Thursday, 15 October 2020
CBO Is Still Here But....
More Reactions/Comments on WordPres in a month than from Blogger readers in a year.
Wednesday, 14 October 2020
Tuesday, 13 October 2020
AOP Journal No. 4 November, 2020
A4
B&W
64pp
£5.00
The fourth issue in the new volume of the Journal contains:
Warminster UFOs and Entities
Encounter with A Boggart and an Incident From Germany
UFO Abductees and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
The Huyton Humanoid : Multiple Witnesses And How To Get It Wrong
The Case of A Strange Car Ride
A Little Known 1950 French Close Encounter
Older UK Encounter Reports
In A Wallasey Garden –Another Lesson to Learn
The Strange Aliens in Jardinopolis, Brazil
"So what would you do if you encountered a landed UFO?"
Do We Need A Privately Funded SETI –UFO Investigation Group
Yahoo Closing Its Groups website
Yahoo! constantly denied that they were deleting groups or content. Then they deleted Yahoo Groups content and 20 years of work on the British Comic Books Archive group -thousands of images and hundreds of files gone.
But it was okay -groups were still there for people to continue discussing and talking about their favourite topics.
As I predicted back then Yahoo! are lying sacks of shit. Proof?
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Saturday, 10 October 2020
Friday, 9 October 2020
not involving ill health and a feverish delirium!
Before I woke from an unusual, for me, deep sleep I had a dream. A story. Someone called The Green Skies "epic" but this new one goes beyond that. It all started while I was sleeping and then in a waking dream.
Although there were VERY brief cameos by super heroes they had nothing to really do with the story. They (two of them) were being told the story. It started out as a regular comic strip where someone was arrested and then developed into....well.
The style of art was black and white but almost abstract. Even as I saw "seeing" it I thought it had touches of Maakika art but then it turned into a style I've not seen or drawn before. It ended iun the creation of a universe.
When I woke properly I went over the details and the fact that I remembered so much is unusual
I know what you are thinking "He said Green Skies was going to be his last big project". That is true. The style and story would require full time work and concentration and I cannot afford either at the moment.
It will remain an art epic that I never draw so onbly I will enjoy it. This note is for my reference and if I ever win the lottery (not likely since I never gamble) I'd sit back, let the bills take care of themselves and get to work.
It was nice to have a story and images like that not involving ill health and a feverish delirium!
Wednesday, 7 October 2020
Tuesday, 6 October 2020
Sunday, 4 October 2020
Views Covering 6 Months this year -84,200
I wanted to check visits to the blog from different parts of the world and if they varied from month-to-month. Not really that into stats but I was bored. I checked for a 6 month period this year and had to double check the views for that period -84,200. The figure was correct and actually more than I thought.
It makes the lack of comments or reactions to posts even more difficult to understand -and lack of support. Yet, in a couyple weeks my other comic blog on WordPress has had a good few likes and even comments.
Go figure.
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hoopercomicsuk
Producing A Blog Header Illo -The Choices!
Author Linda Godfrey asked me if I could produce a new header for her blog. Well, I said I would.
Most people think it's a case of draw something and that's it. I never get surprised at how ignorant people are about how long it takes to draw omething. "Go on -just a full page illo, a few minutes work!" Anyway, the point is that if you have your illustration -in this case I combined "Mysterious Hominid" with "The Werewolf of Hull" hich took ome cropping and repositioning after I had decide which went to the left and which to the right- you have to decide on text.
Yes, you can just "slap in" Times New Roman but that does nothing really. The lettering has to suit the art -Moebius once told me that an artist should always letter his own artwork as it is part of the creati8ve process (he never saw MY lettering). So with book or comic title text several things have to be looked at.
1. What font or text type?
2. The colour of the text (wrong colour can throw artwork "off")
3. The positioning of the text.
Say you get 1 and 2 fairly quickly or decide it is going to be one of four types. You whittle it down to the one you want to use but then 3 needs sorting. There is one thing I hate and that is having a good cover illo that then has to have text covering part of it but that's life. You wanbt to show off the illustration but also need to let the text make it clear what you are looking at.
