Phatcomics

Oliver Lambden is the artist on the Eagle Award nominated Tales Of The Flat (Wonderfully scripted by laurence Powell). He is also involved in numerous other projects, which include The Dan Lester Mysteries ( Written by Dan Lester), and Bloc (Written By Oli Smith). He is also one of the founders of London underground Comics, and be found most Saturdays sat behind a table in Camden Market, trying to fight off hypothermia.

Could you walk me through the process of creating a page. Do you begin with thumbnails, or work directly on the page?

 Laurence may give me some sort of panel layout or have specific ideas for actual panels but otherwise I do most of my working out on the page. Which is bad really because I end up turning the paper to shit from all the rubbing out I do. I try and use sketchbooks to work out panels and things but then I just get frustrated because I can’t get the same result down on the actual page. A lot of times I end up drawing a good panel on another bit of paper and cutting and gluing it onto the real page.

Once you start the pencilling, do you pencil the whole page, comic, or work  from panel to panel?

 I get bored easily so I may start a page, pencil and ink bits of it and then move onto another. I usually leave tricky panels behind as well so by the time I get to the last page I end up going back and doing a sweep of all the pages, finishing bits off, adding and tweaking here and there. There may be particular pages or sequences that I’ve been dying to get to and I know exactly how they’ll look in my head so they get done quickest. On the whole though, most panels get inked soon after being pencilled. Inkings my favorite bit.

So you have a fully pencilled rocking page of action from TFTF. Now is the inking stage. How do you embellish those lovingly pencilled pages? What is your choice of inking tool? Dip pen, marker pen, brush?

 Basically a bunch of Pilot ball pens, a super-thin one which I end up having to replace every few weeks cos I’m too violent with it, some black markers and cheap pencils. That’s about it. I’ve started using grey Letraset markers which are fun too and I seem to work faster with them which is always good. Need to keep trying new things though, have never used a brush or dip pen or anything, probably about time I did. Biro’s are great as well, they’re like inky pencils.  I’m one of those people who believes you can use use anything from a stick with mud on the end to a string of snot to get a good effect. You should never be held down to what some people regard as ”professional tools”. Balls to that. I don’t use a light-box either, I ink straight on top of the pencils and then rub ‘em out (often too soon, smudging the ink). There’s a certain energy you lose I think, when simply tracing on top of the original pencils. 

As well as b+w pages you also produce grey scale and colour work.Firstly grey scale, as seen on your first 24 hour comic, an yet to be published Bloc (with Oli Smith) and Dan Lester mysteries.

 It just adds something a little different I reckon. I usually shade using crosshatching which I’m not very good at really and it is time consuming. I’m using the usual TFTF crosshatching style on the first issue of The Dan Lester Mysteries but reckon I’ll change to grey tones with the second issue, simply because it’s faster and it distinguishes it from Tales From The Flat a bit more. With Bloc, which is so different from anything I’ve done, I just had to use the grey-scale to make it work, to add a bit of depth. Hopefully with Bloc, people who are familiar with TFTF will look at it and not even realise it was me who drew it.

So, pencil, ink grey scale and colour. Is this the next stage for TFTF. A full colour comic? What do you use to colour your pages?

 I’d love to see a full colour TFTF comic sometime down the line, it’s just so damn expensive. There’s a reason one doesn’t see many, if any small press titles in full colour. But we will get around to it sometime. When we have had stuff in colour and when I’ve been the one colouring it I just use Letraset markers (they’d best see this and all the advertising I’m giving em and send me free pens), you can build up layers of colour with them and once they dry they look a little like watercolours. I’m still figuring them out really.  We did a full colour two page comic for Volume Magazine which was coloured on Photoshop by our now resident colourist, Jake Harold and that looked great. I’m not a big fan of computer colouring as it is a little soulless but if done right it can look good. I just like my comics to look a little more organic. That’s why we rarely use computer lettering as well.

Does the computer have much of a part to play with your artwork?

 Well I’m useless with Photoshop so I don’t use it directly for anything. But once every-thing’s scanned in, Laurence or Jake will rectify mistakes or paste in new panels if I’ve not done it myself by hand. With TFTF#7 we started putting all the lettering on with Photoshop. I still lettered it all by hand, we just had it on there as a different layer. I’m crap at placing lettering and Laurence always shouts at me so using Photoshop to do it just gives you more options and freedom.

Finally, how do you see the ideal set- up for producing more  TOTF in the future? Studio, workshop, beach hut?

Y’know, thinking about it, it would be nice to work in a sort of a studio environment with other artists and writers. I’m usually at my best alone in my room at 3am but I also work well if someone’s in the room with me doing something vaguely creative. Even if they’re just playing computer games
actually. I think it’s possible to kind of feed of each other’s creative energy and create a great working space. So yea, a studio type situation where a bunch of people just knuckle down for hours on end and listen to good music would be great. No bloody TV’s. I never have the TV on while working, music only. Computer games are an exception for some reason. The sound of gunfire sustains me.