Drawing ...

I stopped trying to draw in 4th form art class, when my teacher told me I was hopeless. Thirty years later, in 2012, I was inspired to pick up a pen and doodle some silly faces, and I stuck at it every day (or most days) for several months. Now I can say I'm a published artist, having had two comics I've drawn accepted into Seqapunch Quarterly, #4 and #5. The picture here is from the story they printed in issue 4. I'm still much more comfortable with writing something for others to draw, but I'm determined to stick at the art, and I will even start posting a self-drawn webcomic sometime soonish ... once I have a very large buffer of material. More on that soon ...

B.A.S.O. guest page

In June 2012 I decided I should start drawing things. I hadn't seriously attempted to draw since I was told that I was useless by my fourth form art teacher ... thirty years had gone by. I started slow. I'm still going slow.

However, I sent a couple of pages of what I had done to a webcomics friend, and he very kindly asked me to be a guest artist for one page of his webcomic ... B.A.S.O.

B.A.S.O., which stands for Big Arse Soap Opera, is a great webcomic that is epic in scope and concept. Check it out.

Quest for The Quail

Way back in 2011 I had an idea for a series of strips for a community webcomic on The Duck (formerly Drunk Duck) called Duck and Quail. Duck and Quail are the site mascots, and there were a number of stand alone pages done by some very talented people for Duck and Quail. The Duck website had just removed the Drunk part of its name, and undergone a series of coding changes that remain unfinished to this day. Overall the website's traffic plummeted, and what is left in 2013 is a mere shadow of what once existed when the duck was intoxicated. So I wrote a series of 80 strips that told a satirical tale of a sober Duck's quest to find his old drinking buddy Quail ... and somehow save the universe from destruction along the way.

From the first strip in September 2011 ... http://www.drunkduck.com/Duck_and_Quail/5355156/ to the last in May 2012 http://www.drunkduck.com/Duck_and_Quail/5394188/ I was lucky enough to have a large group of artists volunteer their time to get the strip done. The editor of the Duck and Quail community comic, VegaX, was very supportive and encouraging, and the whole project raced headlong to its sappy conclusion.

It was a fun project to be involved with, and through it I cyber-met some wonderful people who I have since worked with on other projects.

Helping Hocusha

I haven't been posting on this blog for a while, but it suddenly occurred to me I could use it to mention some of the writing I've been doing of late, starting with something I helped co-write; the end to chapter 7 of the wonderful webcomic Hocusha.

The creator of Hocusha, Vig Starmax, was suffering from a case of the dreaded writer's block, and his excellent webcomic was on indefinite hiatus. I was fortunate enough to be a fan of Hocusha and to have worked briefly with Vig on another project, so when he posted a call for help I was quick to offer my assistance.

Vig put together a Hocusha bible containing character notes, setting, and over-arching plot details, and from that I helped work out an ending for the chapter he was stuck on. I got to write the dialogue and give some page layout suggestions, and Vig took that and made it much better.

Now Vig seems to be inspired once again to write and draw Hocusha, and it looks like there's a long series of adventures to look forward to. I for one can't wait to see what Vig does next with Hocusha.

You can read Hocusha here ... my contributions started from page 10 of Chapter 7.

Romney, Ryan: the Nigerian Princes

We all know the scheme. A rich Nigerian price has all this money he can't get out of his country. But you could help him, and he'll give you millions. Just send a small bank transfer fee his way of $10,000 and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams. The current US Election offers a ticket that is the equivalent to the Nigerian email scam. Elect Romney, they say, and his financial success will be yours. There'll be a huge tax cut that'll make you all rich. There'll be jobs everywhere. Business will boom. Money will fall from the sky. Except in this version of the scam there's no mention of the small bank transfer fee needed to get you on the path to wealth. No safety net will be cut. No extra debt. No extra cost. It's all win. No lose. If you fall for that one this election I've got some Nigerian princes I know that need help, and for a small fee I'll help you to help them to help you.

Brent Willis' review of Utterly Rucked

Brent Willis wrote this review for the zine Wark#1, and kindly let me share it ...