In the images below you'll note that I tried placing the text in various positions and rejected ach for variou reasons. Negative (black and white) art can be rendered awful by the wrong lettering.
I think it took two hours to sort out the final design.
Like a rolling in fog set low down. For me the colour and positioning did not work (c)2020 T Hooper-Scharf
Whether it is for a blog header or a comic or book it can take a lot of thought. Of course, I could have drawn match-stick figures and slapped on a comic sans header but, well, I'm King of British comics for a reason....genius.
😝😝😝
Saturday, 3 October 2020
The World of Warcraft: Comic Collection: Volume One
Blizzard Entertainment
136 page
Full colour
US Comic size
Hardback
RRP: £12.99 but copies can be found online or at W H Smith for under £11.00
ISBN: 9781789096460
The World of Warcraft: Comic Collection brings together eleven digital World of Warcraft comic books for the first time ever in print!
Featuring all-new stories from the eras of Warlords of Draenor, Legion and Battle for Azeroth, go deeper into the lore of World of Warcraft with fan favorites such as Jaina Proudmoore, Magni Bronzebeard, Gul’dan and many more!
Includes never seen concept art and sketches from Alex Horley, Nesskain and more acclaimed artists!
If you are asking "World of What?" -World of Warcraft (WOW) is a "masively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game -an MMORPG that was released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004. Happy?
First thing to say is that the actual cover is not as bright as this one. I actually thought that it was an alternative cover!
The stories are all pretty good and I don't think any World of Warcraft players will have many complaints (I write that knowing about a gazillion players will complain).
Stories in this collection are:-
Warlords of Draenor -Gul'dan and the Stranger
-Blackhand
-Blood and Thunder
Legion -Magni: Fault Lines
-Nightborne: Twilight of Suramar
-Highmountain: A Mountain Divided
-Anduin: Son of the Wolf
Battle for Azeroth -Jaina: Reunion
-Magni: The Speaker
-Windrunner: Three Sisters
-Mechagon
And the obligatory Sketch-book. Notice how I correctly used an hyphen there? Not a big fan of digital art but what I like I like and there it is. Alex Horley's art is enjoyable enough and miserable old son that I am I'll write that I liked it.
Ludo Lullabi's work on Legion -Magni: Fault Lines and Nightborne: Twilight of Suramar I had flipped through earlier and was very "mmm...meh?" But, when I sat down to read it the art and colours grabbed me in the first two pages. If you can do that then you are doing okay.
I was so-so on avid Kegg's work on A Mountain Divided but it told the tory well enough so I'll just say I was "tepid" -and on such a short strip it is hard to decide on an artist.
When it came to Jaina Reunion and the art by Linda Cavallini and Emanuele Tenderini I had to go through it a couple times. It has that Manga look and feel and that is very popular. The story was okay and the art takes it along. So nothing wrong with it at all.
Suqling on Magni The Speaker has a style that I can either love or hate depending on the story. It worked with this story so not getting a "yeuch" from me these days is a victory.
Windrunner Three Sisters had me hooked from page one just because of the art by Antonio Bifulco and the colours (oh, the colours) by Sebastian Cheng. A treat for the eyes and a good read.
Mechagon with art by Miki Montllo there is nothing wrong with but I just could not get into. Colours are nice and the story is okay but the style of art. I will always point out that for everything I am unsure of or do not like there are a few hundred people who will love it. This story and art does not detract from the book but it's not my cup of coffee.
That said, Mechagon is far better than the obligatory sketch-book and the reason for that is that while Mechagon is well put together and readable the sketch-book is not. As in many of these things the images are far too small. A sketch-book should allow you to study the pencils or inks of an artist whether comic art or character illustrations. You cannot do that hear. This is less a sketch-book and more a stamp album.
You really do not get to learn much about the art because of the limitation of presenting two pencilled pages and two pages of full art (which are full sized in the book itself) on one page. Some 24 pages wasted. This just looks like someone said to the office junior: "Cut and paste and make a 24 page give-away"
If you think about buying this collection I would recommend it but I'd say ignore the sketch-book!