Leigh Chalker (00:26):
Hello and uh, welcome to another episode of Tuesday Chinwag. My name is Lee Chalker. I’m the creator of the Australian Independent Comic Book Battle for Bustle, published through the comic studio. Chinwag is live streamed across two channels, uh, across the little yellow ticker box running across the bottom of your screen. You’ll see both addresses, one for Com X and the other for Aussie verse. If you would like to check out any of their content, go to those addresses and do the most important thing you can, which is like, and subscribe them anywhere you can find them. So the guest on this evening, um, is a dude that, uh, I’ve wanted to meet for a long time, and everyone knows that I enjoy meeting all of these people that I, uh, work I admired when I was a young fellow. So, uh, uh, this is an exciting one that’s, um, you know, one of those ones that’s, uh, I, I’m quite humbled that, uh, this gentleman, um, wants to come on and have a yarn and, uh, he is, uh, Mr.

(01:23)
Dylan Nailer. How are you, sir? Hey, good to see you. Yeah, yeah. It’s good to see you, man. Finally. It’s, um, uh, yeah, I, um, I, uh, have to say, uh, yeah, fan. So it’s, um, pretty tricky man, like trying to keep my cool here. So, you know, I’ll do what I can and thank you, Nick. May, um, everyone’s welcome to, uh, send in their comments. We’ll get back to them as best as we can. If I miss it, I will try and come back to it. Um, you know how it all works. The show is fluid, so anything can happen and, uh, you know, let’s, uh, not waste too much more time ’cause I’ve wasted years trying to get to this dude. So now I’ve got him. Let’s rock and roll. All right. So, Dylan, the existential question that I like to ask everyone before, you know, like to kickstart us off, man. Yeah. Is who? Dylan? James Nailer. Excellent. You did exactly what we <laugh>.

(02:24)
All right. This will be good. So, just to keep everyone in the loop, Dylan and I were talking just before the show and mention that, uh, you know, you can answer that question anyway you want. You could even answer it that way. So Dylan did. So it’s an inside joke. Now it’s outside, so you’re all in on it. And, uh, and uh, there you go. You know, we like to be inclusive and keep everyone in the loop, so that’s just how it rock and rolls absent minded. Hello mate. How are you? Thank you for your support. Um, alright, Dylan. So, man, my first recollection of you, mate was, um, I can’t remember my age, but, um, I was the youngest boy, you know, younger I am now. Let’s <laugh>. I’ll go with that. Okay. You know, time, space and interface and all that jive. So, um, and, uh, I was at the Townsville Show and, um, picked up a Yeah, yeah. And picked up a, a show bag. My parents, um, you know, were nice to me that day and, uh, decided to reward me for some good behaviour. And, uh, and inside of it was a comic book. And the, uh, comic book was, uh, one done by Mr. Dylan Mailer. So I, I guess that would be one of the big questions I would ask is how did you think about that? Like, what prompted you to get into show bags, man?

Dillon Naylor (03:47):
Well, yeah, it’s a, it was a fabulous opportunity and, but it was not something that I thought of. I, I was like a lot of people, I discovered comics through show bags. Uh, my earliest memory is getting a one of those Murray comic kind of reprints through through a show Bagg. And I, I, I don’t think I was even old enough to read. I just remember like looking at this, um, Superman comic and just trying to make sense of it. And it’s one of the, the earliest memories I have of comics. And every year they just sent kind of have the, you know, the Phantom or, or, um, superhero comics. One one year there was like a horror comic in the, in the show bag, which probably shouldn’t have been in there, had reprinted a lot of pre-code kind of horror material. And yeah, that was the exact moment that I discovered horror comics and, and still love horror comics to this day, and still measure everything by how good it that reading that, that comic at that time Yeah.

(04:46)
Felt. And that was through show bags. And I, you know, discovered the Phantom and discovered all these other things. And it never even really occurred to me that, um, self-published comics could be used that way, could be distributed that way. I was busy making my own self-published comic that was just available in like skateboard shops and missing link records and, uh, selling them at the pub. Like I remember trading comics for a beer, like, Hey, do you wanna buy a comic? Uh, buy me a beer. And just using it as a bartering kind of thing.

Leigh Chalker (05:21):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s cool idea. Um,

Dillon Naylor (05:23):
At that time I was living in a share house and one of the guys there, his uncle ran the, the show Bank Factory Company in Wangaratta.

Leigh Chalker (05:34):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (05:35):
And he, um, had this uncle around one day, and the uncle found out what I did and said, you know, it’s, I’ve had this idea to create comics to go into show bags and we’re looking for someone that could do it. Do you, do you reckon you could do something like that? It’d have to be like completely kid friendly and all above board and, um, we could pay you, you know, like a, a percentage on for each one, like a, a, it was like something like 5 cents per copy or something. And all I heard was like, do you wanna make comics? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, sure. And I, I didn’t actually think it would happen, or if it did happen, I, I didn’t know if I was gonna get 5 cents or not, or I was just so excited that somebody actually wanted me to do this. And I already had the characters all set and all I had to do was just like, make new material that was more a little bit more child friendly.

Leigh Chalker (06:28):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (06:29):
And spent a long time longer than I should have. I did, I worked on it right up until the deadline that the, that they gave me. And then I remember having to jump in the car and drive early morning to wa atta to get it to the printing press there.

Leigh Chalker (06:45):
Yeah. With

Dillon Naylor (06:45):
Like seconds des Spare <laugh>. And the, the, the guy that ran the company said, you, you know, didn’t have to put this much trouble into it, like all this detail. And, um, you know, each page was like done in a three and shrunk down. And then it had all this, at that stage I had like a really complex style or in inking brush and so much on each page. And the guy said, you didn’t have to knock yourself out like this. And I was going, no, I really wanna make something nice. So I really wanted to do a good job here.

Leigh Chalker (07:13):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (07:14):
And then that was it. And then, um, months and months went by and then the first I knew about it was that I got started to get fan mail from that comic because I, I didn’t expect anyone to actually write in, but at the end of it, I made my own little, you know, this letter, this letter column will be here and send mail to Dylan at and put, put my home address there and everything. And didn’t really expect anything to happen. But all, all this mail started to come in and that’s the first time time I knew that I realised that this was actually working. Yeah. ’cause I could, the mail was coming in from different states all over the place and all, uh, different shows. Not just the royal shows or the shows in the capital cities, but these comics were in every, um, regional fate and fair Mm-Hmm. And

Leigh Chalker (08:08):
I can tell you they were regional man, ’cause like, by those standards, like I’m regional. And, uh, yeah, I was, I, I got one, um, much to my, uh, great joy that was, um, that was one of those times when I was a young fella that I thought like, wow, man, this dude’s doing it. You know, like, fuck, like, wow. You know, like, that’s really cool. You know, like, uh, and it just primed the, the little idea and the little things in your mind, you know, that you think like, yeah, this fell’s doing it, you know, who knows what can happen down the track. You know,

Dillon Naylor (08:40):
It was, it was great straight away. I think the, the fa part of it was like the best bit. ’cause I knew I was communicating with people Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And obviously this is a time when still letter writing was still a thing and people’s, um, attentions weren’t fogged. So with so much social media and other distractions that people would still do things like, I like this comic and I’m gonna write in.

Leigh Chalker (09:02):
Yeah. Yeah. And

Dillon Naylor (09:04):
I think it was such a unique thing that no one, not many people had seen a local comic before. ’cause No, no. Local comic had this kind of huge distribution, far distribution. And so I think that there was a novelty factor to it. People saw that it was an Australian comics obviously set in this country and using the local language and Yeah. Instead of Superman and, um, phantom and generic kind of characters with, with settings that they couldn’t relate to. But they, they, I think, um, you know, people got really excited about that and it maybe prompted them to write in

Leigh Chalker (09:40):
And send it.

(09:42)
It would’ve been that would’ve that in itself the sheer like, ’cause you know, you get like texts and you get like emails now and it sort of feels like real generic, like, you know, and send job done. You know what I mean? Like where actually have someone sit down with the paper, you know, write their thoughts and then how many times did they crumple it up? That’s not good enough. Throw it over the shoulder and start again and, you know, like, send it off to you. And like that, that would’ve been like, really, really awesome man. Like, that’s very, very cool. Those were

Dillon Naylor (10:15):
Amazing because they weren’t just, um, I got this in a show, Bagg and I loved it. And this is what I liked about it. Sometimes they were just, um, like, so sometimes they were really little kids. Mm-Hmm. And they’d just tell me about what, what they did. Like, we’re on holidays at the moment and, you know, I just went to Dreamworld and here’s a picture of me at Dreamworld. And this little girl sent in a picture of her dress as a hot dog in, um, at Dreamworld. And, and she got, the photo was developed and included in the envelope with the letter. It’s like, wow. Like, and some kids would like, you know, I’m having some troubles at home and they’d like pour, pour out their troubles and stuff like that.

Leigh Chalker (10:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Um,

Dillon Naylor (10:55):
Uh, yeah, it’s, I I’ve got some really weird and wonderful letters and, and drawing and, um, they’d send in Yeah. Their own comic characters and ideas and things. Not necessarily trying to get published, but just like, look, I, I’m doing it too. And yeah. And, and you know, before social media it was hard to connect with other people.

Leigh Chalker (11:16):
Oh, absolutely.

Dillon Naylor (11:17):
Everyone, everyone maybe knew one or two other people that lived locally. Yeah. And maybe you belong to some kind of club or something and you write letters to people. But this, to find out that there was, you know, this much interesting comics, um, kids, just kids at home, they had no other way of knowing whether anyone else was drawing comics. And so, and they sent letters in which I published some of them. And, um, it was an early kind of, you know, nexus of, um, people connecting and talking and discovering that other people were doing different things and, and people would form these little fan clubs. Like there was a Dale fan club and, and yeah. Over, you know, eight years, eight, nine years I did this. So it was like a wonderful time. It was Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it was great. You know, great feeling to be able to, to get the opportunity to do that.

Leigh Chalker (12:05):
Yeah, man. Like I, dude, that’s, um, that’s, that is actually like a really beautiful thing because, um, just in the way you described then, that you had so many different varieties of letters too, you know, like, because I guess you would think that a lot of them would be very, very happy and probably 80% of them would like, you know, this is the greatest thing ever. But as you just mentioned, to get those few personal letters that someone like resonated with you, the creator, to be able to talk to you about their, um, their, their, um, sensitive and, um, vulnerable moments, man, you know, like, and saying thank you, you know, like, um, for putting that out. Because that would’ve been pretty overwhelming because, um, um, around what age were you when, um, you did the show Bagg thing? Man, you’re a fairly young fella. Yeah. At that stage.

Dillon Naylor (13:01):
Uh, that, well, I would’ve been, um, in my early twenties.

Leigh Chalker (13:05):
Yeah. Yeah. And that would’ve been amazing to get those things, those letters, man. Did you ever like, respond back to them? Or like, did you just sort Oh, you did? No,

Dillon Naylor (13:15):
Someone, someone takes the time to like write out a letter like that and, and Yeah. Put that much, um, thought into it and go to trouble of mailing and stuff like that. I wrote back to Yeah, almost every kid,

Leigh Chalker (13:28):
Unreal. Um,

Dillon Naylor (13:29):
You know, I sent them drawings and sent, you know, um, a lot of them were asking for like, back issues at that point. And, and I tried to help where I could and yeah. Uh, the, the company would give me, um, you know, say a hundred of each comic. Uh, they print thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Yeah. And they’d send, uh, printed by the local newspaper factory printing press. So normally print catalogues and, you know, local newspapers. And that’s why the comic looks, looked like the way it did. It was printed on like the cheapest possible pulp.

Leigh Chalker (14:03):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (14:03):
And it, it basically looked like a pamphlet. Um, and part of the, part of the agreement I is, I, I, I would ask for like a bail of 100 of these things to be sent to me so I could take them to conventions and things like that. There was only only one convention at that point, like acon. Yeah. And yeah, that’s, yeah. Yeah. Distribute them that way. So either through the show bags or directly from me at, at conventions and, um, I’d try and fill some mail order where I could. And, but, you know, between all of those things reached a lot of people. I made a lot of really good friends during that time. Yeah. Yeah. Because I still still keep in contact now.

Leigh Chalker (14:44):
Yeah. That’s outstanding, man. That’s, um, that’s, that’s brilliant because there’s like that respect because there’s so many, um, um, so many people I guess that take that for granted, you know, like people that do connect with their work and try and reach out to you and stuff like that. Um, when, um, I guess like going back to like when you, when you found that horror comic and all that, at that stage, were you just like, you found connection through doing your work and receiving connection back and creating that little community there. Yeah. And which you still have was there at that point, because I know from Townsville, um, it was difficult. Back in those times, you did have to send letters off or make long distance phone calls. It wasn’t as easy as it is now to reach out and find emails and Facebooks and, you know, Instagrams and things.

(15:37)
Um, and it seems like the connection is much more instant, um, and possibly a little bit less personal today as it was back when, you know, like you were receiving heartfelt letters and stuff. Were you, um, were you singularly motivated by other creators around you at that stage? Like I should say were other creators with you? Had you gone out seeking them or were you singularly motivated? Like you were just like, you know what, I love comic books. I’m digging this horror stuff. The opportunity came up. You know what, I’m just doing it. You know, like, did you just have that I’m doing it attitude.

Dillon Naylor (16:12):
Um, I’m usually like, yeah. A lone wolf operator just, um, yeah. Uh, one man kind of band thing. Yeah. But, um, at the same time, I, um, yeah, love interacting with other artists and writers and yeah. So the, the earliest interactions I had were with the people that put together Fox Comics. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the early Australian anthology from the eighties. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Leigh Chalker (16:38):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (16:39):
And that, that was the first, first time I discovered that there were local people doing comics. ’cause I went into minol books in Melbourne and, um, a couple of people working there, Greg Gates, um, put me onto, uh, let, you know, let me know that this, this anthology is being put together. And I immediately got involved with that. Yeah. But after, after a few submissions, I quickly realised that the stuff I was doing was just on another wavelength. Um, box comics had a certain tilt to it, and they wanted to do a lot of slice of life and more kind of, uh, level, level headed kind of stuff. But I, I really wanted to do this kind of wacky freeform science fiction horror kind of stuff. And I think every, everyone working at Fox Comics immediately realised that I was just gonna go out on my own. And Fox Comics enabled me to publish my first self-published comic Frankie Lane’s comics and stories. Yeah. That, that was maybe about 86 or 87 or something, so I was just outta high school.