The best NZ comic I've read this year so far Brent Willis

Utterly Rucked by David Tulloch

When I was a kid I used to play with Lego and other toys and would make up long and complicated stories with them. If I had of had a camera at the time I might have made photo comics with them but I didn't. A few years ago, I started doing a photo comic with my collection of action figures that I got with McDonalds and Burger King kids meals but I lost interest in it and so it remains unfinished. I could try and finish it but David Tulloch has beaten me to it with his graphic novel in six volumes called 'Utterly Rucked'. The big differences between my unfinished epic and Utterly Rucked is that Tulloch used Playmobil figures for his characters, and more significantly his story is way better than mine is or would be, had I finished it.

U.R. is an epic 144 page story about a team of ex-pat rugby team from Britain who come to New Zealand with their referee, his nymphomaniac wife and non-nymphomaniac daughter, who travel to New Zealand to play some friendly games against a team led by New Zealander 'Burnsie', but end up getting murdered one by one instead. So its like a murder mystery. Or more accurately, a massacre mystery as the body count gets pretty high. Its up to Burnsie and player/coach Glen 'General Patton' Patterson to trry and find the murderer and stop the murders before the team is reduced to nothing.

There are plenty of likely culprits. Cheryl (who was usually spending some alone-time with the players prior to their deaths) is suspect number one, but her cuckolded referee Wayne Jensen, and even the cute policewoman assigned to the case are also suspects. Or maybe its someone they don't know! Who can it be?

This is a great well-paced and plotted story with plenty of humour, both above and below the belt. And its about rugby too, which should go down well in New Zealand. Its a pity Tulloch didn't get it finished in time for the world cup, with a bit of good marketing he could have sold thousands. Even people who don't like rugby should find this enjoyable, as there isn't a lot of rugby in it, although rugby players and ex-rugby players, like myself (I used to be a reserve wing for the Marlborough College second fifteen in 1985) will enjoy a lot of the rugby jokes.

Although all the characters in this story are toys, this ain't no toy story for kids, too much sex and violence for that. And being all Playmobil figures, many of them look the same, but luckily there is a picture at the back that explains who is who. (BTW, I never had Playmobil when I was little, as I was a Lego kid)

The other great thing about this comic is the price. I bought my copy from the NZCC stand at Armageddon for just 16 dollars! That's less than three dollars for each booklet. And its in full colour too, albeit with home-printer quality but that's no problem. It good to see a NZ comic artist not overpricing their work. Too often I see black and white photocopied comics with only a few pages, that cost about a dollar or less to print being sold for four to five dollars or more. But I'll rant about that another time. Anyway compared to them and most other comics (especially mainstream overseas comics), totally rucked is very good value indeed.

So if you are looking for a good funny comic that doesn't have any dumb or overwrought drawings in it (because its a PHOTO comic) and will take a long time to read (this is a good thing) then try and find a copy of Utterly Rucked. Its utterly ruckin-tastic! (

To see more of David's work you can go to his website: website: www.virtuallycomics.com)

Cheers

Brent

Banks and the Swiper Mentality

As a stay-at-home parent I've seen a few episodes of Dora the Explorer. In case you've managed to avoid the show, it features an oval-headed girl who solves riddles and clues to find a place or object. There are many oddities in the show ... a singing map, a talking monkey, and State infrastructure that includes half finished roads that go over mountains rather than around them, bridges to nowhere, and redundant rail lines that allow many trains to race side-by-side to unpopular destinations.

But perhaps the most baffling figure in Dora is Swiper the Fox. Swiper is a kleptomaniac stalker who hides in the bushes and steals whatever is important to Dora and her friends that episode. Swiper can be stopped, temporarily, by staring him down and saying "Swiper, No swiping!" three times, at which point he seems ashamed and sighs "Aww, man!" Next episode, however, Swiper will be back to his sneaking, swiping ways.

As my wife once asked ... "Why don't they just lock Swiper up forever? He never learns, and he never stops trying to steal."

In business terms Swiper the Fox is an Investment Bank. Dora represents the regulators and the chant is the public shaming of executives and institutions when they are caught doing something manifestly illegal.

"Aww, man!" The banks dutifully say. They slink away. But sure enough, soon they are back with some other crazy scheme to defraud the public and make billions while only ever being fined millions.

Just like Swiper the Fox, there are no real consequences for the illegal actions of the big banks. The just blush, snap their fingers, admit that we caught them (this time) and go back to business as usual. And Dora is a much better regulator than those in the real world. She always resolves Swiper's schemes.