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.

A Merry Christmas to all our readers

Here's a tag cloud Christmas card done on tagxedo.com allegedly based on this blog.

Certainly gives some kind of insight into how robots see us. I only ever did one post about Nana, for instance, but the number of times I had to say "Nana" to explain about Nana... see what I mean, I'm doing it again. I obviously use the contracted form of have (ie 've) a lot, too. Or at least I think that's what it means. And why some words I've only used once and not others... but I like it, cuz of its foibles not despite them.

Merry Christmas, people.

"With regret... you're Fired."

I had The Meeting the other day. The one where you get the bit of paper that says you're being made redundant. By and large, The Organisation has done pretty well, followed all the procedures and done everything properly.

One of the things that had to be done was to "minimise compulsory redundancies". And they've done it. Only about 13 of us have actually opted to be pushed.

Back in June, when the closure had just been announced, there were 243 permanent staff members and 106 contractors. At the end of the day, there'll be about 12 in the closure team, about 45 TUPEd, and 13 compulsory redundancies. The contractors just had their plugs pulled and the rest took voluntary severance, or just left.

It's sheer bloody-mindedness that has led me to stand here and demand to be pushed. I know somebody, somewhere will say, "see, only 13 compulsory redundancies." Like everybody else had a choice. At least I can say, "AND I WAS ONE OF THEM." Maybe we ought to wear lilac in our hats like the Night Watch in Terry Pratchett's story.

Me and the minibar

Just a little under a year ago, there was a lot going down in hotels. In my world. You know, conferences, meetings, that sort of thing. In many ways it brings out the adolescent in people who should know better. Drinking, chasing the opposite sex. The sorts of things that were celebrated in the episode "Big Breakfast".

But there's another side to this hotel experience. The loneliness, the separation from your home, your support networks. So I thought of writing another hotel story, the flip-side of Big Breakfast. I was going to use the lyrics of the Dresden Dolls' song "Me and the minibar" as a monologue spoken by the Kid as she gets progressively drunk alone in her hotel room. And because the song ends with the refrain "Happy birthday, us" it was going to be the anniversary issue. But I decided to go with something lighter, to cheer people up. Though I do refer to this possible story in Frame 14 - which is pretty cryptic if you're not inside my head. Anyway, that was the song. And the Jameson-type cyborg is for Ghost in the Shell fans... cuz it looks like a minibar.