Semiotic Cohesion Comics & Art

Oh, there you are!

Everything's going to be okay. You can come out now. I've got this comic here for you. It's from our third comics anthology and it's called 'Horse At The End Of The World.' It was drawn by the stupendously charming Nandi Williams, who will shock you to the core with her attractiveness.

It was printed in fantaglorious black and white with early 2008-era equipment. Despite knowing the limits of our feeble techomancy, Nandi drew it in colour anyway because she gets carried away like that. Her results were most excellent and I super-promised her that I'd put the colour version up on the website some day where people could maybe make it a desktop wallpaper if they were suitably impressed. But I got carried away myself on telling Sebastian to put up a new Snake Powers post and, well, here it is.

Sebastian and I came up with the script at a Bonfire Party. I think that maybe there aren't enough Bonfire Parties. A bonfire can really pep a party up to extreme levels. You can think a lot about horses when you're partied up so extremely like that.

Okay, here's the comic. Click to go to a magical realm where the picture is bigger.

Splash!



End!

Oh no! I forgot to charge up my camera. That is going to cost me points.

Sincerely,
Tom McNally

P.S ATTENTION TO DETAIL: Here is a picture taken by one Michaela Verity of me and Sebastian -hours away- from coming up with this comic.

You can't see it in the picture, but I was holding a pick-axe and Sebastian was holding a shovel. It was that kind of party.

Hey guys, I did this! It will be the backing for the next six months of Shark Of Wisdom. I think it is funny, don't you?

I must nod to this handy receipt maker for an authentic-looking heading. Thanks, website!

My brother got kidnapped in Cambodia yesterday. I can't wait for him to update his blog with the whole story.

I'll have some comics for you, the internet, next time. There will be horses.

Sincerely,
Tom McNally

Brice Reignier, that thrice-lovely man who toils hard on many Semiotic Cohesion products, up to and not excluding the Shark Of Wisdom comics, just sent me a ker-azy remix of his cover for the upcoming fifth issue of our comics anthology.

Let me show it to you right now!

Other news: The ominous promises of an entirely rehauled website are going to be set aside for the time being, but do not pretend, oh reader, that the thought of a more beautiful and functional website where you can buy all of our fine Semiotic Cohesion productchilds does not burn through my brain every day. It has burned there every day since about 2001. I am a patient man.

Sebastian is currently out in the woods, possibly putting the first words down on the very first The Ancient Shark Of Despair book. It's going to be a rewriting and rejiggering of the first few months of the blog, October 2006 - January 2007, which are looking a bit embarrassing these days. We aim to fix that! Anyway, I'm on editing duties and I shall do my best to maintain continuity and the correct levels of sadness, mirth, spelling. Sebastian has said quite a few times that this book will be so gigantically awesome that it will split him into several new people. I believe him. I think I saw this book in his eyes when I first met him at Newlands train station an indeterminate number of years ago. I think he was eating chips at the time?

Other news: Hey, there's a fifth comics anthology comic coming out, you know? I know the site only says that three exist but the site is a filthy liar most of the time.

Okay, I've got to go write some TASOD before I go to bed. I'll be back soon. Don't worry.

Sincerely,
Tom McNally

NEXT: Some comics.

artfully depicts two men wrestling until they become undone. On sale at Obsfest, OBVIOUSLY.

This is the comic that it is taken on:

CUTHERE-SEBASTIAN

This is a comic that isn't making it into Hedgemony two, cos like, whatever.

and you know the clicking the big

(Also, it might make it into Hedgemony two, cos like, whatever.)

- More like "Sebastian".

The second issue of Hedgemony Comics goes to print tomorrow. Well, whenever I finish it actually. I have to finish it by the time the print shop closes on Friday as to have them for Obzfest on Saturday. I've sat around doing nothing all day as I've had a crippling sense of something or other. I still have a good ten hours work to do, so I might just work through the night. Anyway, wish me luck. And if you happen to pass through Cape Town, South Africa this weekend, pop in to Obzfest and buy some ridiculously good stuff (from me).

This is the cover. It'll probably be different by the time I print it, but you know, this is how it goes.

(Did you know that if you clicked it and it became big.)

- Sebastianastianastian

If you are in Cape Town (South Africa) next week, (improbable, considering our webstats) you should come check out the Semiotic Cohesion stall at Obzfest. This is the quick poster thing I drew up for the event.

