Ollie & Quentin Book

Ollie & Quentin Book
125 pages in full colour!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Rants and Raves by RC Harvey


RC Harvey has written a short piece on 'Ollie and Quentin'. He's been fairly kind although there are aspects of my feature that he doesn't like.
He describes my strip as "Pastis-ische" which I'd never considered before. In my defence I hadn't even heard of the fantastic Pearls Before Swine till 2006 which is a good 5 or more years after I started my strip. He finds the simplicity of my drawing boring which is a shame but purely a matter of taste. I'd like to draw like Richard Thompson of Cul De Sac fame but I'm stuck with my own style which I'm very happy with. I hope that the simplicity makes for easy reading. In the words of the great Mort Walker I like readers to have "read the strip before they realize it". I do try to avoid lazy headshot strips and add more backgrounds than most. Where possible I do try to change the 'camera position' too.
However I do thank him for taking the time to study and write about my feature. Any publicity is very welcome.
Click here to have a read of his piece.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I'm impressed... you have a critic. It means you're being noticed. Thankfully he wasn't a very critical critic. I for one like the consistency of your drawing style, and the suprising twists of your writing style. I guess that means you have both a critic and a fan. Congratulations! Matt Underwood

Piers Baker said...

Thanks Matt. You're right, I was beginning to wonder if anyone had noticed my feature so I'm delighted it's being talked about.

arcticcircle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ELIZABETH said...

"Not superior but not altogether ordinary either."

He really liked it but didn't want to gush...critics do that so they don't sound soft. *smile*

I like your art work just the way it is.

Piers Baker said...

Thanks Elizabeth, you're very kind. I'm fine with everything RCH said. As I mentioned I'm delighted he took the time to read O&Q properly.

Hi Alex, how's the head? Take a look at RC Harvey's website. www.rcharvey.com Some of his own work is there. Maybe you could do a piece about his cartoons?

arcticcircle said...

Okay... I'm recovered now. If you get 9 out of 10 good reviews, it's the 1 in 10 that gets to you...