Ok,
dont come running at me all at once iPhone games developers, because i have come up with the greatest idea for an iphone game yet. move over crazy SHERDS, this is gonna be mega.

Its called 'Drop it on Roger' and the game play is essentially that. You must drop things on Roger. Here's the setting:

Roger is a spy. He has broken into a secret facility and stolen A SECRET DOCUMENT. something that mustn't be revealed to the public. This building is protected by a secure intruder alert system but Roger is a sly little pooch and has shut it down. At its wit's end, the Central Computer locks all the doors in the facility and resorts to you, a lowly air conditioning system program. You must assist the Central Computer in stopping Roger.

Using a limitless supply of HEAVY BOXES in the attic of the facility and the ridiculously complex system of fans and air ducts you must coax HEAVY BOXES to fall on Roger's head.

Each level is a room, the very bottom of which is where Roger is, running back and forth desperately trying to unlock the door and escape. Each room has a time limit which is the time it takes Roger to pick the lock and escape the room. Above the room is a veritable maze of fans and ducts which you must guide a box through so that it falls and hits Roger on the bonce. once you do that, you will stun him but he will still move onto the next room. As will you.

Here's a screenshot what i drew all by myself.


The controls are simple. One touch of the screen turns all the fans on. One touch turns them all off. When a fan is on, the HEAVY BOX moves in the direction of the arrow only, and when it reaches a wall it stops against that wall. At any point if you turn the fans off, the box will fall. If you catch it in another stream it will immediately move in that new direction but if it hits the floor it will break and you'll have to use a new one. There will be bonuses for having the fans on for the shortest amount of time and for completing the room with only one box or in the shortest time possible.

There will be a slight over-arcing narrative about what the facility is doing and what secrets Roger has been able to steal. This will of course be a humourous narrative (yeah, ive been playing Portal 2, im alright with blatant hero worship and imitation)

so there you go. if you're an iphone video game developer and you're reading this GO MENTAL but make sure you use ME to illustrate the game and create all the game sprites... thats all i ask. if you dont i will drop things on YOU. oh and ive already created demo levels of this at home on a crude games development program so ill poshen them all up a bit and make them availiable for download if you like? yeah?

next big hit people... next. big. hit.

i love this stuff. i dont want to draw stuff like this but i definitely draw inspiration from it... i love the ridiculous-ness. some sci fi is a bit caught up in whats real and what's possible.
i love going back to the roots of it all and showing us impossible worlds, flights of fantasy... lets go somewhere you can never go.
its raw imagination and its ace, check these i found on a recent google haul:






this one particularly is amazing. we need more Nautipuss.



and i love this monster... i dont think even it knows what it is



awesome Vangelis cover. this reminds me of Chris Foss stuff...



odd... but great. reminds me of Twelve Monkeys.



im not sure how old this last one is... looks newer than the rest, but its got the same sensibilities... i like it a lot.

hope you like

so im currently knee deep in 7STRING issue 1.
it feels so good to be finally drawing this after what seems like EONS of planning. the whole thing is gonna be full colour like this what you see here.
im going to release it as issues at cons and such, all the while hoping someone at the top will give a shit.
nothin's gonna stop me drawing it though.... this is me for the rest of the year... at least.

so i'll post the odd page to whet yo appetites.
this is an early page.
hope you like

So, first up, apologies for not having posted in a while. ive kinda had my head down, working non-stop and actually haven't had a chance to come up for air and actually THINK about what im doing. I think thats what this blog is good for. To air my thoughts about comix and the work im doing and if anyone reads it or gives a shit then thats a bonus. Mostly i kinda need to get it out.

You see, ive been thinking about what it is thats driving me so hard at the moment. To the extent that although i feel like im drawing some of my best stuff EVER im still not happy. And then i worked it out the other day.

Its validation. I could draw the greatest comic book of ALL TIME but if no-one saw it, or no-one cared it would be rather pointless. Now dont get me wrong here, im not saying i have drawn the greatest comic book OR that i am only drawing comix for the accolades of my adoring public. Im really not.

Im drawing comix because i love them. Because i love the industry, the community and i love other comix creators. I love how with a comic, you can single handedly create a world and then tell a story within it. You make it exist and you control every element. How your world and your buddy's world can sit on a table next to eachother, like parallel universes... I truly believe comics to be the best medium for telling stories...

The validation i require is being a part of that world. For people to see me as a comic book creator, creating worlds and comics that they enjoy. If i love it so much and have put so much of myself into it, i want to be recognised as part of it. I want to be part of the gang.

To a certain extent i do feel part of the gang. Im a regular face at UK cons now and i have many people who come to seek ME out and are always happy to see me. This makes me IMMENSELY happy. I also have a group of comix dudes, we always hit up the same cons and i love all of their work. You guys know who you are...