Leigh Chalker (17:48):
Yeah. And

Dillon Naylor (17:49):
They basically put, put up the money and, and enabled me to do it as it was originally a Fox Comic special had written on it. And it was this tiny little, uh, mini comic size issue, but it was like my first comic. And, um, I did four of those. And then straight after that was the show, Bagg Comics. And, but in that time, I yeah. Met all the people doing work for Fox Comics and also the Oz Acon conventions began at that time. So I quickly met the, all the players there, like, um, Trudy Cooper and Jason Paulos. Tim McEwen.

Leigh Chalker (18:28):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (18:30):
So, yeah, it was just surfing that first wave of comics in the nineties Mm-Hmm. It looked like, yeah. Looked an exciting time. I could see other people that were taking it pretty professionally and travelling, you know, travelling to Sydney and catching up with these people. And, um, the first ta kind of taste of like, um, meeting the, meeting the public firsthand. And that was Yeah. Yeah. Exciting time. And, and then I forged a lot of connections with that. Did done a lot of work over the years with Jason Paul Lost and Greg Gates in

Leigh Chalker (19:05):
Particular. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I know, um, I, I’d speak, um, um, every now and then Jason and, um, Jason has told me that you and he have, um, you know, like worked together and written stories and done artwork and, you know, like, uh, yeah. Intermingled with your, with your stuff and all that over the years. So, uh, yeah. Very similar.

Dillon Naylor (19:28):
Very similar likes. And, um, we immediately, you know, we hit it off straight away and yeah. We, we admired the same artists and had the same kind of, um, you know, childhood backgrounds and, and Yeah. Um, I’ve always admired his work. He’s, he’s an incredible artist.

Leigh Chalker (19:44):
Yeah. He, he is, he’s a beast man. Like, he certainly is. He’s, he’s, um, yeah, he’s a, he’s a hell of a hell of an artist, man. Like, no dramas about that. It’s, um, he blows my mind. Um, um, you do as well a lot. I mean, actually everyone does. Um, I, I’m a pretty easy, mind blown man. I dunno how much of it I’ve got left to be honest with you at this age, mate. So <laugh>, so, so go gentle on me. <laugh>. Um, um, I guess, um, uh, when you, like the mini comics you’re talking about, are those like little tiny ones you used to get like a Reader’s Digest sort of size that used to come out? Is that what you were talking about? Or the thinner page size?

Dillon Naylor (20:23):
So by mini comic, I just mean like folded a four.

Leigh Chalker (20:26):
Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

Dillon Naylor (20:29):
And so the very first comic I published was, um, that size, and then there was three more Frankie Lane’s comics and stories, but they were, um, a four-ish, kind of a regular comic size. Yeah. And then, um, all the show about comics and everything I’ve done ever since, it must really frustrate, um, collectors or, or people with, um, a sense of order and like to, uh, arrange things on a shelf because every single comic I’ve ever done is a different size and shape and dimension. None of them down to plastic bags.

Leigh Chalker (21:04):
Oh, well, you know, don’t, don’t worry about them mate. Just whatever tickles your fancy.

Dillon Naylor (21:11):
I embraced it. It’s almost like my calling card now. I deliberately changed the format, size and shape and masthead and look of every comic.

Leigh Chalker (21:21):
Yeah. Well, I think that’s probably, for me, man, that’s what’s, um, that’s what’s unique about your artwork because, and, um, I mean, look, not just like for people out there too that are listening, like, you know, you’re not just a great artist, man, you’re a damn good writer too. Like, I think sometimes people, you know, automatically look at people’s art first and then don’t really, you know, like, uh, I guess show as much attention to the writing as well. But, um, you’re a very good writer, man. Um, I thank you. Unique, um, you have your voice and I, that’s my favourite, um, sort of creator, man. It’s people that do have, you can pick ’em, you know, like it’s not generic at all. It’s like, there’s a Dylan Whale, there’s a Jason Paul, there’s a, you know, Gary challenge, you know, the whole crew, you know, lined up.

(22:09)
Um, I, I’d like, um, I you got to, I saw once, um, like on a Facebook feed, like, I don’t know how long ago it was though, too. Like, one of the things is I do remember your, I guess, sense of humour and the way you did comics is, um, I guess like, I wouldn’t say it’s slice of life, but it’s, it’s, it’s leaning towards like, looking things from a street level to a certain extent. You know what I mean? Like, just looking at the world around you in your own way, which is really cool. And, uh, there was a thing on which I actually really admired this drawing, and it was one of the first ones you did, uh, you were saying, I’m pretty sure if memory serves me correctly, and it was like a, a, a graveyard and, um,

Dillon Naylor (23:01):
Sounds like me.

Leigh Chalker (23:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. <laugh>. Well, you know, like, yeah. Um, and I just was, and at that time, I’m, I’m coming to something here like, this is just this, I’m fluid man. I just, I talk jive sometimes, um, to get to a point, you know, run a long distance to come back a short way. Uh, and, um, um, and I remember at that time looking, and I was seeing like these really beautiful brush strokes and stuff, and different, you know, thicknesses and dimensions and stuff, you know, like, and, and I’d always remembered that. And it had always stayed in my mind, like, to try that eventually when I got more confident with my artwork and things. And then recently you posted something that popped up on one of my times where I, you know, was doom scrolling and stuff for like 10 minutes while waiting. And, um, and there’s a picture of three brushes, and you were like, yeah, these are the three brushes I’ve always used.

(24:00)
Now I, I have many questions about that, because how have you maintained the quality of those brushes for so long? <laugh>, because, man, I, I, I like kill my brushes and, um, wow. That’s amazing, man. Like, what sort of brushes are they that they have lasted that long? You know, like that just tripped me out, you know, like what got, like, ’cause I’m not a brush man. Like, I, like, I use brushing for, you know, like thick areas and stuff, but I, I just prefer like, um, like I, I like, like these sorts of things, man. You know what I mean? Like the different, um, thicknesses and stuff. So what, what attracted you to the brush? And, uh, like, I’m just very interested,

Dillon Naylor (24:49):
Well, horror comics to begin with. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I was, once I discovered them, I was like super interested in them. And so, in particular, um, the, you know, 1950s kind of ec ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But actually hard to find back then hard to find the reprints even of those comics. But they always had this, these beautiful, thick and thin kind of brushwork, feathering, um, all these really high contrast kind of styles they had, like Jack Davis and, um, all those guys, um, yeah. Wally Wood and stuff like that. So I really, really got into that. And then, um, will Eisner the Spirit. I saw that pretty early on. And that was the thing that made me realise that, you know, brush was the, the tool for me to create, to create that kind of, um, decorative styles Mm. That the horror comics used and, and Will Eisner used. Um, and yeah, I remember just like forcing myself to, like, there was no YouTube tutorials or I couldn’t even find books on the subject, or even just someone to ask. I just went out, bought a brush, Windsor and Newton and some ink, and then just like, experimented with it and just kept at it. And, um, yeah, I, it seemed to take forever back then, but looking back on it, I can, I can see the progress that I made because it happened during Frankie Lane’s comics and stories, which is like late eighties to 1990.

Leigh Chalker (26:21):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (26:21):
And so really, uh, I only took two years to like, really, um, work it all out and develop what I thought was a pretty good style. Hmm. And, um, by about 1990, I was really, really, really happy with how it looked. And yeah, about that time I’m got in contact with Gary, er Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and I started doing some comics for him, or inking. Yep. Inking, some of them were drawn by Greg Gates, and then later on inking Gary Calendar’s pencils directly for Planted the Apes.

Leigh Chalker (26:55):
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen some of those pages more. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (26:58):
Yeah. And that, that was what I, what I consider my formal education, like working with Gary, er Yeah. Just thinking over his beautiful pencils learn so much. And, um, that, that really, um, yeah, I, I can’t put a value on that. That was a, it was an amazing opportunity at that time.

Leigh Chalker (27:17):
When you, um, when you talk about, like, you learn so much from that, like, uh, take me back to like that mindset, um, because I, I find the creative side of things, you know, obviously very interesting. Um, when you get, when you get the pencils from a Gary Celler or someone at that stage where you are learning, you are finding your way, you’re confident, but you know, like you’re confident with your work, and then someone goes, here, try mine, who at the stage is probably a little bit up here, and you’re like, whoa, you know, <laugh> okay, I’m, I’m a bit nervous here. You know? Um, with, with the learning was, did that have more to do with the skill that you had learned up till that point? Or did it also integrate like a personal sense of confidence to be able to pick up your brush at that stage and go, right. I’ve got my head around what he’s like, what he’s putting across on this page. I believe I can translate it accurately in my style and I’m good to go right now. And it just built that confidence up in you, man. You know, like, ’cause that would’ve, you know, like was he, you know, because it, that can, back in those days too, it would’ve been phone calls. There was none of this stuff either, you know, like, it was just like a, you got the pages and like, oh God, I hope I’m doing okay, <laugh>.

Dillon Naylor (28:41):
Yeah. Well, I can remember that the sheer terror of, of receiving these boards from Gary Chaon. And he, he didn’t send me photocopies or anything. He sent me the actual pencil boards, and they were like, what they call finished pencils. They were like, you know, these days you could have just scanned them and darkened them correctly and probably could have got, you know, a perfect inked finished page from that. He sent me these beautiful boards, and I remember just staring at them. I remember putting it off for weeks starting, because I was like, I’ve gotta put ink directly on this now. And naturally I took, I took photocopies for, for emergency purposes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> <laugh>, but Ink Inked directly onto these boards. And I was conscious ev of every brush stroke. I was like, every single line I did, I’d stop and just go, is that right? And, you know, go and have a cup of coffee, come back and look at it and go, yeah, okay. And so I built up confidence like that, and yeah. But yeah, it was a huge boost to my confidence being, um, deemed good enough to, to work on this.

Leigh Chalker (29:49):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (29:51):
And, um, it took a few pages to get into it.

Leigh Chalker (29:54):
Yeah. But

Dillon Naylor (29:55):
I, I think I did a really good job of it, you know, and, um, Gary was happy and, um, you know, with the planet, the APE stuff, it was, this was for an American company. So, you know, a few years before that I was just drawing comics in my bedroom and then all of a sudden it’s like, uh, a no one franchise and it’s been published in America. I just couldn’t believe it. Yeah. And I fancy myself as like, some kind of, um, I’d be going down this, uh, you know, more serious comic book journey, uh, you know, adventure superhero kind of characters. I was never interested in superheroes. But, um, for a second there I thought, you know, drawing horror comics or something like this, um, maybe that was my direction, but, um, but I realised that my real passion kind of was in, um, more humour, humour related stuff. Yeah. And, um, so yeah, nearly 98% of everything I do is, is such humour undercurrent to it. Like I’m a huge fan of ACH Donald Duck and, um, also horror comics. So the comics I do are kind of fu weird fusion of ACH Donald Duck and horror comics.

(31:12)
Yeah. And, and so that, yeah, the comics have this kind of unique quality to it, I think. Um, and, uh, I

Leigh Chalker (31:23):
Definitely think they’re unique, man. Yeah. I, man, I, I reckon in a strange way, like, it, it’s sort of, you know, oh, Nick May I have a comics How to book Made by Dylan and Rod Toley, so there you go. Yeah. Right. So a comics how to book. There we go. We’ll talk about that briefly. How did you get to a How to comics book, Dylan? What brought you to that mate?

Dillon Naylor (31:48):
Uh, so I was doing work, um, with Rod Toley, who lived not, not too far away at that point. I lived in St. Kilda and he lived a few suburbs away and we kind of knew each other kind of socially. And we, um, he was pitching all these different ideas at that point to, to publishers and magazines doing spot illustrations and gag cartoons and things for different types of publications. He had this idea, so it was like Rod’s idea to come up with a how to draw comics book that was, um, had but had a different kind of tilt to it. Um, it wasn’t gonna be very dry kind of, uh, instructions is what you must do, but Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it’s more, more about, um, these are the different options and, um, his ideas and approaches. And it wasn’t gonna be very heavy handed, so it was more of a fun kind of thing. Yep. That would be told through comic characters themselves trying to explain. And, um, yeah, it worked okay. It’s, I dunno if Rod and I worked that well together, I dunno if our two kind of approaches suited each other completely. Yeah. Um, but the Bookwork was a very big success.

Leigh Chalker (33:14):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (33:14):
Uh, the finished product was apparently sold, sold really? Well, it was like through Scholastic. So I went through the, the school book list and, um, yeah, we, we received royalties beyond, you know, the advance and, um, yeah, it, I, uh, I still get people come up to me and say that they, they read that book and that inspired them to draw comics. They got that book in the, in the school library or something. Wow. So,

Leigh Chalker (33:42):
Again,

Dillon Naylor (33:43):
Nice to, to feel like, uh, you’ve done something that might have inspired somebody to be doing what they’re doing right now.

Leigh Chalker (33:49):
Well, man, like I, I’m here like already from just talking to you now, you know, like you have, I guess, you know, like you have touched people because it’s like you’ve kept them motivated and things like that. ’cause um, um, like we were just saying with the show Bagg thing and like pushing it out there, you know, like motivating me and then motivating other people to reach out to you and talk to you about their stories and stuff. The school, you know, like the how to comic book thing, getting into Scholastic and getting onto school book lists and knowing there would’ve been kids out there and parents getting them from, you know, like, um, for their art classes and things like that. Like, that’s pretty awesome, man. It seems like you’re a man that, um, follows his intuition. Would I, uh, and takes opportunities. Um, would that be fair?

Dillon Naylor (34:33):
Yeah. Um, I’m definitely someone who’s not, um, felt, you know, look checking the market and trying to fit into the market and Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I’m, I’m really just going off on my own tangent. Yeah. And I, I I, I don’t have like a premeditated plan for, for any of this. It’s just kind of organically happened.

Leigh Chalker (34:55):
Yeah, yeah,

Dillon Naylor (34:55):
Yeah. These opportunities came up and I took them and, um, yeah. Even though even the way I’m, I’m still working now with people, it’s just, you know, it happens if it just happens, it, it does. And, um, there’s been no overall plan, but it has worked really well and I’m, I’m really happy with, um, the kind of work I’ve done and, and the fact I’m still able to do it now. Mm-Hmm. Still got the opportunities and still reaching a lot of people with the book collections I’m doing now.

