The Adventure Advanced Gang Christmas Wrapping Paper Design (2005)

I know it’s October and we should be concentrating on Halloween, but I’m already seeing tons of Christmas stuff in the shops, despite it being just over two months away. Even the TV is showing a few festive-themed movies and advertisements, and some parts of the world are already putting up their decorations.

So I decided to go with it and show off my festive spirits a little early this year … with this masterpiece from 2005.

This was actually drawn as part of a school assignment, where we had to design our own wrapping paper (although not necessarily for actually wrapping presents). I was hugely into the Adventure Advanced Gang at the time, and so I decided to create a design for some wrapping paper featuring all the members of the gang wearing festive red Santa hats.

Since I’ve never seen wrapping paper which only has a blank background, I coloured the background in red and blue, my two favourite colours at the time. You might notice that Mickey is wearing an orange shirt with his face on it – that’s his ‘other’ outfit in the Adventure Advanced Gang stories. You might also notice that the colour of Patch’s shirt is red rather than the usual pink – I didn’t have a pink felt-tip pen, and the closest one was red.

I’ve included Virgo and Krypto, the two new ‘unofficial’ members of the gang, as symbolism of unity and joy shared by all at Christmas time. That’s why they’re all waving too, as if to say “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!”

Sadly, soon after this was drawn, 2006 rolled around and I abandoned the Adventure Advanced Gang to move on to some new characters to work with. Visit me again next week to find out what I drew next…

The Adventure Advanced Gang Go To The Cinema (2005)

The eighth book exhibition of my blog!

The Adventure Advanced Gang Go To The Cinema

(Click on the link above to open the book in your browser. You will need Adobe Reader installed to view the book. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free at https://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/)

Last week, I exhibited The Adventure Advanced Gang Meet Krypto The Superdog, the second in a trilogy of Adventure Advanced Gang stories which still survive in my portfolio today. Since I only have three of the stories now, this will be the final part of the trilogy.

For what seems like their last venture (at least when you look at my portfolio anyway), the Adventure Advanced Gang hear about a new movie being released at the cinema starring some of their favourite cartoon characters. Being huge fans of Looney Tunes and Saturday morning cartoons (especially Raichu), they obviously await the release with eager anticipation as they travel on the bus to the nearest city which has a cinema (since the town they live in doesn’t have one, strangely enough). I kind of based this on my life when I lived in the north of England, where the nearest cinemas were either in Leeds, York or Hull. Goole didn’t have a cinema when I wrote/illustrated this book, although it does now have a tiny movie theatre.

While watching the movie, the travelling members of the gang spot some familiar faces – both in the movie and in the audience! Although it is justified in that they live in a multiverse of some kind, where cartoon characters from both ends of the cartoon spectrum live and travel together. Kind of like a fanfiction with every single character from every single cartoon ever made, though obviously on a slightly smaller scale.

This may be the last Adventure Advanced Gang book in my portfolio, but it’s not the end for the gang just yet! Stay around until next week for a festive surprise… (Yes, in October)

The Adventure Advanced Gang Meet Krypto The Superdog (2005)

The seventh book exhibition of my blog!

The Adventure Advanced Gang Meet Krypto The Superdog

(Click on the link above to open the book in your browser. You will need Adobe Reader installed to view the book. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free at https://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/)

Last week, I exhibited the 2005 version of The Cat Party, marking the Adventure Advanced Gang‘s first story in their own series. Unfortunately, the ‘true’ second instalment of the series, The Adventure Advanced Gang Go To The Funfair, was lost to the past forever, and only three books from the series survive in my creative portfolio. This book, The Adventure Advanced Gang Meet Krypto The Superdog, will thus act as the second instalment.

One day, the Adventure Advanced Gang set out to visit Krypto the Superdog at his home in another town. Once they arrive, they have some fun together, like watching their DVDs on Krypto’s TV, reading their books, going for a short spin in his Supervan, and even buying some merchandise of the Superdog himself.

At the time of creating this book, the Krypto The Superdog cartoon series was airing on TV, inspiring me to fabricate my own accounts of the dog’s adventures. So this could be considered a fanfiction of the KTSD series, or since Krypto was originally Superman’s animal sidekick, the Superman series as a whole! And as the Adventure Advanced Gang is essentially a mix of my favourite cartoon characters along with some original characters, it could also be considered fanfiction of the series they’re originally from.

Since only three Adventure Advanced Gang stories survive, the next book I exhibit from this series will be the final piece of the ‘trilogy’.

The Cat Party (2005)

The sixth book exhibition of my blog!

The Cat Party (2005 Version)

(Click on the link above to open the book in your browser. You will need Adobe Reader installed to view the book. If you don’t have it, you can download it for free at https://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/)

Last week, I exhibited a literary gem of mine called The Cat Party. You may remember that I wrote and illustrated two versions of this book, one in 2004 (the version I exhibited last week) and the other in 2005. What you may not know is that I created a brand-new set of characters, named the Adventure Advanced Gang, for this version…

During a lesson at primary school, I became distracted and started to put a book together. I decided to write another Cat Party, but give the characters a complete overhaul from the last version. That’s where the Adventure Advanced Gang originated. Deciding to collect all my favourite cartoon characters together in one gang to write fanfictions about seemed like a great idea to me – I was somewhat inspired by House of Mouse, a TV series featuring all the Disney characters – but for some originality, I decided to throw some of my own characters into the mix. And thus the Adventure Advanced Gang was born.

The story starts off on a slightly different note from the 2004 version, but it more or less remains the same – the friends go to visit a convention for cats (see the 2004 version for where I got this idea from), but a rogue cat is angry at being left out of the show and plans to exact revenge by kidnapping the performing cats so he can steal the show for himself.

I’ve now written a blog post describing each member of the Adventure Advanced Gang in detail – find it both above and here.