Ollie & Quentin Book

Ollie & Quentin Book
125 pages in full colour!

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Happy Merry Jolly Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope yours was better than mine as I've been ill with flu all Christmas. Cough cough, sniff, wheeze...

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Unedited


My editor asked me to change Ollie's arms in the last frame as he was worried that readers might think he's pushed the snowball into his own face. I agreed that it was a bit confusing and to have his hands by his sides would be better. Trouble is, I'd already sent it off so it was too late. Darn, that'll always bug me now!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

And the answer is...


"Alien" of course! Here's the reference picture I used.

Monday, December 14, 2009

It's "Guess The Movie" Monday...


Coming to a Funny Page near you soon.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Samples Update

I've added a few new comics to the Ollie and Quentin website samples page. Click here to have a look.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Sunday strip in full


I'm a big fan of Tintin. My favorite adventure is 'Tintin in Tibet'. If you look closely you'll see Ollie is reading it in the drop panel. Quentin is enjoying 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.

Saturday, December 05, 2009

No snow in Spring, Summer or Fall.


I like this one but wrote and sketched it last February so missing the snowy season. It's been burning a hole in my 'to do' pile ever since. Finally it gets its winter viewing.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Sat Nav, Watch and Cash...


...it must be my son's 21st Birthday! Gaaah! Am I really old enough to have a son of 21?!

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Champagne Breakfast, Socks and a new Bike...


...it must be my birthday!

Say hello to your neighbors

My mother heard a loud crash near her house. A car crash obviously. It wasn't till the next day when she went outside did she realize it was her car that had been smashed. An idiot (drunk) has rammed into the side of it totally destroying it. The creep then drove off. A neighbor saw this happen and leapt into his car to give chase. He caught the jerk up and managed to get his license plate. He called the police who arrested the moron. My mom didn't find this out till the next day. When I said what a good neighbor this guy is she said she'd never even said hello to him because she "didn't like the look of him". How wrong can you be? She feels awful and is going to pay him a visit with a big box of chocs.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Friday, November 27, 2009

Mom's email


My mom isn't very tech savvy and often needs help getting her *@%*@%$ printer to print. We're buying her her own laptop for her 70th birthday soon so the swearing is only going to get worse.

Math


Anyone spot the deliberate mistake? Actually it wasn't deliberate to begin with but then I decided to keep my math error in.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Sunday Color


I like the look of this. This is the color file for a forthcoming Sunday. I always color my strips in Photoshop on a separate layer anyway and sometimes it's fun just to see what the color-only layer looks like. I think this works nicely because it's taking place in the snow.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Alex Hallatt interviewed on Scott Nickel's Blog


This week fellow Brit and fellow King Features Cartoonist Alex Hallatt is interviewed over on Scott Nickel's excellent blog. Every week Scott gets cartoonists to answer questions about themselves and their feature. It's well worth a read. I love Alex's answer to the best thing about being a cartoonist.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Typing Errors

I always seem to make the same typing errors. If a word has a double letter in it I always double up the wrong one. Eg. "Spoon" would become "Sponn" or "Green" becomes "Grren"
Another favorite is "Toady" instead of "Today", I think this is when a real word can be made out of another.

Thank goddness my work is checked.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Comma? Huh?


I have no idea why a comma has been added after "goodness" in today's comic but it wasn't me!

Rejeggt


I don't get many comic roughs rejected (which is a relief because I do such tight pencils) but this one didn't make it. I quite like it but, as my brilliant editor put it, "the clever factor is low!"

Monday, November 09, 2009

Our House


This is my lovely house. We've lived here for 18 years. Today we exchanged contracts so our gorgeous home is now sold. Teresa immediately burst into tears. Now I am frantically sorting, packing, ebaying, dumping and moving our stuff as well as doing my comic strip. The next few weeks are going to be crazy.

Newspaper v. Online News


I have little interest in reading news online and much prefer a newspaper. That said I prefer to read comics online. The size, print quality, choice and sheer number of comics in a newspaper puts me off. Apart from a handful of features that look better in black and white (Cul de Sac, Lio and Non Sequitur to name but three) I prefer color comics too so online is where I go. Ollie and Quentin looks a hundred times better in color than black and white. Thank goodness for King Features' 'Comics Kingdom'. In the UK daily comics are often printed in color, it's a shame that's not the case in the US.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

6 foot 6


Of course there are exceptions but I really do think taller people are happier, calmer and generally more content than small folk. Apparently we're also perceived as being wealthier too (which is a joke in my case). The problem is the world isn't built for us over six footers as we hit our heads everywhere, can't squeeze our legs into airline seats and never get clothes to fit.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Rainbow


Moments ago outside my studio window.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Ollie's Flock


It was only a matter of time before we met Ollie's flock. What a handsome bunch.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Happy Birthday Esme


Happy Birthday to my wonderful, gorgeous, lovely daughter Esme who is celebrating her 18th with friends in beautiful Dublin, Ireland.

