My Adventure With Scientists

I’m counting the days until I can engage a babysitter and rush off to the Orpheus. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists is almost here.

I live in Bristol – once famous for its pirates and also the city where the film was made – and I’ve been following director Peter Lord’s behind-the-scenes tweets, so my anticipation has been growing for a long time.

I love pirates, and my kids, of course, love pirates* but it’s the second part of the title, “In An Adventure with scientists” which has made me particularly anxious to see this film.

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to spend a fortnight on a ship off the Atlantic coast of South America. It was an adventure! There were scientists!

After Darwin: A Graphic Biography was published in 2009, Dutch broadcasters VPRO invited me aboard their clipper which was following the route of Darwin’s Beagle voyage, making weekly TV shows as they went.

Some old faces

Until tonight I hadn’t seen these drawings for years. I’ve lost the original files, but discovered these JPEGs online, on an abandoned website.
At the time I’d only just started trying to escape from a tight, laboured style in favour of looser, more expressive marks like these. It was a bit of a turning point.
I also found some sketches of 2000AD characters on the same site, and have uploaded them.

Work in progress

Finished pencilling a page before lunch, which means an afternoon of inking to look forward to!