_SEBASTIANX

Synopsis follows!

(Click on the comic for joy!)

This is an almost entirely unaltered conversation that I had with my father. I played the role of funcrusher. My Dad played the role of a beautiful imagination, barely kept in check by a distrustful adherence to human limitations.

I'm a bit wary about the whole charcoal look. I've spent a healthy amount of time meddling with THE BLACK STUFF. I always enjoyed the style of drawing that I adopt with it, and this comic is similar to that style. It is more refined, but less interesting looking than the real stuff.

I am tempted to draw a comic with charcoal in real life.

And in other news: I can't see red. Dear reader, my monitor is sulking and refusing me any rightful passion and I now have a hard time distinguishing what once was red from black. This is also a metaphor.

- Oh you know, Sebastian

Ahem.

I AM EXCITED ABOUT THIS COMIC.

It is going to be great, I promise you this. But I have become irrational and am steered by forces more conniving than those that would usually allow me to write in forms other than poetry. Oh, sweet. Oh, joy.

THIS COMIC.
It speaks of love, which is something I cannot know.
It speaks of me.

It peaks my awareness of the dangers of this world, such as cars and being in close proximity to people.
Mainly Cars.
I hate to convey my emotions in this tacky fashion.
I really do.

But I have become irrational, I apologize, dear reader.

BUT.
I AM EXCITED ABOUT THIS COMIC to the point that the usually good humoured and polite parts of my brain that weigh up the world's risks are overrun with the inflated importance of finishing this comic.

For what if I did not?

Thank you.

- Sebastian, I guess.

Hey, all of you. I've been busy, what's your excuse? I'm training to be someone that has a vaguely impressive wealth of archaeology trivia. My exam is on Tuesday. Did you know that like, did you know that early archaeologists shot other early archaeologists? Back then you got to keep and sell all the gold you found. And if a colleague stood between you and your gold, well then you shot that colleague and wore their face on your face, marched back to their camp and claimed even more gold. True story.

I'm sorry that this webpost has become aggressive. I've been feeling mildly aggressive ever since I got whiskeydrunk in a desert last weekend.

Look, my point is that I'm really excited about a future where I make all these things that I love and other people love them too. I've started another one of these there thingamajigwhatsrightonoverhereitis (it's a comic):

- Sebastian makes it harder.

Oh boy, where have I been? I've been right here, rabbiting and squirreling and hedgehogging away at a comic for this competition that is being hosted by Random House and the Observer and some other interesting players. I made a two-page story about an eagle that snatches a human infant and yet, for some reason, does not devour it immediately. I tried to make it as realistic as possible.

Anyway, I finished it this morning after literally trillions of years spent getting incredibly fussy over everything in Painter. Now I'm going to have to find something else I can talk about to everyone I know. Maybe I'll do another comic? Comics are kind of my thing, I guess.

Okay, here's the first panel and another panel that also appears in the comic.

This part is based on the true story.


But this part is entirely fictional.

I'm pretty sure that I'll win the competition. I've spoken about it so often that to not win would be bad narrative flow.

In other news, The Nervous Polymath's brain has melted, so I've recruited an entirely different troubled genius to work on the website and do all that stuff I promised all those months ago. I'm going to carry on calling him The Nervous Polymath though. It's like a Pharaoh name.

Also, I went to Birmingham at some point back there somewhere. Here is some evidence of that:

http://nygma.blogspot.com/2008/10/small-press-publishers.html
http://nygma.blogspot.com/2008/10/newcomer-review-of-bics-part-1.html
- This pair is from a comics journalism site of good quality and sound taste. And oh god, I haven't mailed back Gemma yet and thanked her for the kind words. I'm the king of all jerks.

http://black-rider.deviantart.com/journal/20904787/
- This is from one of our neighbours, Inspired, who were a bunch of sweet kids who should be loved by everyone.

http://placentafordinner.blogspot.com/2008/10/there-was-no-big-tittied-woman-dressed.html
- This is a report from my own brother, who takes time out to make fun of the sweet kids mentioned above. Way to go, Paul. Now -you're- the king of all jerks!

Oh man, I am going to be late for dinner.

- Tom saves

Wow! I'm glad that's over. We used their own tragic magic against them in the end (kidnapping). Let's just say that I don't actually know what was going on or even who fixed it! Check this out!:

- S to the E to the B to the A to the why are my hands so small?

