Stephen Downey is a busy chap!

High speed Slaughterman's Creed artist Stephen Downey updated his blog and his Twitter with loads of brilliant info yesterday.

His blog has news on his appearances at BICE, KAPOW! and FanSciCon as well as some juicy info on a new comic he's working on called Jennifer Wilde. I have to say I'm loving the sound of it already and the cover (left) is absolutely bloody brilliant (no pun intended). Here's the synopsis as posted by Stephen:

"At the start of the Jazz Age in Paris in 1921, young French artist Jennifer Chevalier becomes embroiled in death, espionage and revolution which takes her across the three nations of  France, England and Ireland - ably assisted by the ghost of Oscar Wilde."

For more info & updates check out www.stephendowneygallery.com regularly.

Stephen's Twitter was also a fount of great comicy wisdom when he posted a series of great tweets regarding portfolio preparation for artists. I hope Stephen won't mind me reprinting them here for posterity...

I've been to quite a few portfolio reviews in the last few years so gonna tweet a couple of things editors have recommended for preparation.

1/ Size: 9-12 pages broken into 3 scenes. Eg. 3 sequential action pages, 3 talky & 3 featuring something you're good at, like backgrounds.

2/ Don't include pages that feature bad art just because you really like one panel. The editor will notice and point out your flaws.

3/ If you're making excuses as you add in pages (Tight deadlines, feeling sick...) take them out. Excuses are no good to an editor.

4/ Don't point out your flaws to an editor. If they choose to look past (or don't spot) your bad perspective don't bring it to attention.

5/ Show process if possible. Pencils, to inks and even finished pages. Editors may spot potential in one area that another covers up.

6/ The odd splash page/cover is OK to add, but they shouldn't take the place of your 9 - 12 sequential pages.

7/ Order: Best pages first (good first impression) & end on a really strong piece. This will likely be the page the editor will leave open.

8/ Variety: Try to feature both male and females characters (you need to show you can handle both) as well as different locations.

That'll do for now, If I think of any more I'll tweet later. BTW, These aren't my opinions but things I've heard directly from editors.

You can follow Stephen on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenmdowney