I love my job

Don't get me wrong, I really DO love my job. I get amazing satisfaction from producing good work, from turning imagination into some kind of visual reality (regardless of how far from the imagination the final illo might be) and from doing what I've always had fun doing. There is no denial of how damn lucky us self-employed creative folks are. But some days, SOME days, it really is mundane ;)

Where the action is...

I'm still tired out after the weekend at Hi-Ex up in Inverness and my plan of drawing something fresh on Monday disappeared into a thousand little jobs getting ready for a new mouth to feed in the Reid household. So I'm jumping back about a year to show you this Batman cover. Something very similar to this was created as a private commission about two years ago and I took the basis of that illustration and worked in the old style logos and icons from the series in the early 80s. I did plan to colour it but that'll have to wait for a another day.

For those who like to see a bit of process here are the pencils.

Jonday : Late!

A cover for d101 games:


Mostly done in Artrage 3.

Character Design

My next BIG project will be a book that seems to have been 'in the works' for a looong time now.
It's called ( at the moment ) 'KNIVES OF GLORY' and it's an adventure comic about food.
I've recently started working on more character designs, in this case the female lead.
Her name is Lucie and she's French. We all wanted her to be one of those casually fabulous frenchwomen who seem to take no time over their appearance, but nevertheless looks utterly together and sophisticated. While I'm very aware that this is a little bit of a cliche....I don't care. Sometimes you just need to embrace that stuff.
Anyway, the first drawing was directly based on the photograph of a french model that the writer found.Now if this was a Nikolai Dante story then I'd be done right here. However I'm trying to go for a more loose and energetic style for this story and I need her to have a certain aloofness , at least at the start of the story. So here's version 2...Maybe a little too old and vampish loooking. Though I quite like the Jane Birkin-ish thing that's starting to creep in ( yes I know that Birkin is English )
Ok NOW we're cookin' ! I'm fairly happy with that, in terms of the characterisation and the line quality.

I might post some more of the prep work for this story as it moves forwards. Hopefully it will be quite different from anything else I've done.
Thanks for your attention.

Oh and why are you reading this and not being at HiEx in Inverness this weekend? Hmmm? That's where all the cool cats are...oh yea!

Marvelous Movie Mashup

Loads to do and no time to do it. My home scanner seems to have packed it in and i'm going to be a headless chicken with no spare time tomorrow so a bit of a 'cheat' this week. This was something i cobbled together a little while ago - basically just a muck about with a few marvel movies that i could edit together from various online trailer clips - i Would have included more movies if i could have found more good quality trailers. Clips used are from Wolverine, X-Men 3, Hulk, Iron Man and FF 2.

Just checked the blogger version after upload - it fairly shrinks it and batters the quality - but hey ho - don't forget to turn up the volume.(better quality version over on my own site for those who can be bothered)

Hawkgirl. Paris Manga. 2010

Another sketch from the Paris Manga event. Hawkgirl was a surprising favourite among the fans. I must have drawn about five or six of her. At least two versions were side on portraits but this proved to be the best angle.

Thanks to Cyrille for the scan.

Development and reject

Some simple character sketches done for an ongoing project I've been working on for almost a year. The final art itself is still under the usual non-disclosure-agreements, but here are some of the character sketches which didn't make it to the final set of cards. Some of them were discounted out of hand, others went into development and then morphed naturally away from initial ideas here. In all there were about 50/55 characters which I provided, so this is a very small sample of the sketch work that went into that mass of people.

A nice cup of Typhoon!

I know nothing technical about planes, I can name some of them but that's it. I do however like planes, I like the look and design of them and the fact that if you stick your arms out to your sides and wave them about while making 'nnnaaaaooooowww' noises everybody knows you are an areoplane. And I thoroughly enjoy drawing them, this was done for a friends birthday card (yes, we Scots don't spend money on anything). This is the Eurofighter Typhoon F2 that I was blown away by at the East Fortune Airshow back in 2008, the sheer power this plane exudes is amazing.

Jonday: the Scottish play

When the hurlyburly's done,
When the battle's lost and won.

That will be ere the set of sun.


Where the place?


Upon the heath.

There to meet with Macbeth.

Repeat Offender Post - Alex Ronald!

