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Two unusual character’s dressed in surgical garments have been sneaking around replacing denizens with laboratory-made duplicates. In this segment, “The Banker” the strange assistants face their fiercest foe to date. Follow the surreal art misadventures every week as both the  audience and the author try to figure out what the hell is going on. READ THE WEBCOMIC!

I drew some of this pen and ink comic page on the train while travelling to my parents for the holidays. Not the most ideal place for a perspective interior rendering, or really any kind of drawing at all, so the page ended up kind of muddled. I really wanted to pay more attention to the line work, hoping to improve on last week’s image but kind of ruined my chances with the rush job on the bumpy track. I doubt anyone would even notice if I didn't mention it, but the dark planter on the right hade side, second panel, used to have all sorts of little details until I smudged the whole thing suddenly at a railway stop. Oh well there is always next week! HEY APATHY!

The City of Gears Kids Comics Online

HEY APATHY! Comics Online!

Maybe today was one for dreaming, but something about the holiday season, and in particular my 2year old nephew, has got me thinking a little more about comics for kids. As a public performer I have been interested in communicating to both the intellectual and younger viewers. Prior to my street and festival interventions, the artwork had a tendency towards a bleakness and horror much more nihilistic than the playful monstrosities I draw today. The last time I made something that was really geared towards younger audiences would have to be HEY APATHY! Book Two. While Book One, using superhero type imagery to tell a silent and symbolic parable, is vary borderline and can likely be appreciated by all audiences, Book Two was modeled after kid’s comics and cartoons. This sort of story telling might alienate “artsy” audiences (one artbook publisher laughed at me for making kid’s books) but they are not nearly as interesting or exciting as kids are anyways.

A little time before making the Samurai Comic (Book 2), I scripted and sketched out a children’s book entitled “The Sound of the City” based on one of my ink drawings of the same name. Although I haven’t gotten around to working on it yet, the script keeps making its way to the top of my pile of things to do and is really tempting. I think this book will happen soon.

Yesterday I did some drawings for my nephew. He likes to tell me what the pictures are,” Fish! Truck! Mommy!” and so on. It is really fun. These scribbles got me thinking and I decided to give a quick whirl at designing a “HEY APATHY!” kids cartoon. I did the sketch (above) in about a half an hour during which time I pretty much sorted out all the details. To make a long story short, these superheroes are basically vigilante law enforcement in the over-industrialized imaginary City of Gears. The city is on the brink of annihilation, though the denizens don’t realize it and the team has to fight various evils villains trying to destroy the metropolis. Sounds dull I know, but I was inclined to approach this as though it were a real show. This means within a set of rules and formulae. The fun will be in the symbolic narratives which I are festering in my sick mind.

The team consists of two kids, an artist and a book-worm computer whiz, a superhero, the old wise one, a female adult with musical magic, Audu & Jungle Cat (from Book Two). They have a giant robot which, once a diabolical business drone, has been reprogrammed for the better of mankind. The Robot is a key representation of the necessity to use, and not combat, technology despite all the inappropriate programming. The MachineHead corporate villain is continually trying to over-do consumption frequently threatening the well being of the city. Lastly the heroes know that they can not disturb the flow of the city for fear of chaos and must work entirely in secret. Blah Blah. Anyways I’m having fun with this today. I think I’ll flesh it out with some more drawings the next time I have free time. I think it would be cool ( and likely wise) to have a whole television series worked out. You never know when  opportunity might arrive and more importantly this is  just something I always wanted to do. READ WEBCOMICS!

Comic Drawings for Kids

HEY APATHY! COMICS ONLINE

Another busy day at the animation stand. Strange week this is leading up to the holidays. I’ve had a bit of human things to do, such as brunch with the family, some gift making and a small amount of shopping. The drawings posted here are for my 2 year old nephew Darroch.  He get’s a kick out of identifying the things in the pictures. These will get cut out and scattered throughout his gifts. Nevertheless I maintained a solid work schedule and should get a lot more done before I start touring dinner parties for the festive season. So far I made 110 animation stills as well as  a bit of drawing done with the goal of making it to 150 and finishing the weekly webcomic before Christmas. Otherwise the primordial vascular and clawed limbs protruding from beneath my bed at night have not been able to find me when I am under the covers and I think the cat has figured out a way to get rid of them. Life is good. VISIT HEY APATHY.COM

Metropolis Animation Drawings

ALTERNATIVE COMICS Animations

The City is a giant gear spiraling infinitely around and around. At least that’s how it feels today. I’ve been working on an animation sequence involving the symbolic city of gears. This was probably one of the first uninterrupted studio sessions I’ve had in a while. There always seems to be something else to take care of. I took full advantage of the open schedule and have been producing frames rapidly pace since noon. After this short interlude for eating and typing, I’ll put in a few more hours before calling it quits. If I’m lucky I might get 10 frames done. (That equals less than 1 second of film) Each frame is almost exactly like the previous. The image depicts the metropolis rolling around in a gear like formation. The process involves two basic steps, a brief under drawing and a final rendering. This means that after I drawing the whole thing once, I actually have to go back a re-draw it all again. The short loop is going to take at least 200 frames to complete but I am just stubborn enough to enjoy the doing this kind of work.

