So did I mention that I was unemployed in 1993?
I think I might have done...anyway, I went to stay in London with friends for a few months, where I finished off 'LUX & ALBY", my first book. The pickings were thin, but Stewart Green was running a newly revived and hipped up version of ROY OF THE ROVERS ( a very well known Soccer comic in the UK ). My problem was that I didn't really give a rats ass about Soccer and I was incapable of faking it. So I didn't, I actually learned to like watching men run around chasing an inflated pigs bladder. I read a lot on the subject, I watched it on TV and I even went to matches. After a few months I felt I actually had a handle on the subject, I could hold a conversation on Arsenal's prospects for the season, how Hibs were looking against Hearts in the Scottish Cup Final. Then when I eventually did start drawing ROY samples....they looked fairly convincing.
...convincing enough to get me the job anyway. So that was a few months of paid work, culminating in me drawing an episode of the lead ROY strip , while the backup strip was drawn by the legendary Mick McMahon ( one of my very favourit comic artists EVER )
...so in short, a career defining moment for me and because ROY was published by Egmont-Fleetway, the same publisher of 2000AD/The JD Megazine, that gave me an inroad to finally getting published there.
Oh and just because I know that you're utterly fascinated by all aspects of my illustrious career ( har!) here's the earliest drawing that I know for certain that I did. Aged 5.
I dunno why I put the Discount Coupon on it, but I do remember that I couldn't read what it said at the time.
Next week I'll do something new....maybe some naked Lulu.
Remember you can drop by Alex's own blog to get your weekly hit of Ronald goodness.
So its half way through the Japan versus Denmark game and I get a text from Gary saying he's in Inverness with no Wi-fi connection to sort his post, so I get to pick a bit of classic Erskine for you to gawp at.
Even more work from Alex this week on Crackdown 2. He's a man of few words is Alex, so few in fact that he just sent us this image :)
The thing about being a freelance artist is that you never ( NEVER! ) have any downtime. Seriously , you need to be doing something about the job you have next or the job you have after that or ( as in this case ) the job I'm likely to be doing around the end of next year.
Nature's Embrace crad art, from AEG's Legend of the Five rings. The Plague War set has just been released by the company so I've got the A-OK to show my work from the series. Tried something a little different with the background and the nebula of hair, which I think was a success. As I recall the description didn't tell me how nature embraced, or why, or any of that stuff, so I was quite free to move within what I knew of the product and have a bit of fun.
Continuing the football theme for last week here is the Hulk facing the red card from referee Pierluigi Collina. This was done back at the start of 2006 for a charity book called Just One Page, it had a comic football theme to tie in with that years World Cup.
We continue this Sunday with more of Alex's work on Crackdown 2.
This is part of a sequence in the new Nikolai Dante story 'CITY OF THE DAMNED', it features somebody whipping another person to death. That isn't really much of a spoiler. The guy with the whip is based on Russian Heavyweight boxer Nikolai Valuev, quite the most terrifying looking human being I have ever seen. So naturally we needed him to play a heavy in our story as pretty much anything Russian is fair game for Robbie's pen.
We welcome back Alex for another look behind the work produced on Crackdown 2 Motion Comic.
...convincing enough to get me the job anyway. So that was a few months of paid work, culminating in me drawing an episode of the lead ROY strip , while the backup strip was drawn by the legendary Mick McMahon ( one of my very favourit comic artists EVER )
