Just a reminder that Friday 18th May is going to be the third Dialogue Free Comics Day where we try to get as many webcomics as possible to post a wordless comic. More details here if you’d like to join in.
Milton’s Life turned two years old at the weekend and to celebrate, I’m giving away free (yes free) drawings of Milton with any purchase over £2/$3. So, if you make a purchase, just email me (noel@miltonslife.com) with what you’d like to see Milton doing. Please bear in mind the limits of my artistic ability. If you ask for a picture of Milton riding a surfing velociraptor whilst having a light sabre fight with Darth Maul, it’ll probably end up looking a bit shit.
Drawings will be done on A5 paper in B&W.
If you’ve going to be in the vicinity of Bradford this weekend, then pop along to Hand Made where I’ll be taking part in the Loosely Bound Zine Extravaganza. I’ll be selling copies of my DJ Bogtrotter and Milton’s Life collections and maybe even doing some more hand drawn stickers.
The Zine Extravaganza is part of the launch of Fabric’s brand new ‘Hand Made in Bradford’ arts space, and also coincides with the official launch of Bradford City Park just across the road from the space, with lots of events happening. There are more than 25 stallholders taking part so the event promises to be an exciting one.
A full list of the stall holders is available here.
The event is from 10am till 4pm. The address is
Hand Made in Bradford (the old Zavvi shop)
1 Tyrell Street
Bradford
BD1
Hey everybody – notice the new link in the menubar? Yes, that’s right, I’ve now got a shop, so you can pay to have like real paper copies of all the stuff that I give you for free. I know you’re all just itching to shower me with your hard-earned cash. If you’re a UK resident, you can go to this shop and if you’re from anywhere else, you should head to this shop (which is hosted on my other webcomic DJ Bogtrotter). And if you’re a UK resident and you want to buy stuff not just for yourself but as Xmas presents for all your friends, then as long as I get your order in by Thurs 15th (yes, this Thursday), then I’ll get Santa to drop it off. If you’re from anywhere else and you want stuff for Xmas, sorry, but I screwed up and didn’t get the shop ready in time. You could just buy some really, really early presents for 2012 though. Happy browsing shoppers!
Have I mentioned that I’m regularly contributing to a new webcomic? It’s called
Short Attention Span and consists of single panel gags. It’s a group webcomic and there’s six of us at the moment, looking to knock out one cartoon a week – Asher, Ben, Colm, Max, Steve and me. But we are always looking for other comics, so if you want to do a guest comic, just head over to our guest page and check it out. All you have to do is draw a comic (420 X 420px) and email it in.
Sorry about the lack of recent updates. I know I said I was going to start doing two comics a week, and here I am, producing hardly any. That old bugger called “life in general” has caught up with me and a depressingly tedious mix of work and other commitments has left me with very little drawing time. So, I’ve decided to take a small break and will return in June/July with my two-a-week schedule. In the meantime, the other week I did the 25 expressions challenge and thought I’d share the results with you all.
As you can see, I still have a lot of improving to do. The expressions need to be more varied and subtler. Still, I think my attempt is better than Keanu reeves’ effort:
In 2009, on my other webcomic DJ Bogtrotter, I managed to draw 100 bad comics as part of 24 Hour Comics Day. I wanted to do the same in 2010, but life got in the way and I didn’t manage it. Well, I’ve decided not to wait for the next 24 Hour Comics Day and I’m just to do it again anyway. The date I’ve chosen is Saturday 9th April and as an added bonus, I’m going to try and raise some money for charity whilst doing it. There’s a Just Giving Page where you can pledge some money to The MS Society in recognition of my (hopefully) sterling efforts. And, if you sponsor me for £3 or more (about $5), you get to pick a topic for me to draw a cartoon about. Neat huh? I’ll be posting the results to Twitter as I go (so you can follow me if you want to see them on the day) and then I post them all to DJ Bogtrotter later. Please tell all your friends.
Just a little post to introduce the guest comics you’ll be seeing over the next week or so, whilst I get on with updating the website. I’ve always wondered what the etiquette was with how guest strips are ordered. Do you start with the strongest one and then work your way down? This always struck me as a bit rude to whoever comes out last. “Gee, thanks for your efforts, but lemme just stick this one over…… here.”
So far, I can’t pick a favorite one anyway, so I’m just going to post them in the order I received them. That means that we start not with a strip, but a sketch. I did a guest strip for EQ Comics a while back and as a thankyou, he did this delightful sketch of Milton. It was the first time another artist had ever drawn one of my characters and, I must say, I was chuffed to bits with it.
Later in the week, you’ll get to see strips from Pea Green Coffee and Bearman Cartoons, with more to follow the following week.
In early April, I’m going to relaunch Milton’s Life and finally make it a two (possibly three) strips-a-week webcomic. The plan is that I’ll spend a bit a time redesigning the website, the characters and building up one of these mythical buffers that I keep hearing other webcomic artists going on about. So whilst I’m doing that, it’d be handy if I had a couple of guest strips to keep the site busy. If you fancy having a go at doing your very own version of our sad, little Milton, just send it to noel@djbogtrotter.co.uk and it will get published. It needs to be 900px wide and can be as tall as you like. I don’t mind a bit of sex, violence and bad language, but please don’t go too crazy with it.
Wishing you all a very Merry Xmas (if that’s your sort of thing). A big thankyou to anyone who’s read, commented and shared the site. I’m having a little festive break and Milton will return in the New Year. In the meantime, here’s a quick Xmas sketch.









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