Nemesis Fleet

Beers in Space!

2008-10-12T23:09:00.004+01:00

Shay needs a goddamn space suit. I'm working in a few lotus symbols onto the suit, it being something he's just swiped from the Scented Lotus itself.

Sketch Dump 9: colour!

2008-08-13T10:42:00.003+01:00

Some more sketches of the main cast!

Sketch Dump 8

2008-08-12T09:06:00.002+01:00

Still working on crazy lady Sekhmet's design.

Some bland cast doodling.

A couple of composition ideas.

General character doodlings. And some guy I sketched at the pub.

Neglect is a terrible thing.

2008-08-12T00:38:00.010+01:00

The worst thing about this is, I've had lots of artwork to put up here for quite some time. Still! At least I'm not just sitting around like a lemon playing video games instead of blogging. I'm actually drawing this time!

Monstery development again.

This one went a bit too Warhammer 40k really:

I'm pretty happy with this look for these weird things. The guy in robes is a priest of Set.

The priests headdress thing has a floating bit, just because.

More tomorrow, and if you fancy looking at my non Nemesis Fleet sketches try heading over here: http://abigailryder.blogspot.com/. I've gone drawing mental!

Sketch Dump 7

2008-04-27T21:10:00.003+01:00

Not quite sure if it qualifies as a sketch dump as it's just one image for now. Dave and I are playing around with the look of the Scented Lotus a bit, here's a peek at some of the sketches I've been doing for it.

The Bristol Comics Expo is close by and though we'll be there with the Manchester Comix Collective I am sad to say that I won't have an issue one with me. But at least you can all fling unpleasant items at my head in person. Thankfully the reason I've not got an issue one yet for you is a nice one, meaning I've been too busy with art jobs! I keep chipping away at the Nemesis Fleet work whenever I can, but it's usually Dave and myself dicking around with script and story stuff.

Colour Plans

2008-02-16T10:35:00.007Z

Something a little different today. Some thumbnails I use to develope scenes for the comic. I really want to start to give an impression of scale, as well as work out what colours work for different locations and moods.

Sketch Dump 6

2008-02-10T19:18:00.001Z

I've been pretty busy for the last month, but I have built up plenty of sketches of Cynopolis, Neith, and the people who live in those places.

Sketch Dump 5

2008-01-14T19:45:00.000Z

Zounds, it's...sketch dump time! Here is another look at the Scented Lotus.

Cynopolis doodles.

Lazul's head has gotten a little rounder.

It's more Shay. He smokes and drinks loads and scores with women. WOW!!!

It's yet another work in progress. I can hear Dave weeping from the other room "Oh Abigail Abigail" (that's him saying that) "whyfore can you not just finish something before starting a new picture?!" And I say "shhh it's all part of the Plan." And he say "no it's not, you are making excuses so you can sneak off and play Portal." And then I hit him over the head with an item that is comical and random. We're just like that! HEE.

The Scented Lotus

2008-01-09T23:48:00.000Z

Quick update today, as I'm at work until about ten this evening! Just a few sketches of the ship I mentioned in the last one: The Scented Lotus. It's supposed to be big and cool, and a bit like a big floating piece of naff jewelry. There'll be more development of the ship design when I post my next sketch dump.

The Cast: Part 6

2008-01-06T13:58:00.000Z

Uri and Thoth

Uri is a creative genius who has designed all sorts of devices, from household items to giant robots of destruction. Although she never makes such things out of any desire to harm anyone. She just sees cool inventions and wonders if she can make them, and make them better.

One of her most famous creations is the gigantic solar barge The Scented Lotus, currently owned by Sekhmet's administration. The Lotus has an onboard artificial intelligence based on the god of wisdom, Thoth, and it communicates with the crew through bird-like robotic avatars scattered around the ship. He is arrogant, rude and seems to take great pleasure in insulting everyone around him. Only Uri knows how to reprogramme the nasty little git, and Thoth will only take orders from her or the ship's captain.

Uri would be about 7 inches tall, and I first developed the idea for her after seeing images of snake demons with human legs from The Book of the Dead. Somehow she made her mechanical limbs so she could build her inventions. There are more weird robot servants she's made for the Scented Lotus but I'll save that for a future update. I wanted her to be very colorful and cute. She's an odd little character. Thoth's robotic form is based on an Ibis, one of the god's sacred animals. I'm trying to make him look as snooty as I possibly can. He's about the size of a football which makes him good for kicking.