Leigh Chalker (35:24):
Yeah, for sure. Well, you are, man. Um, ’cause, um, it’s not, I guess it’s like, you know, like following your intu, um, you know, your intuition about things too and following, you know, I like the fact that you said it’s, um, that you followed it organically. ’cause um, I would think that, um, from the artwork and things that I’ve seen of yours over the years, man, that was, that’s a fair way to describe it as well. Um, I in terms of your, like, not even your art technique, but if you’re storytelling, you were just talking, um, earlier about being, you know, organic and being, you know, saying that you and the gentleman who did that how to book may not have worked the same. So how do you work? Are you a little bit more freeform? Are you a little bit more, you start playing with, you know, artwork and stories develop sort of thing, and you come back and go with the flow? Or are you like, I’m, I’m thinking you are not really a rigid dude, man, that, you know, like sits down and goes like, bang, this is it and this is what we’re doing. You know, like, what’s your basic, you know, like, um, how do you approach it from start? Uh,

Dillon Naylor (36:31):
I like to think that I’m, I’m a very persistent person. Like Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, for instance, the, the characters and ideas and things I’m doing now are things that I developed really, really early on. Yeah. And I kept doing it. Like the, the charact the, the central characters I keep returning to Darton di are just things that came out of like, really early high school. And, um, basically just kept at ’em, keep reshaping things. I don’t like to throw anything away, so I, yeah, yeah. Keep my notebooks, I keep all these things and I find ways to redevelop them. Yeah. So these little characters were just little bio drawings that I kept drawing. And then they ended up, um, a self-published comics. Like I said, the ones where I started to learn how to use brush and do things a little bit more formally. But that was still really insane comic books that didn’t make any sense at all, <laugh>. But, um, when I started doing comics for the show bags, I used the same characters again. Yeah. So I redeveloped retooled them for the show Bagg Comics, but realised that now I have to, these comics have to make sense. So I started to concentrate more as a writer. Yep. And use, use a, a, a more formal structure telling a story instead of, um, just making it up as I go along, basically.

Leigh Chalker (37:49):
So that’s, that’s basically where your writing started to get, you know, like sharper and stuff too, is you realise like, Hey, I’ve gotta step this up now. Artwork’s feeling good. Like I’m in a pretty, you know, I’m happy with that. Yeah. Gotta bring this writing up now, man. You know,

Dillon Naylor (38:02):
As soon as I knew I had like a, you know, essentially a mass audience, I knew I had to like, um, tell a proper story and then started to take that, you know, more seriously. Yeah. And take more pride in it. And, um, so yeah. I like, I like to think myself as, as a, a writer just as much as an artist and really put a lot of effort into that.

Leigh Chalker (38:24):
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s good man. ’cause you are, you’re definitely, you’re a very good writer, man. I’ve enjoyed the books of yours. I’ve read. Um, I find, um, find that you’ve like every, you know, I, I would obviously Dar and Dill is, um, I, I don’t think I’m outta school in saying that’s an Australian classic man. You know, like anyone that knows Australian comic books is very well aware of that comic book, um, and has a lot of people have read it and, you know, like know it and it’s looked at very fondly by a lot of people. Um, but what with Patricia, and, um, that was a huge success for you as well and still is a huge success. Um, because that, I like how it, you, I like look, I just like artists who do follow their nose, man. And they don’t just stick to a certain thing.

(39:25)
You know what I mean? I’m gonna do, you know, this genre forever in a day, you know what I mean? Like, I really want to have a go at that. That feels like where I want to take myself. You know? I don’t care if people buy it or like it, I’m just gonna do it because I want to. You know, I think that’s a good way to be, um, if you’re drawing and creating and doing whatever you’re doing. Um, and, um, with Patricia, I mean, that, that’s, I’d say that’s a huge success. I mean, like, my God, man, it was in a lot of magazines back in the day where, you know, magazines were, you know, like a thing. And um, um, and then <laugh> made me laugh, you know, like your coffin shape book, you know, like that sort of stuff. I was gonna chuckle about that earlier when you were talking about, that’s my thing. Now I just like to change sizes and things like that. I can see that that’s a cool idea. Um, but what with Patricia, was that something that, you know, when you’re a young fella, you just came outta nowhere or, you know, like, um, was that younger or was that like an older sort of time? Like how did that come about? Like, I, I like it’s a good character.

Dillon Naylor (40:32):
That was something that came about, um, especially for Kone Magazine. So, so the story was, I, the show Bag Comics kind of finished up Yeah. Um, at the end of the nineties. Yeah. And, um, into 2000 I branched out and did, um, I was doing some toy design for a company called Moose.

Leigh Chalker (40:57):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (40:58):
And it’s a, it’s a really big company now, but at the time it was just like, you know, me and two other people. And I, I was basically in charge of all the designs. And so I had to quickly crash course myself in being more disciplined again by creating things that had to be perfectly three dimensional Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> drawing things from the front, the side, you know, we didn’t have computers at that point.

Leigh Chalker (41:23):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (41:24):
So it was all technical drawings, and I would do these, draw these characters. I had to simplify things down. I would, my style was still pretty complex at that point. And for this, I had to basically strip back what I was doing to, to almost to the like animated cell level. You know, very simple diagrammatic drawings, getting back to shape characters, that, that shape is just basically a round circle and things that could be easily, uh, made into moulds and sculpted. And I had to like, you know, crash course myself on these very simpler designs. Um, and it was during that time I came up with Patricia. I was catching the train in and out to work, and rather than sleeping on the train or reading, I was like, um, designing a character of my own and using the, the knowledge that I was gaining by working at the toy company.

(42:23)
So I started to develop this very simple character. And I was trying to think ahead, I was trying to think of something that could easily be made into a toy. It could be animated, um, keeping it very simple, minimalistic as possible. And, um, so I can, I came up with like this little horror character. So it’s, it’s basically inspired by Wednesday Adams, but you know, the Wednesday Adams of the time. Mm-Hmm. And, um, yeah, just like a cute little girl. But, but she has like this terrible temper and, uh, she’s, she’s lived for, you know, thousands of years, but she’s forced to go to school every day. And she’s like smart, smarter than all the teachers <laugh>. And just the, the, the frustration of this character who’s fish out of water doesn’t want to be there. And just a moody little cow.

Leigh Chalker (43:15):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (43:17):
And yeah, it just started to write itself just this, this little antisocial little character and the sort of jokes you could get from it. And then I built this cast of characters to go with it and, um, showed it to Kone. So, so when I first started working for Kone, I, um, I actually was doing Dart and deal for them. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, reprinting some of the show Bagg comics in colour. Um, so I was actually getting paid for the, again, for the same material that I already done, but it was in colour and reaching a bigger audience again. ’cause Kone was <crosstalk>. Did you do

Leigh Chalker (43:54):
The colour, did you learn to do the colour at that stage? Or did they send that out to someone? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So

Dillon Naylor (44:02):
I’d work at the Toy Factory all day. Yeah. Huge train ride back to like Belgrave where I was living at that time. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And the, the commute was like, I’d leave in the dark, come home in the dark.

Leigh Chalker (44:13):
Yeah,

Dillon Naylor (44:13):
Yeah. Eat some food and then sit in front of my Mac and scan and colour these pages until I fell asleep. And then just up and go get on the train again. And I was, it was almost like two jobs, two, two working day and night just because, uh, these opportunities were there and

Leigh Chalker (44:31):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (44:31):
Yeah. Yeah. So I’d, um, each month they were printing Dar Dylan, and that was like a big hit in Kone. And so it was like great, it was like they were reaching another audience again, another level up. But then, uh, and I said they also wanted like a character for Girls Darton deal was just all male characters, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then I thought, well, I’ve, I’ve been developing this little character and I showed them this character and little vampire girl, and I thought, great. They’ll, they’ll run Darton deal and Patricia, and it’s just gonna be full of my comics. It’s gonna be great. And they loved Patricia so much that they dropped Darville. Oh, <laugh>.

(45:16)
And they’re going, yeah, we just want Patricia, we want lot, lots of that. We want puzzles and drawings, pictures to colour in and stuff. Yeah. We love this. And so it was just all about Patricia for those years. And the, the magazine was just huge selling thing and they started to print it, publish it in other countries. So it was, um, franchised out so that they’d run it had it in the UK and the Philippines. And at one stage it was, there was a German version of KZ and Yeah. Right. Translate my comics and they’d send me copies of it back. And, um, yeah. I’m just wondering how, how, because I use a lot of puns and the, the jokes, the, the kind of writing that I use, that the jokes, there’s all in the dialogue and the wording of it. Mm-Hmm. I’ve got a lot of trouble to, um,

Leigh Chalker (46:05):
So like you, you were feeling some of them may have been a little bit lost in translation sort of thing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (46:10):
You know, now I could just like run, run Google translate over it or something and Yeah. And check exactly what happened to it. But I just get this printed thing back all in Germans just going, wow, I wonder how this pun works. Like, how did, how did they do that?

Leigh Chalker (46:22):
<laugh>? You would’ve been like, that’s so cool. I’ve got no idea what’s happening. <laugh> man, that would’ve been awesome. Hello, Peter Lane. How are you buddy? Thank you for watching and Oh, glad we finally got a Dylan nailed at Chinwag. It’s long overdue. Thanks guys. Yes, it is, man. We’re getting there. Gary Chana such an amazing, unique, wide ranging career and still going at the top of his game. Genius. I’ll tell you what, Dylan, that’s um, that’s some good praise there, man. Is there going to be a Dylan Nailer collection? There you go. From Nick May. Well, that up there mate there

Dillon Naylor (47:01):
Already. Yeah. Are some collections out there? Some of them have gone in and out of print, um, already, like there was a collection of Darton deal show Bagg Comics.

Leigh Chalker (47:09):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (47:11):
Published by Milk Shadow books. Yeah, yeah. Um, maybe eight, nine years ago. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that went in and outta print pretty quickly. And so I’m currently working on reprinting that book, but in colour. And it’ll include all the other stories that were in the show, Bagg comics. Like the, so the collection I just talked about was just my lead stories. So it was all my artwork, but the, you might remember the Darville Show Bag Comics that had, um, guest artists also drawing darton. And that was a great time. ’cause I, I’d go and ask, you know, Greg Gates and different people, Jason Paul asked, all the people I would admire were, you know, could you do two a two page Darton deal? And, and I’d love, you know, to have all of these back in print and I’d love to have them all in colour. ’cause Darton deal looks great in Coloured, um, yeah. It has this kind of bright animated look to it. And Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So last three years I’ve been, um, colouring these pages in my spare time. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages and taking a lot, lot longer than I thought. But eventually there’ll be a complete show, Bagg Comics in Colour book. But, you know,

Leigh Chalker (48:22):
That, that is cool, man, A one stop, like, man, that, that would be quite literally hundreds and hundreds of pages too. Like,

Dillon Naylor (48:31):
It’s gonna be a big book.

Leigh Chalker (48:32):
I do it. I, I look, I’m also a big fan of, um, people that learn from the ground up, man. You know, like, and, uh, uh, like just you saying like the initial drive doing many comics. I love the idea of many comics, you know, great, great creators have started from that, you know, um, to do on your own, go on a, you know, like aus coms and stuff for the first time meeting people and now, you know, learn and, and then you went to toys and then you from toys you went to, you know, like creating Patricia on a train ride, you know, essentially, you know, you wanted to create your own like, man, you know, I’m, I really, dude, I tell you what, you must have seriously like a p like a magic power man because it’s like, what I’m seeing here is like heaps of variety.

(49:23)
Gary’s, right. Uh, from what I’ve seen. Um, and those to sniff out a hit like a creative character that strikes a, a large audience, which, um, and you don’t just, you’re not firing one hit and missing with the rest dude. Like, you seem to be like, you know, like firing a lot. Um, and now you’re like in the process of going, but you’ve learned colouring, you’ve stayed up all night, you know, work and, you know, like backwards and forwards sacrifice and having no life, you know what I mean? Like just, this is what I want to do, you know, like, and I’m gonna do it. You know, like what, you know. And now you’re at that point where, you know, like you’re going back over Dar and do, you’ve just done rock and roll fairies where, um, where you went back and recolored all of that and Yeah. You

Dillon Naylor (50:15):
Working one was actually already coloured, luckily.

Leigh Chalker (50:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Like,

Dillon Naylor (50:20):
So at the time, at the time when Kone was coming out at, you know, at the height of its powers, they quickly wanted to spin off Kone into a, um, separate magazine or create a system magazine for Kone. So they created Total Girl, and, um, they needed a new comic for that. So they, they said, well, what we need, like female characters, uh, something very positive, something very fun. And so I usually do little self-contained gag stories. Like, Patricia was always two to six pages, little self-contained, uh, little episodes. Um, rock and Roll Fer was more a continuing cereal, which I hadn’t done before. Mm-Hmm. Like open-ended kind of cereal.

Leigh Chalker (51:10):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (51:11):
And the unique part of it was that I, I dunno why I did it, but I decided to make the decision of completely winging it, like making it up as I went along. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I vented the characters. I vented, um, roughly what was gonna happen. I used the, the central protagonist of the, of the story was some, a character from Darton di, a girl called Penny Mm-Hmm.

Leigh Chalker (51:37):
<affirmative>.

Dillon Naylor (51:38):
And so a girl finds fairies, they’re a small little rock band in the forest. I just started there and then just like, where’s this gonna go? And I’d make up two new pages every month and leave a cliffhanger for myself. And next month I’d have to like, work that out and create another cliffhanger. And it just went on for about six years, just, um, <laugh> completely making it up as I went along.

Leigh Chalker (52:04):
Yeah. There’s a beauty in that though.

Dillon Naylor (52:07):
But, uh, it’s only now that I, like, I’m can’t believe that I did that, like, took that risk. Like you could just easily write yourself into a corner and, uh, you know, three years into a story and there’s nowhere to go. And I just, I don’t have that crazy confidence anymore. I would, I would never dream of like doing that, but it just so happened that out of luck and pure confidence. So I created like what I felt like was a really good little story, ran about six years, a hundred something pages. Um, why

Leigh Chalker (52:38):
Do you feel like that? Why do you feel, like you just said at that stage you had supreme confidence, you were really riding high and everything. Why, why do you feel now that you wouldn’t or couldn’t go down that pathway again of trying something along those lines?

Dillon Naylor (53:03):
I think just to be honest, as time goes on, I’m just less and less confident. I had really, yeah. I had mad confidence as a teenager and when I was inventing these comics for the first time. And, um, but I find as, as I’ve gained skills and experience and time, um, I, it probably, maybe it happens with a lot of people. Uh, I just find I’m just more and more self-aware and critical of what I do. And, um, I just don’t have the same confidence. I, I still have the same drive to do it, and I the same, no trouble with imagination or, um, directions which direction to go in or Yeah. But, um, I just find, yeah, I, I, I do something and I look at it and I, um, I’m just very critical of it. And, um, yeah. I just find, yeah. It’s, uh, it’s hard to explain, just

Leigh Chalker (54:08):
Is is it a critical, um, like within yourself, um, I, I’ll come back to Nick May’s comment in a sec. Is, is it criticism from within yourself that you could do better? Or is it a criticism that you’re thinking from an outside, like what people are gonna think about, you know, like what you’re putting out Yeah. And you come a bit more sensitive towards the work you’re doing.

