Semiotic Cohesion Comics & Art

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)