Creatures of Khemet: Part 2

2008-01-06T12:49:00.000Z

One of the main reasons I loved reading mythology as a child was the monsters. I imagine the old story tellers sitting around trying to think of new ways to frighten the kids.

"Okay this time, a donkey, but with SIX HEADS. That's bloody scary."

"No way man, in this one we need something really damn weird. What are the most dangerous animals we've got?"

"Hmm, crocodiles are pretty bad?"

"Great! And they're ugly, that's good. Let's have that be the head."

"Oo oo! And it needs great big claws and powerful arms, it could have a bit of lion in it."

"Nice. If it has a lion mane too, that would hide the bit where the crocodile head joins. Now then, the backside. What's the scariest bum in Egypt?"

"Uuhhh, a hippo bum?"

"You're a goddamn GENIUS"

The devourer, Ammut. Wonderfully retarded, the best of all the Egyptian demons. I wonder if I'll ever manage to make it actually scary?

Sekhmet

2007-10-24T08:29:00.000+01:00

(Gosh this is up later than I'd hoped! Sorry all!)
Sekhmet, lady of red linen and Queen of Khemet. She's the only known living god
and has ruled the galaxy for hundreds of years. Famously attempted to massacre all of mankind once, but was stopped when the other gods got her very very drunk. No one talks about that anymore. They would rather not have their heads ripped off.

I think I'm still trying to find her a little visually, she's meant to be a warrior goddess so I want her to be huge and athletic. Also mature. Yeah a goddess like Nut (see my first page for the comic) who represents the sky is going to be a little sexy and elegant, but Sekhmet needs to look like she can smash your face in with her thumb. Currently I worry that she looks a little too much like a guy in drag. But part of the fun of this blog is showing you all how the development is going, and I'll keep you up to date.

Birmingham Comic Con

2007-10-15T11:15:00.000+01:00

Well Dave and I had a very enjoyable weekend, meeting up with some incredibly cool people and handing out fliers for our comics whenever we could. Thanks everyone for the encouragement! I got some much appreciated critique on my work for the comic, and I'm really happy about the direction it's going in right now.

We're already in the process of booking tables and hotels for the Bristol convention in May, hopefully we'll be going with quite a few of our colleages so our tables should have a few very different comics for sale.

Expect some new sketches and comic images here tonight!

Sketch Dump 4

2007-09-26T21:11:00.000+01:00

So it's been a while! Again. On top of the Tom and Jerry colouring work came a few other paid jobs and that can only be a good thing. Funding for our personal comic work for example! I intend to regularly keep posting new sketches in the run up to the Birmingham convention in October, which I am definitely attending. Here are a few sketches from the last few weeks to kick things off.

The Commander

2007-08-26T23:32:00.000+01:00

The Commander

This is the highest-ranking, most heavily protected man in the galaxy - not that he needs it, judging by the size of him. His name isn't on file, he doesn't leave fingerprints and he doesn't answer questions. This is the high commander of the grand army of Queen Sekhmet, whose career is as long as his cape and glittering as his armour. But he doesn't need that army of his. He is an army. He could physically ruin you without any effort.

But he doesn't. What intruiges Shay about the Commander when they inevitably meet (Shay is the galaxy's most wanted outlaw, don't forget), is that he is in fact a very personable and courteous gent, and seems rather fond of Shay. This comes as a surprise, because he also appears to be very good friends with Ahjin, Lazul's villanous high priest father and Shay's deadliest enemy.

It can't last.

A kick up the bottom!

2007-08-26T12:47:00.000+01:00

So while writing out my restock of indie graphics for my comic shop, one of our regulars pops in and asks me if I've seen the latest issue of the Judge Dredd Megazine. We had sold out of it so I was thrilled when he came back with a copy for me and showed me the small press article by David Baillie. Well! Now Dave and I have had our blog mentioned in the Megazine I have had a flood of complicated feelings: a) Oh man, that is so terribly cool! b) Oh my god we haven't posted in ages, that must look awful!

While I've been getting little bits done since I got back from my holiday, we had a sudden influx of paid work and I'm still settling into the new routine. In my opinion however, this is not a good enough excuse for the lack of updates! And with the Birmingham convention coming up and me definitely now going I'm not allowed to make any excuses any more.

So thanks to everyone who has taken an interest in our little blog, I think you all deserve some new artwork as soon as I get home from work.