Dillon Naylor (54:36):
Yeah. I just, um, when when I look at it, I’m thinking, um, um, now I’ve, I’ve got all this time to look back on Mm-Hmm. I’m wondering whether that’s as good as it was five years ago or 10 years ago, or because it’s different. Is that a good thing? As my, my style was constantly changing, but now I’m not always sure that the direction it’s going in is the right direction. I’m just, I’m basically just overthinking everything.

Leigh Chalker (55:05):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can understand that.

Dillon Naylor (55:08):
I feel happy, feel happy with the work, and it takes me longer and it might be every two or three pages I have to like, start again, where I never used to do that.

Leigh Chalker (55:19):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (55:20):
Uh, um, but yeah, I’m basically just overthinking things. I just, I used to, I guess it comes down to, I used to just work a lot faster and do it, and then it was out the door, and then, then a few days later it’s published.

Leigh Chalker (55:34):
Gotcha.

Dillon Naylor (55:34):
And that’s it. But now Gotcha. The projects take longer, so they’re sitting there.

Leigh Chalker (55:39):
And that’s obviously because you’re like not, you are working to your, to your own pace and satisfaction. You don’t have that whip, crack and delight, man, I’ve gotta get this out now. Like, you know, it’s gotta be in by Friday sort of thing.

Dillon Naylor (55:52):
Yeah, that’s right. They, the things are sitting on the desk a lot longer. Mm. And therefore there’s the danger of just you coming back to it and then looking at it again and again and giving it a third, fourth look and Yeah, I’m just, I’m basically just overthinking everything now.

Leigh Chalker (56:06):
Yeah. I, I, dude, I like, man, I’m not, I’m not anywhere near obviously you. Um, but I, I can definitely, I, I understand what you are saying there, because I can’t work to a deadline. I hate them because I like to take my time with my artwork and stuff like that. Some can take a week, sometimes a a day, like I don’t care. It’s just my thing, you know? And, um, and I can be very over critical of my work too. Men, like if I do a 24 page comic book, I can guarantee you that I have done 36 pages of artwork, you know what I mean? Because even though there’s nothing wrong with the page, I’ve gone, nah, I can do better. Or cha you know, like, so I understand the overthinking side. Yeah. Where if I had a deadline, I would probably be very much inclined to go, you know, like, what out and follow that and just roll onto the next one.

(57:11)
So, no, I definitely understand that, man. I guess that’s the pros and cons of, you know, like, um, deadlines and stuff, you know, like to doing it to your own device and your own pace and things. But dude, you, you ain’t losing no skill, Nick, let me tell you that. Like, you know, like you’re just, you, you, you got your thing going on. Don’t stress about that. But, um, Nick may just had a comment that came up. If Siz can pop that back up, we’ll come back to that. So Nick May, so Dylan has done some controversial licenced comics. So tell us about your controversial licenced comics. Dylan <laugh>, if you know what <laugh>

Dillon Naylor (57:48):
Quite sure. I’m not quite sure what.

Leigh Chalker (57:52):
Alright, Nick May, what do you mean by controversial mate so we can clear it up? Hello? Yaku sa saying, I hope I didn’t ruin that name of yours, mate. It’s a very lovely name. So I meant no offence. Um, uh, I blame the fingerprints on my glasses. Um, yeah, Nick, if you’re out there bud, chuck us out. What you meant by that comment so we can get Dylan to answer that as, uh, succinctly as possible, mate. Um, um, yeah, but no man, I, um, I think it’s, you know, like with,

(58:29)
Oh dude, I’ve got so many questions for you. I just dunno where to go. ’cause it’s like, uh, you’re, you’re thoughtful, dude. This is what I like, I like talking to people who are thoughtful about their art. You know? Um, you’re not, like, you’re not, you don’t seem me ego driven to me, man. You know, like, you seem to be someone that, you know, like, um, is very thought based in their creation, um, hence the, uh, organic nature of your character creations and stuff. But, um, what, um, where did you get outside of comic books with your senses of humour and, um, your shorter, you know, like, as you’ve said, like six page, you know, like clips and, you know, two pages, that sort of thing. Where, what was the main, what was the main, um, like influence for your humour, man? Was it, um, your family members, there was someone in the, that was comedically based, or a brother or sister, or just what she used to watch on Tally or, you know, you’ve mentioned Donald Duck comics and that sort of stuff before, but like, what was your, where, where did that, um, gestate from?

Dillon Naylor (59:36):
Uh, I don’t, I don’t quite know how I could, what I could attribute it to. I was always a big fan of, um, degeneration. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> like, um, Tony Martin, Mick Malloy, the, the radio show. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (59:47):
Yeah,

Dillon Naylor (59:48):
Yeah. Um, ended up doing a comic based on that.

Leigh Chalker (59:51):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (59:52):
And, um, yeah. You know, um, humour and comics and, and comedy films and, um, I can’t think of any particular kind of, uh, template.

Leigh Chalker (01:00:07):
You just take it all in because it’s like, yeah. Yeah. No, that’s cool. ’cause um, I, I’d say by a couple of things that you’ve said, um, I’ve got uncles that, um, I like older brothers to me that, uh, would possibly be a similar age to you that were very much into that particular, um, the Doug Anthony All Stars when they’re in their prime and the gen and that sort of level of humour and things like that too. So I, I completely get where you’re coming from with that. Um, with, um, I also have to say that, um, I do like coming across, um, the particular records that, um, you seem to pick up from around, uh, Melbourne and, uh, that you post on, uh, uh, Sundays generally, it seems to be your day of record day, you have an impeccable taste in music serve one that’s, um, oh, thanks.

(01:00:59)
Uh, uh, I would say, uh, a a friend of mine who I went to school with, who you would know, uh, or recently met Michael Plata and I, I would say, have a very similar, um, taste in music over the years. We listened to a lot of those records. We used to sit around, um, uh, my house and his mom and dad’s house and go through their record collections while, um, we were young and learning music and artwork and stuff like that. And, uh, you’ve taken me back to a few things where I’ve seen you pop up some records and go, oh man, I haven’t heard that for a long time. I’m gonna jump on and have a listen to that. And they still sound fresh. Uh, you know, like, uh, the Man You dropped a Bryant Eno bomb about three months ago, man. And I was like, man, I haven’t heard that in ages. So I banged that on. I can’t remember the name of the old one. It’s the one with the tree on the front cover, man. Um, like the weird looking tree

Dillon Naylor (01:01:57):
Fan.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:58):
Yeah. Um,

Dillon Naylor (01:01:59):
But yeah, I’ve, uh, I’ve always been a scrounger I’ve always been, yeah. Scrounging through secondhand shops and yeah. Um, I love the whole treasure hunt thing, and I love, um, you know, the chance finds that you, you would find in secondhand shops and garage sales Hyundai markets, and a lot, a lot of those things have kind of informed my, my own taste and my own comics in, um, you know, the books I’ve discovered and the music that I listen to and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> And I kind of put it down to, you know, sometimes you’re meant to find these things, these little treasures that are hidden away. Yeah. Like, I would, I wouldn’t normally just, um, stream or download or uh, select, you know, go buy a record of a particular thing. I wouldn’t go out with something in mind and come home with it and put it on. Yeah. I like the idea of finding these things.

Leigh Chalker (01:02:57):
Mm.

Dillon Naylor (01:02:58):
That maybe they’re, they’re there for you and they’ve been there just waiting. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I love the old treasure hunt part of it and bringing these things home and, you know, sometimes the weirder the better. I love weird I unusual kind of music and stuff I’ve never heard of and Yeah. Yeah. That when it’s like one or $2, it’s, there’s no risk in that. And, and some of it’s terrible and some of it turns out to be life changing.

Leigh Chalker (01:03:23):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:03:24):
It’s the same with comics and books and that maybe 98% of all the things I have at home are just those kind of chance fines. And I prefer to kind of, you know, randomly discover these things

Leigh Chalker (01:03:37):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:03:38):
And then bring them home like that. And, um, I feel like that’s shaped a lot of my taste in, in music and books and comics and illustration and art in general.

Leigh Chalker (01:03:50):
Yeah. No, I can de do you de definitely, um, um, Yo-Yo from n Naughties Art. There you go. Goodday mate. Um, man, you’re definitely painting a picture of how you’re all coming to be like, um, uh, to me at this stage, I can see how the music like, and that ties into the artwork. I can see how the treasure hunting and attracting things or, you know, like going out and looking for things in the world has brought you into that intuitive, you know, like following, you know, with your artwork and stuff like that. Like, I, I’m, I’m sort of picking up what Dylan Nail is putting down here, man, you know, so it’s good. I like it. It’s, um, because, uh, you know, like we’ve never met before tonight, but I, I would like to think that, you know, sometimes, I mean, look, hey, you can’t be like one thing all the time, but I like fluidity, man.

(01:04:49)
Sometimes I can be very emotional, sometimes I can follow my nose, sometimes I can be very serious. I’m a <laugh>, I’m many things, you know, like, but it is good to just sometimes like, let it all go and just wander out into the world, man. And see what, you know, like comes back at you. ’cause you do find beautiful treasures, man. Some of those treasures are ideas too, which you seem to like just grasp. Um, dude, Neil Bland’s got one. You, I met Dylan in 1990 at a Fox Comics meeting. We discussed the difficulties of crossing the Dset Road train intersection in Boronia back when I used to drive. So Dylan,

Dillon Naylor (01:05:33):
I remember,

Leigh Chalker (01:05:35):
Oh, there we go. <laugh>. Excellent.

Dillon Naylor (01:05:38):
I think Neil had submitted a cartoon to Fox and it showed this particular intersection Mm-Hmm. In, and it was a notorious intersection. It had about like five roads and railway tracks and things intersecting. It was this particularly nightmarish thing, which I think they’ve solved a lot of now. I think a lot of the train tracks underground and, uh, and they’ve approved it a lot. But I made special notice of it because I took my driving lesson when I was learning to drive through Boronia through that exact intersection and failed the test because there was like a train, train, train coming one way, an ambulance coming another way. And, uh, just to see someone make reference to this in a comic, this exact horrible intersection. Um, and yeah, I think we bonded over that moment.

Leigh Chalker (01:06:32):
Yeah. Yeah. And

Dillon Naylor (01:06:33):
I’ve known Neil all these many decades since.

Leigh Chalker (01:06:37):
Yeah. Yeah. He’s, man, he’s, um, was he still, was he, you know, still, still spruiking, you know, only cash back in that, those days or what mate? Because yeah, that’s his new slogan now. Josh Cash, you know, like, which, which, you know, I, I like,

Dillon Naylor (01:06:53):
Yeah. I think he had a bit unappreciated, if I remember right. Cash <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (01:07:00):
Oh man. I’m surprised it’s not a tattoo. But no, he’s a, he’s another very unique, um, artist man that I’ve had the opportunity to have on a chinwag too. And I enjoyed that conversation immensely. He’d be a good dude to talk to, um, face to face, you know, like in person. But, um, man, like with, um, has, has a lot of Melbourne, like informed a lot of your like, i ideas like, you know, like, because you’ve mentioned today, you know, like different suburbs, you bring cash. There you go. That’s it. Neil, you change, um, um, like, uh, ’cause you have mentioned today like a lot of suburbs and, um, just different places like your houses where you’ve lived and like train travel and that sort of thing. So I, I’m assuming that part of also like your storytelling for the d and dill stuff, you know, like, and, and your, again, not slice of life, but you know, more storytelling related from a Dylan Nailer perspective. Would that just be from a, that’s around the suburbs of Melbourne and putting things together where you’ve obviously grown up down there and you’ve seen changes in the city and changes in attitudes with people and you know, like just different ebbs flows of things, man. Like, does that, you put that into your like, comic deliberately as well? Yeah,

Dillon Naylor (01:08:22):
Definitely. I should make mention of, um, another comic title I did in the nineties called Pop Culture and Two Minute Noodles. So I dunno whether you’ve seen it.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:29):
No, I haven’t seen that one. No.

Dillon Naylor (01:08:31):
It was at the time I was doing a lot of,

Leigh Chalker (01:08:36):
There you go. Peter Ains just said, Dylan Reprint Pop Culture two, middle of Noodles, issue five. There you go on cue. So you got a fan.

Dillon Naylor (01:08:46):
I was doing a lot of kids comics, so I was doing, um, a lot of stuff that was, you know, looked kind of cutesy and, um, as a way of combating that or showing people that I had a bit more range. I developed a kind of it cross between young ones and dogs in space, but, you know, set, set very much in Fitzroy.

Leigh Chalker (01:09:10):
Um,

Dillon Naylor (01:09:11):
And it began to start to reflect the way I used was living at that time as well. So it’s like a share house, little soap opera, and it revolved around these five characters. They’re fairly kind of raw stereotype characters. It’s like a punk, punk guy.

Leigh Chalker (01:09:28):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:09:29):
Kind of goth hippie and

Leigh Chalker (01:09:31):
Which one were you, mate?

Dillon Naylor (01:09:33):
And it was, um, it reflected, it ref kind of the reflections of people I was living with than myself.

Leigh Chalker (01:09:40):
Yeah. And which one were you, were you leaning a bit more goth? I, I, I’m sort of thinking possible.

Dillon Naylor (01:09:46):
Um, yeah, I was probably more there, there was more of a, I was more of the hippie guy. I, I felt like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, and, uh, there were just excuses to tell stories that were a little bit more jagged. The language was, you know, a bit more challenging and there was, you know, kind of some drug references and, uh, just, just mainly just to demonstrate people that I could, uh, you know, do other things a bit, something a little bit more underground, but looking back on it, very naive kind of stuff, it’s, it’s almost kind of cute in its own way. But, um, I, I’m kind of proud of that stuff because it, it’s semi autobiographical and, but they’re very Melbourne stories.

Leigh Chalker (01:10:30):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:10:30):
I was living in St. Kilda at that point, like right on Chapel Street and, um, living the whole Bohemian lifestyle thing, mid nineties, going out to see lots of bands.

Leigh Chalker (01:10:44):
Yeah,

Dillon Naylor (01:10:45):
Yeah. Drinking a lot of beer, um, playing pool in the middle of the day and Yeah. Um, yeah,

Leigh Chalker (01:10:51):
<laugh>

Dillon Naylor (01:10:52):
Living life.

