You read that right, pard.

For the forseeable future, I've decided to take commissions for fun and profit. This time, I'm opening the floodgates to include different compositions, so although the bean men are still an option, as are the geometric portraits, I'm also considering whatever you can throw at me. So sharpen your brains (ugh) and have a think about what I can do for you.

Oh yeah, and bear in mind I am primarily a vector artist, so while I'd love to do an oil painting, you'd have a long wait for that piece while I learn to paint. Feel free to enquire, though!

**There's no set price list, I'll have to give you a quote based on the specifics**

Oh, and with a certain holiday fast approaching, a piece of art is a pretty unique gift isn't it? Just sayin'...

Okay, so everybody and their dog and their dog's life coach are going to post a blog about this. Most of them will give you the facts.

I won't.

I will lie to you.

The Walt Disney Corporation, or 'Big Walt and the Mecha-titans' have today announced that they are buying Marvel for the princely sum of 16 turnips and a full-body massage. Joe Quesada has been quoted as screaming "Aaaaaayyyyyyyiiiiieeeeee!", but with one of those funny upside-down exclamation marks at the front. Hans Gruber, working for the Disneytron Announcement Carousel, issued a statement but sadly the wind was blowing quite a bit and his words were scattered to the four corners of the world, owned by the Disney Corporation.

We contacted Hulk at his holiday home in Majorca, but he declined to comment.

Daredevil was more forthcoming, requesting "...some damn privacy! I've been through all of this press @##$%!! before and you people still hound me! I went to prison! I'm bliiiiind!"

So what does this mean for the inhabitants of the Marvel Universe? Will they be forced to relocate to Florida? Will Jean Grey's cryogenically-frozen body be revived? Only one man can tell:

Phil Uatu, 65, is a former Watcher who retired amidst allegations of abusing his 'watching' privileges in locker rooms and public parks at night. Keen to sidestep that issue, he's only too willing to provide a commentary on this shocking turn of events.

"Stuff's going to 'appen, mate!" he enthuses in a surprising Cockney drawl. "Ohhh, I tell ya. Yer gonna see singing fish, robots that learn life lessons... Doctor Octopus is going to be working in the mailroom of a large publishing company by November. Listen to me, son, I'll see you right." Uatu takes a drag of his herbal cigarette and picks up his binoculars. "Mate! Look out there! There's a dog ripping a man's face off! You wanna see this, it's off the chain!"

We left Uatu's house with a sense of unease and no answers. He was clearly a mental.

So did Disney even buy Marvel? Some are saying it's a trick to lure us into buying more comics and more DVDs (sorry, Disney DVDs), and some are saying that Joe Quesada walks the streets at night, salting the sidewalk. All we know for sure is that something definitely happened somewhere, possibly involving hostages, but probably just money and cufflinks.

This is Jamie Roberts, for the sake of fillng thirty minutes, signing off until tomorrow.

Sleep well (don't sleepwalk and wee in the wardrobe).

I look back on the last 10-15 years and I realise something. I don't hand-draw anywhere near as much as I used to.

When I moved from the east coast of Yorkshire to relocate in Manchester, I brought with me a whole new attitude, partially because of the 'fresh start' and partially because I'd previously been a graphic designer (a role I haven't been able to regain since moving, but that's a story for another day). I'd shifted my focus from pencil and ink sequential images of superheroes fighting or robots and lizards attacking New York or whatever. My new focus was in the field of character design.

Not like, concept art or costumes for human figures. I was inspired, and remain inspired by Tado, Peskimo, Jon Burgerman, James Jarvis, and more besides. If you don't know who I mean, google them. You won't regret it. Anyway, my tools of choice were pencil and paper, scanner, Illustrator and Photoshop. I experimented and found my style over the years.

The problem was, I started looking at pencil work as nothing more than a rough guide for me to smarten up in Illustrator. I even produced a 36-page comic that way, there are no pencilled pages (that reminds me, the comic never saw the light of day... maybe I should get back onto that). So imagine my surprise when I was advised by a fellow artist to maybe offer hand-drawn artwork in my commissions and, upon giving it a try, I really enjoyed it.

Now, suddenly my sketchbook has become something I can go to with a real purpose. I bought a flexible curve which doesn't sound like much but it'll help me a lot (I have a mild hand tremor). I bought white-out and markers. I am absolutely rejuvenated! Suddenly, I'm drawing sketch cards, portraits and experimental pieces.

A few more days of practice and I'll offer physical art in addition to digital art.

Ain't it marvelous?


RE-POSTED

I'm opening commissions again for a short period.

From now until midnight 1st August, I'm rocking the commission boat for all-digital work.

To make it simple, there are three price bands according to the type of work.