Creatures of Khemet Part 1: Snakes

2007-08-01T11:42:00.000+01:00

Well, demonic monstrous firebreathing snakes to be precise. The sort that worship Chaos and the giant snake Apophis, who was defeated centuries ago by Ra. They range in size themselves and tend to stick to the more remote areas of Khemet. The giant snakes generally mistrust humans, though some have been spotted working with members of Nemesis Fleet in recent years.

Cobras are a different matter. The species as a whole is very sacred to Khemetians as they are a symbol of the goddess Wadjet and are magical creatures. While they are far smaller and sweeter than the chaos serpents, the cobras of Khemet should not be underestimated. They can breathe fire too!

I'm Back!

2007-07-22T13:49:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone and apologies for the huge gap in updates. There was a much needed holiday from rainy Manchester, plus a new freelance job doing some colouring for Panini magazines. Oh, and Harry Potter seven came out but I managed to read that in just under two days, so that didn't distract me for too long!

I have been working hard on the comic pages between my full time job at Travelling Man and the colouring for Panini, but they are pages that I won't be posting just yet as they contain a bit too much info. So for now I'll just be posting more development sketches.

Thanks to everyone who has still stuck with us!

Sneak Peak! First Two Pages.

2007-06-17T18:43:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have already seen page one, but seeing it once ain't good enough. Here it is again! I will probably end up tweaking all my completed pages again, so don't expect these to look exactly the same when I'm finally done with issue one. But only a tiny bit of tweaking. Honest!

Sketch Dump 3

2007-06-14T00:38:00.000+01:00

Lazul's little embalming shop, which appears in issue one. Also, I have been mutilating hieroglyphics today between finishing some pages of the comic. Tomorrow though I'm back in the shop for a full day of work, but I should get some sketching done in the evening while I run the games/comics night.

I've now also done what I said I would never do, I made a Myspace. It's basically just an advert for this blog however. Honest!

Sketch Dump 2

2007-06-11T01:08:00.000+01:00

Say hallo to some more character designs. These are all characters who appear in the first few issues.

The Cast: Part 5

2007-06-09T15:31:00.000+01:00

Ahjin Lazuli

Lazul's father and the High Priest of Anubis. He's a thoroughly unpleasant chap, and is responsible for banning hospitals and doctors from his home planet. Saving lives unnaturally seems to be an offense to their god, Anubis.

No one really likes Ahjin very much. Lazul's family is a lot of fun to draw though, they're all very different to him.

Sketch Dump 1

2007-06-07T08:44:00.000+01:00

Hey guys! Sorry for the wait, but here are a few character sketches from the last few days for you.

The Story So Far

2007-05-31T01:42:00.000+01:00

Hello, then! I'm the Dave who writes Nemesis Fleet. Insofar as "Script" can be a job description, it will be listed as mine inside each issue of the comic. The first issue, though, is testament to the fact that it isn't as simple as me writing a script and Abby drawing it.

Today, we sat down around the stack of paper that makes up the first issue, and went through it pointing and laughing. Nothing has changed, we haven't suddenly decided it's rubbish, it's just something we do as often as we can, to make sure we're looking at the comic objectively. It would be the easiest thing in the world to come up with a story, bash out a script, slap down some drawings and call it our unalterable Word, but we don't like doing it that way.

The story for issue one didn't begin with a script as much as it did a head full of ideas. I'm technically going to be "writing" this comic, but really what I'm doing is organising the story into something other people will be able to read. The whole thing has existed in a sort of bubbling, exciteable form in Abby's mind for a fair while. I just divide it into issues and panels and set down what specific words the characters should say. I make sure all the little bits of the story go in the right direction and end up in the right place. I don't write it, I herd it.

Today I helped Abby lock the barn doors. No, forget that metaphor now, it's gone too far. What I'm trying to say is that we made sure it's where we want it, and it isn't likely to escape. We went over every page, picking apart each panel and making sure we had told all the story we needed to tell, had omitted nothing that needed to go in, and generally had written something that reads well and doesn't just dump exposition on the reader. The problem is that we are quite picky, and prone to thinking up entirely new and much more interesting plot ideas each time we look at it, meaning Abby has faced total re-draws more than once before.

But here's the good news. For the first time ever, we found we barely wanted to change anything. A page here, a panel there, a few camera angles and the emphasis of some scenes, but nothing major. Nothing that means rewriting and redrawing the whole thing yet again.

That's got to be a good sign, surely.

Panel Progress

2007-05-30T20:39:00.000+01:00

An update to the panel I posted earlier, what are your thoughts so far guys? There's a character to add next, standing on top of the rocks.