Leigh Chalker (01:10:54):
Yeah. The dream man. We were like,

Dillon Naylor (01:10:57):
But we were like, you know, living, living very rough. Everyone was like crammed into this old house and just getting by on, um, generic brand meat pies and stuff. And, um, but I started to like absorb some the, the, the weird stuff that would go on when, when you’re living with that many people and all their friends and constantly rotating cast of weird characters

Leigh Chalker (01:11:22):
Yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:11:23):
Out on the street. And when you’re in these pubs at three o’clock at night and in, in a nightclub, and you wake up somewhere and you dunno where you are. And I was absorbing all of that stuff and turning them into stories.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:35):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:11:36):
And I, I think those comics have helped record those kind of locations in the feel of that time.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:42):
Mm-Hmm

Dillon Naylor (01:11:42):
Mm-Hmm. Uh, there’s a unique quality to the nineties at that point.

Leigh Chalker (01:11:45):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:11:46):
Um, feels like, you know, things change and even share housing has kind of changed. Yeah. In a way. Back then there was that one phone and you had to split the bill this many ways and

Leigh Chalker (01:11:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Complex

Dillon Naylor (01:12:01):
Problems were harder then. And

Leigh Chalker (01:12:04):
Man, I, I’m totally with you. Like, um, I remember playing in bands, you know, you get outta school and you know, you’re drinking beer and, you know, you know, because up in our towns was different, obviously to Melbourne, but, um, like I, I remember, um, our mutual mate, Michael Plato, and I had no idea what we were doing musically at that stage. We were just making noises and stuff, man. And I used to cruise up and down the nightclub strip in Townsville and play gigs and stuff and get your free beer and pass out and, you know, like cars and <laugh> and then go and like, you know, you’d wake up and in a house of like, you know, like 30 people, you know, like just all passed out. We were in backyards and people hanging upside down on swings and stuff, you know, <laugh> and, you know, lots of good times. How long have I been here for? Three days. What, you know, <laugh>. Yeah. I’ve been there, man. Like that Were good times, man. You know, like it’s, but you know, hey, what,

Dillon Naylor (01:13:03):
That was the stuff that was the vibe I was trying to put down on paper and Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, looking back on the, on those comics now, which, which are, you know, long outta print. Mm. And they’re there, there’s another book collection I I I’ve been meaning to do.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:17):
Yeah. Do you keep all of your original pages with you? Like, or are you reprinting from the actual, like, printed comic books, or you’ve been taken around all your pages with you?

Dillon Naylor (01:13:28):
No, in most cases I’ve still got all the original art, so, yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:32):
Wow.

Dillon Naylor (01:13:33):
All the collections I’ve done so far, I’ve, uh, gone back and remastered the original art. Yeah. Yeah. Um, painstakingly rescanned it. And, um, in other cases, once I started using computers to colour, still got all the original files, everything’s squirrelled away. Yeah. So I’ve got, I’ve got at least six or seven books ready to go. Just all the materials are here, um, slowly, you know, putting them together and re-releasing them.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:03):
Yeah. That’s, that’s unbelievable, man. How much you’ve got to go. Like, what are your plan? What’s your next one that you’re close to that thinking about throwing out there?

Dillon Naylor (01:14:14):
Well, the next thing that’s coming out is a Patricia kind of art book. It’s gonna, or, or maybe a colouring book. So it’s gonna have all black and white art, and it’s made up of a lot of sketches and things I’ve done over the last six or seven years, as well as guest art from people, all versions of <inaudible>. So it’s like a Patricia colouring book, basically.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:36):
Yeah. That’s cool.

Dillon Naylor (01:14:37):
And then after that there’s a, um, there was these two other characters I created or called Properties that I created, um, that ran in Nat Carmichaels Oy Oy Oy magazine.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:49):
Yes. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:14:51):
One’s called Preston Peace, which I co-created with a guy called Jason Towers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And he’s basically a, like a dead school boy. He’s, he died on the holidays and comes back to school, but his parents have pressured him to come back to school. It’s all about like peer pressure. And, um, he, he’s basically a dead school kid at school. And, um, it’s very funny, but trust me.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:19):
Yeah. He

Dillon Naylor (01:15:20):
Another property called Fat Las Inc. Which I’ve had for a while. Yeah. And it’s got Aussie superhero team. It’s set in the seventies.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:29):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:15:30):
And it sprung from, um, I used to do comics based on Bar Jazz, the character from The Late Show.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. <laugh>, I was gonna mention Barge as to you earlier when you were talking about the DJ and stuff, you know, like Yeah. Um, yeah,

Dillon Naylor (01:15:47):
<crosstalk> in Martin Maloy comic book. And, um, that was probably one, you know, one of the most popular bits and the bit that I enjoyed doing the most, just making new adventures based on Barass.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:59):
Yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:16:00):
Little comic stories. And I wanted to keep going after the Martin Malloy show ended, but getting the rights to use Barass was too complex.

Leigh Chalker (01:16:08):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:16:09):
Right. So, but I had all these scripts written, I had all these ideas, and so I’ve taken the essence of that and applied it to this idea of a set of four superheroes. But it set in the 1970s. So they’re like, um, very Aussie Aussie superheroes, and they don’t have powers as such, but like one, what are they, like

Leigh Chalker (01:16:35):
Throw like a cannon ball or something like that, you know? Yeah. Like, are they those sorts of powers?

Dillon Naylor (01:16:42):
The, the leader of the team just has like a blue shear of single it on and shorts and carries. They used to have these esky that were really solid made of tin, like corrugated tin, and they were like, yeah, yeah. 70 styles solid ies. Yeah. He has some full hands and like floor. He just swings this esky and just knocks <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (01:17:06):
Nice. And,

Dillon Naylor (01:17:07):
Uh, so it’s, it’s, you know, similar to the Venture Brothers, the adult swim cartoon. Yeah. Yeah. So these two, two characters are gonna be books coming out through, uh, Nat Carmichael’s Comic Odds Imprint, and they’ll be distributed through the US We are using, using, um, diamond distribution or something like that.

Leigh Chalker (01:17:32):
Yep,

Dillon Naylor (01:17:32):
Yep. Uh, uh, so yeah, that comic’s just about finished. And I’m also working on a horror anthology book. I’ve been working on that for a couple of years. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but I rather than use my own script, so I’ve got like a big book of horror stories I’ve written myself. I came to the conclusion that I could keep using these stories and my own stories and my own art, and I could keep bringing out more and more comics and, but, uh, if I want to progress, if I want to expand my audience, um, or get published at a different level, I, um, I went about trying to approach established authors that write horror comics. Yep. Horror stories, not necessarily comics, but write short horror stories around a theme. And I would illustrate from those stories. So even though I’ve got the stories myself, I wanted to get established writers to write for me Yeah. And force me in different directions. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:18:40):
Well, that, that’s what you were saying before too, man. You know, like when you were saying, talking back to your artwork and your growth and stuff, I mean, that makes perfect sense to like, you know, try something new, you know, like, and, and it would force you to like Yeah. Try some different angles, some different sorts of storytelling, some different processes even, and things like that. You know, like modes of thought,

Dillon Naylor (01:19:04):
I guess that, that the trap of working with yourself as a writer, you tend to end up writing on things that you want to draw.

Leigh Chalker (01:19:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.

Dillon Naylor (01:19:14):
To be able to expand and explore different levels and different ideas, I, I have to, um, you know, get someone else to write for me.

Leigh Chalker (01:19:25):
Yep. Well, it’s also a case of like stretching your muscles a bit too artistically, isn’t it? You know, when you get to that point where you’re like, oh, I really want to try something, you know, like just stepping outta that box mate, you know? Yeah. That’s cool. I’ve got

Dillon Naylor (01:19:38):
These, I’ve got these stories, um, that I’m working on, or, and yeah. They’re pushing me in different directions and forcing me to, uh, dig deeper into a different kind of, uh, range of possibilities. Yeah. Um, yeah. So I dunno what the timeframe for that is, but that, that’s an interesting project I’m working on at the moment.

Leigh Chalker (01:20:00):
Well, it’s finished when it’s finished, mate. You know, like it’s, um, you know, like, I don’t know, like, you seem to be at that point, at the moment where, you know, like you’re enjoying life with no deadlines. It may be giving you a little bit of anxiety, you know, like, which I don’t think there’s any need for, but, you know, like, it’s, it’s different within oneself, you know? Um, yeah. But

Dillon Naylor (01:20:20):
It’s great. It’s great to have those open-ended deadlines, but at the same time, I really do need deadlines. Yeah. So I’ve gotta like, um, force myself to like, bring these things to con conclusions sometimes.

Leigh Chalker (01:20:32):
Do you, like, do you just at some points, like you’re working on a few different projects? ’cause like, like, you know, me, I, I can have three things happening and I’ve got all these ideas happening, but then you’ve gotta re you know, focus on one. And do you just get to a point where you’re in the middle of drawing it and just you’re looking over outta the corner of your eye over all that other stuff over here, and you’re like, God damn it, by the end of September, I’m having this done. You know what I mean? Like, and you just force yourself onto that.

Dillon Naylor (01:20:59):
Yeah. I’ve got five, six things going at the same time, <laugh>,

Leigh Chalker (01:21:05):
Five or six, not,

Dillon Naylor (01:21:05):
Not a good thing. It’s not, not a good thing, but I’m happy with how they’re looking.

Leigh Chalker (01:21:10):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:21:11):
But I, yeah, I really have to like, draw a circle on the calendar and just go, all right, that’s enough. That’s, that’s happening on that day.

Leigh Chalker (01:21:19):
Yeah. Well, mate, that goes to show your imaginations fire. And if you’ve got like, multiple things happening, because it’s like, what, what do you think, um, what’s your favourite like, way of storytelling? Is it like shorter? Like is it the six panels or is it eight, or is it 24? Some people, like, ones like, what, what’s your, you know, it’s like, you know, page panelling. Some people like five panels on a page six. So you, like, you don’t worry about any of that jive, you know, like you can get, people go, it’s gotta be lettered in this way, it’s gotta be done. Like, you know, the rules about things. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the whole rules? Do you like to follow them or you go with your flow with that as well?

Dillon Naylor (01:21:59):
With me, I find it depends on the, on the subject matter itself. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So if I’m doing something sim very more simple like Patricia, um, I prefer less panels.

Leigh Chalker (01:22:11):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:22:11):
So I, I often work in a four panel grid, four panels per page. Yep. Um, but, uh, now for instance, at the moment I’m writing, I’m doing an illustrated novel, which is another thing I’ve, I’ve never done before. It’s like a, it’s basically writing a novel, which I’ve never done.

Leigh Chalker (01:22:30):
Yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:22:31):
And adding illustrations to it.

Leigh Chalker (01:22:33):
So is that, oh, dude. Is this like, like adding illustrations where the new chap, you know, like those classic books where you get to the new chapter and there’s a beautiful illustration that leads you into, you know, like the next cha Like that sort of a, an illustration? Or is it more of like what, um, the dudes did like on those Lord of the Rings, you know, appendices, you know, like all the Lord of Rings books where you, like children of who are in there, you go, there’s one I love that book, so I’ll talk about that. You know, like, and you get to it, and then there’s those beautiful Alan Lee paintings, you know, like put in the monk and stuff like that. That’s cool, man. Like, that’s, that’d be awesome. So yeah,

Dillon Naylor (01:23:15):
This is like, um, there might be an illustration every two or three pages. Um, yeah. More that kind of thing.

Leigh Chalker (01:23:21):
And

Dillon Naylor (01:23:22):
It’s really just the idea of writing a novel. Um, Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, it’s, I’ve, I’ve always, whenever I’m writing, I just think in terms of a screenplay Yep. I write scripts out like a screenplay.

Leigh Chalker (01:23:34):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:23:35):
And, um, it’s, it’s like a whole new area to actually really write things out formally and, um, approach these things differently. Yeah. Yes. Enjoying that as well. So I’m, I’m trying to think of different ways, different ways to work. Yeah. So, for instance, the horror anthology is, is more, it’s probably the straightest thing I’ve ever done in a while. It’s very, it’s more serious, a little bit more dramatic. Almost everything I do is up to this point has been like, um, humour based or, you know, even when it’s not, it’s very sarcastic. Yeah. Um, there’s always been this underlying humour to everything.

Leigh Chalker (01:24:17):
Mm-Hmm.

Dillon Naylor (01:24:18):
<affirmative>, uh, you know, but this is more traditional horror. Um,

Leigh Chalker (01:24:24):
So you’re talking like, um, Lovecraft sort of traditional horror. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:24:31):
Um, so yeah. So all, all of these new things are just basically, you know, expanding into new areas of what I already do.

Leigh Chalker (01:24:39):
Yeah. Yeah. No, dude, I like, I like where you’re going, man. Like, it seems to me that like you, again, you like following your, just your intuition. You’re going with things like, obviously these are things that have been with you since you were a kid. ’cause it’s like, you know, like, um, ’cause you’ve mentioned your love for horror and things like that too. Like, um, with the serious, like, horror thing. ’cause this interests me. Hey, be good mate. Um, the, um, like, I always found, like, for me, like, uh, they probably weren’t horror. They were more action adventure. Like, I was always a big Robert E. Howard fan man, you know, like with Conan and Solomon Cain, and, you know, like that whole saga of Solomon Cain off in, you know, like Africa with the voodoo tribes and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. That had some real cool horror elements to it.

(01:25:29)
And, um, had a real cool, like, you know, like artistic vibe to it too, man. You know, like, um, the swords and the, and the, the hat and the, uh, the cape and all that sort of stuff, man, it’s a nice aesthetic. You know, RA does have a nice aesthetic to it, you know, like, maybe not, um, some of the imagery that goes with it if you’re a little bit, uh, you know, um, sensitive towards, um, the macabre. But I have myself always also been drawn to that sort of stuff, mate. So, um, you know, like, uh, um, the, the more, the merrier ’cause it’s, uh, just, it’s good. It’s nice to strike a, an emotion in people, I think, you know, like regardless of whether it’s, um, um, pleasant or not. But, um, it’s good. That’s the best sort of artwork, man, is to strike.

(01:26:20)
Um, best sort of creativity, I think is to strike a bit of an emotion in someone. Um, when, um, I want to know how you find all the time to do all of these things because you got hundreds of pages, you got all these projects that you’re doing. And even though you probably feel like you’re taking, you know, like it’s taking a long time to get through them. For, for me listening to you talk now, I’m thinking like, man, like it because it, it, it, you’re working quickly, I would say. ’cause it’s like you’re intuitive. You’re talk, you’re trying to learn something new. You’re learning on the fly as well. You’re pushing yourself, you know, like you’ve recognised you might wanna try some other things, stretch your muscles and things, you know, like, which is always a good thing, I reckon. Uh, um, so you’re not stagnating. Uh, and that’s, that’s incorporating like, lots of thought processes too. And you know, like articulation in your head, you know what I mean? Like trying, you know, like, because you know, separate what you’re doing on that project to what you’re doing on that project to get the nuances right. And things like that. Like, where do you find the time to gather your thoughts and, uh, um, and the time to sit down and, and practise or play as such, I guess me. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:27:44):
Well that, that’s the real trick. And, you know, as you get older and more responsibilities and things that, that just gets trickier and trickier. ’cause I’ve still got a young family and Yep. Um, I’ve got a la large property to take care of, and I’ve gotta cut firewood and drive kids to school and do this and that. And, uh, so yeah. Very hard to find that discipline that time.

