It’s been a while since I shared anything with you about my friend Bob Byrne of Clamnuts. Bob has a very popular blog over on his comics website Clamnuts.com. Bob is quickly becoming the cornerstone of the Irish Comics scene, and it’s no wonder - he’s a one man Comics Industry all in himself.

The degenerate thing is just jealousy.

In case you have the misfortune to not be subscribed to his blog, here is a small selection of things you should be aware of:

• Bob has landed a spot in 2000AD. In case you don’t know that makes him the envy of everyone in the world.
• Bob’s working on his silent masterpiece Mr. Amperduke and has a following of fans eagerly awaiting it.
• Bob produces a free pint sized comic called ‘The Shiznit’. It is available for free download in PDF form on his site.
• Bob has published a wonderful children’s book called ‘Robots Don’t Cry’ and you can buy it from O’Briens.
• Bob’s blog is full of wonderful gems like his essay on marbles, the time shopping for couscous nearly turned him into a crazed killer and the poignant tale of a harrowing break up.

Finally Bob has recently begun sharing some of his sketches with us through the magic of screen capture - here he is drawing two little Hitlers…

El Collage is the illustrative blog of one Mauricio Planel Rossiello, based in Brazil.

The above image is wonderfully titled ‘Dude, these humanbeings are great, it´s a pitty they last for a short time.’

While Mauricio’s illustrations are (as the title of his blog might suggest) all collage works, he mixes up the style from piece to piece and so it’s most certainly worth visiting his site and having a look through the archives.

Yup, it’s Franks random sketches time again. Again, I can’t really say exactly where it came from - it was a phone doodle, whether it was a reaction to what was being said or not I can’t really say - I don’t think it was to be honest so I don’t know what triggered it.

Looking at him now, I kind of see this guy as the internal monster who’s freaking out when you have to remain calm - for example if one was dealing with a difficult customer in the workplace, you might smile and say ‘Certainly, I’ll see what I can do…’ while inside this little freak out man is, well, freaking out.

Another from the random sketches department. I have no idea why I like this so much, I don’t even really know where the idea came from. I think I was working on a logo which I thought might have eyes in it at the time and this appeared amongst the scribblings.

I intentionally kept this one sketchy and kind of lumpy, but a refined version might be nice too.

While doing some ’spring cleaning’ I found a copy of the Where’s Me Culture magazine/newspapery thing, and on the back of it was this ‘Down With TV’ image which I drew.

I quite liked it, so I dug up the file and thought I’d throw it up here.

Down With TV was a concept from somebody by ‘Izzo’ who was involved in Where’s Me Culture - if he finds his way here, make yourself known!

Also, as far as I remember it was the guy behind Whazon (a free listing of what’s on available in Cities in Ireland) who put together this brilliant logo for Down With Tv.

The very cool logo for Down With TV was designed by John Foley of Bite! Design.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Down With TV ever became what it could have, there was talk of a website and stuff, but it never happened. I take some tiny responsibility for that, as I moved to Dublin after telling the guy behind it I’d meet up with him in Cork to discuss his website options, so that meeting never happened!

Where’s Me Culture was a kind of alternative creative group who got together to compliment/oppose the main Cork Capital of Culture 2005.
Where’s Me Culture. Ah the nostalgia.