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I found this video this morning while browsing Deviant Art. It's an hour long but it talks about gestural figure drawing and touches on storytelling.
For me figure drawing is a real discipline and hard to master, but is essential for sequential art. Within the first 20 minutes when he draws a gesture the penny dropped

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsxBiylAMNM

I hope you good folks find it as entertaining and instructional as I did

Cheers folks

many of the members here meet up at conventions and gatherings throughout the year, so don't be shy, pop along and say hello

Thanks Commando Forces If folks are as friendly there as they are on this forum I will for sure!

Alright folks,

I joined to enter the June art competition and since then I've been lurking and interfering here and there. Folks around here seem pretty decent I've learned a few things too
I've been reading comics since I was 5, and I discovered 2000ad when I was 12. Not long after that I found a stall in my local market where I could buy boxes of old progs for a few quid and since then I've been hooked.

I mostly work with websites for a living, and have found myself in gainful full time employment. I tend to spend the boring parts of my day job doodling, which my colleagues (and boss) tend to encourage. An idle distraction has quickly turned into a hobby and daily activity so expect more art competition entries from me

Doodling: https://boredinmeetings.tumblr.com/
Artses: http://mightybren.deviantart.com/

I also enjoy photography, travelling, and laughing at monkeys.

Photos: https://500px.com/brendanmeachen

I used to promote live music in the South East and publish an arts zine, but everyone around here is boring and no one really contributed much, although I sold out every issue without fail. Promoting live music is expensive, difficult, and tiring, and you meet a lot of awful egos (usually the punters). That said every single musician and artist I ever met has been a wonderful human being and for that I am very grateful.

Eternally an optimist. Always having fun.
Bren

Thanks Jim The price is definitely attractive, along with the backwards compatibility! If Serif can deliver it definitely makes me wonder what Adobe are trying to achieve with their price points.
Lack of Glyphs would be a small inconvenience but presumably I can copy and paste these from elsewhere

I'll give the free trial a go and see how I get on. Other than a learning curve it sounds like a winner. Appreciate the recommendation! Loosing Illustrator CS5 felt like loosing a limb!
Cheers!

I've been looking for an Illustrator alternative since I upgraded Mac OS and CS5 stopped behaving properly. I'd been holding out for a while, and when I saw Creative Cloud I just thought "No". Especially since I replaced Photoshop with more specialised web design tools a long time ago.

How does Affinity Designer compare? It looks awesome from the website, but would appreciate a second opinion from a professional

I've mostly use Illustrator for graphic design work, and some web design, as well as illustration. Decent typography is VERY important to me. I'm the kinda person who gets annoyed when I see badly kerned signage in public spaces.

I've got everything illustration covered with a copy of Manga Studio and a whole suite of wonderful tools on my iPad, so not a huge concern for me.

So what do you think? Does it replace Illustrator, or are there any gotchas?

Most comic artists have had to spend their time In Full time or part time jobs WHILE working as comic artists (I had a part time job working in IT up until 7 years ago.)

That's actually kinda reassuring. I'm stuck in an IT job now and I find it BORING! I'd prefer to be drawing all day long.

I've met a few Illustrators who work as designers on a contract basis. A good portion of the year is spent working a 9-5 office job, while a quarter of the year is spent working as a freelance illustrator.
Contract work pays well but in the creative industries it's VERY competitive. The reason I'm in IT right now is I lost the dick measuring contest with a senior designer in a previous job.

Working in the creative industries is tough, but very rewarding. From my own experience though you need to be prepared to take a lot of criticism (some justified, some not) and be prepared for uncertainty and instability too.

Thanks for your candid post PJ as a newb with high aspirations (and low expectations) I actually find it very encouraging to hear some real world experiences from a real professional. It's humbling and sets some realistic expectations, and just increases the amount of respect I have for comic book artists

What program are you using on the iPad if you don't mind me asking mightybren? That's a great piece

I've tried a few of them and found generally they range from being fiddly and overkill (ProCreate) to strange and fiddly (ArtRage). At the moment I'm primarily using Tayasui Sketches II which is simple and easy to use, and has some very nice art tools. The brush tool for inking is the best I've found so far. The water colour tools are awesome and simple, and behave like real water colours
Also it lets you group your art into sketchbooks, which I find really useful.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/tayasui-sketches-draw-paint/id641900855?mt=8

Lovely work mightybren. Reminds me of Mick Austin, which is a good thing!!

Thanks amines2058! That's high praise Mick Austin is a personal favourite of mine but I didn't make the connection between my style and his at all

A quick iPad sketch form the weekend, while sitting in someone's garden waiting for something to happen

Very old Slaine doodle...

This is a tough vote! The quality of art this month is awesome! The bar has been set very high

My votes...

• Brian Corocoran - Chopper
• Andy Lambert2 - Flight to the Death!
• james newell - Midnight Surfer

Honourable Mentions

• Uwe de Witt3 - Chopper
• Neil McClements - Chopper
• Jan Lyew - Dredd & Chopper
• Steven Denton - Chopper

Well done to everyone! I really enjoyed following everyone's entries

That's a stunning piece of work Brian! Awesome!

Another doodle from some meeting or other... 

Hi Brian, I've used Tumblr to post images on this forum here's how...
Find your image on your Tumblr blog, right click it
Select "Copy image address". This will copy the images URL to your clipboard
On the forum, click the image button (the one that looks like the mona lisa)
Paste the image URL between the "img" text in square brackets

Hope that helps!