Just returned from the Angouleme Comics Festival. To be honest, I found the experience a real downer - there's just so much stuff out there, and I can't see how my stuff fits into the picture. I'd spent the previous 2 weeks scanning pages into my computer and cleaning them up so that I could get them together: that's the first 235 pages of 'Year Zero'.

The thing is, when I was drawing them, I was doing it as fast as possible, because I wanted to learn how to draw fast and also to make up a story on the hoof. Flicking through it now, though, and it looks pretty thin stuff. I think for the next 240 pages or so (I'm on page 268 at the moment, out of 500) I'll work at it more, and put in lots of dense blacks, because they seem to reproduce well.

The Bicycle Thief still stands up though, although I'm a bit sick of people saying it looks like Quentin Blake. I love Quentin Blake, the man is a genius, but I don't want my work to be identified with his like I'm copying him or something. It's just because I use dots for eyes sometimes and I'm a bit scribbly.

Still, going to Angouleme gave me a chance to buy lots of new BDs. I think maybe I'll review a few and write about them here.

Funding proposal

At the moment I am contemplating putting pins in my eyes, swallowing a broken glass, jumping down the stairwell - anything but this funding proposal, which is crawling along at an ungodly 15 words an hour. I wish I was exaggerating. Part of the problem - no, wait - the whole problem is that I am not the slightest bit interested in my proposal idea: it is so dull, I can't even be bothered to repeat it here. It was my third idea, after all. The first two were a bit more interesting, but they had already been done somewhere in the world, so I had to switch. I suppose this would be flying along a lot faster, but I have been taking regular breaks every 3 minutes to check my email, eat chocolate, download songs, draw pictures and then colour them in... It's all incredibly demoralizing and makes me wish I'd never started this MA programme in the first place. Then there is the strange phenomenon which Dan mentioned the other day, which is when you are working on something you start getting really inspired about things you would like to read or do. In this case I have had some brilliant ideas for comic stories I can do, and my doodling has really improved 100% since last week, but I frustratingly can't justify drawing when I should be extrapolating costs for an imaginary project which is never going to get put into practice. Where's the justice in that? I'm going for a walk.