Blueshift comics

[blueshift]

I've decided to put all my comics in one handy place so you can all read them. Hurray. I should write more, some of these are great! D:


Childhood stuff

Crumble
This was my thrilling childhood superhero comic featuring Even Man and Flare Man. Also my love of the Armageddon Factor.

Misc
Lots of one-pagers including the Combat Colin ripoff Combat Wombat, Star Trek, and The Y-Files. What's interesting is the basic structure is still pretty much how my writing style and sense of humour works!


Transformers

G-100
Andy T and I did this for AutoAssembly in uh, 2010 I think. It was a homage to 300, but with Thunderclash. I like it, what a team we were Andy! What a team!!

I can't find the original files anymore, so this is just a PDF. Do you have them Andy?


Slagacon 2010
This was an unfortunately-titled US convention. The guy running it wanted to do a comic and wanted to highlight their exclusive figure. This never actually happened, quite late into the day which was probably a good thing as it was going to be a black repaint of the Impossible Toys Arcee which... was a figure beset with issues. A shame though as it would have been cool! I wrote and coloured this one.

I remember having a massive list of things to include hence the rather frentic pace, but I think I managed to pull most of it under my control and in the direction I wanted (pretty much every character was mine apart from 'Novastorm' which was going to be the exclusive, and a name I don't feel is very Transformery!).

I can't find a copy of Dodger's bio that isn't corrupted, but final issue is clear, so the file must exist somewhere!

I was especially pleased with Iceburn (a fire/ice Transformer who can only talk in sarcastic quips), Equinox (an insane Transformer who believes in magic over technology) and Dodger (literally scum).


Slagacon 2011
We brought Andy T on board for this one to help with the cover and lettering. I made sure to hand in my script really early to make sure what happened last year (about two weeks to colour 12 pages) didn't happen again, but it did (two weeks to colour 22 pages, THIS IS HOW MEN ARE BORN). There was another artist involved whose art wasn't as good as Jakes, and another colourist who thankfully helped me out, albeit in a different style, but despite that, there's a lot of stuff in there that I really like.

I actually forgot how funny it was. I mean, really funny. You can tell the characters I liked and the ones I had no interest in.

This was also to advertise their exclusive, which was to be a Powermaster Prime upgrade armour for the Classics Prime. I believe they did actually cast it but had a heck of a lot of problems with breakage.


I was down to do the comic for the next year as well but managed to fall into a massive depressive funk around that time sadly, so someone else did it. They didn't do any more conventions after that, and unfortunately the organiser passed away.




I will try to find more stuff on my harddrive. I hope you all like this! Let me know what you think. Sadly there are very few opportunities for fancomics nowadays

[Andy Turnbull]

Yes i have all the files for G-100 and more than a few for Slagacon.

Andy

[blueshift]

Transformers Mosaics
Apparently I did 15 Mosaics. Feels like more! I wrote a lot more, that's for sure. It was always a real task trying to convince people to draw them, as I didn't like to use the overused characters, but that's who most artists wanted to draw (so thanks for the artists here for helping me out!). It's also one of the reasons why I ended up doing lots of colouring of my own strips!

I really learnt a lot about writing doing these, especially trying to fit a story onto one page. I always felt it was important that even though it was a one-pager, there be some sort of point or story to it. Some land, some don't, but I did try! A lot of the Mosaic frustrated me as there was so much effort put into something which was pretty much just visual static.

Highlight for me is Voice in the Dark. But I have a soft spot for a lot of them.

Also it includes the group ones we did at a BIG one year! Maybe we should do that again this year!!

Annoyingly I can't find any of the original lineart or colouring files!

[blueshift]

Bots of Honor
Bots of Honor was a project that span out of Transformers: Mosaic where some of the more popular writers and artists created a series of linked five page comic strips. There were five in total (and several one-pagers) and I did three. It was pitched to me as in the style of Batman: Brave and the Bold, with Prime as the main character with a guest cast, and the same sort of atmosphere. So that's what I did. And then everyone else did pretty generic Transformer comics with little humour. Oh well!

I would like to have these relettered at some point but (you've guessed it) I've long lost the files. As much as I like Josh, his editing of my scripts amounted to removing all contractions in speech, which I felt made it a bit more awkward to read). He also tried to take all the jokes out (imagine that, a Blueshift story with no jokes!) but I fought back there!

Supermarket Sweeps is basically a huge troll on anyone who likes the Sweeps and thinks that Bombshell wasn't Cyclonus. I did the colouring, and also coloured all the lines various shades, which you can't tell at all (so never put that much effort into a strip again!)

Bottle City of Micro was based on a running joke a friend and I had which we never did anything with. I really like this one. The hidden joke here is the origin of Ironhide's headless toy.

Question Everything is a one page strip and... doesn't work. I'm usually loathe to blame the artist, but I feel we we're quite in synergy here. There are long shots when the script asks for close shots, and close shots when the script asks for long shots. In a one page story, the writing and art needs to work together to pull in all the information the reader needs, but there's lots of stuff here that the art doesn't carry in terms of a sense of place and who is where. (The idea is that Optimus Prime is talking to Boltax whilst his friends are fending off a gigantic Powerdasher army, which you can't really see!)

I love Architect of Fear so much (and that title OH MAN!). The decision to grunge up the pages came both from wanting to make it super pulp, and also not being too happy with the artwork - but having the final look be like an old comic actually worked in the art's favour! The only weakness is that you can't tell that's there's someone in the I-Beam at the end!