News Jiffy

Hey gang! Just a wee heads-up: Glen and I have a 6-page JERSEY GODS back-up in this month's INVINCIBLE (that's ish 55). To celebrate, I'm posting ONE of those pages... right here!



Written by Glorious Glen Brunswick, pencils and inks by Dynamite Dan McDaid and colours (not shown) by Ravishing Rachelle Rosenberg. Do me a favour and go and buy it. And then come here (or here) and let me know what you think!

Bye!

Gods and Monsters

Hellow fellows. If you head over here RIGHT NOW, you’ll see some sketches and things from Jersey Gods which, all being well, will hit the shelves in February 09. Excitingly, I will be going to New York Comic Con to help launch the books and do sketches and things. I’ve never been to NY before - Maybe I’ll meet Todd McFarlane!

But don’t go anywhere yet! As the Doctor Who Storybook has been on the shelves for a couple of months now, I feel pretty confident in putting these up here. I’ll be honest, I’m not as happy with these as I was with last year’s effort, or with my Hotel Historia strip from earlier in the year. Sometimes you have the mojo, and sometimes you don’t. Anyway, compare with my roughs and see the magic of the creative process!






Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve just bought GTA 4, so I’ve got some serious killing to do.

Tumbleweed

Hello everybody. Sorry about the lack of posts - I'm incredibly busy at the moment with Who stuff and Jersey Gods and life, so no time to tend to my poor, neglected blog. I could make some vain comments about how I'll try harder, maybe make a post a day... but alas, I think that would be bollocks.

Anyway, the DOCTOR WHO work is continuing apace. Part Two of Thinktwice hit the shops about two weeks ago, and I've just finished the final (I think) draft of part two of the *next* story in the sequence, which features an old friend of the Doctor and some spooky Wicker Man shenanigans... And I'm just starting issue four of JERSEY GODS. Speaking of, the word on the grapevine is that we've got a 6-page preview for JG coming up in a forthcoming issue of INVINCIBLE. More news on that as and when...

In the meantime... Internet chum Mark Cardwell reminds me that I did some work for this year’s Doctor Who Storybook from Panini (which is in shops now and makes an ideal Christmas gift). So here are some preliminary sketches from that. Unlike last year’s effort, this one is entirely Earthbound, and does not feature a flying alien tortoise. Boo. It does, however, feature Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, who was an absolute pain to get right. I think it's a bit soon to post the final pieces online, but check out these roughs:

Mo' Jersey Gods...

If you head over to CBR, you'll see an interview with m'colleague Glen Brunswick, wherein he talks up our forthcoming super-hot-cool-thing Jersey Gods. Some rather jolly stuff in there (and he's terribly nice about yours truly) but holy moley would you look at those variant cover roughs? What's better than having stuff you've made up drawn by bona fide legends like Darwyn Cooke, Mike Allred and Paul Pope? Until they invent the Orgasmatron - nothing.


Darwyn Cooke's cover rough


Mike Allred's variant cover for issue one


Doc's cover rough for issue two


Paul Pope's cover rough for issue... three? I think?


...and another Paul Pope rough. Innit lovely?

Also, the Jersey Gods blog is now live! This'll feature commentary from Glen and myself as well as sketches and things. Link on the right.

Back to the TARDIS

Hello everyone! The madmen at Panini Towers have foolishly allowed me to have another go at writing Doctor Who for DWM. Part One of Thinktwice is drawn by Martin Geraghty with colours by James Offredi and letters by Roger Langridge. It features the return of Majenta Pryce, who I created for the story Hotel Historia (see below). What's she doing back in the Doctor's life? Well, we'll see...

In the meantime: some sketches! When I send a pitch to DWM, I sometimes like to include a few illos to give the document some colour and to get across an idea of how I want the characters to look. So...


This is Majenta Pryce, as she appears in Thinktwice. Incarcerated in the space gulag, with her memory wiped.



Mr Gripton, the head warden of the space prison. The cruel screw-in-chief is a bit of a cliché, but as I set out to do a proper “Doctor Who in prison” story, it made sense to go with this archetype. Martin Geraghty has done wonders with this character, giving him a big, babyish head and really pushing the “Hugo Strange-ness”. Cool.

A monster!

Knock, knock

Oh yeah, the strip I wrote/pencilled/inked/coloured for DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE is now up on m'website. Here's a LINK and... some jpegs!

America!

Heads-up! I am in the lovely new Popgun anthology from Image Comics! Two wee JERSEY GODS vignettes, wittily penned by Mr Glen Brunswick of Killing Girl/Gray Area/Frequency fame and clumsily drawn by me. I'm putting one of them up here, along with some WIP stuff. There'll be more of this sort of thing as launch date looms...

Remember - comments are my fuel!


Initial thumbnail sketch. This is where I block everything out, work out where the tone is going to go, spot the blacks etc. I hardly ever work up my thumbnails to this extent anymore - haven't got the time, and I want to save that energy for the final page. Thass the theory anyway.



Inked page. FW acrylic ink, brush, PITT technical pen.




