Sunday 27 March 2011

Dunstable D Dragon

Dunstable D Dragon was originally devised by our mate John Freeman, but he didn't know what to do with the character. Antonella and I said we'd have a crack at developing the concept into a graphic novel or a children's book or something of that sort, and John kindly gave us permission to use his character. We're still working on it, but in the meantime, here's a few concept sketches to be going on with:




Really the character is completely different now from the Dunstable Dragon appearing in the calendar illustrations (see previous posts). It'll see the light of day some time in the next couiple of years, I'm sure.


Dunstable pt 10

Here's the illustration for the October page of the calendar. Once again, the SFX are bilingual - in English and Italian.

Friday 25 March 2011

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Tom Waits

So anyway, one day I was listening to Tom Waits while working because I wasn't sharing the office with anyone that day and could get away with it, when I suddenly thought: "This song would make a good comic strip". So I got my partner Antonella to write a script, and this is what I drew:


Our people wrote to Tom's people to ask for permission to use the lyrics, but Tom's people never wrote back. So we did it anyway. Then we did it again:
We should point out that we never intended or sought to do this for money, it was just for our own amusement. Call it a fan tribute. Don't rat us out.

Dunstable pt 5

I should explain that because the calendar this is from was intended as a Christmas present, and was sent to all my partner Antonella's family back in Italy, the whole thing is senza parole and the few words that do appear - as in frame 2 above - are bilingual.

Sunday 13 March 2011

Snowmen

So anyway, a friend of mine wrote a children's story and asked me to have a go at illustrating it. It was called A Snowman is Not Just For Christmas. I took it as an opportunity to develop my style a bit, and come up with a series of illustations that looked like this:

But the one I thought was most successful out of all of them was this one:

I published this one on my old blog just before Christmas that year, and before long I was getting a lot of hits. A quick image search seemed to show that it was one of the most popular snowman images on the internet. I mean, people were checking this out a lot. And, I suspect, using it for commercial gain as well. Strangely, despite its near-global popularity, only one person ever asked me for permission to use it, a really nice librarian from Michigan who wanted to put it on her library's calendar. So I said yes. She got it for free. The rest of you buggers can pay up.

So anyway, I did another last December for our Christmas card that we send to all our friends. Here it is:


Help yourself, everybody...

Dunstable pt 3

Friday 11 March 2011

Dunstable 1

A boy meets a dragon on a snowy day. I did this strip a couple of years ago for a calendar I produced by way of a Christmas present. There are 12 episodes (one for each month, obviously), and I'll post a new one each day until I run out, or until somebody tells me to stop.

So anyway, I started this blog...

Hi. I'm Nick Miller. I have a blog.

This is me.



These people are also me, but right now the version on the end of the row is more me than the others.

I like being me.