Leigh Chalker (01:28:09):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:28:10):
But I make a lot of use, um, like if my, if my daughter is at basketball practise Yep. I just use that time while I’m waiting and just have a laptop and a sketchbook, and I just use any little downtime, little negative space like that. Yeah. I find I can’t work, uh, used to be able to, you know, work into the wee hours. Uh, that was always the, the best time. Everyone’s asleep. Yep. House is quiet. I love working when it’s quiet.

Leigh Chalker (01:28:36):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:28:37):
Um, so I was always like a night owl, um, in my twenties and thirties and forties. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, uh, by finding now that, you know, I’m just, just too tired at the end of the day. Can’t do it. Yeah. Uh, so I, I’ve gotta just being really inventive and just use any little bit of negative space and downtime I can.

Leigh Chalker (01:28:55):
Yeah. Right. So you just learn to compartmentalise your time, really. They’re like, where, where it’s, you know, bang, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that. Like, I’ll finish this. That, I mean, man, you gotta, you gotta do what you gotta do. I mean, that’s adapting in itself as well, isn’t it? You know,

Dillon Naylor (01:29:10):
Always. Um, you know, always had to be very, have a very formal situation when I’m working like a big desk, um, good lighting, uh, good chair, just, you know, no sound, maybe some music. Everything had to be perfect. Yeah. But now, um, I’m just working on scraps of paper in a cafe or in sitting in my car and I’m learning, learning to draw just on like a piece of Masonite, you know, leaning against a tree. I <laugh>.

Leigh Chalker (01:29:41):
See, that’s cool though, man. This is all like, like, I like where you’re going with that sort of stuff. ’cause I think that’s what it’s all about, man, is, um, just doing what you gotta do, where you gotta do it, to do what you have to do, you know, because it’s in you to do it. You know, like, um, it’s, it’s an excellent, um, uh, I would say, um, discipline to have to be able to just do like, and move on to something, you know, like something else where, for me, I’m still in that phase of, I have my granny flat out the back, and that’s like, I guess my safe zone if, you know, like, my, this is, this is my area. Like, man, honestly, um, there’s only ever been four people set foot into this room. Like it’s, um, yeah, like, it’s like, this is, I generally talk to people from the doorway.

(01:30:48)
So like, I’m in this <laugh> I’m in. If you entered this room, then I guess you’re like sort of, I, I think highly of you. I’ll put it to you that way. Um, and, um, so I’m still stuck in that zone like you are, man, I’ve got the lights bit like this shit everywhere. Don’t worry about that. I’m no neat freak. I’ve got stuff everywhere. Um, but like you, I have my lamp, my favourite lamp. I have my pens I’m using in a certain location and you know, like, you know, certain papers and things, but I haven’t got to that point of sitting in my car waiting for something. And you know what, I’ll draw or, you know, I’m on lunch at work or something, and I’ll draw, you know, it doesn’t compute for me, man. I sort of run around, try and get all my shit done so that I can come back and, you know, like, um, spend the time. But I can, do you really like, draw in silence with your thoughts? Like, I would’ve thought you would’ve been the sort of dude that would’ve had that amazing record collection, like romancing you in the background, man as you were, you know, like, yeah. But it

Dillon Naylor (01:31:55):
Depends what stage of creativity. Like o obviously story writing, scripting, it’s gotta be done in complete silence. It can’t be anyone else. Um, and then pencilling layout and pencilling all done the old fashioned way on on paper. Yeah. On the stuff table. It’s gotta be silent. Can’t even have music on. Can’t, can’t have anyone else around. No distractions. Yeah. But then inking for instance, that’s, that’s when you put, put the Brian Eno on and Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I can be talking to someone at the same time I can be eating, um, watching TV and inking is kind of like autopilot thing. I, um, all the hard work’s done.

Leigh Chalker (01:32:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:32:41):
Just kind of embellishing everything now. Yeah. And inking, you know, inking with a brush is just, I have, I haven’t bothered to try and explore the ideas of like working digitally using tablets and stuff like that. Um, I just, I consider it like therapy. It’s a therapeutic kind of thing. It’s a meditation thing.

Leigh Chalker (01:33:02):
Dude. I totally get you. I totally get you, man. I love the tactile nature paper. Um, I’m not into the, like, no, for me, I like the traditional style of things too. So I totally get where you are coming from with the meditation and, and the, the, just getting in the zone, man, you know, the stream of conscience and stuff like that, and just flowing. I would come back to a little point that I find interesting with you there is when you’re in silence and you are doing the pencils, are you super de you’re obviously very super detailed with your pencils. Like, you know exactly where your inking. So once your pencils are blocked, done, finely detailed, that’s when you come in and you can relax with the, the ink and you just go about things. Is that Yeah. Your like, more like, you like the pencilling sort of thing, I guess, as well, if you know what I’m saying? Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:34:04):
I love both stages of it for, for different reasons. Um, and yeah. But yeah, I make sure all the thinking is done in the pencilling stage. So very finished. Uh, no, nothing to worry about. Nothing, nothing to like, so basically inking is like, um, you know, almost like a hypnotic kind of thing. I’m like really in a trend. Um, my mind in mind is sometimes a million miles away. Sometimes I’ll ink something upside down just so it’s more like abstract shapes. Yeah. Yeah. Everything’s already there, so I know what I’m doing. I know the positive and negative shapes and, um, sometimes I deliberately turn the page upside down just to kind of disconnect myself from it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I’m a really big fan of the inking decorative shapes, that kind of wood cut effect.

Leigh Chalker (01:34:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have noticed that I, I, I would suspect in seeing your artwork, that that would be something that appeals to you. Is that blocking sort of, um, different, you know, the shapes and the like, yeah. That’s like, um, you do have a really cool way of do, like, using that negative space of flipping it, like contrasting it like you do have Yeah. I, I, I’d say that’s something that, um, looking at your work that eventually for me personally, when I’m finished with this frame of process for my learning, that I would very much like to explore more is how you, um, entail that. I, I do find it interesting. ’cause for me, um, when I was younger, I was very much a very detailed penciler, um, and thought pencilling was, you know, that was it. And you know, like, um, but as I’ve gotten older and more into the process, I’m a very loose pencil a man.

(01:36:00)
Sometimes I can, um, um, sometimes I don’t even detail faces, like with eyeballs and things like that. I just do basic shapes and structures and, you know, like, um, uh, tra you know, action, you know, posing and, you know, like, um, progression and, and then I just block the composition in. Yeah. Man. And then I just hit it with the, with the inking. That’s why I think it takes so long. I, I sort of treat inking like it’s painting, man, you know? I just layer it and layer it. And sometimes, you know, I can just, and then, I don’t know, sometimes people say to me like, <laugh>, I had my, my, um, I guess I, I find like when I was talking to you about intuition as well before, because I think intuition’s a really important thing, like in artwork. And I, I’m glad that you follow your intuition too, because when I, um, I, I was going through this process of I’d lost my intuition, like, or what I perceived was my intuition, and I was lost in the logical thought, you know, like world as some of us get to for a lot, you know, of our time.

(01:37:13)
And I was talking to Valerie, my second, like teacher or person that, um, um, like had come into my life and was like, you know, talking to me about certain, like, elements, you know, that could, you know, art and life and, you know, creativity and things. And we were discussing this thing about intuition, and I said, Valerie, I’ve lost it. I’ve got no idea. Like, I’ve lost the voice, man. Like, is it when the, the logical thought and everything comes together? Is it all a balance and everything like that? And she goes, Lee, do you know when you finish a drawing? And I was like, yeah, I just know in me that I’ve finished that drawing. And she’s like, there you go. You’ve never lost it. You just haven’t identified it for such a long time. ’cause you worry too much about all this other bullshit.

(01:38:03)
You know, like, and, and I’m, I’m glad, I guess that’s what I’m getting to, is I, I like the fact that you follow your intuition about your projects, man, and, you know, changing your art. And I’ll flip it and I’ll, you know, just give myself a little bit of spice and, you know, like all that sort of stuff. Like, that’s very cool, man. Um, I, I do like where you’re coming from creatively, uh, from what you’ve discussed tonight. Uh, it’s given me food for thought too, man. Um, okay. To move forward. So, um, that’s why I like doing chin waggons, Dylan. ’cause I get to meet people that, you know, like I’ve never, I’ll, I’ll prob I may never have the opportunity to meet in real life, you know? And, uh, and I’m on this real, like, um, for varying reasons, creativity is extremely important in my life.

(01:38:51)
Um, and I’m in this massive learning curve and trying to learn as much about everyone’s different processes and their, their feels and their vibes and, and as well as me learning, you know, like provi, you know, like talk to you about things or other people. So other people can learn too, because, um, there’s so much man, like comics are so cool. Um, like, yeah, what, what do you prefer, man? Are you, you a black and white man? Or are you a colour dude? You know, like, what do you prefer working? If someone gave you the dream job and said like, you choose Dylan, what do you want to do? Black, white colour? You go for

Dillon Naylor (01:39:28):
Definitely black and white. Um, yeah, I’m just a nut about black and white art. Um,

Leigh Chalker (01:39:33):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:39:34):
I grew up, um, with those Murray Comics kind of reprints

Leigh Chalker (01:39:38):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> of things.

Dillon Naylor (01:39:40):
So rather than getting the American versions, so always, always had the black and white versions of Batman. And, um, also horror comics. The re the reprints were often in black and white. And, um, I was a huge fan of the 1970s kind of horror comics. <laugh>. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:39:59):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:40:01):
Eerie, eerie, creepy and vapour. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (01:40:03):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Magazine they used to come out. There’s a second hand store up here, man, that used to, this old dude used to get ’em, and he ran the bookstore, the book exchange. Remember book exchanges, Dylan, how good were book exchanges, man, like treasure troves of goodness, you know, gone Now, you know, like terrible. But yeah, this dude used to read them and he used to put these like, you know, black and white horror comics in there. And I used to buy them as a young kid. And, um, it was on Bundock Street, and then he sold up and it became a podiatrist. I remember that. I was filthy, you know, like, but anyway, um, <laugh>, uh, yeah, like, I’ll move on from that. I’ll just let that go. Um, and, and, uh, um, and I loved them until like, my grandma cottoned onto the fact that what are these books you are reading and why is there a painted cover of a naked woman on the front cover? You know, like with, you know, like creatures, you know, like, you know, like coming out of the ground. And, you know, those days ended pretty quickly. But, um, once grandma, you know, the old, uh, Bible baher, you know, like discovered that, I think she even went into that book exchange mate and gave that dude to serve for selling it to a young fella, you know? Um,

Dillon Naylor (01:41:30):
Yeah. Those are the comics you had to keep hidden.

Leigh Chalker (01:41:33):
Yeah. I see. I wish some where like 40 years ago, man, why don’t you there to tell me? Well, you know, I should have written you a letter <laugh> Dylan. Where do I keep the, the Noie comics, man? <laugh>.

Dillon Naylor (01:41:47):
But, uh, the, the styles of, of that, they had a lot of Spanish artists in those comic, and they had these super decorative, um, line work, and that’s where I first saw Bernie Wrightson.

Leigh Chalker (01:41:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:41:59):
And I love all those, um, the inking styles of, of that, of that time. But more importantly, the fact that it’s black and white, that it, it just left a huge impression on me. And I think, you know, always think in terms of black and white. And so for instance, the, the Patricia book, Patricia and the Creepy Caretaker. Yep. Um, it’s just these big full page illustrations. Um, I did them all in black and white. I wanted to publish the book in black and white. Yep. But I remember some friends saying, no, man, you’ve gotta have some colour on that. It’s not gonna work. It’s black and white. And so I reluctantly applied colour very sparingly. So the whole thing has basically two colours and variations of, of those two colours

(01:42:45)
In it. Um, so yeah. Colour almost used as like a grey tone. Um, I’m not very good with colour. Any colour work I’ve done, unless it’s like super simple, it just looks horrible. I’m just, I don’t have a good instinct for colour. I don’t know whether it’s got something to do with, um, when I was growing up, our family just had a black and white TV far longer than anyone else. Um, I remember right through the seventies and into the eighties, we still had this black and white TV and all the cartoons, all the great TV shows at the time. I experienced them all in black and white and grey.

Leigh Chalker (01:43:27):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:43:28):
I, I remember going round to someone’s house and watching something like Lost in Space or Star Trek and was blinding the, the uniforms that they were wearing and the, the yellows and reds. And I remember watching Batman for the first time in colour, and it’s like, technicolour, it’s like fluorescent colour. I just couldn’t believe it. Like the colour was blinding.

Leigh Chalker (01:43:49):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:43:51):
I, I think, um, experiencing all the classic cartoons and TV shows of that time in mono monotone monochrome. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> it also affected, you know, the way I perceive things. Yeah. Preferring, like watching the old black and white movies and, uh, yeah. Noticing things like contrasting composition more because of, I

Leigh Chalker (01:44:14):
I, that take makes total sense, man, being your frame of reference and stuff too. You know, like, um, I can totally get that. Um, yeah. Yeah. Do you find that, do you find that black and white art for lack of, um, a better way of describing it is a bit more, I find it exciting and thrilling to an extent, because you can’t really hide behind anything. Do you know what I mean? Like, and if you like, make one false move, you can really ruin an entire page and many, many hours of work. You know, you don’t have that ability to be able to go, oh, just, you know, colour it in a dark red, you know, like, or fade it out or, you know, like, go back in. You know, like, do you find that that risk factor is appealing for you and keeps you, you know, like vibing when you’re doing the pages and stuff?

Dillon Naylor (01:45:18):
Well, I just, yeah. If I can, I just avoid the whole subject of colour. I just, uh, I’m a huge fan of colour, of colour comic.

Leigh Chalker (01:45:27):
Yeah, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:45:28):
People that know what they’re doing. And I, I, I’m in awe of it, but I just, I don’t have any good instinct for colour myself. Mm-Hmm. Um, so yeah, in the ideal world, I would have, uh, have my own private colorist to do the work for me, and then I could just describe what I was after.

Leigh Chalker (01:45:45):
Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm.