Dave and I have been working out some more written stuff today, tidying up a few loose ends in the initial story. We've planned a 6 issue mini series but I have more hiding in my head like every other good dork making their own comic. Fingers crossed on it all going well!

Here's another bit of background I've been working on:

The Cast: Part 4

2007-05-29T19:57:00.000+01:00

Lazul.

Lazul is training to become a priest of Anubis, like his father (the High Priest) and all of his brothers. He would love his family to appreciate him at last and accept him, but he's very much the runt and his lack of confidence means his skills in magic are quite poor. He's also just, well, a bit too nice for the whole death worshipping cult thing.

If I'm ever feeling annoyed when I'm trying to draw, doodling Lazul always makes me feel better.

As an extra, here is a panel I'm currently working on. I will be posting it's progress until it's complete!

The Cast: Part 3

2007-05-29T08:42:00.001+01:00

Harpok.

Our lovely youngest character! He boasts about having more ASBOs than grades and can usually be found hanging around local bus stops, playgrounds and car parks with his gang of hoodies. They're usually smashing things, it doesn't matter what. When they're feeling original, they're setting fire to things. Oddly I'm really fond of the little git, and so are a lot of other people I've shown the comic to so far.

As a little extra, here are his long suffering parents!

The Cast: Part 2

2007-05-28T21:46:00.001+01:00

Tass.

Shay's teenage sister is a standard wannabe goth.She's incredibly defensive about the way she dresses and what she believes in (butomg , cute cartoon animals holding blood soaked chainsaws and saying THE CHEESE DID IT are so random and ironic!!1), and hates it when her brother makes fun of her.

I like drawing Tass a great deal, her different costumes are so much fun. She is so desperate to be different like her friends were back in school, but the goth thing doesn't really suit her at all. So I'm trying to give her a feel of 'trying too hard'.

Tomorrow, chavs and a guy in a dress!

The Cast: Part 1

2007-05-27T19:53:00.000+01:00

So first things first, let's meet the characters!

Shay.

Our main character, the 26 year old wannabe space adventurer Shay. He's a bit of a grumpy sod when we first meet him, though he has good reason. An average bloke who just wants an average life with a pub close by. There will be many, many sketches uploaded of him, I'm quite paranoid about drawing him correctly so he's usually the first thing I draw when I sit down with my sketchbook.

Welcome to Khemet!

2007-05-26T15:10:00.000+01:00

I'm Abby, and I'm working on a comic called Nemesis Fleet. Recently there's been some interest in the development that goes into the series, and so here we are. For the curious, this is what the comic is about.

There's a bloke who has a bottle and a sarcophagus. Those are the only two things he cares about right now, the bottle because it's empty of beer and the sarcophagus because it's full of his teenage sister. Her last wish was to see the great city of Cynopolis - the Vegas of space - and now Shay won't see her embalmed and entombed anywhere else.

That's because Cynopolis is the place to die. It's the great City of the Dead, governed by the zealotous Temple of Anubis, who place death above anything else - hence the teenage Tass' fascination with the place. But when Shay gets her there, along with the car-burning, bus-hopping chav boy Harpok (who he can't seem to get rid of), it's on the day of a huge and important ceremony to raise the spirit of a dead king, to be performed by the High Priest's youngest, most frightened and most generally useless son, Lazul. This ceremony will be the make-or-get-banished of the young priest's career.

And Shay, drunk and not unreasonably upset, does have to go and ruin it.

On the run in a stolen ambassador-class space ship, Shay, Harpok, Lazul and what remains of Shay's sister are chased across the galaxy by some of its most powerful people: the ferocious High Priest of Anubis whose position and family honour are at stake, the frustrated government ambassador whose ship is doing everything it can to let her catch up with it and arrest the thieves on board, and even the mountainous Commander of Galactic Queen Sekhmet's forces, who almost seems like a nice guy when he isn't trying to kill them.

And all this against the backdrop of war between the evil Queen Sekhmet, whose godlike psychoses grip the whole galaxy, and the equally evil terrorist forces bent on tearing her kingdom apart, the mysterious and deadly Nemesis Fleet.

That's the comic. If you like the sound of that, you should keep coming back to this blog because not only will I (and the comic's script writer, Dave Bulmer) keep you updated on our progress in putting it together, but I'll also be posting my sketches and draft work. That means you get to see exclusive pictures of Space Egypt, which is something everyone wants, surely.