Policy Police Cards

I've fancied doing this for a little while now, and had thought about it a little recently. Then last weekend my son was at a chess tournament, so I designed these while I was waiting in the "Parent Pen". It was in a primary school, with little chairs. So you can understand how I suffer for my art.

The reverse says "Call the POLICY POLICE" along with the url for this site. I got them produced by moo.com - and I had them within the week. Maybe I should start leaving them in phone boxes... do people still use those?

Policy Police: Return of the repossessed #1

At last the next longer story begins. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Return of the Repossessed.

I suppose I've been thinking about this story for about a year now. It's changed direction several times in the face of a real world that has been in a state of flux. I've even changed the name over that time, but I've settled now on name#3.
There are 11 episodes scripted, so it should come to an end in December 2011.

As you can guess, the challenge was to come up with something that had the legs for the long haul in our turbulent world. I think it's up to the task. See what you think.

Where things are with Policy Police right now

I was talking to a friend the other night and mentioned that I'd got episodes scripted until December this year. It sounded a bit mad just saying it, so I dug them out and read them. To my relief I quite like them. They will be tweaked some as each episode gets drawn, but I'm happy with the overall direction of the story.

Which is good, because I'm thinking a lot about the drawing stage right now. I'm still working on drawing the first episode of the upcoming story, but it's nearly there. I've been learning about working with panels and pages in Manga Studio as I work towards the next Policy Police book... I've reworked one of the short stories into page format now, but I think the whole thing will take some time. As much because the 20-frame screen version has become a 29-panel, 6-page version for the book. 

Anyway. I'm guessing the first episode of new story will be posted within the week. Something to look forward to.

Bad Advice....

Instead of cracking on with the next episode, I've recently got distracted into a competition run by Mario Live whose little tutorials are teaching me how to use Manga Studio. So, to encourage him, and learn about using panels at the same time I did this little one-pager:

http://mario-live.com/blog/2011/01/drawing-contest-2-participant-3-steve-davies/

You can vote for me by hitting the Facebook like-button you'll find at that link.

 

More historical artefacts

I've been riffling through some of my old stuff and I found this little collection of illustrations.

Richard Evans

Back in the late 80s and early 90s I worked at TSBs management college in Solihull. Our unit produced a couple of training programmes using 12" videodisks. I did these pictures to illustrate an article written by my then boss (Theresa Barnett) about how they were produced. It's available here if your organisation has access to Emerald.

Probably the most amusing thing for me is the old new technology in the pictures. These were the things that surrounded me in my office at the time - 5.25" floppy disks, the big TV/monitor, the VHS camcorders.

In fact I was so pleased to see these after all these years, that I've decided to re-draw the people so that I can use them in Policy Police. I'm sure Big Hair will be back by 2025. Maybe a fashion that's just going away again...

Policy Police: Cutting a Dash 2: It's back!

First comic of 2011, and I've really enjoyed doing it. Getting to grips with Manga Studio and all. As I said in the previous post, this is a sequel to Cutting a Dash, from about 18 months ago. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Rapid Response.
 

 I don't know what influenced me to revisit this one. I guess partly because I spent so many months with the consultants and senior managers building a dashboard. The pain lingers on.

What will 2011 bring for the Policy Police?

Three things.

First of all, BARGAINS! Blurb has sent me some promotional codes so that you can get free flat-rate shipping on one order placed before 31st January 2011. This will allow you to get up to 3 books sent (via the slowest method - ie post) for FREE. I think these codes may also count for DISCOUNT on the more expensive shipping methods. Anyway. Here are the codes and amounts in whatever your local currency may be. You should enter the code (ie SHARE, or whatever) in the box provided at checkout. And get up to 3 of my books for a mere £3.25 each.

US ($6.99) = SHARE
GBP (£3.99) = SHAREUK
EUR (E5.99) = SHAREEU
CAD ($7.99) = SHARECAN
AUD ($9.99) = SHAREAUD

January will also bring the last of the recent batch of one- and two-part stories. It's going to be a sequel to Cutting a Dash, which is about 18 months old now. It asks the question, "What happens to the dashboard when the strategy changes?"

Then the rest of 2011 will be taken up with a new 11-part Policy Police story. This one gets a bit dark at times, as austerity begins to bite within The Agency.