Final page. I used photoshop to add tone (the book itself will be in full colour) and also to make any fixes: Glen didn't like the original pose for the hero on panel five, so I changed it to something more dynamic. I also tweaked the hero's face a bit in the last panel.

Wrong about Spiders

Blistering barnacles, I'm itching to tell the world about this thing that I'm working on with "Glorious" Glen Brunswick! But Glen (and our publishers) want to do the publicity right, so I can't very well blow the whole thing open here, can I? All I can say is it's gonna have a distinct Kirby flavour (natch), which is why Glen gets that "Glorious" handle (a wee riff on Glorious Godfrey and the jokey Stan Lee-isms of Silver Age Marvel)*. And also that I'm halfway through issue two and it looks, I reckon, pretty cool. When it's common knowledge I'll post up some designs and other bits and pieces and you cats can judge for yourselves.

So, let's forget that for the time being. What else is on? Oh, there's that other thing I can't talk about yet. The Doctor Who thing. I can probably say that I'm writing some stuff for DWM - that should be alright. My next script contains the words "Baron Greenback", "Loligo" and "Boomerang". Among lots of others. When it's out, I'll put some design sketches and maybe some bits of script up on here.

In the meantime then...

For Kyle Latino, Orson Crandall from Iron Fist. A real quickie, but I like this okay. He's way cooler in the actual book though.



Because I'm a sucker for a) all things eighties and b) anything Marvel UK, here's a Death's Head:



An' finally, Debs coloured some old sketches I did. I gave her minimal instruction (just a little basic photoshop jargon and some very broad shading tips) and let her get on with it. They look cool! I really dig some of her decisions here: the little light on Hulk's face, the neat offset colours. It's pretty hip.





*I'm "Dynamic" Dan McDaid by the way. If you knew me better, you'd realise this was pretty funny/ironic/inaccurate.

Warm-Up Sketch: inevitable Wolverine sketch

Wolverine versus some ninjas. I did this with Wacom tablet as a warm-up for some games work I've got coming up. I'll post sneaky previews of this as I get through it.

Wacom tablet and photoshop and wasn't Doctor Who good tonight? A real cracker I thought, and the best of this run so far (with Fires of Pompei a close second). But hey now, what about that Next Time trailer? Delicious stuff. What's on Donna's back? My guess - one of the Spiders of Metebelis 3, last seen in Planet of the Spiders. She's got previous with spiders, of course. I hope I'm right!

Seven Songs - I always hit the tape with the rough road styles

Yo. I've been tagged by Mr Mark Cardwell to do this: 'List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to’.
Right you are, then.

1. MGMT. Time to Pretend. Bloody ubiquitous, yet oddly still rather niche electro-indie warbling. Utterly pretentious and overblown, but utterly love with it (even if it was used to trail George "Useless" Lamb's execrable 6Music show recently). It won't embed, but see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVnRzEjpUmE

2. Deacon Blue, Dignity. Terminably unfashionable, probably even at the time. But I'm moving back to Scotland soon (despite being a soft English puff at heart) and nothing says Scotland like this windswept, melancholy yet oddly stirring number.



3. Depeche Mode, Just Can't Get Enough. By contrast to number 2, this one feels so "London", it hurts. Chilly, romantic, kind of gay... it's the perfect music to propel yourself through Camden Town. To. And bits of it sound like they're from the soundtrack to a Sinclair Spectrum game from 1986, which is all to the good.



4. Tyga and Zyntherius, Sunglasses at Night. Speaking of... this comes on my rather rangy old MP3 player, and suddenly I'm walking around like I'm in a videogame. Not one of the nice ones either, one of those doomy fin de siecle jobs where points are scored by killing hookers with a hammer. Bloody brilliant.



5. Roxy Music, Virginia Plain. Oddly, I don't think I even heard this before I saw it spoofed on Big Train a few years ago. I've compensated for that loads since then, of course. Probably my favourite ever song, at the moment: fantastic lyrical jiggery-pokery plus top sleazy Ferry delivery plus some expert keyboard business from Mr Eno equals brilliance - and I love the way it seems to come in from some distant point on the horizon. Won't embed, but hey now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zoi6O-cq9I

Hard not to picture Kevin Eldon singing this while dressed as Chairman Mao though:



6. Bomb the Bass, Bug Powder Dust. Fabulously barmy monologue from Tim Simenon and Justin Warfield, covering everything from Burroughs to Sid and Marty Krofft. Funny, grimy, thrilling stuff.



And if you're puzzling over the (ace) lyrics, here's a comprehensive guide. God bless the internet: http://www.sauna.org/kiulu/powder.html

7. Dexys Midnight Runners, Because of You. Or as it's better known, the Theme from Brush Strokes. It's a thing of delicate beauty anyway, only enhanced by its association with a bittersweet sitcom from my youth. And it's "our song" if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Alright, that's me lot. Who's next? Maybe Jay, Roger, Carly, Fred, Francesco, and Mattcrap would like to have a go?

Warm Up Sketch: BLAM!

Hot cowboy action!
Drawn with brush and PITT pens, in m'sketchbook. Yee-haw.

Warm-Up Sketch: Darkseid 08

It's going to be a big year for DC Comics' premiere bastard!