In fact I more than enjoy the work and have become a bit obsessive about the films. It takes so long to draw a single idea that the ordeal is simultaneously meditative and exhilarating. The animation itself requires immense attention, single ideas remain prominent (almost static) for extended periods of time, yet I can barely think about anything else. I’ve come to this sort of slowed down thought process based around movements equaling 1/22 of a second while attempting to physically transcribe these movements as quickly as possible. Meanwhile my conscious attention remains focused on the gear, each building and how they are going to move in the next few 1/22ths of a second and where they need to be 2 or 8 seconds from now. Occasionally I flash to future scenes or other stories, though through necessity, I rein in those wandering thoughts and drive them  swiftly back to the gear. Sounds all fragmented and crazy, it feels like that a bit too, however when the damned thing starts breathing… well that’s something I can hardly wait to see.

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TO BATTLE A BANKER! Weekly Alternative Webcomics

WEEKLY WEBCOMICS! Strange Adventures in Investing...

HEY APATHY! Free Comics Online! This week the odd assistants attempt to kidnap and replace their must insidious foe yet, the banker! Weird superheroes, unusual citizens, diabolical villains and nightmares personified, welcome to the city of gears! Follow this surreal art comic exploration of the mind and the metropolis as reality weaves in and out of television broadcasts and little difference can be seen between night and day. New pages every week.

Surreal Comics is my fourth, and absolutely most absurd, graphic novel in the HEY Apathy1 mythology. The story follows a mad scientist and his lackeys as they mysteriously replace a number of denizens of varied societal positions with Frankenstein-like duplicates with intentions unknown. At the same time an unidentified superhero protects the city from giant robot terrorist attacks. Using an unusual combination of single page, short comics and extended narrations, the goal of the comic is to reveal the weird fable in the most disorienting, albeit entirely legible, manner possible. How else could I legitimately entitled the story SURREAL COMICS? READ COMIC FROM THE BEGINNING

Toronto Art

HEY APATHY! INK DRAWINGS

HEY APATHY! Toronto Artist Gallery Drawings. These are some shots of large HEY APATHY! Ink drawings collected at the Cambridge Galleries. The Show featured a wide range of thematic explorations regarding the metropolis, chaos, people and the apocalypse. Most of the works were created with a hand made bamboo drawing instrument and black India ink. The drawings range in size from 2 x 3 feet to 10  x 16 feet. This exhibition also included an animated installation presented on a television screen embedded in the wall.  This exhibition was curated by Sascha Hastings in 2006 and remains one of my most elegant presentations to date. FULL EXHIBITION HISTORY HERE

Thirteen Stories, forbidden tales of the apocalypse

HEY APATHY! Independent Comics and Art

A plant has attacked a corporate office, a mad scientist and his twin assistants have set about replacing people of varied societal positions, a centaur is still chasing the supermodel, amorphous nightmares runs rampant through the streets and the city of gears spins on! The past year has been, well different, but it always is. One of the most significant of these “differences” has been my dedicated, though feeble, attempts at writing stories. As a street artist, 2004-2008, I had little use for the written word managing all my interactions verbally and with an experienced eye for unspoken communications. The streets are all about the eyes and body language which I would then perceive and create a verbal approach accordingly. Around the fall of 2009 I started building a website and all of a sudden there were none of these options forcing me to use the only means available for online communication, words.

I made a number of failed attempts at essays and descriptions for my site but found the work overwhelming, scattered and ultimately poor. I put that project on hold and started with something smaller, little blog blurbs, but on a daily basis. I made sure to do about 200 words everyday and started working with little structures. I’d do 100 words on the story in the art, and 100 on the story behind the processes. Soon the word count doubled, and while still not satisfied with the finished paragraphs, the ordeal slowly became easier and was soon a regular in my daily routines.

Prior to this it must have been 10 years and the only writing I’d done was papers for an art school. Nevertheless what choice did I have? On Tuesday April 12, I ran out of things to say and started making things up. At this time I’d never actually written, or properly considered writing, a stories with words. When I “write” graphic novels I do so directly with the ink on paper. They are basically composed like silent films and the dialogue/text are the last thing on my mind. Animations are made the same way, I just make it up as I go along. Telling the stories on the streets is again, entirely contradictory to the written version. For example I can change my choice of words on the spot depending on the demographic of the viewer. You can’t do that online or in printed text.

The process of making things up proved immediately gratifying. Although I have been putting a some efforts into producing drawings this year, my primary focus has been on developing new animations. These things take for ever and you don’t really get to think about the narrative developments because so much attention I required for every 2/22 seconds of the film. Basically in the same time it takes to illustrated a single panel artwork telling a world of stories, the animation might only get the characters from one scene to the next (if I draw fast). Knowing full well that I can’t make animations and comics at the same time, the written stories really fulfilled a need to produce ideas rapidly while engrossed in such a technical process.

So I decided to write 13 stories with illustrations to use on my site. I think there are 7 posted and few more hanging around the blog. I maybe only edited 2 of them properly but I won’t start inserting scolding coat hangers in the veins beneath my toenails if that doesn’t happen before the new year. If I can get all thirteen ideas into pages, I’ll be satisfied for now. I’d love to see the work published in a little black hardcover entitled “Thirteen Stories, forbidden tales of the apocalypse” or something like that.

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