Leonieblog

Finally, the electricity and gas are working again!
Everything is back to normal.
Hurrican Remo is busy wrestling:

Next doors cat thinks he owns the neighbourhood, and therefore can just stroll into anyones house and piss on whatever he wants:

And I need to get some more freelance work.
Yep, same as ever.
Here's how beautiful my dissertation looked, it cost thirty pounds! But they expect it bound in a particular way, so best to just pay up.

The library in town has closed down, so all the books have been relocated to other libraries until it re-opens, and my local library got all the graphic novels! That's going to save me some money.
At the moment my days consist of filling out job applications, finishing off freelance work and filling out invoices, hoping to find some time to work on the next issue of monstrum (and that zombie strip I thought I'd have finished by now), trying to co-ordinate a manga exhibition, and all the usual stuff like doing dishes and other fun things.
Normally I'd be feeling pretty fed-up, but just having hot water and electricity after two weeks without is so nice that I don't really care about much else right now. It's a good feeling.

Posted by Leonie at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

That is the sound that the fuse box kept making.
We've been without hot water and electricity for quite some time now, waiting while british gas messed about. I was very stressed as I had a ton of freelance work to do this week and I needed the computer. Luckily I was able to run an extension cord from the landladies house so I could get my work done. Now we have some electricity (no hot water, no fridge, no washing machine, no microwave, no kettle, no stereo), but british gas are back on Monday to pull up our floorboards (the problem is with the junction box - hooray!) but we don't have floorboards in that room, we have a solid floor which they'll have to cut through. Aaaarrghhhh.
Apart from that, and the fact that I think I'm really losing my mind, everything is just peachy! Haven't been able to work on that comic strip which I was meant to have finished by now, for obvious reasons. No further along with the next issue of monstrum. Handed in my dissertation, apparently I did really well. Some good news at least!
I think this means I'm finished my MA, I have no idea when I'll get results or if I get anything in writing to say that I actually did the course.

Posted by Leonie at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've just finished and sent off a web comic. I'm not sure if or when it will appear on the internet, above is a little sample section.

I'm leaving in my dissertation to be bound tomorrow, it's called :
'Making comics: What issues are affecting creators in the comic industry today?'
It's a snappy title. It's quite a few hundred words over the suggested word count, but most of that is Eddie Campbells Manifesto which I've used as an appendix. Plus I had a pretty good sized bibliography.

Got some freelance stuff on, so no cake, cider or shark shortages in Leonieland just yet. After reporting on the abysmal Megalodon movie, I am happy to say I watched a crap but not as crap shark movie the other night which restored my faith in the genre. Sharkzone uses some actual great white footage (repeatedly) and a dodgey model which seems to have a hole in the roof of its mouth. The plot is ripped off from from Jaws and a scene from shark attack 2 (which was ripped off from Jaws anyway), also some of the shark footage looked similar to the stuff used in bits of shark attack 3. There is also a pointless subplot about diamonds. Why do these people think they need anything other than the shark as the plot? I don't remember Jaws needing russian businessmen, diamonds, oil drilling, nuclear waste dumping etc. to add tension. As usual there is a terrible script and horrendous acting. What makes this movie stand out is the fact that the sharks growl and roar like big cats while attacking. Also, whenever anyone is surprised by the appearance of a shark (how do they sneak up while growling?) they exclaim: 'Jesus, sharks!' which I thought was genius.

Posted by Leonie at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was one calamity after another this weekend! It all started out so perfect. We watched a whole season of Entourage, hung out with Sheriff and Emma, got to eat yummy food (Emma is a really good cook, we're thinking of moving in to their spare room and seeing how long it is until they ask us to leave), watched the Kali gradings (it's fun to watch until you realise that it won't be long until you'll be going through that hell again) and went to the cinema with Matt and Maz.
Then I got home, checked my e-mails and found, to my horror, a bunch of emails from uni people going on about how the dissertation was due in on Monday. Monday? How did that happen? I'm such a poindexter, how did I not realise? I didn't even have a title for the bloody thing!
So I spent all day Sunday trying to get it finished, which was tough enough without the added bonus of two power cuts! Plus Andy managed to spill coffee over nearly every thing I own (how can one mug hold that much coffee?).
Anyway, I got it all finished in the end and handed in. I need to wait for feedback incase there are any mistakes, and then do the final bound version.
The manga exhibition I'm helping organise is going well. I've spoken to Tokyopop and it seems they're onboard, so it's going to be huge! They're talking about competitions and all sorts of neat stuff. Plus we have access to a bar with a cinema licence so we're hoping to show anime too. It's going to rock.
I'm also working on some new strips. I just got a script from Tony Hitchman for the next Accent UK anthology, so I'll be drawing that up soon. And I'm doing a webcomic and an article for the new small press site, www.indiereview.co.uk.
I was talking to someone the other day about naming characters. Usually I don't have a problem with this, stuff like Monstrum was dead easy because all the characters were based on people or were named after adventurers. (Like Campbell got his name because the character was like someone Bruce Campbell would play, Ella Hass is named after Hans Hass the diver/adventurer/biologist etc.) If I do get stuck, I've found some really good baby naming websites. The great thing about that is that you can see where the name originates from and also what it means and how popular it is. I am considering using names from the spam I get because some of them are amazing!
I've been going megalodon crazy lately. I've been reading Steve Altens books, which are the best and worst books ever written. I want to do a photo story of the first chapter of the first book using my giant fuzzy shark (pictured below with wookie) and an inflatable dinosaur, if only I had more time for all these projects!

I also watched the worst movie ever made. Simply called Megalodon, it was worse than shark attack 3, which at least had the courtesy to use file footage. This pile of poop used computer graphics that aren't fit for a bargain basement PC game, they didn't even have any texture on them and parts of the shark were transparent. Screen grabs from the Jaws game look better.
And it made no sense. You'd think for $5.00 it would have been a bit better!

Posted by Leonie at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)