CICE Back Home

A brief bit of the history from the outside of this little con. Cardiff Indy Comic Expo used to run a 2 day event in Cardiff's Mercure Hotel waaay back when I first started doing cons. The last few years saw CICE drop off the scene for a little while, but you can't keep a good con down. After a brief run of events at the Cardiff Masonic Lodge, CICE is finally coming home to the Mercure Hotel!

It's been a long road for the organizers to get back here, but the effort that has been put into the last few years and going forward has been appreciated. Not just by me, but the guests and the Independent publishing community in general. When I first moved to Cardiff back in 2010, the indy comics scene was a big a vibrant community that aloud me to get my own work out into the world, but also introduced me to some wonderful new titles as well as a lot of friends.

So if you're close by this weekend and you want to be a part of something creative and awesome, pop in and take a look. We'll be there (Myself and Kev from Deadstar) as well as many others all showing off our own comics and stories. There'll still be plenty of the usual mainstream stuff, but if you fancy looking at some home-grown talent or just something a bit different from the norm, then this is the show for you.

Return to the Green

Just a little sculpting project this week. A Buddy of mine is looking top do a fantasy Mughul army for Kings of War. To try and save himself some cash, he's asked me to sculpt him some heads for conversions. It's been a while since my last sculpting project and I always like to dip back into these things to keep my putty skills sharp.

They're still WIP I have to add beards and side flaps to the helmets, but I think they're coming along.

On a selfish note, this seemed like a good excuse to do some work on my LOTR Angmar army. I'd picked up the Gundabad Ogres a while back, but my plans for a Gundabad Army never took off. So with some extra work I'm turning them into Angmar Trolls...

The first troll has just had a bit of a nose job and the addition of a crude flail using jewelry chain. The second Troll is a bit more involved.

I'll be using him as a Troll Chieftain. I'm going to add a skull necklace for added "grim" factor, but the mask and sword are done.

Until next time folks.

On Wards and Upwards!

CFCC is is done for the time being, but it will resurface later in the year. For now though I'll just say it was great to see some friends I don't see very often and I i was glad to meet so many new people at the event. AoS was well received as was Dolphin Squad 2. All-in-all the Deadstar Team had a cracking weekend and are looking forward to the next lot of events. Deadstar will be attending London MCM at the end of the month as well as Cardiff Independent Comic Expo the following week and Caerphilly Comic Con the week after. I won't be at London myself, but I will be at the other two shows.

So with Comic Cons filling up the schedule for the next few weeks, will there be time for hobbying? You betcha!

A little piece I've had stashed away for a while now. My regular gaming group are planning Dungeon Crawler with each of our character models have been designed by someone else in the group. We used Hero Forge to make the minis. For those who are unfamiliar with them, Hero Forge provide allow you to design your own miniature and then get it 3D printed there and then. Their turn around is pretty good and they have a huge selection of option with which to build your mini from. Any ways, here is the model I created to represent our buddy Keron.

Introducing Keron, the Friendliest Man in Warh- "ahem"- I mean with a Warhammer! The colours are based off Keron's Empire army from Warhammer. It's a much brighter palette than I normally use, but I want to try and imitate Keron's style from that army. It's much cleaner and brighter than my usual "cover it in washes and rust" approach to painting models. especially of recent months.

I've had a chance to get some INQ28 stuff painted at last and will hopefully get a chance to paint some more soon...

... but first there's some Lord of the Rings on the horizon so I'll get to painting some more Orcs I think.

Comic Con or Bust!

It's that time of year again, I'm heading to Cardiff Film and Comic Con to peddle my artistic wares and chat nerd with my fellow attendees and traders. This year I'll be working under the banner of Deadstar Publishing as they take multiple new releases to the masses. New Dolphin Squad, new previews and most important (to me anyway) new Age of Savagery! AoS was debuted last weekend at Swansea Comic and Gaming Con and was very well received by the crowd and the creators that were present. This weekend will hopefully be more of the same, with a bigger crowd, more of the creators present and a two day show to celebrate the efforts of over 20 creators!

I've been looking forward to this show for weeks now as it's the first Con I'll be attending with my new work this year. I'm super excited to be able to talk to people about a project that has been a true labour of love for over year and a community driven labour at that. So if you're in the 'Diff this weekend, come to CFCC and say "Hello" to myself and the other contributors that'll be present like the boys at Hell Bound Media, Danny of Dolphin Squad fame and hopefully a few others that might come out of the wood work.

If you can't make it to CFCC, but are still interested in AoS or Dolphin Squad or any of the other cool titles that Deadstar carry, you can order stuff from HERE.

Hopefully see you there guys 'n' gals!

The Saga of the "Age of Savagery"

At long last I can finally say this, Age of Savagery is complete, off to the printers and is available (for pre-order at least) on Deadstar Publishing's webstore. Ten stories, 22 Creators and a butt load of heart & soul, this has been a saga for me since the initial submissions call almost a YEAR ago!. I could not be happier with the awesome work people have submitted.

Way back early last year, before I approached Kev with the rather grand idea of open submissions, I was just struggling to get Issue 4 of New Wasteland Fairy Tales off the ground.

I just couldn't get into the story I had written and the whole theme had seemed to take a rather grim turn. I wasn't board with the title, far from it, NWFT will be getting new installments, but something was nagging me. An itch at the back of my mind that needed to be scratched. I didn't want big pink robots and have silly-slap stick in this story, I want something a bit more... savage.

And so began the doodles, I was scribbling ideas and designs for a about a month every chance I could get. Reading old Conan comics, looking up old-school fantasy novels and re-watching 80's fantasy movies to get a feel for what I wanted. Eventually I had a world and a short story that I was happy with, but it was to short a story to publish alone and I had sunk too much time and effort into the World building to let it collect dust on the shelf, so I talked to Kev about it. Initially I thought we'd just drum up other stories from else where and just publish a mixed anthology, but I think it was showing him the sketches and ideas I'd come up with that got him excited.

We took the idea to CFCC last year and told anyone that would listen. We asked artists and writers, old and new until I'd exhausted my ability to speak at volume. (to those who know me as "Shouty Dave" this was a big deal) Within the first  2 months we had our first completed submission from Josh Sommerville-Jacklin and soon after we had prose and art submitted from people I hadn't heard from in years.

It was all shaping up until the printer botched the deadline. We were scheduled to release in October, but without a big event between CFCC and Xmas that we could attend, Kev and I made the hard choice to delay release until the New Year.

Going into 2018 and we had our events calendar set up and ready to go. We were hoping to get everything ready for Swansea Comic and Gaming Con, but between an exploding hard drive and the printers once again making a mockery of our time table, it was looking tight. That said, we can confirm that AoS has gone to print and we will be launching (if not this weekend in Swansea) then certainly the weekend 12th-13th at Cardiff Film and Comic Con. We made it folks, a year in the making and the efforts of over twenty talented people, but we made it.

I feel it fitting that an anthology of Barbarian short stories should have it's own saga about it. From humble begins to the heady rush of early success with the initial submissions. Onto trials and woe of the first failed printer deadline and then the limbo of additional editing leading into Xmas. But on the horizon was the hope of a grand release, we merely had to conquer our long standing foe... The Printers. Through many angry phone calls, sleepless nights and an uncooperative computer system, Kev battled this nemesis with all the energy a sleep deprived editor could muster. Right now he stands victorious upon a pile disgruntled emails and invoices ready to strike at The Printers again should they present a threat to our CFCC release date a third time....

I, his chronicler, once asked of Kev, "What is best in life?"
He responded "To get eight hour sleep. To have the printers do as they're told first time. To hear the lamentations of their manager."