Sunday Coincidence

Darn! Another coincidence, this time with fellow Brit and King Features cartoonist Alex Hallatt of 'Arctic Circle'. I do remember a conversation where we were both thinking of a scrabble joke but had no idea we were doing it for the same day.
BTW Alex has a lovely new site for her strip to celebrate it's 2nd birthday in syndication. Click here for a peek.

Belleville Rendezvous by Sylvain Chomet

If you haven't seen Sylvain Chomet's Belleville Rendezvous then you're in for a treat. The animation is just stunning. The backgrounds are to die for but there are two truly gorgeous scenes I wanted to show you. The first is the house witnessing the march of time and the second is the fantastic freight ship chase across the sea. Isn't that a cool way to draw a ship? Cyclists amongst you will love the story too. Enjoy.

Loch Ness Monster Photo

Wow! Look what Google Earth picked up at Loch Ness in Scotland. Yes, finally, it's conclusive proof of the existence of Photoshop, I mean, Nessie.
Click here for the full story.

The Attic Pigeons Series 1

Another chance to see the first series starring Barbara and Nigel, the attic Pigeons.

Morning Glory Clouds over Australia

I know I'm a bit of a bore-nerd-geek about Nasa's Daily Astronomy Picture of the Day Website but I had to show you this incredible photo. Have you ever seen clouds like these? Click here for a description.

H.Amster

O&Q appear on a Swedish newspaper website and every now and again this guy pops up in their banner. His name always gives me a giggle.

Pearls Before Ollie and Quentin

Like a lot of us I'm a big fan of Stephan Pastis' 'Pearls Before Swine'. I was delighted to see today's PBS being very similar to a joke I did a while back. I know Stephan works a long way in advance so there's every possibility he did this first but, hey it's nice to see the greats thinking like us small fry.

Breakfast in Bed

Actually I hate breakfast in bed. It's so awkward and uncomfortable and crumby and my legs get all hot and restless. Does anyone REALLY enjoy eating in bed?

Drop Shot

I had to make the tennis ball pink to get away with this.

Stephen The Lawyer

Stephen really exists. He's my oldest (and shortest) friend from school. I was best man at his wedding, he IS a lawyer, charges at least that much per hour and... actually he can't draw. Plays hockey for England though, but that's another comic.

He's grown now.

"Who are those two people in my photo?"

A laugh out loud moment in the paper this morning and it wasn't the comics...
This cheeky ground squirrel popped up in the foreground after Melissa Brandts and her husband had set the timer on their camera for a picture of them by Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, Canada.

Perseid Meteor Shower

In celebration of this week's Perseid Meteor shower...

(Thanks to Mike Lynch for the reminder).

!!!!!!

I like this strip but reading it afresh today I noticed just how many exclamation marks I've put in it. Far too many! Less is more in my strip and I should have taken a few of them out.

Today's Sunday Strip

Just so you can see today's Sunday strip in it's entirety.

My view

This is the view I have from my attic studio. It's where I do all the computer bits of my strip (scanning and coloring). We live at the top of a hill so my view stretches to the horizon. On a clear day I can see London over to the right. The sunsets can be fab from here and it's a really cheap spot to enjoy the town fireworks on bonfire night (Nov. 5th).

"Where do you get your ideas?" #632

Ok, this is a pretty lame strip and I bet you can guess where the idea came from. I write in coffee shops and enjoy the noise of life going on around me. I even pick up good comic strip topics from overheard conversations which is always a bonus. One thing I do have to endure, though, is screaming kids. I've had two of my own so I'm not really complaining but there are times when you think the child really needs to leave 'cos it's been screaming the place down for half an hour. Some parents eh?

While I'm on the subject, the results are in:

Best Americano Coffee... Costa (although it does keep me awake till 2am)
Best Decaff Americano... Cafe Nero
Worst Decaff Americano... Starbucks (I have never tasted anything so foul. I honestly thought they must have scooped a mug of dishwater out of the sink).

IMHO

My home page

My home page is Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Sounds really nerdy and dweeby but some of the photos are just gorgeous and not all deep space Hubble shots. Here are some of this year's favorites.

Lucky Plant

This is my "Lucky Plant" given to me when I moved to a new studio in 2006. Within days King Features contacted me saying they wanted to syndicate my comic strip. Wow, it had worked!
Since then it has flourished in the same way that the comic industry has.

Who let the dogs out?

I was interested to see how this joke would work for my Swedish readers so I put "Staten och Kapitalet" into my translator program and it came up as "State and Capital"!? I hope that worked in Swedish 'cos it sounds very odd to me.

Red

I'm really pleased with that final frame. I tried coloring everyone in normal colors but it just didn't work so I went for red throughout. I like it so much I now use it for the reverse side of my Ollie and Quentin business card (except I've taken that frown off Quentin's face).