It's quite unusual for me to preview a project I'm working on when its so early on in development, but following the lead of publisher Fabled.One I can share the news that I'm doing the artwork for a new board game called Calleva.

Set in Britain in 20 BC around the city of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), it's written by Mat Humphrey - who has a number of really interesting and excellent games in the works, including the also announced Chickens 'n Aliens and Tomb of Akhenaten. I can't wait to see how this turns out and to share more with you. You can follow our progress on the Facebook page and Twitter. Here's the artwork for one of the Calleva cards, already completed.

My announcement of The Brambletye Box a couple of weeks ago was met with a lovely warm wave of enthusiasm, and that has really helped to get things going again with it. Obviously it does sometimes have to take a back seat to my commercial work, but already I've scripted the next scene and completed the thumbnails and A4 roughs for it, and I'm about to commence drawing, so hopefully you'll see those strips going up online very soon.

Remember you can support the comic further at my new Patreon page where I'm previewing sketches and other bits and bobs. A number have already signed up and I'm incredibly grateful for this, it's all kindling to keep things moving forward. Thank you!

I've been blowing into the cooled ashes of the world of Julius Chancer, and a little flame has sprung up and started dancing around. Enough that I feel it's time to open up and get Julius out in front of you again. So here is the start of his next adventure - The Brambletye Box.

At the moment I'm just making the first 5 pages (19 web strips) available to read (start here). More will follow as and when I'm able to put them up. I'm not going to promise any consistency just yet as it will be at the mercy of my work schedule - but by publishing them now I am making a commitment to getting this done as best as I can.

You can help ensure more work gets done by joining my Patreon. This is all new to me, so I'm starting out with low expectations and asking for very little (if anything) - just to gauge support and see how it goes. Your feedback on whether this avenue is worth pursuing will be most welcome.

The Brambletye Box takes place immediately after the end of The Rainbow Orchid. I will publish as much as I can online, with the ultimate ambition of it eventually appearing in album format as a single volume. Here's the promo blurb ...

The theft of the mysterious Brambletye Box from a controversial auction sets in motion a race to discover, not only the thief, but the story of an ancient Sussex ruin, three powerful stones lost to history, and a fantastic island where legends of strange beasts and a magical meteorite originate. Julius Chancer returns in a quest to discover the truth and save the world ... if he can!

As ever, I am incredibly grateful for your support and your patience. Julius has another big adventure ahead of him, let's see where he ends up this time!

Maschinen-Mensch have just announced the next expansion pack for Curious Expedition 2, called The Shores of Taishi, taking us into the realm of the East-Asian influenced islands of the Celestial Shores.

This DLC contains some of my favourite art for CE2, particularly the new Peacock tribe and their village. Other features include a recruitable red panda, a range of new enemies, such as the Ushi Oni and Dangkang, the animal shelter of the Tanuki, and a host of new items, trophies and locations.

Check out the trailer here, and add it to your Steam wishlist here. The Shores of Taishi is released for PC on May 19th, and soon after for consoles.

If you have any awareness of the comics world at all then you'll know that George Pérez has died, aged just 67, and after an illness about which he was very open, and seen out with an incredible spirit of generosity and grace. By all accounts, this was his character anyway, and he was hugely loved and admired throughout his almost 50 years as an artist.

I mark his passing because he was principal artist on one of my favourite comics from the early 80s, The New Teen Titans (co-created with writer Marv Wolfman). My relationship with superhero comics lasted only a few years - from about 1980 to maybe the mid-80s, and The New Teen Titans was the one comic I made sure to seek out every issue, and is pretty much the only run of superhero comics I still have in my collection today (including many of its offshoots and rarities).

I was totally absorbed in those stories - Brother Blood, Deathstroke, Terra, the Brotherhood of Evil, Trigon, the Vigilante, the runaways - just some that have stayed with me after decades. I carried on with the Teen Titans after George left - but it was never the same and my interest quickly petered out (though I did go back and collect the original 1960s Teen Titans run with the also-fabulous Nick Cardy, and I was very happy when José Luis García-Lopez made a guest appearance on art chores of The New Teen Titans too).

But the work and style of George Pérez is forever impressed into my brain from those early-80s formative years of comics reading, in the same way many of the classic 2000AD artists are, Joe Colquhoun from Battle, or the best of the contributors to Warrior. His work went way beyond the Teen Titans - including memorable runs on Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wonder Woman, which I also encountered to a much lesser degree.

So thank you George for the joy and inspiration you added to a very happy period in my own life. It's sad he's gone, but what a fantastic legacy - I'll be digging out some of my old comics for a re-read.

Recently I was commissioned to provide the cover for Fine Food Digest's Spring 2022 edition (vol. 23, no.2).

The brief was for an isometric view of a mini-market with a number of new shopping methods integrated - self checkouts, recipe boxes, store collection, delivery options, and even a robot at a till (not sure we've got those quite yet!).

