Zoonitoons App is Live!

For those of you who have an iPad, good news!
We have finished our Zoonitoons app and it's FREE!
Click this link to preview (even if you don't have an iPad this link will give you an idea),
or search "Zoonitoons" in the Entertainment section of iTunes.

Yes we hope to release it on other platforms like android, but we are starting with Apple. One step at a time. This is the result of six months working with two programmers, my brother Tom and his friend Paul Sagor who is an app veteran. Please support our venture, as this is where I will be releasing my NEW Zooniverse comic which I am feverishly working on.

My comics are formatted to the iPad screen because I'm not impressed with the whole pinching to enlarge a full comic page. I find zooming in and out disruptive to the immersion of reading a story. I've also noticed that readers tend to leave the page full size and don't zoom in, scanning the pages without taking time to enjoy the art. It seems like a waste of artwork to me, so I've prepared everything to fit the screen. I've done this more with the upcoming issue which is called "Kick Off".

Superficial Surgery is the free comic we are offering through our Zoonitoons app.

I will continue to release printed comics, but the app makes the work much more immediate and accessible to the whole world. Postage out of Australia is expensive and slow, printing in color is costly and printers are a bit of a hassle, so this is a preferred alternative.
I hope that you enjoy it.

Zooniverse Minicomic #2

It is official! Helen Maier and I now own a publishing house!  
We took the plunge through our new Australian company Zoonitoons, printing two comics:- Zooniverse mini #2 and a reprint of issue #1. Launching them at the Armageddon Comic Expo in Melbourne. Halfway through Saturday we recovered our printing costs.
We are sincerely grateful to everyone who supported us by buying copies! 

Introducing Zooniverse minicomic #2 . . . a little bit of Australian comic history
This issue collects some my pre-Zooniverse comics published in Melbourne around 1983-84 and nine illustrations I did for the UK at the same time. All of the artwork in this issue was rescued last June after 15 years mouldering in a Queensland garage. Back in our possession we were shocked to discover the poor condition of what remains. Luckily we found a few old bromide copies and although most of the out-of-print mint copies I had of Australian comics containing my work were nicked a decade ago by our light-fingered ex-employees, a couple of original comic magazines survived. It was important to get this work scanned and printed before the originals deteriorated further, becoming unusable. 

Please keep in mind that all the line art was done before computers, using brushes and metal nibs dipped in ink bottles!

The Cover of Zooniverse mini comic #2 Available at www.zoonitoons.com

The cover for Zoonimini #2 is a huge coup to finally have this art printed after waiting almost three decades. It was originally done, when I was 21 years old, as a wrap-around cover for Inkspots issue #5 back in 1984 (the year Helen and I met). Unfortunately the comic magazine was abandoned by it's publisher and the original art was either lost or stolen. All that was left to work with was a single twenty eight year old bromide. I was so happy to finally scan it and digitally colored it! Seeing as we were getting posters printed we have an A3 version that will be available for purchase on the Zoonitoons' website. The poster includes the 3 zoons that were cropped out so that the Kren Patrol could be featured on the above cover.

Here is how the Inkspots cover looked back in 1984...

Unprinted wrap-around cover for Inkspots #5

The stories inside Zoonimini #2 include "Sproat Fanbunder & Spleen Sphincter: the infamous repairmen" which was originally printed as a two parter in Reverie comic magazine issues #6 in 1983 and #7 in 1984 (I did the second installment while working on the original Zooniverse series). Below is the front page for the story, the original art was never returned from the printer, so I assume that puts it in the stolen category.

The front page for the "The infamous repairmen" in Zooniverse mini comic #2

Below is the cover for issue #7 as it was printed in 1984. I had to do the colors by hand separation, which meant a separate piece of art for each CMYK color, it was tricky to guess the right combination of values to make a subtle color. I no longer have this original art or my mint copies of Reverie, so I relied on the help of fellow veteran cartoonist Ian Thomas to send me a scan of the cover which I repaired as shown above. Without Ian's gracious help this art would have been lost forever.

The original Reverie #7 cover featuring "The infamous repairmen" from 1984

The story for the infamous repairmen on the surface seems to be a flippant and shameless plug I did back then for the upcoming Zooniverse comic, but it is actually deeply personal allegory for my childhood. With Spleen representing my father, Sproat my mother, Snok as me and the Clone-a-gram as my art (Zooniverse). My two younger brothers don't make an appearance but they were essentially treated the same as me, so Snok could easily represent them too. I'll leave you to figure out the rest should you get your hands on this story. 

The first appearance of a Clone-a-gram from "The infamous repairmen" 1983

The second story in Zoonimini #2 is "Sacred Stripture". For this one I set myself a ludicrous challenge. I wanted to combine old illustrations with my recent "History" animation so that the story looped between the comic and the animation. The animation shows the Sacred Text scrolling in the background and the comic is the Sacred Text! I had to turn the old illustrations from 1983 into a Holy Stripture, within less than a week due to the printing schedule!

Below is the introductory page. I had trouble incorporating it into the story until woke up one morning realizing that the artist portrayed in the image is the Notator:- the zoon who wrote the Stripture! I've always loved this image which at the time summed up my personal feelings about being an artist. It was a bold experiment before I found my "Zooniverse" style. I was choosing a direction here, the pig drawing was an old comfortable look that I'd used for my earlier "TimeTree" comic. The spooks were an entirely new style of mine that has never been published and the "Notator" character was halfway between my previous Asphyxiation work and the emerging Zooniverse technique. Again, the original art was never returned from the printer, and presumed stolen, so I scanned and restored the image from the printed cover.

