Ben Michael Byrne
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2012?
Getting another four (40 page) issues of Kranburn out there, obviously a huge thanks go out to FEC comics/Steve Sparke for that. Starting work on an amazing project titled Job Dun with the very exciting writer Mark Hobby, when I first got the issue #1 script, I was scrolling faster and faster to read it and couldn't wait to get my teeth into it. Having short stories I wrote and illustrated in Terra #1 and Home Made #1 and Velocity #2. Also doing art duties on a short story for Futurequake in the UK. Cover for Spitfires #3. Sorry if I've forgotten anyone. :P
Who are some of the comics creators that you've discovered and enjoyed for the first time in 2012?
100 Bullets. Over a decade ago I was in Ireland and a friend there urged me to read it, but I was still pretty much sci-fi/anthologies only at that point (2000AD etc) and didn't follow up. But now I'm happily chewing my way through the 100 Bullets trades, got another three or four waiting for me under the Christmas tree, yippee. :-D
What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2012?
Reading and re-reading Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, pure bliss. I can have a pile of unread books waiting, but I'll still end up picking up one of his and opening it for the 50th time.
Have you implemented any significant changes to your working methods this year?
Nothing drastic I think, but I'm always tweaking it here and there, as my child get older (she's approaching three) I have to adapt my schedule etc. The biggest change would probably be streamlining my work a little more and getting more 'German' with my efficiency (are positive racial stereotypes still naughty? Meh :-D ). My wife and I purchased a house about a year ago and I'd always wanted a cork board in my study, so now I have this well laid out timetable, with all current and future projects on it, each page of a job etc represented by a rectangle that I fill in as I go etc so I can at a glance see what needs tending/what's getting a bit close to deadline. I'm in anal heaven. Readers may interpret that however they wish, guffaw!
What are you looking forward to in 2013?
For myself: more Kranburn. Seeing Job Dun in print, its being coloured by Noelle Dreeves and will be longest coloured work I've ever been a part of so far, very exciting.
Outside of comics, owning the new Dredd movie, owning the new Metro: Last Light game (as well as Suvarium, Wasteland 2, Nuclear Union but I'm not sure exactly when those are due).
Birth of our second child and the pooey nappies that brings with it. :-D
And if I grew and extra arm or two maybe starting another of my longer running projects that I've been cooking for a few years. There's a pretty big project I've been writing for a long time now called NSEW and I'm really keen to grow it further.