Dillon Naylor (01:45:46):
Um, but, um, I’m very happy with, um, the Patricia book, creepy caretaker with how it came out, just using those very limited colour schemes. Yep. But I, I spent years getting that Exactly right. The whole thing took about seven years.

Leigh Chalker (01:46:02):
Yeah. Right. Really like when was it when, uh, question, so you are with, um, like now Nat Carmichael is someone I’m aware of, have not met, is on a chinwag in a, in a couple of months, which I’m, I’m keen to meet him because he is a, a historian and he knows his stuff, you know, like, and I like learning as, you know. And what, what, um, and Patricia, was that like, he came, was that like a mutual, like you were doing something and, and knew Nat talked about it? Or was that a, Hey Dylan, have you got something to do? Hey, I’m working on Patricia, I might be five years away from getting it done. Like, how did that all come about, man? Because that was a very successful Kickstarter and, um, I see it’s out and about in the world, like in numbers, man, and, and successfully going. So like how did that little, you know, like, uh, garden Grow,

Dillon Naylor (01:47:00):
The book came about from, um, I basically wanted to, to create something in a way that, uh, I hadn’t done before. Just one single page, one big illustration per page. Very limited amount of text. Yeah. As an excuse to kind of just draw the things I want to draw and take my time on it. I knew it was gonna take a long time, but I thought, well, if I could do anything, what would it be? What would be my favourite thing to do? So that this is gonna be a labour of love anyway. And I just wanna draw graveyards, um, <laugh> atmospheric, atmospheric graveyards, dead trees, really creepy looking things. Lots of shadows. I like

Leigh Chalker (01:47:45):
Graveyards too, man. I’m not laughing at you for that aesthetic. Like I’ve been, I, I pull up when I’m driving around at, at Cemeteries mate and like wander around and like sit there and appreciate them as well, man, the beautiful structures and, and, and, uh, scope and things of stuff too. So, yeah. Sorry to interrupt.

Dillon Naylor (01:48:07):
I keep a lot of sketchbooks and I sketch in the cemetery. I just fascinated with all the textures, the stone and the more decrepit cracked and, um, the better decaying the cemetery is too. It’s

Leigh Chalker (01:48:20):
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>,

Dillon Naylor (01:48:21):
It’s this whole gothic cliche thing, but, um, I, I figured I wanna just do a whole book that’s just pictures of set in a cemetery and there’s only gonna be like two characters and it’s just gonna be all about just clouds and bats and long shadows, all in black and white. And that’s just what I’m gonna do. Yeah. And, and so I just worked on this thing and I carefully put the story together. The story ended up being a poem and the whole thing is this lovely little gothic horror for kids. Spooky story.

Leigh Chalker (01:48:54):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:48:56):
Uh, agonised over it and added things to it and subtracted things and till it was perfect. And then I went to show people and no one was interested. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So this was the problem. I was, I don’t follow what the market is after. I don’t, I’m not looking for gaps in market. I’m not thinking about what people actually want. I’m just doing things ’cause I wanna do ’em.

Leigh Chalker (01:49:16):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:49:17):
That way it’s a hundred percent sincere and it’s a hundred percent way I’m happy with it. Yeah. But the problem is, yeah, that’s not how the market works. And so I’m showing people this thing and it’s going, this is like, I can see the work that’s gone into this. This is amazing, but we just dunno what to do with it and it’s not right for us. And, um, I basically showed it everywhere and I was showing it overseas and um, and then I years started to go by after it was, and I started to realise, oh, maybe my instincts have bailed me. Um, uh, maybe this is not, it is something that I’m happy with, but maybe no one else is interested in. I didn’t stop to think about that. My instincts have been right every other time.

Leigh Chalker (01:50:03):
Yep, yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:50:04):
And there was this small moment of panic, but at the same time I was still terribly proud of it. And, but there was a moment of, um, oh my God, I think I’ve, uh, I think I’ve actually, for the first time I’ve gone down the wrong street with this. And I did, I dunno what to do. So I put it all under the bed. I put it all in a box and kind of slid it under the bed. And then I remembered Nat Carmichael, who was doing some publishing at that time. Yeah. And he’s, it’s actually someone I’d known for a long, long time. I first met him when I was like a little kid. I was like a still in high school, early high school I think. Mm. Um, a friend told me about him. I got in contact with him writing him a letter, and at that time he was interested in putting together a Felix the Cat comic.

(01:50:55)
Yep. I think he had possibly had the rights to the character at that, at that time. And was trying to get some local artists to do Felix the Cat comics. And I was like a big fan of that kind of stuff. Anyway, I love Felix the Cat. And I sent him, I wrote these stories, I did these submissions, and we started talking a little bit, but then things happened and he couldn’t go through with that. And then decades went by, I didn’t hear a thing from him. And then I saw him pop up again, his name pop up again, and I saw that he was a publisher and I showed him the book and he Yeah. Immediately went for it.

Leigh Chalker (01:51:28):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:51:29):
And the important bit about this book was it can’t just be published any old way. It can’t be, if it was some small little paperback thing, if it, it just wouldn’t be Right. I envisioned a really beautiful format. It’s not, it wouldn’t be Right. Unless it was like hardcover had to be of a big size bit landscape shaped book. Yeah. Um, paper quality. Um, everything about it had to be exactly right. ’cause I’ve, I’ve gone this far invested, this much time in it. Mm. And to his credit, NA Na Carmichael created the book exactly as I wanted.

Leigh Chalker (01:52:05):
Yeah. That that’s lovely.

Dillon Naylor (01:52:08):
And then once it was published, everyone loved it, uh, sells really well. It shows and one of the ward. And so yeah, it’s just one of those things. Um, it took a long time. It took much longer than I expected, but Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the main thing was my instincts were right on this.

Leigh Chalker (01:52:26):
Yes. Yes. Again, it

Dillon Naylor (01:52:27):
Seems something, it’s probably the most, most proud of that book than of, of anything I’ve ever done.

Leigh Chalker (01:52:33):
Yeah. Right. Okay. Like, ’cause again, you know, instinct’s. Correct. Um, might have had a little bit of a woo, you know, like nervy, you know, like thing there, but you got

(01:52:45)
Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah. But no man, that’s, it’s awesome. ’cause um, I like the fact too that you’ve just explained or given us even more of a hint about how much you take note of your, um, creation of your, of your works. Because earlier about d and d you were saying it was printed in a catalogue, newspaper printer. So that’s why it was on that paper. So obviously back then you learn about paper and then with Patricia you were like, no, it’s gotta be hardcover, it’s gotta be certain, you know, gramme of paper and this gloss and, and wide and all that stuff, man, you’re like, across the whole board of Dylan ER’s career, you’ve picked up your aesthetic man about how you like to, how you like your stuff to look, you know? So, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:53:30):
Um, I wanted, I wanted to create something, something for the ages, you know, like a legacy item. I just, I wanted, yeah. If I wanna be remembered for anything, I’d love to be remembered for this book. Yeah. And, uh, very, um, you know, very privileged to, to feel that I’ve been able to do that.

Leigh Chalker (01:53:48):
Yeah. I

Dillon Naylor (01:53:48):
Think that that’s something that’s like perfectly my vision.

Leigh Chalker (01:53:53):
So 100%, 100% your vision. Like, bang, that’s it. When you saw the proof, you were looking at it and you were just like, oh man, that’s, yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:54:04):
It, it’s great to get that opportunity to see something. Do you come to life exactly the way you want it,

Leigh Chalker (01:54:10):
Do you think in your like career, do you think there’d be too many creators that would have the opportunity to be able to say exactly those words, like, you know, do you know of anyone else that’s had that feeling of like, wow. Exactly how I envisioned it from when I first started.

Dillon Naylor (01:54:32):
Yeah. Well, I’m sure there’s, there’s people out there. Um, yeah. Just, you know, just to be able to like, keep writing and drawing in itself, even if it wasn’t exactly right. Just the, the idea that, um, I mean, I know so many people along the way who have just had to like, go onto other things and stop what they’re doing. Really, really talented people.

Leigh Chalker (01:54:55):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:54:55):
Um, that no longer write or draw or create

Leigh Chalker (01:54:59):
Yeah,

Dillon Naylor (01:55:00):
Yeah. Or maybe move into different areas more, uh, related or unrelated areas. But

Leigh Chalker (01:55:06):
Yeah. Um,

Dillon Naylor (01:55:08):
Yeah, the, the main thing is I’m just, I’m very lucky to be able to still do these things, spend time on these things, and

Leigh Chalker (01:55:15):
Absolutely. And

Dillon Naylor (01:55:17):
It’s just an extra bonus that I can do things that come out looking so beautiful like this. And

Leigh Chalker (01:55:23):
Yeah. That, well, that’s, that’s what I’m getting to, is like, you are lucky and it’s like the, you know, like one of the, you know, this, finally you’ve got to the stretch where you’ve got something that is you entirely your vision man, you know, that you’re so proud of because, um, George Hall just put, um, a comment up saying, uh, I believe it just said like, just always stick to your vision, you know? And, um, and you’re a definite prime example of that, Dylan, because, um, you know, like even if people pick up your latest book now, your Patricia or your Rock and Roll fairies, even though, you know, like these are, um, collections and stuff, but Patricia’s new, um, and they’ve seen the earlier things. Um, the progression from what I’ve seen is, is completely like, it, it’s your pulse man. You know what I mean? Like, um, and um, that’s, that’s a very, very cool thing. Dylan. Um, I, one of, I can’t remember the name of it, but there’s a, um, there is a book, and I’ve always meant to get it of yours, and I will get it now that I’m talking to you. ’cause it’s just jogged a memory of mine. I can’t remember the name of it. Um, front covers, um, like a little esque character, um, like crouching down and there’s bars like, you know, the shadows of bars coming over him. Um, oh,

Dillon Naylor (01:56:50):
Ah, um, contactless.

Leigh Chalker (01:56:52):
Yes. Now what that I, tell me about that, because that one just interests me, like, like interests me personally. Like, I just like the aesthetic of the artwork. And I, I briefly read a detail about how that came together so that this is, this one’s for me, man, <laugh>, like, I wanna know the info about how that came together.

Dillon Naylor (01:57:13):
Yeah. In a, in a nutshell, that was, um, something that’s dropped outta the blue, um, uh, during one of the Covid lockdowns Yep. Art Gallery of Ballarat, where I live Yep. Contacted me and, uh, I didn’t even have to apply for this. They, they contacted me somehow and said, um, look, we’re trying to match together creative people trying to get two, two people from two different disciplines and, um, get them to work on a project, um, that will exhibit in the, in the gallery. So sometimes, so people working in textiles and sculpture. And, um, I kind of represented visual art illustration, and I was paired with a guy who was a singer, a guy called Skyscraper Stan.

Leigh Chalker (01:58:04):
Yeah, right, okay.

Dillon Naylor (01:58:06):
Um, songwriter musician. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:58:09):
Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (01:58:09):
And, uh, I’d never met him before and, but we were suddenly like, put together and it’s like you two come up with something. And, um, yeah. So we formulated this idea of I was gonna do a comic and it was gonna be completely silent. Um, and Stan would create a soundtrack to go with that. And so through music and just visuals, no dialogue, no words at all, um, this story. And so in keeping with the, the covid lockdown vibe of it all, uh, we came up with this idea of a nightmare world where this guy’s just been in permanent lockdown. Everyone’s been in lockdown for like 10 years or something. And it, this is the story of just this a day in the life of this one guy looks like a, almost looks like a rodent. He’s kind of like, um, mm-Hmm. This old man that sits in his, in this apartment and the whole story takes place in the apartment, but he stockpiled food tins and most importantly toilet paper into, into pile, and the piles go up to the ceiling and the, and they’ve created a kind of maze within the, um, apartment.

Leigh Chalker (01:59:30):
Yep.

Dillon Naylor (01:59:32):
Um, and it’s all about him, kind of. He puts on a record and then moves in between the piles and tins and things, and goes about this kind of day of his looking out the window and collecting the mail, which is just junk mail. And, um, all these things are kind of hinted at, and I won’t spoil it for you, but at the end of it, the camera kind of pulls back and you finally see an aerial shot of the entire apartment. One of those impossible shots where they must have like, removed the roof to be able to see it. Mm-Hmm.

Leigh Chalker (02:00:06):
<affirmative>. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

Dillon Naylor (02:00:07):
And then you, you see everything that’s happened within this space, and it’s just, he’s basically just like a rat in a maze. It’s just a maze created by toilet paper rolls. And the man has lived out his entire life within this little space.

Leigh Chalker (02:00:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (02:00:22):
Um, so, you know, it was a, it was a great challenge. I set myself, I, I’ve never done a comic that’s completely silent before Mm-Hmm. Over 30 pages. Yep. And the original pages were a three and exhibited in order in the art gallery of Ballarat with the music playing over speakers.

Leigh Chalker (02:00:39):
Lovely. Oh, so that, so that’s where, that’s where you both came together, was in the gallery. Like he had old, what, what was his slingshot? Stan, or whatever his name was, is that <laugh>

Dillon Naylor (02:00:52):
Skys Dan

Leigh Chalker (02:00:55):
<laugh>. Sorry, skyscraper Dan, if you ever listened to it. You know, like Slingshot wasn’t bad, not a bad, you know, like go, but you know. Yeah. This class. Yeah. Um, like so you got the comic and he went home and did the artwork based on the ideas. Like, you know, like you sat down and talked about, this is what I’m gonna do, this is what I’m gonna happen. He and then came together and a

Dillon Naylor (02:01:19):
Few different meetings. We had about four different meetings, and so we decided what the story was gonna be, and I created the sketches and the character. Yep. And basically, uh, the, I storyboarded the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. And then gave me that, and from that he created a soundtrack that matched that.

Leigh Chalker (02:01:41):
And was that cool when you first heard that? Did you sit there and go like, whoa, that’s ripper.

Dillon Naylor (02:01:47):
Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (02:01:48):
Um,

Dillon Naylor (02:01:49):
And, um, yeah, I, it’s, you know, again, it’s just a, a situation you forced into, not forced, but, uh, find yourself the way you’ve gotta like, um, tap into different parts of your skills.

Leigh Chalker (02:02:03):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (02:02:04):
Um, I’ve, I’ve never worked in that capacity with somebody like that, but it was a great collaboration. Worked really well, and really the comic comic is basically a souvenir of that exhibition. I scanned each page and turned it into a comic book as a kind of souvenir item.

