Let’s be up front about this. 2023 was not1 a2 good3 year4 over5 here6.

With that out of the way, I wanted to do a kind of year in review in ‘things’. There’s stuff here I’ve probably already written about, but I’m going to assume that most people skim these missives and I’ll just blunder ahead with immaculate confidence.

I’ve chosen bits that I’ve done based on how “photogenic”7 they are, so this isn’t a complete catalogue of my many roaring successes and riotous good times this year.

Back in January, I was working with Superbrothers on JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time, lending brain-capacity to the production of the game. I wrote about it in more detail here, and made the dumbest bit of dev-team-in-joke audio, which is linked at the bottom. Good stuff.

Amongst putting in hours the ol video game mill, I did hourly comics about my day going for a walk, a burger and struggling to get a file to work. Thrilling.

I made my wife a couple of really nice and well-thought-out valentines cards;

And we climbed Cader Idris in mid-February. It was COLD8.

I spent time getting my hands dirty and my brain relaxed with clay and pixels. That was good fun, and gave me a nice idea for this illustration I ended up doing for a Michael Rosen poem;

I also spent a lot of emotional and physical energy trying to nail down likenesses of Gavin Williamson and Matt Hancock, again for a Michael Rosen Poem for the National Education Union magazine. Hancock has such a distinctive look, I found it really tricky to get. I think I managed to capture his ‘essence’ eventually, but you should see how many versions I had to go through to get to this point. Williamson on the other hand was relatively easy.

In March, I finally stopped making the Make It Then Tell Everybody podcast. I wrote about it at length here. It’s been surprising to get some really lovely notes from people letting me know what the show meant to them, and equally surprising to continue to regularly get messages from people pitching themselves as a guest.

April was a good month.

I spent a bunch of time in Canada at the end of April and the start of May to get over to TCAF9 and10 then spend some quality time in the woods of Quebec at Superbrothers HQ. Good, good times with good, good folk.

I was home for a few days before heading back to Denmark to teach at The Animation Workshop again. My travel day was BUSY. Up really early to drive to Manchester, a flight to Copenhagen, a train to Viborg and then about 15 minutes to eat some food before I started drawing each and every performer competing in the Eurovision Song Contest while they performed. I’d recommend better ways of relaxing after a full day travelling, but I can’t think of any. I really enjoy this sort of thing. I also enjoyed eventually compiling all my drawings into this cool video with a music by meeee;

I was really excited to be asked to give the graduating speech at The Animation Workshop for the Graphic Storytelling class of 201911. My speech was in the form of a comic that I drew and performed for them. Good times, good people, good luck out there!

July was a month in which I got my head down and tried to get some work done. I made good progress with the next graphic novel I’m working on with David Gaffney. It’s been trundling along underneath everything this whole time, I’ll have more to share soon enough. It’s a good one. Really weird, dark and touching.

I also put the updated version of the blade pen I make on sale in July. I’m still really pleased with the design and production of this pen, I think it’s really good12.

If you’ve met me in person I might have shown you the accidental knuckle tattoo I have from slashing my finger open with a very sharp blade while making these pens. How does that happen? people ask. Notice the perfectly round (and deceptively deep) incision in the palm of my hand below13. That’s how; I’m blasé about personal safety it seems.

August was a bad month14.

I was back in Denmark at The Animation Workshop to lead the first class in Minicomics with the newest students. That was good fun. Lots more early mornings and long days travelling.

My flight home from Copenhagen was cancelled, which meant that I got to go to a BBQ and briefly visit Helsinki15 on my rescheduled route home16.

We put on the Show N Tell at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, which was so much fun. I wrote about it here.

October!

I put together the David Gaffney story I’d illustrated for the Show N Tell as a video that I also narrated;

This kind of approach to illustrated narratives has given me Some Ideas that I want to spend more time exploring in 2024. Watch this space.

Make of this what you will, but I spent more time making weird masks than I probably should have.

The goat mask is called ‘Alan Ramlam’ and the red one is called ‘Yackie Putatz’17. I will not be taking any questions at this time.

I’ve been working on something that isn’t quite ready for talking about yet, but here’s a brief glimpse at it. This thing is scratching some itches that haven’t been itchy in a while, and if it all comes together as I’m planning should be pretty useful. To a very small number of people.

Onwards!18