Fear not, we know its been over a month since Alex last appeared on Scotch Corner so to help those with withdrawal symptoms here's a masked vigilante Alex sent our way!

Remember you can drop by Alex's own blog to get your weekly hit of Ronald goodness.

Alex used to be a regular on Judge Dredd in the 90's but just now he's painting magazine covers and promotional art for Ruffian games in Dundee as well as concept art for indy film studios Black Camel pictures and Mothcatcher films.

The Guest Post on Sunday is open to all who wish to take part, so click here and join in!

Movie Concept Art

Some concept drawings for a movie pitch.
It's a Romantic Comedy...obviously

Up, up and away

Ok - free plug for a mate first. Check out Rik Hoskin's first published Superman strip in Superman 80-page Giant #1 ON SALE NOW. Go tell DC how much you love his stuff and help Rik get a regular gig. Bought this yesterday to check out Rik's strip and thought i would do a Superman sketch so that i could plug it for him. Inspired by Gary's recent quick 'sketches' i thought i'd give myself a speed test and aimed for a ten minute sketch on the train in to work this morning. In order to try this i pretty much ignored the pencil stage and just doodled a stick man and quickly blocked in my 'cylinder' shapes - eek, almost 5 minutes gone already. 15 minutes later i had an inked version - so almost 20 minutes in total. Can't say i was overly happy with it (scary not doing the pencil stage)but ok for a wee test. Gave it a quick colouring job in the office - that took about 25 minutes - so just short of 50 minutes all in.

Catwoman. Terni, Italy. 2010.

Another convention sketch. This time from the Fumetterni event in Terni, Italy. Had a wonderful time there sketching mainly Captain America, Judge Dredd and Hal Jordan (the original Green Lantern) but occasionally there were some feminine distractions. Wonder Woman is a popular request but this Catwoman was my favourite from the whole weekend.

Quick, they didn't notice

That Andy posted late again. SHHHHH!!!!!!

Some L5R work today - the last stand of an embattled Samurai against an onrushing horde of enemies. Which is better, the green samurai, or the red samurai? There's only one way to find out - fiiiiiight!!!

A town called...

I'm fond of a cowboy/western comic strip, so many great strips are available in Europe in that genre that it saddens me that nobody in the UK publishes them, aside from Cinebook who release Lucky Luke that is.

Anyway, this one page strip was for Accent UK's 'Western' graphic novel which I'm sure is still very much available and highly recommended, and not just because I'm in it :)

Jonday Cover

Hey! Nearly forgot it was Monday, what with all my "actually leaving the studio" antics.

Here's a cover I just finished last week.

(C)Jon Hodgson and Magnum Opus Press.

Is it Friday already?

Ok so another Saturday, another bunch of naked drawings.

Yawwwn , you all think , " doesn't this Fraser guy do anything but draw naked people every day?" Certainly in my ideal world that would be one of my primary occupations ( along with cheesemaking and having a wine cellar ). In this world I tend to draw lots of stuff, some of which is quite exciting and full of action and excitement. explosions, car chases, sci-fi cityscapes, robots and stuff....regrettably all of THAT stuff is a SECRET right now!

...so another week of naked people will have to do you right now. I promise to get exciting and action packed very soon.

In the mean time if you can imagine some soothing French music and look at these drawings while the wheels behind the scenes turn.

Thank you for your attention.

A la prochaine fois mes amis.

The Psyence of Colour

Some more digital colouring technique experiments this week, but decided to colour up a story page rather than just a single character or image this time. This is a page from a short Agents of Psyence story written by Rik Hoskin (you can currently find Rik's comic work all over the newsstands in Panini and Titan books etc - check out his newest gig on the Star Wars: Clone Wars magazine strip). Originally the idea was for it to be printed in Simon Bowland's Nucomix anthology (pick up a selection of titles in a comic shop these days and chances are Simon's done the lettering on at least half of them). Simon went full time as a letterer and Nucomix unfortunately came to an end, the next likely home was within the Bulletproof anthology where i did a Slumbertown strip with Rik - but it too seems to have come to an end.
As such, i'll maybe post the rest of the strip here at some point (possibly colouring the rest of it up too) as it's looking a bit homeless at the minute.

The black and white version of the page is posted below for comparison.

