Patrick Warren short and MCM Expo

Patrick Warren is manga artist who created the Manga Shakespeares Henry VII and Richard III for us. Like some of the artists at SelfMadeHero, Patrick's background is in animation. Patrick has a new site where he's sharing some of his animation tests and I spotted something that I hadn't seen for a few years.

The video below was part of Patrick's Animation MA showreel at Westminster Uni. The manga influence on his work is pretty clear and it is a lovely short. Enjoy!



Patrick will be making a rare appearance at this weekend's MCM Expo at London's ExCeL Centre to sign copies of Henry VII and Richard III.  Please do come and say hello, we'll be on table 920 in the Comics Village all weekend.

Here's the full line up of artists signing at the SelfMadeHero table during MCM Expo. Keep an eye on the hashtag #MCMExpo for Twitter giveaways from SelfMadeHero throughout the show.

Saturday at the SelfMadeHero table

Faye Yong : 11am – 11.30am
Sonia Leong: noon – 12.30pm
Nana Li: 2pm – 2.30pm
Emma Vieceli: 3 – 3.30pm
Patrick Warren: 4pm – 4.30pm

Sunday at the SelfMadeHero table

Paul Duffield: 11am – 11.30am
Ilya: noon – 12.30pm
Emma Vieceli: 12.30pm – 1pm
Chie Kutsuwada: 1.30pm – 2pm
Sonia Leong:  2pm – 2.30pm
Faye Yong: 2.30pm – 3pm
Nana Li: 3pm – 3.30pm

The Nao of Brown

Nao

We're stupidly excited at SMH HQ this afternoon! Late last year we heard about an incredible graphic novel from a London-based artist. When we finally got our hands on it, the script was quite simply the best thing we'd ever read (seriously) and we had to have it.

The artwork style embodied everything we loved in linework, colour and layout; the narrative was compelling, complex and original; the author passionate and endlessly talented. 

Glyn and Emma seal the deal

So, today we're hugely proud to announce that SelfMadeHero has secured the worldwide rights to The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon.  We'll be revealing more about the story of Nao soon, but you'll have to wait until early 2012 to get your hands on a copy as this labour of love will take Glyn well over a year to create.

You may know Glyn from his time at Deadline working with Alan Martin or because he's a collaborator of Jamie Hewlett's on the Gorillaz project or through his storyboarding for film. If you haven't heard of him yet, then you'll hear a lot more about him when Nao hits the shelves in 2012, that's for sure.

We're currently known for adaptations and graphic biographies so Glyn's epic work will join a new series made up from British, American and European creators, which you'll here more about later this year.

You can check out Glyn's work over on his blog and of course we'll keep you updated with sneak peeks here.

The Geek Syndicate podcast – A Study in Scarlet

 panels from A Study in Scarlet (Edginton / Culbard, SelfMadeHero 2010)

If you have an hour spare, you should listen to Barry Nugent's Geek Syndicate podcast. We bumped into Nuge at London Book Fair in April and made sure he had a copy of our brilliant A Study in Scarlet (Edginton/Culbard). You can hear him and new presenter Stacey Whittle talking comics, singing 'The Littlest Hobo' theme tune, breaking the news that the dog in Spaced died and having a big old chat about A Study in Scarlet.

Ian Edginton is hailed as "The King of Dialogue" by Stacey. We'll have to make him a crown to wear, now! [sigh]
 
The podcast: click here!
The review: click here!

You can also follow Nuge and Stacey on Twitter.

At the Mountains of Madness – film trailer

OK, so this trailer is a fake. There is no film version of the At the Mountains of Madness "COMING SOON" – sorry! That said, you can look forward to I.N.J. Culbard's wonderful graphic novel adaptation of Lovecraft's chilling horror (do you get it? 'chilling', it is set in the Antarctic, see. Anyway...) coming soon from SelfMadeHero in October.

Culbard's take on The Miskatonic University library

Culbard, takes both writing and art credits for this forthcoming title – and a fine job he does of it too. Over at his blog – Strange Planet Stories – he's posted up a few panels, which should give you an idea of how he's tackling Lovecraft's oeuvre-defining novella.

Fortunately, Dyer didn't go on to run a budget airline 

as he had no fear of flying through volcanic ash clouds

If you like Lovecraft's short stories, then you'll be interested to find out what other Lovecraft stories we've got coming up. You'll hear it here first! 

Well, you'll probably hear about it on Twitter @selfmadehero but you'll get the full details here, that's a promise.

"I have ventured in a sea of glory... but far beyond my depth"

In April last year we published a manga adaptation of William Shakespeare's little known history play, Henry VIII, in association with Historic Royal Palaces to mark the 500th anniversary of the real King Henry's ascension to the throne.

Patrick Warren, the artist, visited Hampton Court Palace to help his research for creating the backgrounds in the manga. As well as sketching the palace interiors and exteriors, he used archive material to re-create the costumes and environment of Tudor England.

