Tag / Jones

by Andrew Pilcher

The Observer Building

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I took some reference photos to get the backgrounds right for this strip. The backgrounds to frames 1 and 3 are of the stuccoed fronts of Cornwallis Gardens, a Victorian development of grand houses around a triangular green space that has now sadly gone to seed. It’s got that combination of grandeur and squalour which is very Hastings. If you look very hard at the trees in the background you’ll be able to see a wino shouting at an empty can of Special Brew.

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Turn 180 degrees and you’ll see this glazed tiled pile – another example of derelict grandeur – The Observer Building.

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Once upon a time it was the home of the local paper, Hastings Observer, with the offices you see here on the street level at the front. The building was built on the edge of a cliff, so it drops away two further levels at the back, which was where the printing presses used to be. It’s now being used as a multi-purpose arts space, high on quirk and character but severely lacking as a performance space in my opinion. It’s a great space for a party or a ‘happening’ though, and I’ve used its coffee shop a few times when I’m working on Smith scripts.

Here’s the website for it. Caution: it may contain toxic levels of whimsy.

Why the crowd outside? They’re all waiting for a fashion show to open.

by Andrew Pilcher

A tribe called quest

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The first frame sees the cats on the start of their quest, walking thru Alexandra Park towards the town centre. And the second frame extablishes Smith and Jones’ house to be somewhere in the St Helen’s area of Hastings. I just took this as a chance to portray the cats as they see them selves in their own imaginations. So Jones is, naturally, the Queen, while Smudge is the she-warrior Smudge-Ra. Chumley is more spiritual so I made him the wizard, and poor Smith can’t help but see himself as the fall-guy for the other three.

by Andrew Pilcher

D&D

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I haven’t played Dungeons and Dragons for around thirty years so pardon me if the terms I’m using here are out of date. Panic not; Smith isn’t turning into one of those gamer cartoons where motionless people in hats are snarky to one another – this storyline lasted about three more strips before it mutated into something else.

by Andrew Pilcher

Oxfam Bookshop, Chapel Place, Tunbridge Wells

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When people ask me where I get my ideas from, the address in the heading is as good an answer as any other. It’s where I got the germ of the idea for the following set of strips, though lots of other things fed into it as it went on. It all started when I saw a secondhand book about urban exploring, thought it looked interesting, and bought it. It’s still on my ‘to be read’ shelf, along with many, many other books, but a quick flip though the illustrations gave me the impetus to produce this…

by Andrew Pilcher

Factor 50

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This is me. I’m a redhead – and I’m the only person ever to have got a bad sunburn during a foggy day in San Francisco.

by Andrew Pilcher

Flutter flutter flutter

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This took a fair amount of post-processing once it was in Photoshop. The flights of starlings were created by taking a photo of a close up of a flock of starlings, removing the background, posterising the photo to make it simpler, and then superimposing it onto a pre-drawn background of Smith, Jones, railings and sea. Then the sound effects were drawn on top of that and outlined with a Photoshop stroke filter.

Actually, the starlings have left the pier – the removal of the burned out skeleton of the ballroom at the end of the pier means they no longer have anywhere to roost, so they’ve moved back to their old haunts on the remains of Brighton’s West Pier.

by Andrew Pilcher

Miss Jones! Miss Jones!

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One of the things you have to watch out for on the pier is little kids kneeling down on the deck, peering through the gaps in the planking at the sea roiling directly below.

And the reason for the post title? Remember the show Rising Damp? Miss Jones is on the left.

by Andrew Pilcher

Prohibition

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Also published by the Independent. And by the time it was published on GoComics the powers that be had revised their bylaws after a group of dog owners staged a wag-in on the pier, and dogs were allowed on the pier under suffrance.

Look, it’s a guest apperance by my own cats, Billy and Bella. Ginger’s just a generic.

Incidentally, that seat Bella’s sitting on is rather neat. They’re custom built and are all over the pier…

 

by Andrew Pilcher

Madness

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The pier officially opened on Saturday 21st May 2016 with a concert by Madness. Over the pond, they’re that band that popped up with a jaunty little number called ‘Our House’ in the early 80s and then disappeared again. Back here in Britain, they’re one of those evergreen bands like the Pet Shop Boys that have been going on seemingly forever, and still producing new albums that are worth listening to. Despite being a decidedly North London band, they do have a Hastings connection, as Suggs was born here.

The gig sold out five minutes after the tickets went on sale. I missed out on getting any as I was stuck in a traffic jam in Tunbridge Wells during those all important 300 seconds. Instead, I settled for listening to the concert from the balcony of my flat, about a mile and a half away. Even from that distance, it sounded really good.

Others took to watching the concert from their drones. Or just sitting on the beach next to the pier and having a picnic.

So why is the saxophonist in the air. Because that’s what he does.

On a whim, I posted this strip to a facebook group specifically about Hastings, and was amazed by the positive response it got. Not only that, but the local alternative newspaper, the Hastings Independent, got in touch with me and asked if they could reprint it. I like the Independent, it reflects the creative yet ornery character of Hastings in a way that the ‘official’ newspaper the Observer could never do. Of course I said yes. So they’ve published a Smith strip in every issue since. And, goodness, they do a good job of it. Each strip is published in perfect colour, to a standard I could never have dreamed of in my Daily Mirror years. And they print them BIG.

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This strip also got to be a Sherpa Choice selection on GoComics. Not bad going for one strip.

by Andrew Pilcher

We’re only here for the pier

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OK, let’s start catching up with all this. I’ve taken a week off from work, have completed all my Hastleons and drawing obligations for the week, and can spend an evening making a dent in the backlog of posts I have to make here. I’ll be posting this as if it had been put up on its GoComics publication date, but it’s actually going up here two months late. I know. Sorry.

Still, aside from all the political madness that’s been going on here, there have been a few developments happening in Smith towers too. This strip is what started it all…

Hastings Pier was a tatty hulk by the time it burned down in a suspected arson attack in 2010. It’s taken six years to compulsorily purchase the pier back from Ravenclaw, the shadowy Panamainian company that owned it, strip the pier down to its shell and then rebuild it again. And this was the week on which it finally reopened.

Find out more about the pier here.

Before the fire…

During the fire…

After the fire…

Now.