Stacy - UKCAC sketch. 1989.

First convention sketch for UKCAK, London 1989.

more Exalted

An illo from last summer for the Exalted game line from White Wolf - I was very pleased with this one, and I think it was one of my more successful illos of the time - although now I see some really obvious things I should have adjusted - well, they're obvious to me. I think this might have been work on the last book due for release on the game line, but will have to check that info...

(C) White Wolf 2010

Rose Tyler

Unlike some artists (I'm talking about Gary) who can whip out a sketch in no time at all that people actually like I have a very hit or miss approach to my 'on the day' convention sketches. So to avoid disappointment I produce my sketches in advance of the show, it frees up my time on the day and it also gives the public a chance to see what they are getting :)

I've been posting a lot of sketches over on my own blog and this week I've been drawing the Doctors from the new series of Doctor Who, so as a companion (do you see what I did?) to those sketches I've rustled up Rose Tyler. In a few weeks time it'll be all about the new companion Amy Pond as the latest series hits our TV screens but for now the companion that has meant the most to the Doctor over the last five years is Rose played by Billie Piper.

At the moment three (myself, Gary and Simon) out of the six members of Scotch Corner will be in attendance at the Inverness comic convention Hi-Ex! on the last weekend of March, if you can make it along please drop by and say hello!

Jonday - Les postres du films

Apologies for my French. Undermining the Auld Alliance one post title at a time...

Ok so I've been working on a poster for AppleCloud films, a fancy new film company working out of Edinburgh.

Here's the original version I did to get the ball rolling, with little more than the script, and an idea of what the film would look like from the producer. NB: The text at this stage was just placeholder. Handwritten fonts. Hmmmmm. Still it had a feel I liked.

And here's where we're at a few weeks later. We're headed in a much grittier direction. Work continues!

Sunday Guest Post - Mike Collins!

We've had some great contributions to the Guest Post recently and we continue this week with a legend in the comics industry, Mike Collins!

Mike has a comics CV that is as impressive as it is long, from Judge Dredd, Superman, Star Trek, Doctor Who and... well it's a long list. But like all artists Mike is known to work outside of the comic field and his contribution this Sunday although keeping a strong comic connection is something a bit different.



About eight years ago, I was approached by London Records to produce covers for an album and two singles for ShyFX and T-Power. The brief was to make them into super heroes (the name certainly lent them a superhero-y feel). The guys are DJs and the singers for each track also get a superhero persona on the album cover, which folded out on the CD to make the alley scene.

I remember walking into HMV when the first single came out and being bowled over to see my art on the 12" Vinyl version and suddenly remembering that one of the items on my wishlist as a kid was to do an album cover and see it in a record store. A massive kick! Liked the music though not quite Smashing Pumpkins or Tom Waits which are more my style. It had, as Hugh Dennis used to say, 'a good beat'.



Going back through my files I've found my sketches for the album and second single cover... here ya go... peek behind the creative curtain.

Many thanks to Mike for sharing his work with us, keep up to date with Mike and his work at his website.

The Guest Post on Sunday is open to all who wish to take part, so click here and join in!

Hello everyone.

When I was asked to contribute to Scotch Corner it occurred to me that there isn't much that I do that isn't ALREADY posted online. At least the stuff that's not owned by the publisher or spoiler heavy ( sometimes I forget...sorry )

At the same time I was clearing out a huge stack of copy paper from my workspace, mostly life drawings that I've done and not gotten around to chucking in the bin yet. I'm not sentimental about my stuff you see, I do it for the experience of doing it and the artifact left over at the end is just more stuff to clog up my life with. I have derived some sadistic pleasure in the past from tearing up my finished artwork in front of my studio mate Dean Haspiel, who has a somewhat different feeling about finished artwork. I'm a bad person, I know.

Anyway, here's some drawings of a naked lady. Thanks for having me and ENJOY!

Iron Man

Iron Man this week in his 'classic' costume - click on it for a larger version. Still mucking about with different digital colouring styles. The double-edged sword of digital colouring is the sheer simplicity with which you can change your mind and back again umpteen times just by playing about with layers etc. As a result this one ended up being quite different from what i had in my head as it changed organically while i coloured up. My initial pencil sketch is below.