The site is under fire from a rowdy bunch of Sumerian Demigods. We're so in the process of fixing this!

Check out all the wonderful goodies available on SEMIOTICCCC COHESIONNNN
at our page made almost entirely of meat!

- Sebastian

(In light of this post I was going to make a new category 'Revenge!", but I didn't because I know Tom would disapprove. Did I tell you about the one time he outright said he didn't like laughing? Exactly.)

You need to be introduced to Mayor Don't. So far he's had a cameo on the credits page of our fourth comics anthology, and been the subject of Gavin Haynes' delectable song, but for the most part he and his antics have only existed on the nebulous Mayor Don't Master List Dot OhDeeTee that flourishes sweetly in some ill-frequented nook of my hard drive. Sebastian and I feed it with words and scanned in pages of notebooks every now and again and you are now to savour its first fruiting.

Click for larger image (Ooh, like 120 or 200 KB or so.)



Not much of this one was crafted in the world beyond the Wacom tablet. I drew the foundation sketch while at work, with my one foot resting on a tower of Holsten Pils, or Stella Artois, or some other horrible swill that stinks.



The aim of the game was to work on my digital brushstrokes. I wanted to get each one to be fat and thin in all the right places. This is a lot easier to do in the analogue world, it turns out, but I hadn't figured that out yet. Also present for your singular delight - the tricksy, multi-layered text that took me forever and ever to do that was, unfortunately, both illegible and ugly.





The design for the Mayor's kitchen tiles looked unnatural and weird when I laid down the standard pattern-and-warp trick, so I traced over the fiendishly exact tiles with my own, charmingly irregular lines. So now you know! There was also, around this point, a dreadful misadventure with cross-hatching. I scrapped the clean lines of the background and decided instead that I would cross hatch everything. I did pretty much all of it before I decided it was a terrible mistake and destroyed the evidence.

And now, gentle reader, we are the end of our breathtaking journey. I hope you've all learned something and are a little less angry with God or your father or whoever it was, now that you've seen this first Mayor Don't cartoon. There'll be more coming, but not for a little bit. I've a Guardian comics competition to enter. It should be exactly five hundred laughs.

- Tom

I've been feeling worn out creatively recently and my ability to write comics has become brittle. I dug up a text file that I had written a bunch of comic ideas in and found a section that broke down into incoherent phrases. I remember a few of these making a lot of sense at the time, so much sense that I could safely leave out the large chunks of context that I would assuredly remember in the future. Well, I don't:

"Princess of lies. Is someone's girlfriend.

Princess of the future.

You spend all your time at the swamp

godking reintergrating into society, boring deskjob, frustrated. Phones his mom, but she says that he's going to die now. (has a gold goldfish)

If everyone looked like you they'd be ugly. (and stupid)

Psychopomp (is also a pimp) keeps trying to tell people that he chose the profession because of the wordplay Psychopimp

secret power police - triangle of darkness

empire of touching"

-

So, here's what I've got for you. I'm working on this one about rhinos:

--==!!Sebastian!!==--

Come in, come in. Gather round, that's it. All of you. Now then. Listen. I'm going to show you a secret. You must promise to be astonished.

The secret is a new comic currently being developed in our steel labs. Its code name is LIONFACE THE ARTIST. It is being tended to and looked after by Head Technician Colleen Brice. She's like a sock full of pennies and each penny is a dream. The sock is a woman. Named Colleen.

This is the fourth comic she's cooked up for Semiotic Cohesion. Her other tiny masterpieces are 'DJ Last Human,' 'Stegosaurus & Me' and the ever so slightly epic 'Rhino.' So now you know.

Also - while you're here - I'll give you a sliver of insight into the goddamn creative process. Lionface isn't quite finished yet, so you can see here a comic on the verge of coming into being. For a more embryonic approach, you can see the roughs/storyboards/thumbnails I made from which Colleen has been working.

Okay. It's coming.

Click for larger image (Ooh, like 120 or 200 KB or so.)



Here's Colleen's first page. Lionface wants more from life than sitting in the Savannah and working at the factory. He wants to go to Art School.





These are my roughs for the first page.



This is the central spread. Lionface's colleague at the factory advises him to see the boss about this art school thing. The boss is oddly enthusiastic.





The roughs for the spread.