******************************************************

Simple bean man (example - link) - $12

Geometric portrait (example - link) - $20

Detailed bean man (example - link) - $25,
and $10 per extra character.

*******************************************************

I'm opening commissions again for a short period.

From now until midnight 1st August, I'm rocking the commission boat for all-digital work.

To make it simple, there are three price bands according to the type of work.

************************************************** ****

Simple bean man (example - link) - $12

Geometric portrait (example - link) - $20

Detailed bean man (example - link) - $25,
and $10 per extra character.

************************************************** *****

After 1st August, I'll re-assess whether this is still going. If I get swamped, I'll update this blog.

Cheers, peeps!

Let me be frank. My sketch cards are raising a grand total of $2 for charity so far. That's not going to do bugger all to help the American Cancer Society.

Saturday morning (UK time, I guess midnight Friday night US?), time's up, and I really want to say I did my bit to help raise some cash and help a good cause. Last year, I got six cards and they did okay to a certain degree. This year, I was only sent four cards and I screwed one up, so half the number was all I could contribute anyway. I tried to change my style and choose two well-known Marvel characters (Cable and Wolverine) and one of my favourites (Marshal Law), hoping they'd be more desirable.

Nah. Not so far.

Happily, I have no pride so I'm perfectly comfortable with begging you guys to take a look and see if you can't put in some bids and get the total up. Other artists are doing okay, but it all helps, right?

Go take a look. Linkage? Below! Go!

Spoink!

Cancer. Ladies and gentlemen, 'tis a bad thing. I hate it, as I imagine you and every sane person in the world does. So why would I bring this subject up on what could be to many of you an otherwise bright and happy day, full of fluffy bunnies and (insert favourite flavour) pie?

It's because the guys at Comics2Games are holding a charity auction in aid of the American Cancer Society. They're doing something good there, and it's the second year they've done this. I'm going to try to contribute every year. I did Thundercats headshots last year, but they didn't go for as much as I'd hoped.

So if you feel like doing something nice, check out my cards and put in a bid. I'll be your friend.

Check out the whole auction here.

Due to an unexpected personal financial meltdown, I'm taking commissions all of a sudden! Ummm... yay!

Each commission will be priced at $7, so I'm almost giving them away. If you're not familiar with my style, they'll be along these lines: Bean Men: Series X

So that's the deal. Requests will be taken from now on and I'll do my best to do at least one every day. These pics will be seen only by you, the customer, unless you say otherwise (I'll put a watermark over anything that goes in my gallery).

If you want a unique high-res 'bean man' for the price of a really terrible videogame, either send me a message or e-mail me at: monkeyvsbadger @ yahoo dot co dot uk.

PS: More than one character in the same image? Let's talk.

This week, life has been a series of increasingly irrelevant questions.

How will I continue to cope with my new sleeping pattern?

Recently, I realised this kick in the backside I've been requiring for some time was not something that I thought about when I got home from work. It's all well and good having ten minutes of inspiration, but some people need reminders, some people need to totally adjust their life. In my case, the latter is true. So rather than getting home from work at 7pm and having no motivation after 8 hours of staring at a PC screen, I decided to cunningly get up at 6am and work on my art then. That way, when I lose motivation or start to feel tired, it's only my day job that suffers! Take that, 'the system'!

It's not going too badly, since now I have a laptop to work on, I don't even have to get out of bed to finish commissions and get some substantial progress going. Woo!

Why do McDonald's breakfast muffins and coffee make me hate myself so much?

That one's easy. It's because, like most people of intelligence, I hate McDonald's for what they represent and what they are. But damn, those breakfasts are goooood. And let's be fair, the coffee is good too and it stops me going to Starbucks. Although at least Starbucks have Fair Trade coffee... Knackers. What a quandary. To be continued.

How much is Watchmen going to blow me away?

IMAX. Tonight. Followed by beer with friends. I love the comic, and from the reviews I've read so far, it's faithful enough to please fans. So the answer to that one is... lots.

What's the best thing to spend £75 of Amazon vouchers on?

Thanks to my ace family, I had that decision to make. The answer?

DVDs: Rec, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, Cloverfield, There Will be Blood, Labyrinth, The Dark Knight.
CDs: Fleet Foxes 'Fleet Foxes', Justice 'Cross', Midnight Juggernauts 'Dystopia', Smashing Pumpkins 'Siamese Dream', Friendly Fires 'Friendly Fires'.

Good times.

How is it possible for a crack to appear on your slide-phone's screen, but the screen itself to remain intact?

Dunno, but I'm glad I forgot to cancel the insurance I thought was unnecessary.

Is it weird to go to see a band on your own?