But i think they, like me, want to KNOW that they are a comic book artist. And im increasingly getting the feeling that i will never know for sure. That you are only a comic book artist in the eyes of OTHERS (other artists and your audience). From my own eyes i am just a guy who struggles to draw in the time left over from his dayjob, which he needs to pay the rent, and then goes to bed every night wishing he could just draw and somehow live because THATS ALL I WANT TO DO WITH EVERY HOUR GOD SENDS.
Its like im always disappointed because i cant say with absolute 100% truth:
'I AM A COMIC BOOK ARTIST'
i instead have to suffix it with:
'...who works at a school to pay the rent and self-publishes his own books whilst simultaneously bankrupting himself'

I want to be able to wear it as a badge. When i first came out of uni i got a cleaning job and had to clean at the high school i went to as a kid. I could see all the teachers who remembered me, looking down at me as if to say 'wow, he's done well for himself hasn't he'
the few that talked to me i would manage to force into conversation: 'yeah but im ALSO working as a freelance illustrator.' the truth was i was getting max 1 commission a month and nothing more.

I think its totally natural to want to be able to turn around when someone asks what you do and say that you are doing what you love and what you've aspired to do all your life. Instead its always a bit complicated and there's always a part of it that makes the whole thing sound rubbish in other people's eyes.

I do know that most artists have a dayjob. And its the lucky ones who either make it big, get a grant or live some other way that can do it all the time and hence can call themselves 100% hardcore comix dudes. But i bet if you asked them they wouldn't say its so, completely for certain.

I guess what im saying is, in this industry its really difficult to know where you stand. Because even the huge names in comix aren't celebrities (except maybe Stan Lee but we all know he doesn't really count).
Bottom line is, as much as i dont know where i am and whether i will ever be a comic book artist in anyone else's eyes, im gonna keep drawing.
Its like thats the only thing you can ever be sure of... whether you're drawing or not. And i am... so if you are too... lets be comic book artists together.

Here's a transformers picture i drew for Titan. If they like it i might get a transformers gig. that'd rule. fingers crossed.

Hey guys, i just finshed drawing this:



... and im supremely happy with it. its the cover for my hype building extravagant introduction to my major comic project 7STRING. a collection of short stories in full colour introducing the characters and world from my upcoming musical sci-fi epic. it will be for sale at my table at Leeds Comiccon and then after that ONLINE!! in a special shop i will create from nothing but CODE.

i also drew this cos i love autumn:



i love this season so much. that chill in the air without it being cold. Halloween and Bonfire night and my birthday. Its all just right. You can be outside for ages and not get too hot or too cold providing you're dressed right
and the girls. they have this amazing combo of slightly revealing and wrapped up warm. this picture was a sketch i did in my sketchbook of a girl in town. i love how she's wearing hotpants with kneesocks but then a jacket and scarf. its so conflicted but so goddamn awesome.

also dont forget to check out my DAILY webcomic Cat and Meringue at their special website
catandmeringue.wordpress.com

thanks dudes, hope you all good

hey guys, just a little shout to say Cat and Meringue have their very own spot on the web now. head to http://catandmeringue.wordpress.com to see their adventures updated daily. im actually really into it (which is good considering im drawing one every day) and i have big plans. so jam a big spear-shaped bookmark into that page and check it out every day!
also i got this amazing tribute from the legendary Nikki Stu:



i would love to see what anyone else made of the cat and the meringue...
hope you're all gooooooood

just finished drawing this and thought id share... im well happy with this one. been in a bit of an art funk lately hating on my stuff, whenever i get like that ive got to draw myself out of it and that usually means spending ages on a pic to get it perfect... ive got this damn close to perfect.

hope you're all having a good nite

my new daily comic. It is the adventures of a Cat and a Meringue in a boat of modern design.





i will probably update weekly on LJ but if you follow me on Twitter you can watch the epic unfold on a day by day basis. im @nichangell

hope you all good

here's the double page comic which forms the first work ive done for Titan. im super stoked i got to do this and there's another 2 on the way, as well as whatever else i get in the future.
these GoGo characters are quite fun to draw and the stress on colour is huge. which suits me.
unfortunately i dont have the lettering as someone else did that but i think it tells its story quite successfully without!



also my book 'A Brief History of the Next Universe' is literally inches from being finished. I MAY have some copies ready for perusal at Thoughtbubble if im lucky but most of them are going to be winging their way to publishers to get THAT ball rolling. that ought to be interesting.
still gotta try these things.

im seriously contemplating quitting my dayjob and moving back in with my parents just so i can do comics full time. i dont know how you other comic artists do it but the evenings and weekends just aren't enough for me and im working nearly constantly on my drawins!

i care so much about 7STRING and my 5000 other projects, and they just dont get a look in at the moment. still, i shall be at all the cons i can be and i will have a tasty new full colour 7STRING book at Thoughtbubble in november so SEE YOU THERE!!

take care dudes