value! This app can do so much. It was certainly worth the investment. If you like to mess around with digital art, and you own an iPad, I can’t recommend it enough.
Get yourself a really good stylus to draw with though. I’m using the Cosmonaut, by Studio Neat. It’s definitely the best one I have tried. Some are a little touch and go, but this one is just a really good option, for writing or drawing. They’re affordable too.
Hey, two years ago today I started posting comics online! Nice.
Thanks for reading,
Marc
Big Day Out Auckland 2012: The wave goodbye
January 27th, 2012 | by MarcThe Big Day Out Auckland always arrives on the Friday of the 3rd week of January. It’s a date I look forward to in my calendar every year. Just a day in the sun watching bands – some old favourites and hopefully making some new discoveries as well.
This year leading into the week was the news that this would be the last time I’d be able to look forward to the festival in Auckland. Due to the lack of support this year, Auckland will be left out of the festival tour henceforth. Very sad news indeed, but completely fair. If New Zealanders can’t make the show viable, then there isn’t much point in putting on a show that can’t cover it’s own costs.
The show was dramatically re-aligned this year. Less stages, no Boiler Room tent at Mt Smart, and only one main stage. I wasn’t sure how this would play out over the course of the day, but I was optimistic that the streamlined approach might be a good thing for the show.
Sure enough it was definitely the least attended Big Day Out I’ve ever been to. It hardly came to a point where it felt like the volumes of people were even close to that of previous years. This was bittersweet. On the one hand, it’s total shit because it means hardly anyone there for the artists to play for. Not to mention this is exactly the reason why the show won’t be continuing on in Auckland. On the other side of the coin though, all the annoyances that usually exist with a festival environment weren’t at all present this year.
It was easy to get around. Queues were manageable. The lack of volume on the mobile networks meant it was easy to communicate. It made for a very pleasant day. Those of us attending the show were making the most of the reduced capacity.
Onto the music!
Cage the Elephant were the first band we saw. Their enthusiasm was great. I haven’t heard too much of their stuff, so I’m going to check out more for sure.
Das Racist were having fun during their Boiler Room set. The AV visuals they brought with them were pretty damn hilarious. With mash-ups of television intros from 90’s X-Men cartoons and Law and Order, through to Kindergarten Cop and Bart Simpson. Awesome stuff.
We snuck away early to catch Wellington’s Beastwars playing the Skate stage. I’m glad we did, as they played an impressive live show. I’ve been playing their album for a while now, so it was good to catch them live, finally.
Right after on the main stage the Cavalera Conspiracy came on to rip through some metal numbers. They were tight and heavy as shit. It was pretty fantastic. They played some old school Sepultura songs and that really got the mosh pit going. These guys were the welcome surprise of the day. Blisteringly awesome.
Time for another wander around the festival, which allowed us to take in some Best Coast. I had time to give them because they had a video with kittens in it. I guess you could shelve them under inoffensive sunny pop music.
Then we went to the Boiler Room again (weird calling it that seeing as there was no super top tent any more and it was just an open stage like the other stages. Where was the room?). We caught Battles, whom we had high expectations for, but found completely boring. It just wasn’t working for me. Maybe after that Cavalera Conspiracy set I was critiquing a little differently? Who knows? Other people there seemed to be enjoying though, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
Resting our feet in the late afternoon seemed necessary. The crowd had gotten larger from earlier in the day, and that was a good sign that there might be a respectable crowd once we had reached the finale of the show with the headliners.
Eventually we made our way down to the main stage and position ourselves in to see Kasabian and Soundgarden. We were in pretty close, which generally means you can expect some aggression from folks who also want a good vantage point at the front and will do some pretty awful things to get there. I have to say, I was surprised that all the bad behavior in our immediate area came from women this year. They weren’t just being annoying either, some were outright bitches. As always, I burrowed in tighter when people tried to challenge me for my spot. It’s a simple rule. First in first serve. Nothing else matters.
Kasabian were fun, and worthy of their spot on the main stage.
However Soundgarden was who we came for. I’ve been a fan for a long time and never seen them, so I was pretty excited for them. They didn’t disappoint. The band was very tight, Chris’ vocals were sharp. It was just a great performance. Loved it. They dedicated a song to Christchurch as well, so extra brownie points for the consideration there too.
Awesome day out. Sad to see an old friend go, but a lot of great memories, this year included. I put together a small collection of photos and some short video clips as a Big Day Out retrospective Set on my Flickr. If you want to go check that out, you can do so here.
Thanks for reading,
Marc