Leigh Chalker (02:02:21):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool, man. That’s a really cool story of, um, I, uh, I do like the idea of that. I, I, like, I found that artwork crotch quite striking. Um, that would’ve also, but there you go, man. That’s another thing for you. You’ve done a silent comic over 30 pages. So another thing you’ve attempted, you know, like along your career, you know, um, pretty outstanding Dylan, you know, like really, um, man, very inspiring. Very inspiring. So Dylan,

(02:02:55)
I’m, I’m most interested, I, I wanna read your novel and see all your other artwork and stuff like that too. So, uh, you know, yeah. It is inspiring for someone like myself who does black and white man, I’ll, uh, I’ll, uh, I’ll look a little bit more carefully at how you do things. Not that I didn’t before, but I will now that we’ve had this chat. ’cause I can see that, you know, um, you’re a, you’re a, a, a, a thoughtful, as I said earlier, um, man, with his artwork, and I like that. ’cause um, you’ve got a good voice when it comes to art and stuff, dude. Um, I also, I also, um, and I mean that, um, I also notice, um, that you’re a bit of a, um, a bit of a carpenter type, landscaper esque gentleman, um, you know, like in your spare time as well, mate. So, you know, do you enjoy that as much as your artwork? Or is that one of those necessities <laugh>?

Dillon Naylor (02:03:55):
Well, um, what I, what I actually do to earn money is like renovate houses and things like that. But if I had to rely on just cartoons, I, I probably would be living in a cardboard box right now. But <laugh>, uh, I, I never really talk about it, but I mostly, you know, you know, renovate houses and landscape and stuff like that and yeah. Yeah. I, I really love that bit. I, I’m lucky enough to live on a big property and I, um, really enjoy, um, working, working with the land and stuff like that and beekeeping, <inaudible>.

Leigh Chalker (02:04:29):
Oh yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (02:04:31):
Um, moving into bee most

Leigh Chalker (02:04:32):
Important creatures in the world, man. So I applaud you for that. Without bees, we’re all see you later, you know?

Dillon Naylor (02:04:39):
Yeah. And, um, yeah, I’m live living, um, totally off grid at the moment, so, uh, it’s always been a dream of mine to be able to be completely self-sufficient like that.

Leigh Chalker (02:04:50):
So what do you got, you got the grey, you, you’ve got you grey water, you, uh, your solar powered, you know, like, um, you’re all like, um, what do you got? Like, what, what’s turning the lights on, man? And, um, what are you using there, like solar power, that sort of thing you, like, you’re doing, you, you’re getting to that point where you like spinning your own water and stuff like that. Like, you go into those extents, you know how some people do like, or what’s your plan? That’s, I find this very interesting off-grid lifestyle, man.

Dillon Naylor (02:05:23):
Yeah. Well, I dunno the exact specifications of the system, but it’s, yeah, all self-contained solar, um, yeah. And yeah, um, a lot of rain in Ballarat, so water tanks are always full. Um, I, I love going out chopping wood, but got enough wood to last the rest of my life out there just to cut up. And so, yeah, it’s just great to be able to, um, yeah, just know that you’re basically self-sufficient like that. And that’s always been a, and, um, I’m really proud to have achieved that.

Leigh Chalker (02:05:54):
Yeah, that’s awesome. Like, with your bees, are they natives or have you set up hives?

Dillon Naylor (02:06:00):
Uh, a hive at the moment. Right. And I’ve, it’s only just been put there, so I, I actually don’t have any proper bees stories yet to tell you, but

Leigh Chalker (02:06:09):
Yeah. That’s a bummer, man. ’cause I, I like these. Um, I, I have a couple of native bee hives, you know, like, I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t get dressed up in the hazmat suit. Beekeeping. What a buzz. Indeed, George. It’s, um, nice one, <laugh>. Um, yeah, like, I don’t, I, I don’t get dressed up in the hazmat suit, so to speak, spraying the, you know, the, the smoke around. But the native bees, um, have got three locations around my place. Um, and believe it or not, they’re tricky little suckers. There’s one at the, the front door, they have like double open, you know, French doors, whatever they call ’em, like, and right in the, you know, the, the brick, you know, they’ve got a little hole in there, man. And they come in and come out and like, so who knows, you know, like what, what farm they’ve got going in the walls of the house and there’s one down the backyard and the lemon tree and stuff. And I, I, I pride myself on, you know, like maintaining, you know, like a, a happy environment for, um, the bees man. And, and frogs. I’m another frog man. I love a good frog. I’ve got about 20 of ’em live outside, you know, like, so, you know, I, I like that. Oh,

Dillon Naylor (02:07:22):
You come over? ’cause we’ve, we’ve got, yeah, tonnes of frogs. There’s basically 20 acres of really natural kind of bush and it’s a, um, a really big wildflower area.

Leigh Chalker (02:07:34):
Oh, ripper

Dillon Naylor (02:07:36):
Indicate like wildflower honey.

Leigh Chalker (02:07:38):
Yeah. Yeah.

Dillon Naylor (02:07:40):
Once a hive is established.

Leigh Chalker (02:07:41):
Yeah. That’s cool, man. Like that. That’d be good. Good, good, good flavours. Like with the, with Now let’s get back to this. ’cause you seem like, like this is another thing, now we’re talking about the land man, you know, not that I really know anything about it, you know, I just wanted to put an emphasis on the deeper part of my tambour voice there, um, to hide the nasally North Queensland twang. But, um, what, um, what’s with all the wood chopping man? Like, is it like just this deep sped up frustration occasionally you go out and you just don, you know, or is it just like, realistically coming down to keeping warm?

Dillon Naylor (02:08:18):
I actually like, really enjoy it. Like, uh, I, I can’t really work for that long anyway when I’m drawing my, like my eyes these days. Mm-Hmm. I get eye strain really quickly. Yeah. Um, and so yeah, I just worked for a little bit then head out and chop some wood. And I, I love it. I love chainsawing and splitting the wood and all those kind of earthy, earthy stuff things.

Leigh Chalker (02:08:44):
Yeah. That’s cool, man. Yeah.

(02:08:48)
Yeah. Oh, I like it, man. You’re like this delicate artist that goes out, you know, like the next thing, it’s like, put the brushes down and Oh, where’s Dylan, you know, <laugh>, he, he is gone from one set of chaps to another mate, you know what I mean? Like, just in, inside the outside. So there you go. Like, you know, duality of things. That’s awesome, man. Um, yeah, like, that’s really, really awesome. Um, mate, as, I guess, um, I guess as, uh, as we wind down our, uh, chinwag this evening and stuff like that, you know, um, uh, what, what is it that, um, you know, if you were looking at young Dylan and, uh, you know, the parallels had brought you together. So Dylan’s looking at young Dylan and chopping wood is very therapeutic, says Mr. Chalmer, I imagine it would be, I I haven’t had to chop much wood gentlemen up in North Queensland, you know? Um, yeah, keeping warm is not something that’s like, uh, <laugh> concern. Um, it’s when it drops like five degrees and everyone’s in their Eskimo, you know, is, uh, uh, that’ll be coming soon. Um, what would, what would Dylan now say to young Dylan about entering, um, comics and creativity and, uh, what would his advice be to anyone?

Dillon Naylor (02:10:19):
Well, it’s a, if it was like young Dylan was here now, it’s kind of like a different environment. It’s a completely different world for comics in, in one, in one way of looking at it, I guess it’s, the world is a lot more open to comics and partial to comics, you know, libraries and have huge sections for graphic novels now, uh, you know, you’re probably the same as me. You remember that was just like asterisk and tintin if you are lucky. And, uh, the choice is pretty limited for comics and the librarian Brown on comics. Um, the world is a lot more open to the, to the format. And obviously comic properties are like, you know, very lucrative. Comics seems so successful in almost every other way now, except maybe comics themselves. Sometimes it feels like that, uh, games and toys, <laugh>, it’s huge industry.

(02:11:18)
Yeah. And the humble comics sometimes gets overlooked. Yeah. But, um, you know, people are still embracing the physical objects. Uh, you know, it’s great to see like, interest in vinyl and people are, are realising may maybe they shouldn’t throw all their DVDs away and it’s good to, good to, um, see books. Mm-Hmm. And I think sales for books are still better than ever. Yep. Um, and so yeah, people are still embracing those physical objects and, but, you know, publications for comics, opportunities for comics, I know it’s all, it’s all kind of different now. I, I had like just a great run. Yeah. Um, comics in show bags, and I did a lot of educational material for comics. Yeah. Um, worked in, you know, many different ways, how to draw comics, um, you know, books and, uh, I just feel like those publications have dropped away and, um, you know, now everyone’s just doing web comics and things, but it’s easy to get lost in that crowd.

(02:12:29)
Yeah. Yeah. Um, it’s a little bit harder to stick out now, I think. Yep. There wasn’t, wasn’t many people in the game when I started off, and so it was a little bit easier to see on of, even though I was, what I was doing was very undeveloped and ragged. I, I could still had stood a better chance of standing out back then with, with, with the things that I did, my own things. And, um, now Accessi accessibility to comics is greater than ever, but, and there’s more people doing comics than ever walking through trade shows and conventions, and that artist alley just stretches forever. And there’s so many people working in comics now, and that, and that’s great, but at the same time, it’s also how do you stand out in that crowd? It’s much, much harder to stand out in that crowd. And, um, so yeah, it’s, it’s better, it’s better in some ways, not, not as, not so good in other ways. And so, yeah, I think my advice to a younger Dylan, I, I, I don’t even really know, I dunno where to start. I’m grateful for, for the run that I have had, I guess.

Leigh Chalker (02:13:34):
Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, I, I think my, my take from our chinwag tonight mate would be for young Dylan to follow his intuition, like, like, uh, this Dylan has because, um, you certainly, I wouldn’t say luck is on your side, mate. Probably a great deal of skill, a great deal of dedication and great deal of, um, time and effort. I mean, even as you said, you know, like in those moments where you’re in share houses and the party periods, and you know, we touched on that, you still found time to, or were mindful enough at that stage to take in those experiences and like, you know, create something out of that where a lot of people, you know, probably would barely even remember their memories, man, from those sorts of, you know, like times and party, you know, like modes and things. Um, you know, having the strength that you were to remember your characters you did when you were younger, to move into com, um, to move into like toys, rechange your style.

(02:14:53)
So it was simpler, not as detailed. So you adapted, and that adaptation led to Patricia because you didn’t wanna waste time in, you know, trains and that sort of thing. You learn to compartmentalise where you could do all your artwork and the timeframe that you had, and now it’s just stepped up that you’re like picking off things that you did back then and you are like bringing them back out into the world. You’ve finally released Patricia, the book that you’ve always wanted to release, that is the thing that you’re most proud of, as you said. Like, if that right man, boom, that’s the one. That’s how I wanted it. I don’t know, man. I think the little Dylan, you know, likes got a pretty good creative, uh, uh, older self to look at, man, it should probably follow his, um, intuition and, um, and believe in himself and not stop creating. So

Dillon Naylor (02:15:46):
It makes me feel tired. It make me feel tired running through my whole life like that.

Leigh Chalker (02:15:50):
Well, man, I, I like listening to people and I like learning about people. Um, and I get a great joy, uh, of being able to meet people, um, that I have admired for a long time. And so when I get these moments with Chinwag, um, I do like to take as much of myself in that particular time and concentrate greatly, mate. You know what I mean? Um, because I may never get this time back again with you and your company, you know, like, so that’s why I just, I, I try to be as attentive as possible and, um, and, and grateful for, um, for you and other guests that have come on and, and taught me things, um, and help, you know, like for like, because I can take away a lot, um, from you this evening, you know, like, um, hard work, determination, um, you know, originality, believing in yourself, your, um, again, your intuition, your creativity, a lot of things, man, you know, like that I just find motivating because, um, sometimes, believe it or not, I’m not always as optimistic as sometimes I may appear. That’s what I was saying to you earlier, man. You know what I mean? Like, I am what I am and sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down. And, uh, today talking to you was, um, exactly, um, uh, one of those, um, anecdotes, uh, or not anecdotes, but an anecdote for, uh, what I needed to hear to give me a kick up the bum to, um, continue on. So thanks for giving me the opportunity to come in and talk.

(02:17:27)
Oh, man, it’s, um, it’s, it’s a pleasure and, um, I certainly, uh, I hope people out there got as much, um, out of this as you did. Um, nearly missed this, Ian. Well, I’m glad you didn’t mate. Um, and thank you for watching and supporting Chinwag. Um, yeah, yeah, man, that was awesome. Um, Dylan, thank you, man. Um, and, uh, I hope, um, next time you see Michael Plager out and about at one of those, uh, rock and roll shows or wherever you, you see Mick out, um, at, give him a handshake for me ’cause I haven’t seen him for a long time, man. And, um, he’s another one mate. He’s a, um, just much like yourself, man, just follows his nose, his intuition, his creative, you know, like, um, thing. Um, yeah, I can see why the two of you were mates. So, uh, that’s good.

(02:18:23)
Alright, um, now thank you everyone for watching the show. Um, as always, I am, uh, 100% grateful. Thank you for always showing interest in the Australian comic book community and all of the guests. Um, don’t forget to like and subscribe comics and Aussie verse. That’s the most important thing. If you wanna support some Australian comic book creators, you can head over to. No worries, Ian. Thank you, man. Um, if you wanna head over to the comic shop, which sponsors the show’s over a hundred, uh, comics by Australian Creative in there, there’s a $9 flat fee. You don’t have to buy my comic book, you can buy any one’s. Just, um, you know, like, um, help ’em out with some inks and some brushes, and who knows, mate, you know, they might get brushes like Dylan’s that, you know, like just to unbreakable and pump out a whole heap of, you know, like good stuff.

(02:19:15)
So, um, you know, it’s just, it’s all a wonderful thing. And, uh, absence minded, thank you and awesome chat. Thank you minded for, as I always say, winding down, Dylan, hang around after the show for a bit, man. And, um, we’ll do a formal goodbye. And, uh, everyone out there, um, look after people, um, you know, COMEX, uh, you know, we’re very big on looking after people. Mental health is an important thing. I suffer from mental health issues and, uh, have to be aware of those things. It’s just, um, it’s just how it is in life, you know. Um, I wasn’t built to handle certain things. Some things get on top of me, and with the help of my friends and people, uh, they help pull me from under that rug. Um, so I thank them for that. Uh, so help out a mate. Um, give him a ring if you haven’t heard from him for a long time. Keep a lookout for people. Um, look, as always, uh, chinwag will be and always is made with love and community unity. And we’ll see you next week for Jesse Jackman. Thank you very much for watching. Good evening. Bye.

Voice Over (02:20:25):
This show is sponsored by the Comex Shop. Check out comex.cx for all things Comex and find out what Comex is all about. We hope you enjoyed the show.

Dillon Naylor

Main Guest

Dillon Naylor

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