The front page for the "Sacred Stripture" in Zooniverse mini comic #2

The image above was originally published in 1984 as the cover for Fox Comics issue #4 shown below, I'm pretty sure that I did the art in 1983. Obviously I've flipped it for story flow, but I've always liked that the original cover made little sense until the back cover revealed the artist character...

Original wrap-around cover for Fox comics issue #4

"Sacred Stripture" includes new art that I took from the "History" animated loop, I also made new panels with assets created in Flash (below left). The Rector and his innocent Supplelicant are recent artwork, the rest (below right) was originally done in 1983 when I was twenty years old for two publications in England. These random images were pre-Zooniverse and gave me a chance to experiment with inking styles while creating strange environments over which the publisher pasted badly photocopied code for the Spectrum (an early home computer that was released in the UK).

Old and new art combined in "Sacred Stripture" the second Zoonimini story.

Below is the second book of "Astounding Arcade Games" which was published exclusively in England in 1984. I had finished the art a year before for issue #1 and the publisher reused my art without my permission for the second book, this time cutting images up to make it look like new work. The cover below is a mash up of two pieces of art, and no I didn't color it. I once possessed a mint copy of the first book but it's long gone now so I can't verify it's exact name.

Cover for Astounding Arcade games for your Spectrum issue #2 printed in the UK

I now have the original illustrations in my care and used most of them for the Sacred Stripture. I scanned them shuffling them around until some semblance of a theme came into view. I now have a Zooniverse based Holy Scripture to form religions and philosophies off with Zoons misinterpreting and misquoting the texts. This is going to be fun!

Spak's back story

[Edit 2021 - The shockwave file is available HERE at my Patreon]

The Loop De Loop animation challenge for this month was "Mad", so I had to do something on Spak! 
[SPOILERS AHEAD...]

Due to commitments coloring Rex Vectar, another comic of mine, for Clubhouse Comics and the Australian government making me run around for a week so that bureaucratic boxes could be checked, I ended up with only four days to produce this entire loop, including writing the script and editing the audio with Helen Maier's wonderful musical score. Somehow I got it done and two days later it was screened at the Loop Bar. I was overjoyed!

Spak in happier times. Still from the animation.

This animation deals with a some of Spak's back story: how his lover died 2100 years ago.
In the early stages of the War Between the Sexes, the four races of the Motherhood Empire escaped their domineering male counterparts to live peacefully on their fem-constructed worldship, they called Girlaxia. Being a single sex meant that clonebirthing was the Foremothers only means of reproduction, but biologically many femzoons needed male companionship and sexplay, so they created the Plastoid race, a genetically obedient population of synthetic malezoons. Using their own DNA the Foremothers batched male duplicates of themselves in living plastic, the game was to find their copy. Girlaxia was so enormous that it dwarfed giant gas planets so often the copies never met, some found each other and formed deep friendships, but quite a few bonded.

Althra was clonedbirthed into flesh from her own ancient genes when Spak was over 900 years old. (Plastoids are non-biodegradable by the way). The two copies found each other and fell in deeply in love.

A moment of horror. A still from the animation.

Spak and Althra were both Scy-Borraine warriors, fighting side by side during the height of the War Between the Sexes. When Girlaxia fell they were still holding back hordes of fleshmales on the planet Asu-Assala. Plastoids don't eat or sleep, Althra simply couldn't keep up. Overwhelmed she was skewered and paraded around until Spak could reach and protect her shredded corpse.

Above is the original panel from issue #3 of the Zooniverse series from 1986 (Entox is in the foreground by the way). I traced a lot of this comic art for the animation, trying to keep it as acurate as possible. The image on the left is the original painted art that I've scanned and not adjusted in any way, yes the paints have survived for twenty six years. The image on the right I scanned from the comic so that you could see how it printed. For the animation I took my color cues from the printed version. The deeper red suggested a bloodbath without me having to stoop to showing gore.

Spak seethes. A still from the animation.

I love the above image, the moment when Spak cracks!
I made a last minute decision to include the image below in the animation. Meeting the deadline, meant that I had to work all night. The image was traced from my 1991 roughs for page 30 of the unpublished book Age Old Enemies. I'm glad that it has finally seen the light of day!

Spak takes his revenge. A still from the animation.

 Above is another panel from issue #3 of the original Zooniverse series. It shows Spak during his banishment on Asu-Assala by the Plastoid Society who decide to hide until the Foremothers return. Spak is worshiped as the Dead God Krantrak by the locals, who Spak ritually kills.... it's an even longer story. Again the original paints on the left, the printed version on the right.

Zooniverse Minicomic #1

Zooniverse is back in print!! Here is the cover which is artwork I did back in 1986 while still working on the original series.

Cover of Zoonimini issue #1 artwork from 1986

The Zoonimini's are intended to pave the way towards the 200 page collected album of the Zooniverse series! They will elaborate on concepts I was unable to cover in the series. This first issue reveals the Animoid Rimworlds in relative position to the Hub for example.

Also included is the comic story "Zoons at the Ozcon" which was included in the program given away at the 1997 Australian Comic Convention held in Sydney. "Zoons at the Ozcon" is a very biting commentary on the activities of earlier OzCons that I had attended. Not much has changed so it seemed more than fortuitous to relaunch this comic, fifteen years later, at the first OzCon to be held in Melbourne.

Zoons attend an Australian Comic Convention in 1997

Included in this story is a timeline summarizing most of the animated shows that I've been Lead Character Designer on. The left page below was from the original comic, but I've created a new page that updates the timeline to include shows after Extreme Ghostbusters.

A sampling of animated TV shows that I've been Lead Character Designer on. From 1986 to2008

Our intention with this first issue was to introduce a new readers to my work both in comics and animation. With subsequent issues of Zoonimini's we hope to put all Zoon related material into print most of which was never seen beyond the shores of Australia.