So Lionface goes to art school. But he's shocked to find out that girls are allowed to draw. Oh Lionface! You're such a fish out of water. You're like Star Trek Four!

And some more roughs.

The script for 'Lionface the Artist' was concocted, of course, by myself and Sebastian. Sebastian, by the way, has gone missing. So it'll just be me here on this blog for a little while. I think we can all handle that.

All right. I think you've seen enough for one day. Go and play!

- Tom

Oh, that NERVOUS POLYMATH sure is wacky!

I did a fan-comic for Super Mega just the other day. I'm a VERY big fan of all things Johnny Smash and was VERY excited to see my handicraft up on the site.

_
_
_
_____SEBASTIAN SIGNING OFF JUST THIS ONCE

While in a hot debate with the Nervous Polymath today on the topic of The Website And All That Is On It, he mentioned to me, in a voice as soft as pity, that he'd been making some graphs and that I could see them so long as I didn't tell anyone that he'd forced me to. He said that the graphs told a story.

Listen people, the graphs tell the story of a man's feelings before he opens right up and hugs someone. Maybe he is hugging them goodbye. Maybe he is hugging them hello, or thank you. The story is kind of open that way. I think you should see for yourself.

Click for larger image (230 KB)

The Nervous Polymath was delighted at my decision to put his graphs up on this blog. He says that he's hard at work on a series of jellies or membranes or something and he'll put speech bubbles in the next one. I think this is the start of something light and special.

- Tom

I'm working on a batch of new comics! I think. If you don't believe me, well I have all sorts of proof. I am so sure of this one four-pager, which I haven't actually written yet, but it's sounding so good. In my mind.

I've gotten this far so far and was filling in the text when all of a sudden out of nowhere I noticed that it was a pretty decent single page comic like it is.

- Sebastian

You may have heard of "Webcomicz". Mike Rouse-Deane sure has. Well, he's gone ahead and started up a secret project (I'm not allowed to tell you this) where he suspiciously channels a dangerous amount of the poor-old-internet's pocket money into the hands of those notorious capitalists, THE MAKE A WISH FOUNDATION. Fatcats. Cahoots. Girls making promises. Call it what you want to, it is all happening right here: The Guest Strip Project.

The moral of the story is that I was tricked into helping him implement his sinister plan by drawing one episode, one trecherous episode. Shucks, that's what I get for committing my life to, well, to put it plainly: being a bad person. The storyline I chose to expand on was the origin story of Kevin.

Okay so. I made these comicz the other day for an arts festival, and am so ridiculously proud of them. I want to turn these comicz into webcomicz. I assume the missing link is them being on the internet. I'm going to post them up on the site every few days until my cache is depleted. HERE GOES.

Anyway, I'm at University and am hallucinating wildly from a distinct lack of sleep. I'm going to go find a corner somewhere where I can just rest my eyes for a minute and maybe wake up with a crippling sense of alienation.

Goodbye.

Sebastian.

Too late Sebastian! Too late for this cat.

I do not make any presumptions upon you, gentle reader, so let's pretend that you aren't acutely and painfully aware of the new art I made for the 'daily' Shark Of Wisdom homily. Normally I wouldn't trouble our lovely readers with the minutia of its creation, but that is probably what this COMICS & ART blog is all about.

The day of the three hundrenth Shark Of Wisdom card was looming, so I took my first pass at it in the usual way - standing behind the counter in an off-licence during a period when there weren't too many drunks about. If any customers come in while I am doing this, I show them what I am doing and they ask me why I like sharks so much. People ask me this a lot. It's a fair question.

The concept, you see, was that there was this presumably Neolithic family hanging out around a fire and they see Shark Of Wisdom streaking through the sky for some reason and he merrily doles out the good stuff while he falls through the atmosphere.

"Hey! Looks pretty nice," I thought to myself. "There can be colours and everything. But jeez, that looks like it will be a lot of hard work to get right. Why not do something simpler? Like expand on this sketch I'm working on in another part of the drawing pad? It looks so much easier." The hypothetical rest of me to whom I was addressing this question agreed.

Oh yes, much easier. Big shapes, clear lines, I could make most of it dark and cop out on the colours. Also, hey, this one is a lot funnier. Look at that martini glass. That's hilarious.

