Jon Cairns

Alpha Flag: Bravo - PDF Download

This is the section of story where the faces hadn't yet geled for our characters, and the storytelling is a lot rougher than I'd like, but I think it serves as an interesting time capsule for that weird awkwardness that threads through Alpha Flag.

It introduces us to Foxtrot, Hotel and the hole disease. It finally offers a couple answers, bundled with a dozen more questions, some of which that a...

Hotel 07 - Pencils

Renee is currently tied up doing some coloring work, so I'm going to power through with pages for her stack. In the meantime, he's what my Alpha Flag pencils look like currently.

The seemingly random diagonal lines are construction lines that let me rule out equal-sized panels without having to measure and calculate milimeter lengths and stuff. It's much faster, and also generally more accurate....

Alpha Flag: Charlie - PDF Download

This chapter contains some of my favorite drawings of the Diver. Drawn from July 2011 - December 2011, it rounded out the first year of Alpha Flag, and I feel like it took about this long to figure out the visuals of the comic. Being my first longform comic, I was really learning a lot as I went, week to (every other) week, so the look morphed and stretched and snapped back kind of inconsistently ...

Alpha Flag: Delta - PDF Download

Delta ran from December 2011 - May 2012 and was the start of some of the more violent elements of the comic. It's where we first see our guys actually kill an aspect.

I think Renee's colors really shine in this chapter. Since it's almost entirely red and blue, she experimented with some really interesting hues and shades to convey the tension between the various actors, all while the sun slowly ...

Hotel 06

Back on the Alpha Flag page train, y'all! As I said on the Hotel 05 page, I'm going to be posting the inks for pages before the final pages go up so long as they're not super big spoilers. If they are super spoilery, I'll post them after the finished pages go up on the main site.

This is the first page where I've gotten to use some of the photos I took while in Svalbard directly on the page. Spe...

Dead Star Pluton - PDF Download

It being Halloween makes for the thinnest pretense for sharing this short science fiction comic fragment! Red skulls, gore!

I drew Dead Star Pluton in December 2012 while on vacation in Poland for the first time. I was meeting my partner's family for the first time, and since nobody other than my partner spoke much English, I had a lot of time to hang around and draw comics. This story wa...

Alpha Flag: Echo - PDF Download

I drew Echo from June 2012 - October 2012. This is the last chapter I drew before I started experimenting with nib inking. When I started drawing Alpha Flag in December 2010, I had recently switched from inking with a Pentel Color Brush (a quasi-reusable/disposable brush pen with nylon bristles and an ink reservoir in the handle) to inking with a Kolinsky sable brush, dipped in ink. As a way of tr...

Alpha Flag: Foxtrot - PDF Download

After a break to move countries, it's time to get back in the Alpha Flag saddle. The new pages will start soon, but until then, here's another PDF of an earlier chapter: Foxtrot.

This one never got a wide release (outside of the mailing list), so if you had a gap in your AF PDF collection, this should fill it.

I drew Foxtrot from November 2012 - August 2013. It was the tail-end of the peri...

Alpha Flag: Golf - PDF Download

I've been working on remastering Alpha Flag pages for modern tablet screens, so if you prefer to read your comics on a device, this release is for you! It also means there are finally some PDF versions of Foxtrot and Golf coming down the pipeline. And also, also means that the full bleed pages in Golf get a little extra love than they do on the site--when the Diver encounters the cabin, for exampl...

Life Update - October 2016

I've had a couple of chaotic weeks moving from Poland back to the UK. Currently hunting for an apartment in Manchester for the next year (my partner is in the final year of his PhD at the University of Manchester). I hope to be getting back to normal Alpha Flag updates shortly after we land one! I'll keep you guys updated.

Following that, I'm also preparing for my first convention in years--tabl...

Hotel 05

I'm going to start posting the inks for pages before the final pages go up so long as they're not super big spoilers. As such, Hotel 05 is an atmosphere page that's pretty light on spoil.

A few things of note on this page:

- Two-Point Perspective: It's something I don't use very much. I try to get away with as much one-point as possible because I like the compositions it creates. I thought...

Sketchbook: Copic.i

This 44 page, A5 sketchbook chronicles my first couple months of working with Copic markers. It's filled with color drawings, anecdotes and tips--the result of exploring a new medium!

Hotel Inks: 01-04

Here's what Alpha Flag looks like before I send the files to Renee for her to add the colors. I'm always kind of amazed when I see the finished product, since she has a large degree of control over the finished look of the series.

I'll be posting the inks of each page moving forward, too.

The as-of-yet-unnamed-but-really-obvious-if-you-look-at-the-décor cabin has populated itself almost e...