SUM QUOD SUM page 3

I hadn't been blogging as I'd been entertaining my good friend David Blumenstein. David is an incredible animator and cartoonist. I really recommend you check out the promo for his new animated series THE PRECINCT. I haven't seen such a brilliant, professional and funny piece of animation that good in a very long time. I describe it as an Australian South Park.

David had been to LA before so there was very little on his agenda list. In fact his agenda consisted of one thing: chicken and waffles at Roscoes. We headed out to Hollywood and braved both of these phenomena, which were unfortunately not on the same plate. I should preface this by saying that I eat really healthily. So when the deep friend chicken covered in gravy and mountain of waffles arrived I kinda freaked out and went into some sort of anaphylactic shock. All I saw was the amount of calories and saturated fats I'd have to work off. I know, I'm worse than most of the women you know. But hey, I have to watch my girly figure!

We rounded out the rest of his two day stay with a trip to the Getty, which blew me away. It is such a beautiful building. We caught the last day of the Bernini exhibition and his sculpting skill absolutely floored me. After wandering around the Dali exhibition with Noo, I decided that I only really like seeing art museums with other artists. Sorry, I'm a snob. But I just get so much more out of it like that. And David was no exception.

Not the most beautiful photo I took of the Getty lighting or art-wise, but the one that probably communicates the architecture and scale of it the best.

We found this nice balcony with great lighting as the sun set. I told David it would make a great photo and took one of him. Then vanity came ringing and I asked him to take a photo of me. It would be a better photo if I put some product in my hair and shaved once in a while. I'm such a bum!

Before I took him to the airport we went to Hooters, as he'd never been before. I'd only been once. We indulged in more fried chicken which finally broke David. I'm sure his 14 hour plane trip back to Melbourne wasn't pleasant.

Between entertaining David and finishing Sum Quod Sum I'd been too busy to blog.

Speaking of which, let's get back to it. The shout out page. One of the things I find when I'm drawing is that I can get bored drawing all the people in the backgrounds. To remedy that, I thought I'd draw in as many people that I knew as I could. That way I'm drawing tributes and portraits of friends rather than just randoms (as my English friends would say).

Ollie had written his fiance Abby into the story and had her accompanied by his best friend. I mentioned I'd like to shoot both her and his friend. He remarked that his friend lived in San Diego. Then I suggested that it should be him. I wanted to draw him in as an engagement present to the two of them from me. I went around to their place and we had a fun shoot. Abby and Ollie were great and really got into it. Their lovely dog, Star (like her namesake) insisted on her 15 minutes of fame.

Then came the bus. I was just going to draw some random people when it occured to me that I should draw some friends. Then it occured to me that I should make it more authentic by drawing some English friends. On further thinking about who I should draw I noticed that it was two very special SARMY members birthdays! On the far left with the dredlocks is Noo, and sitting next to her is Nat. Previous readers of my comic might know them as the owners of the Nat and Noo pub in Australia in Root and Branch part 1. I worked from our holiday snap shots and I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

In the far back corner is Rob Beck a great young guy who has been emailing me encouragement quite regularly. I asked him to send me some snaps for reference and drew him in. His rationale of why he's in England is that he's a teleporter who accidentally teleported there and now can't get back.

And that's all for the shout outs for this page. I remember joking to Annette on panel 1 that I was disppointed that she didn't individually colour every single person in the stands. Thank god she laughed. Someone closer to the edge of sanity might have stabbed me. Ollie called me after I had drawn page 1 and mentioned that Sprint needed their new phone in the story. I suggested that it might fit really well here. I think it's the best product placement you will find. It tells us what Elle is looking at in a page of excess detail. I'm very happy with the way it came out.

I want you to go back and take a moment with the background of panel 4. All those struts let alone the entire city of London stretched out behind them. Yeah, that took a while.

No really, go back and have another look.

Ok, enough of that . You can move on now.

When I shot the reference for panel 4, Ollie couldn't figure out why I wanted to have Abby and him in the shot. I told him that I wanted the reader to think that Elle is following them, then when Claude pops up we then figure out who she's really following.

Speaking of which, you will notice that I changed the way Claude is facing when he appears. I wanted us to be able to see his face and thus recognise him. I was pretty happy with his likeness. But Claude is quite easy to draw.

It was Ryan Gibson Stewart that pointed out the funniest comment with regard to this series. He said to me that I must be pretty buzzed that I got to draw a cross over between Doctor Who and Veronica Mars. =)

One more day for the competition entries people! Scroll down to the COMPETITION entry and write in what you think.

SQS 2 is done, and I can't wait to see what you all think.

One word.... BIKINIS!