One of my favourite bands right now is Everything Everything. I don't get as excited by music and artists as I used to (but I am in my thirties now, so gimme a break) and this band are the first in ages I can just listen to at any time. The fact they're based in Manchester is a bonus, but their Manchester show is sold out. They played in Lancaster on Wednesday and I was really up for going. Sadly, my friends couldn't make it, and I was faced with the option of going alone or missing it and hoping I can get tickets for the rescheduled Liverpool gig when it's announced. I chickened out and opted for number two.

But if I had gone alone... would that have been strange? I mean, it's an hour's drive so I couldn't drink and do the social thing at the bar (I couldn't anyway, I'm criminally shy). When the band come on, of course, it's all irrelevant. The focus is on the stage. Until then though... potentially lots of time to kill.

The final question...

Not having moved since I started typing this blog, will I have any feeling in my buttocks when I stand up?

Unlikely.

Anyway, in case anyone's interested, I've done a series of Bean Men based on the X-Men characters over the last couple of weeks. There's a whole gallery of them here and here. Enjoy!

Wednesday has come around very quickly for me this week. No surprise there, as I took this week off work, to catch up on artwork and just to get that bit of breathing space. The last day off I had was in August last year, and Christmas... well, it's hardly a time to put your feet up, is it? So, it's nice to not have to be somewhere, although the January finances won't stretch to many activities or journeys.

One journey I am definitely soing to have to take soon (maybe this week, but I dunno) is a trip to Glencairn in Scotland to visit the Laird's Retreat. Oh yeah, I'm the proud owner of a square foot of Scottish land, which means I am now officially a Laird. I can change all my official documents if I want! Maybe I'll buy some tweed and a flute, and just stand on a rock up there pretending to be Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.

So... anyway. I'm being a productive little monkey this week. Working on an 8-page colouring job for Nightmare World (it's comin', Dirk! I'll update very soon!) and once that's done, I've got a couple of short commissions to finish. Stuff that's been on the back burner is finally ready to be moved to the... well, the front burner, I guess. Steve and Scott, that means our respective projects. Then there's the small matter of my solo efforts; submissions to 'The DFC' and my webcomic.

"Webcomic? Pull the other one and a large trapdoor will open to reveal a dancing camel and a neon sign saying 'Yeah, right! You've told us that one before!', you slacker."

How rude. But fair. There have been more false starts to this project than some kind of amusing simile which is just out of my reach right now. And I've had plenty of coffee today, too. Jeez.

The point is, I honestly want to get on with it and I have new ideas every day. Sketches, dialogue, ways of creating reader interaction... I want it to be revolutionary (very apt, considering the subject matter...) and like no comic you've ever read. Art style is nothing like my usual stuff. There'll be more graphic design elements than you would normally see in a comic. I'm trying to incorporate other media. Seriously, I have big plans for this. Somewhere on the internet is the webspace and the site, just ready for me to start. See? Progress (after a fashion).

The truth is, my own creations can wait until I fulfil my commitments to my collaborators, or at least get it down to a manageable workload. Let this be a lesson to thee, fellow creators. A lesson in how to resist the temptation to just say "Yes!" to everything you are offered. Everything has value, whether monetary, in terms of exposure or just keeping your interest, but be realistic about what you can achieve. And never, ever let a setback put you off.

If you stop believing you can make it based off of one rejection, or one negative review/comment, a collaboration that fell through, or months of hard work on something that never saw the light of day... remember that nothing's changed with your ability or your goal. Just your attitude.

Rambling now. Before I sign off, here's a few music recommendations for ya.

Everything Everything
http://www.myspace.com/everythingeverythinguk
Ida Maria
http://www.myspace.com/idamaria
Dinosaur Pile-up
http://www.myspace.com/dinosaurpileup
Santogold
http://www.myspace.com/santogold
Stars and Sons
http://www.myspace.com/starsandsonsuk
Ten Bears
http://www.myspace.com/tenbearsmusic

So I've started to fall into that trap of over-doing artwork. I spend a looong time on some of my li'l bean men and although I like the results, I'm losing sight of why I started doing it in the first place.

I love designer vinyl toys and collectable packaging, I love Munnys and Cardboy and Tado and Squink and all of that good stuff. When I go into Magma (a cool store in Manchester's Northern Quarter; probably a chain, actually) and see DIY pinhole cameras and sketchbooks and pop-up calendars, I feel so stunted, creatively. Time to go back to basics and think back to why I first made the switch from purely comic book art to my current output.

So I've started simplifying things. I'm trying out a template (still illustrating comic book characters, but that's my passion, after all) that I'll only change to a lesser degree than before, and only when absolutely necessary. Simple shapes, flat colours and ultra-cuteness. If it works, and I'm still enjoying it next month, I'll think of practical uses. Here's hoping.