Then a secret, latent desire to try and replicate the style of an Albrecht Dürer woodcut took hold of me. This has been happening every so often since high school. Normally I am able to withstand the urges but this time my flesh was the picture of weakness. "Won't take a jiffy in Photoshop," I reasoned, poorly.

And so, with a ruler, my Wacom, the entire series of Transformers: Animated playing in the background and a curse in my heart, I Dürered that sketch up so hard it didn't even see it coming.

Then, last night, I awoke in a cold sweat realised that I needed to blacken that smoke up a bit. Smoke is black. Everyone knows that. So I abandoned the warm bed of my sweetheart and ran back to my lair to spend all afternoon ruling line after line to the tune of Neil Shubin's 'Your Inner Fish,' to some degree of success, maybe.

So there we have it. Now you know why the Shark Of Wisdoms have been coming late this week. Too many lines.

Sincerely,
Tom McNally

P.S There's a new chapter of The Saga Of The European King lying around half-written. That's late too. I will prove I am not lying:

Let us travel back in time, you and I, to the murky mountains of 2005. One Mr. Goodman, a man of many potent talents, was promising the people of Britain another one of his sublime anthology comics, to be themed after that stealthy sign of our times, the Ninja.
"Hullo," I thought to myself, "Why don't I draw a ninjery comic for Goodman and put that same comic in my very own Semiotic Cohesion comic, will which surely be fantastic. Then I can have more people see my magnificent work for no real extra effort!"

I dutifully put pen to paper and laboured away on my mother's fold-out table for what was probably forever. We had no computers back then. It was farmlands as far as the eye could see and we had to go to internet cafes to touch base with the shining beasts back in South Africa. Oh, how young we all were. To be in 2005 again!

Actually, it was a stinking year. An awful thing, best forgotten.

But anyway! I finished the comic somewhere near the deadline and the NINJA anthology prompted vanished from known existence. Semiotic Cohesion Number One was published a little later and Soggy: A True Ninja Story was my only artistic contribution to its body. Well, except the editorial pages and the back page and stuff like that.

For the curious and obese among you, I'd like to confirm that I'll be putting the whole of Semiotic Cohesion Number One up here on this blog. But slowly, an inch at a time. Like a real gentleman.

Click for larger image (200 KB)

Now I think Sebastian wants to show you something.

I've been working on a strip for Mike Rouse-Deane's Guest Strip Project. This is the start of the comic. The fellow drinking 'the booze' is Kevin, my favourite commentary-on-nobility-making character of all time.

Hello, my name is Sebastian. I write and draw all sorts of things. I draw comics, but I like to dabble in psychedelic art, the picture below being a psychedelic drawing that I'm doing right now. I draw it entirely in Photoshop with a tablet and make use of some filters to get those creepy effects.

A lot of people don't like this one.

Click for larger image (617 KB)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of all nations except the scary ones. I trust you are having no difficulty in reading the inaugural post of the Semiotic Cohesion Comics & Art blog. If you are experiencing any difficulties, perhaps you ought to try again. Try blowing on it first.

While we already have many wonderful blogs that shock and amaze the world on a nearly-regular basis, this one will be rooted in as much fact and non-fiction as the bounds of entertainment will allow. Here we will festoon you, the ridiculous public, with the fruits ripened in the brains and hearts of our many dark artist-orchards. We will also keep you abreast of miraculous real-world events of import, such as when we release fantastic new product or slither our way into the public arena to tout or hawk as appropriate.

Right now there are many exciting things bubbling just under the surface. The ghosts of our web designers are hard at work on skinning the remaining blogs while their bodies lie inert on filthy mattresses in the bad part of town. I have personally been on the phone to a nervous polymath who assures me that the luscious Semiotic Cohesion anthologies will be available as a downloadable Paypalistic sale-for-money option quite soon. In the depths, a mass of musicians do shift and creep, ostensibly working their bodies into the form of a number of new songs that will make us all so happy. Sebastian, that storm-tossed orge of light, is awash with the delight of bringing you many quaint picture-stories that I have heard referred to as 'webcomics,' or 'webcomicz.' I have recovered a Micro-phone from a decrepit Chinaman that will allow me to record my voice in such a way that it resembles a series of Saga Of The European King podcasts that render the venerable text as hard sound.

It will be so great. I promise, I promise, I promise.

Now tell me all of your secrets.

Sincerely,
Tom McNally
(The Editor)