by Andrew Pilcher

The ubiquitous bear

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Every year about this time a yellow bear infests the BBC with his cheery bonhomie and mysterious eye injury. It’s Pudsey the bear, the mascot of the BBC’s annual Children in Need appeal. It’s a very worthy cause, raising millions of pounds each year for the care of disadvantaged children all over the UK, but at the same time, whenever the BBC decides to plug one of ots pet projects the BBC does tend to overdo it a bit, blasting you with heart rending bear-related appeals using every medium at its disposal (and let’s face it, that means all of them!). So this year Smith and Jones have come up with their own counter appeal.

by Andrew Pilcher

Bam! Krakk!

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I haven’t updated this blog for a while – huge apologies for that. It’s been a hectic Autumn and I’ve been concentrating on making sure the strip is always updated on GoComics rather than posting on this blog. But now I have a holiday in the States coming up, spending Christmas with Linda’s family, so that’ll give me the chance to catch up. 

I’m writing this on my new iPad pro. Yes, I’ve finally given in to temptation and bought a tablet. Why did I wait until now? Because up to now tablets have just been about consuming material rather than creating it. The Pro comes with a huge screen, a cover that concerts into a real keyboard, and best of all, a stylus which means I can start drawing straight onto the screen as if I was drawing on paper. That is going to save me so much time – not only that the 4G Sim card means I’ll be able to draw or post whenever I get a snatched moment no matter where I am.

I’ll be catching up at a succession of different airports on the way to Albuquerque, so expect to see a lot of posts suddenly appearing on Saturday 12th December.

Guy Fawkes night… That seems such a long time ago. Note the properly drawn fireworks explosions in this year’s Bonfire Night strips. Up to now I’ve tried to recreate fireworks using Photoshop filters but was never happy with the effect they made. Now I’ve gone back to basics, using a combination of ink and a ballpoint Tipp-ex applicator to create these explosions full of Kirby crackle. I think they’re much more in style with the rest of the drawing.

by Andrew Pilcher

Vinyl roof

smith-pilcher-871-151102There’s nothing more 70s than a car with a vinyl roof, and I still think a car with a reconditioned one looks rather swish. But most survivors from the 70s now look like the one in the cartoon.

austin-princess-03The car is a British Leyland Princess – a Ford Cortina competitor that could have been a world beater if only they built them well enough to hold together for longer than one week. And if the management had given it the hatchback it was so obviously designed for.

by Andrew Pilcher

Echolocation

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by Andrew Pilcher

Assault and battery

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by Andrew Pilcher

Bat

smith-pilcher-868-151026Note the pumpkin-orange background, a colour normally only ever used on Alison Ward. It’s that time of year again.

by Andrew Pilcher

Infinite spaghetti loop

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by Andrew Pilcher

Infinite temporal loop

smith-pilcher-866-151021Possibly the only cartoon strip published today that doesn’t mention Back to the Future Pt 2. Instead I used time travel in a slightly different way, creating a never ending temporal loop. This is regularly enacted in our house, with Bella in the hammock and Billy underneath her, playing with her tail.

by Andrew Pilcher

Scrape scrape scrape

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