Well i'm not long back from London and I must say that the thing was a roaring success!

First of all a breakdown of the operation. I went down with 30 comics (which were A5 booklets each containing about 30 comics + other stuff), two different free leaflets for people to get a taste of the comic and around 20 prints (of the type now available through Deviantart).

I didnt plan to take so many prints but there was a mistake at the print shop so what the hell!

I also took 4 sketchbooks of the comic so people could peruse them and see how the magic happened. In addition the major eye candy for the stand was an LCD monitor and my laptop/tablet. I figured that this would enable me to show the comic process as well as draw peoples attention to the stand with some moving images.

The most important thing I brought were two helpers in the form of Steve and Dave (Also characters from the comic) Who helped me man the tiny stand and Generally keep me alive with snack foods.

First Impressions arriving and setup was that there seemed to be a real mix of products on offer and comic types. The good thing was that only one other stand had a monitor which made me stand out really well! After setup I sent out my spies to determine whether my products were approprately priced. Before the doors opened I ventured out to explore the other stands. Art from ScaryGoRound (www.scarygoround.com) was more than I could stand so money started to change hands. Initially business was light but it was a special feeling indeed to sell my first book and see the confused punter walk away with this strange collection of non-sensical ideas and humor that I called a comic book.

1 comic sold by 10 oclock and I was beginning to feel aprehensive. Steve and dave went to get coffee while leaving me the challenge to complete a piece of londong centric artwork featuring me and the queen. The finished piece titled "accidental regicide" will no doubt show up here soon. I took a little break and went for a wander leaving the stand in the capable hands of dave and steve.

5 minutes later I returned to find the stand flooded with clients! Showing my salesmanship talents up for what they were, Dave and Steve were charming the pants off everyone that passed by makign sure that all left with a leaflet and more thana few left with a comic!

This stratagem worked out well and soon commerce was frantic. At one point I was signing several books at a time while attempting to demonstrate manga studio to interested parties. We sold out of books before 3pm and after that my minions concentrated on the prints. We sold a good few prints but my main happiness was that our book stock was decimated!

There are really too many moments and fun things to relate in one post but I feel I must take a moment to highlight some of the excelent people I met at the con.

Next to us was the excelent comic LocalGirl(carolineclifford.com) Who's co-exhibitor didnt turn up. But with three men on our stand we gladly provided a stand in to let her eat / Drink.

I also had a long chat with niki ( [link]) Which was excelent as I had already seen a lot of her work on Sudeki. Its always nice to see full art portfolios also since all I had were my crummy sketchbooks.

Many many others also, My mind is still swimming So I have no doubt forgotten to mention many people. In any event, a good time was had by all!

On the monitor, if I wasnt drawing I showed a video of me drawing. In addition to that I stuck the daicon IV video on (which got a lot of interest). Which wasn't entirely without point. An Ambitious project of mine is to enginner the resoration of the Daicon IV music video into glorious high definition. This essentially involves re-animatng the entire video cel by cel. All 6500 odd cells of it. An ardous task for one man, but not perhaps for a few hundred thousand anime fans. More on this project as it (hopefully takes shape in the summer when I have more time)

Anyway. I Have been thouroughly inspired to draw more and hopefully will be dumping far more content into DE in the near future!

2008 will be an exciting year for me and hopefully for anyone else who enjoys my comic "Cascade failure"

This year the most important commitment I am making is to actually try and produce 52 comics this year without missing a week (this may proove difficult at some points but we'll see how we get on)

The really exciting thing for me is that I have decided to attent this years UK web and mini comic thing in london on March 22nd.

[link]

This will be my first ever convention appearance and I am really looking forward to meeting other people in the industry but also anyone who reads and enjoys my webcomic. I have always produced the comic so that the 5 or 6 people whom I know directly that read it, find it amusing. It always staggers me when I get fan-mail or donations from people claiming they too enjoy the comic and like my "art work" etc. Making the comic has always been a blast for me and I will be on hand to provide a variety of cheaply produced goods to interested persons.

Planned products include :

An A5 cascade failure comic, collecting recent editions into a handy sized edition that you can read on the train or the toilet.

A free one page comic which will give the new reader a glimpse into the world of cascade failure without the need for that book purchase.

Possibly a poster or two featuring my warcraft character or Cascade failure art.

Other things:

I might even do sketches if i'm feeling really confident / Drunk

I will have on-hand the 4 or 5 sketchbooks that the comic is drawn in so you can see the original art and the process required to produce the comic.

I will have my laptop so you can see first-hand the comic creation process and ask any questions you like about how the magic is done.

I may have information / materials relating to some new and exciting projects.



SO if you are in the london area on march 22nd then pop by and see whats going on! Could be a long time before I am at a convention again!

In 2003 I had an idea for a comic while on vacation. Not much at the time, I had a main character, a setting and a couple of little ideas on things that would happen. As the years past I kept plugging away with my main comic ([link]) while I toyed with the idea a little at a time. and I mean little! By the start of this year I had maybe 7 or 8 pages of text written) and things weren't progressing much at all. Had three main characters an overarching concept, a map planning out the full rough story but again it wasn't going anywhere really.

Part of the problem was that I would not allow myself to start the comic if I didn't think I could pull it off. recently I started to think I am getting close to the point where I can give it a try.

While on holiday again this year I had an epiphany and everything came together. The concept and style have changed somewhat but the content has went through the roof and the idea is now very solid. Went from 3 characters to about 8 solid ones with many many storylines all planned out. I now have a little momentum and will keep working on polishing the story and fleshing things out.

and don't get me wrong, This isnt something that is going to pop up soon. becuase I still have many problems / things to resolve. First of all, how do I want to make money out of this (lets be honest here, free things are nice but part of the reason I have held onto this idea so long is that I think it could be successfull, so I dont want to give it all away for nothing!) Do I put it online and get a readership and attempt to make money from merchandise and book sales (later) or do I flat out ignore the internet and try to sell the story to a manga publisher?

Important questions but nothing I have to solve right now. Instead I will keep whittling away at the story.

But I suppose this is the first annoucement that I am working on a new, completely different comic in addition to ye-olde one.