Mixtape Cover by Sarah Fogg

We're now able to announce that the anthology we're working on is called Mixtape and the cover has been illustrated by Sarah Fogg. The comics don't have a theme this year so the variety reminds me of a playlist of songs from different genres.

There are more behind the scenes blogs to post this week. It's getting very exciting because we're near to our print deadline. 

Thanks!

Sammy 

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Many Years Ago

The first preview page is from Many Years Ago by Jack Davies. I posted some of his design and development work a couple of weeks ago. The food theme has been interpreted in really different ways by everyone in the group and Jack's stone age story seemed like the perfect introduction to the book. 

Jack kindly offered to draw title pages for everyone's comics in the book and this is his alternative cover design in full colour.

I'll be back later in the week with the second preview page :)

Thanks

Sammy

Eat Me!

Sugary sweet bunnies, a deliciously grim detective tale, turf wars of fiendish butchers and food wars on national TV! Just some of the stories to be found in Eat Me! a food-themed anthology from Inspired Comics. Sit down and feed your brain with six original comics, from light snacks to juicy steaks, there’s something for every taste.

Hello! Sorry I took a break from blogging so I would have a bit of extra time to sort the files and things. I'm pleased to say the files have been sent to the printers on schedule and hopefully we'll have the books ready for Bristol Expo in May. I'm very excited. The cover illustration and title picked by the group is by Sarah Fogg and the anthology includes comics by Jack Davies, Catherine Reda, Harry Griffin-Hayes, Luke Bayliss, Sammy Borras, Sarah fogg and Lily-rose Beardshaw. I'll be posting preview pages and some more development work over the next couple of weeks. 

Big thanks to Jack Davies for the extra title illustrations in this anthology 

Thanks for reading!

Sammy 

Planet Rabbit & extra covers

This an absolutely lovely preview page from the second comic in the anthology, Planet Rabbit by Lily-rose Beardshaw. I know Lily is working on some other projects at the moment but they've not been published online yet so I don't know if I'm allowed to ruin the surprise. I will keep an eye out for an announcement and let you know but the best place to keep up to date with Lily's projects will be on her blog. You can also find this great un-submitted cover design which contains characters from different stories in the anthology drawn in Lily's style. 

I am very pleased that the four other covers that were left over will be featured in the inside of the comic and  they will be in  full colour! Covers by Sarah Fogg, Jack Davies and Gemma Sheldrake.

Thanks again
Sammy

A Thousand Empty Heavens & Cover

We've finalised the anthology line up and everything is nearly all ready to be printed. I'm getting very excited now. Over the next 2 months I'm going to post a 1 page preview from each comic and let you know what exciting things we're all up to ready for Thought Bubble in November.

I'm featuring the comics in order they appear in the book. This is a little preview of A Thousand Empty Heavens by Sarah Fogg. There is always excellent stuff posted on her blog regularly so make sure you're following her. 

After many different anthology title ideas we chose 'Science Fiction Octuple Feature' which was suggested by Lily-rose Beardshaw. The cover that won the voting we did was my own design, but I've decided to add little previews from the 8 comics on the back because I think they're all great. I really wanted to use all the submissions we had for covers, but I'm pleased the others will all be printed in full colour within the anthology. 

Because the image was re-sized for the internet I've added a larger version of the previews. Contributors are Sarah Fogg, Lily-rose Beardshaw, Laura McNulty (writer), Sammy Borras, Cat Reda, Luke Bayliss (writer), Harry Griffin-Hayes, Shaz Jubeen, Jacob Boniface (writer), Jack Davies and Gemma Sheldrake. So weekly I'll be blogging a preview page. 

Thanks for reading

Sammy

Twitter and Misc News

We joined Twitter this week - just in time for autumn. Now that the summer is over we're just putting the finishing touches on the anthology so that it's ready for Thought Bubble. So the Twitter Feed should be a great place to get info as we build up to that.

If you're a big Twitter fan already you can find some of us already tweeting away ..
@InspiredComics, @JackDaviesArt, @SarahKFogg, @GemSheldrake and @SammyBorras

And remember we have a Facebook fan page too!

This is another beautiful cover submission Sarah drew. I'm sure you all love her robots already - and the comic she has drawn for this year's anthology has so much depth, its really amazing.

Collecting together everyone's comics has been a lot of fun and I'm excited that I'll be able to blog about all the comics over the next month or so. But while you wait for all that, Jack has done some interesting blog posts about each stage of his comic creation process.

The other news I have is that my work is going to be in a Self-Portrait Show in Orbital Comics Shop in London starting next week. The group of comics creators listed is great, I'm really excited. You can find the event information here.

Thanks again!
Sammy

Sci-Fi Anthology - More of Sarah's Character Sheets

I have more covers for you this week, this time by Sarah Fogg. I love Sarahs robot designs from this summer. I'm not sure if Sarah's Nambots will feature in her inspired comic but you should definitely have a look at them in this blog post. 

Looks like there's going to be some great world building in these comics, with some big contrasts.

Thanks again
Sammy

Sci-Fi Anthology - Covers and Characters

This is another fantastic cover submission by Gemma Sheldrake. It's going to be very difficult this year to choose which cover to vote for. There are more covers waiting to be featured. I'm excited today because I've received the first set of final comic pages from Gem and they're looking awesome.

This is my cover submission. I'm a big fan of having a slice of life theme as the base for something with fantasy or science fiction twists.

All the comics I have submitted in Inspired anthologies are a collaboration with writer Laura McNulty. These are the character sheets for our sci-fi comic. We've known each other since I can ever remember so making comics together is a lot of fun. (and I'm sure Starbucks love the amount of coffee and paninis we needed this year to have time to develop the comic together.) 

Thanks again for reading - there will be plenty more updates to follow

Sammy 

Sci-Fi Anthology - Jack's proposed cover design and preview

Hi again, these great images are by Jack Davies. For all our anthologies we have had an open submission system for the cover design and then have a vote within the group for a winner. Its great now that we have an active blog we have somewhere to showcase the brilliant designs regardless of whether they make it onto the cover of this years comic.

Just a quick update with some other projects we're working on. Gemma Sheldrake is offering a wide variety of commissions from her website - including gorgeous environment illustrations and full comics pages. For more details click here. 

Sarah Fogg has a great little gallery on flickr of sketches from her journal entries. I love this one from when Inspired Comics had a table at Bristol Small Press Expo this year. There was a stall selling the cutest hats! 

Encase you didn't already spot it - I've set up a Big Cartel online shop for Inspired Comics anthologies and all the comics listed are £1 each! We have recently sold out of the Pick&Mix1 anthology, so thank you very much to all the people who bought one over the years. 

I'll definitely be back in a week with more previews and updates - I have more exciting things to share already.
Thanks again!
Sammy