Individual elements had to be easy to extract to use as separate illustrations for the interior feature article, so everything had to be on its own layer. It wasn't too different from the way I'd been working on the recent computer games project, Curious Expedition 2.

The biggest difference was in the style I chose, with no outlines and a very clean 'vector art' look (though actually it's not vector art).

Thanks to the the Guild of Fine Food and art director Mark Windsor for the work - a challenging but very enjoyable brief!

A news quickie ... Curious Expedition 2 is now available for Xbox and PlayStation, to join the already released versions for PC and Switch.

Also available for all these platforms is the Highlands of Avalon DLC.

That's it!

Perhaps I'm writing this a bit too soon because it still feels very strange, but I have completed my work for Maschinen-Mensch's Curious Expedition 2. This has been the longest project I've ever worked on, in fact I think it's the longest I've had any job!

I was first contacted by Johannes Kristmann, Curious Expedition's co-creator and art director (and artist for the game's first version), back in Feb 2018 and, after some try-out samples, I started my work on the game in January 2019.

It's been three years and almost 4000 hours of drawing, resulting in over 100 environments, more than 200 characters, creatures and skins (plus separate hands, hairstyles and facial expressions), more than 50 equipment sprites, about 300 item icons, 70'ish dice images, about 100 or so map elements, plus a few extras such as clouds, cursors and textures.

Not everything you see on the screen is my art - the team has included animators, a special effects artist, an interface designer, map creators, and that doesn't include the magicians behind the scenes with all the programming, writing and producing that has to be done. It's quite a mind boggling package.

It's been a real challenge at times, and I've learned so much from the experience. I'm proud of my involvement in such a terrific game, and my art has improved thanks to these past few years of consistent work.

I think I can honestly say I've enjoyed every aspect of the game, but my favourite pieces have also been some of the most complex. These include the club halls (especially creating and designing the Taishi 'floating library'), the city of Paris, the Broken Compass tavern, and the environments and characters that make up the various tribes.

I feel incredibly lucky, not only to have worked on a game that is thematically right up my street, not only to have had work in what's been a difficult few years, but also to work with a fantastic company and team of people - even if they were about 700 miles away, it always felt like I was coming into a friendly 'office' when I sat down at my desk in the morning.

A huge thank you to Johannes who has been an absolute pleasure to work with, I'll be forever grateful he decided to entrust me with his vision and ideas for the game. Thank you Riad, and thank you also to Laura, Mascha, Katarina, Philip, Isaac, Lorenzo, Shawn, Milan, Luzia, Petter and Sandrine - these are just a few of the team with whom I have worked, there are others too - truly inspiring work from all.

That's enough gushing for now (sincere as it is). As I write there are still two more DLCs to come out for the game, one in particular has some of my favourite work in, but I can't show that yet. I'll update when they're released, of course. In the meantime - you can buy the game here (Steam) or here (Switch), and it'll be out for XBox and PlayStation in the coming months.

And now, I guess, onto something new!

Jean-Claude Mézières, the artist and co-creator (with Pierre Christin) of Valerian and Laureline, passed away on the 23rd January.

The characters first appeared in Pilote in 1967, eventually seeing their adventures in 24 albums. Some of the designs had an influence on Star Wars, and Mézières also worked as a concept artist on Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, plus, of course, Valerian and Laureline had their own film outing in 2017, again by Besson.

Here's a quick tribute to him and his fantastic creation.

Last week saw the release of the first pay-for DLC for Curious Expedition 2. The Highlands of Avalon (trailer here) takes you to the misty hills and valleys of the Picts, and features a number of new locations, terrains, creatures, items and game mechanics.

These include new recruitable characters (the Grail Knight, the Clydesdale horse, Kobolds and Pict islanders), four new enemies, six new locations, and seven new equipment items ... and more.

"Curious Expedition 2 is like a Jules Verne pulp adventure version of a pen & paper RPG, mixed with narrative roguelike elements, all wrapped up in a streamlined and accessible gameplay experience. Take on the role of an intrepid explorer, assemble your crew and head out into the unknown."

The DLC is available now on PC from Steam, and will be coming to the Switch edition early next year. Next year will also see release of the full game on Xbox and Playstation.

Not much from me recently (apologies) but I wanted to mention that Curious Expedition 2, the Maschinen-Mensch game I've been doing artwork for since Jan 2019 (and still working on new content even now!) has just been released for the Nintendo Switch.

We bought a Switch last Christmas, mostly for the children to play Minecraft and Animal Crossing, but I did also happen to buy Zelda: Breath of the Wild for myself - which the children quickly got absorbed by as well.

So it's really exciting now to see and play Curious Expedition 2 on our nice big TV screen - it does look rather splendid - and especially as I've not been able to play-test the game for a while as I'm on a Mac at home.

It's available from the Nintendo eShop for just £16.99 - check out the trailer here.