And to the lowlife that stole her purse and all her money on her birthday, I hope something particularly disfiguring, embarrassing and painful plagues you in the years ahead. Something like leprosy.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Ruder and Funnier



My thanks to Jonathan Lemon of Rabbits Against Magic fame for alerting me to this. It's taken from Dean's Comic Booth blog and it looks like he alters comics to make another joke. In my case a much ruder and funnier one. Here's his version with mine above it.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Lost in Translation (USA)



I'm not sure if cafetieres are widely used in the US so this joke might fall flat for many of you. Here in the UK this is actually quite funny. You see the plunger on the cafetiere is very like those plungers you get when detonating explosives in condemned tower blocks. Every time I plunge I think about a building collapsing somewhere.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Lost in Translation



Did this work in Swedish? It's a dreadful English pun. I wrote it when I didn't have any foreign clients so didn't expect to have translation issues. I know the Swedish translator of my comic does a really good job usually so I'd like to know what they did here.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Earthworms


Can you guess what's going on here?

Leaves


This week's Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers reminds me of a guy in Guildford who doesn't wait for the leaves to fall off this one tree near his house. Every year at this time he actually snips all the leaves off the branches before they get a chance to litter the grass!

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Return of the Eggs


The Mischievous Eggs are back! Originally based on Spook and Rosanna, my nephew and niece, they've come for a prolonged visit this time. They've burnt their nest down and Ollie has to Eggsit them while his sister rebuilds it. She takes her time. It'll be weeks before she collects them again.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Coincidences



I love my coincidences. Today I've been inking and coloring up a sunday comic all about a meteor and look what my Astronomy Picture of the Day home page photo is today.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Mop



I like today's comic but I HATE THAT MOP! Why did I draw it like that? It looks like a crazy haystack or something. I should've drawn it like the above. Darn.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Controversy


I am not surprised this comic didn't make it through the final approval stage. What was I thinking? Because 'Ollie and Quentin' isn't controversial, isn't cynical, political, topical and rarely has a message of any weight I guess I hoped people would read this strip as it was intended, just to be a bit of fun about two eggs not really existing until they hatch. How naive can I be?

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Rabbits Against Ollie and Quentin



I think Jonathan Lemon's 'Rabbits Against Magic' feature is 'Ollie and Quentin's' long lost comic strip twin. We obviously share a sense of humor as we seem to touch on such similar topics. (Remember our "Homophone" coincidence recently?) Not at all surprised to learn that Jonathan originated from the UK, after all it's where the best sense of humor comes from. Cough.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Cow Attacks


The world is definitely getting madder. There have been a spate of cow attacks here in the UK, usually on people walking their dogs too near cows with young calves. This reminds me of a story my mum told me when she was walking her little fat pug in a field of cows last year. The cows got spooked by little plump Otto and chased after him. Trouble is he has a habit of fainting when exerted and promptly keeled over in mid stampede. My mum had to scoop him up and run out of the field with him slung over her back like one of those soft animal backpacks kids buy.

Friday, October 02, 2009

Stupid Idiot Gary


Gary is Quentin's rival for Rosie's affection and is always referred to by his full title of 'Stupid Idiot Gary'. Apologies to all those Gary's who aren't stupid idiots.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Rhinomato


Off topic here but I had to show you this weird tomato we grew. We call it The Rhinomato or Hippomato for obvious reasons.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Crossover Comic


My attempt at a crossover comic. Apologies if, like me, you're not a fan of these rather embarrassing strips.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Chable and Dork



I think that's probably it for this joke. Spife? Knork?
Nah.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Party Crasher


Hee Hee, every now and again my Google ad appears on other comic sites. I've seen it beside the excellent Pooch Cafe and Pearls Before Swine Comics and today it made an appearance on the Dilbert site. Looking at it now has made me decide to include an Ollie and Quentin comic strip which I could change weekly. Is that a bit cheeky?