Warm-Up Sketch

For Gene Colan.

Pentel brush pen and PITT pen. Sorry it's not better. Gene's terribly ill at the moment, so if you want to donate a little something, you can click here.

Warm-Up Sketch: ELKA!

For the excellent Warwick Johnson Cadwell - here's a pic of Elka, Swedish Troll-Slayer par excellence. Another insanely fun character to draw. Warwick, if you're ever looking for pin-ups let me know (and I'll probably have a crack at Gelatina quite soon...)

Pentel brush pen and PITT pen on printer paper.

Warm-Up Sketch: Marshall Law

Here's a sketch of Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's seminal (and frankly rather alarming) creation, Marshall Law. I loved/feared the Lawman when I was an impressionable teen, and got into some trouble when my old man found a copy of Strip! (which featured some ML naughtiness) in my room.

Pentel brush pen and PITT pen on printer paper, with photoshop

I really enjoyed drawing this, and I think it shows. Thanks to Mighty Mark Cardwell for the suggestion.

Warm-Up Sketch: Savage Dragon

He's surprisingly tricky to get right! And I think I've messed up slightly here. It was fun, tho. That's just some generic baddy he's smacking up there, by the way. I think he's called Gunhands or something.

Pentel brush pen on printer paper then a bit of photoshop "magic".

Warm-Up Sketches: Hellboy, Mister Miracle and the Shadow

I watched Hellboy last night. Sadly, it's still not very good. Lots of problems, but the main one is that there just isn't enough Jeffrey Tambor. I bent the missus' ear off during the film's dreary, CGI-soaked climax, by continually going "where's Jeffrey Tambor? I hope Jeffrey Tambor's alright. Are they going to cut back to Jeffrey Tambor?" This in spite of having seen the film before. They cut back to JT a little way into the credits as a sort of joke, showing him panicking in the dark as something evil approached, and apparently missing the fact that elsewhere in the film some effort had been made to expand his character beyond the role of comic support, and even to offer him as a kind of replacement father figure for HB (cf. the bit with the cigar). Anyway, this typifies this rather odd, flat, strangely schizophrenic film - a film which should be Die Hard meets the Exorcist, but which too often feels more like Spy Kids 4: Cthulhu Returns.

Anyway, I sketched a movie-ish HB. I hope you like it.

Brush pen on printer paper. Took about ten minutes and it shows.

...aaaand, I also did a slightly wonky Mister Miracle for Wilfredo Torres. Sorry WT - I've got a better one in the works.

Pentel brush pen and photoshop and I watched the most amazing thing on the internet last night. US broadcaster Keith Olbermann - who I hadn't heard of before - attacking GWB in the most erudite, comprehensive, and fantastically rabid way imaginable. Manic, thrilling stuff, and nearly enough to give my bad liberal self a semi. Here's a link, if you're interested. To my US viewers, this is probably ancient news, so sorry about that.

...and lastly but not leastly, I did a Shadow for my pal Mark Cardwell. Hope you like it, chum.

Pentel brush pen on printer paper, with some photoshop colours thrown over it.

More suggestions for Warm-Up Sketches please! I'm spending more time on these than I should, but they are a lot of fun. NB. I'm not prepared to draw Keith Olbermann.

Warm-Up Sketch: Morpheus

I think someone asked for a Sandman, right? Anyway, here's a Sandman...

Warm-Up Sketch: Bozo/Robo

Pentel brush pen and blah blah blah on etc.

For Kyle Latino and Mr Matthew Crap, Bozo the Iron Man VS Atomic Robo!

Doc Savage - Thick and Fast!

I thought this might look a bit nifty with some pulpy colouring on it...

Warm-Up Sketch - Doc Savage

This was done with a Pentel Brush pen and 2B pencil on printer paper, with a little bit of PITT fineline for the fire and sundry details.

I actually did this in the middle of the night on account of being bored and unable to sleep, which means I am already breaking the Warm-Up Sketch rules. Never mind, I hope you like it anyway. Next up... Dream from Sandman, or Atomic Robo, or Mister Miracle (cheers to Kyle Latino, Mattcrap and Wilfredo Torres for the suggestions - keep 'em coming!)

Dan

Warm-up sketch - Static Shock

As requested by David, a sketch of DC/Milestone character Static. This was a warm-up before starting the business of the day, and jolly good fun it was too. I really enjoyed drawing a character outside my comfort zone - and I aim to do more. Suggestions please!

Unimportant Newsflash!

The first one was done with acrylic black ink and an ink wash. I think I might have posted it before - sorry about that. The second one is a Wacom/PS jobby.

I REALLY like drawing the Thing!

If anyone out there in Internet Land wants me to draw the Thing for them, I will happily draw the Thing for them.

Atcherlly, that reminds me: I am always available for commissions. Get in touch via the email /comment section and let me know what you want.

Website thrills

Hello there! I thought you might like to know that my website has just undergone a rather snazzy re-design courtesy of my divine better half. Why not have a look here: http//danmcdaid.com then pop back and let me know what you think?

Now here's a picture of Witchblade. Hurrah.