Few people have seen the play performed, but from this Saturday you'll get your best chance in a decade when Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London stages the play – 15 May to 21 August.
 

Shakespeare's Henry VIII is the play that destroyed the original Globe Theatre, when wadding from a stage cannon ignited the theatre's thatched roof and burned to Elizabethan venue ground. This year's production takes place in at the rebuilt Globe on London's Bankside (it was re-built after the fire of 1613!). The Globe's own website highlights some of the elements that translated well into the manga: 

Famous in its own day as Shakespeare's most sumptuous and spectacular play, Henry VIII is a gorgeous pageant of masques and royal ceremony; a blaze of fireworks, cannonfire, red satin and cloth-of-gold. But within the passages of grandeur works the mind of the mature Shakespeare: psychological and political insight, language of great depth and power and, in the figures of Wolsey and Katherine, two of his most vivid and memorable characters.

If you don't know the plot of Henry VIII, well, go book a ticket and consider it a novelty to watch a Shakespeare play without knowing what happens at the end! On the other hand, if you prefer to know what's going on, you should pick up a copy of our version, which is conveniently staged in period costume. 

The best priced copy of Henry VIII can be bought from the SelfMadeHero stall in Bristol or London at MCM Expo later this month or on the interwebs at Amazon, via our own shop.

EX LIBRIS

 
Yesterday, we were delighted to welcome Cartoonist extraordinaire, Martin Rowson, to sample the shabby chic delights [ahem!] of SelfMadeHero HQ. Martin was here to illustrate a limited edition 'Ex Libris' plate for our beautiful new, hardback edition of his epic graphic novel re-working of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (out 8th May and available from all good comicshops and bookshops).

Martin toiled for two hours with his nib pen (a gift from Ronald Searle, he tells me) and India ink (artist's own) to create a beautiful bookplate for the graphic novel's launch this Thursday at the Cartoon Museum.

Some of the numbers from the 150 bookplate edition have already been snapped up in advance by collectors, which isn't surprising as we're not charging a red cent more for them – £20. It is however strictly first come, first served basis.

After the Cartoon Museum launch, we may release a few more bookplates for the Forbidden Planet Megastore signing this Saturday (although, the PF copies already have a special £4 discount, so we'll see) and the rest will be for Martin's appearances at The Guardian Hay Festival (see my previous post) and his appearance at The Southbank Literature Festival in July (details to follow).

You'll be able to see Martin illustrating the bookplate and hear him discussing the book with Panel Border's Alex Fitch next week in a video podcast on our Vimeo channel and blog.

If you would like to reserve a single bookplate edition of Tristram Shandy before they disappear completely, drop us an email at doug@selfmadehero.com, likewise if you run an independent comics store and would like to secure some, please do get in touch soon.

Bristol Comic Con

Just to let you all know that SelfMadeHero will be at Bristol International Comic and Small Press Expo in May. Space willing, we hope to be selling our new titles at special expo prices and you'll see a number of SelfMadeHero creators dotted around the Ramada and the Mercure. To namecheck a few – I.N.J. Culbard, Ian Edginton, Emma Vieceli, Ilya, John McCrea. There'll also be a few artists and writers attending who are quietly working away on SelfMadeHero projects for 2011. I could tell you who they are, but that would spoil the fun.

When we saw our friend Brady Webb (Panini) recently he was delighted to tell us that he's taking legendary writer and co-founder of 2000AD, Pat Mills, to expo where he's doing a special signing and speaking on a panel about Requiem. We've heard Pat Mills speak many times and he never disappoints.

Personally, I'm most interested to see Phil Noto (see image above). I've always loved his 70s/futuristic painted pin ups and just have to remember not to buy any.

If you are at Bristol, we're always happy to see pitches and look at portfolios, but a piece of friendly advice: if you can't show us any sequential work then it won't be a long conversation!

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Hay we go!

(c) Martin Rowson, Tristram Shandy

One month to go until we pack our bags for The Guardian Hay Festival, our first literary festival of 2010 (if you don't count Angouleme). We're pleased to say that we have three events at this year's festival (although only two are in the public programme). We kick off our events on 27th May with a day of schools workshops on Romeo & Juliet led by the immensely talented manga artist, Sonia Leong. This first event isn't open to the public, but you may hear about it as Sonia will be interviewed for the daily Guardian podcast just before it.

 (c) Martin Rowson, Tristram Shandy

Our first public event is with the Martin Rowson on 3rd June at 4pm. Martin will be talking about creating his epic comic interpretation of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Sterne's original, which he began writing in 1759, has been dubbed the original "anti-novel" because it broke almost every established narrative convention and used graphical and typographic devices as part  the story of Tristram Shandy. Famously, he inserted an entirely black page to represent the death of Parson Yorick in on page 73 of volume one. You can see how various artists have tackled Sterne's black page in this brilliant image blog, put together by the trustees of Shandy Hall in Northumberland.

I'll post a preview of our final Hay Festival event next week, but Joe Gordon has flagged up the main comics events over at the Forbidden Planet International blog.