Archive | September, 2010

The Breakfast Sketch

24 Sep

A Friday night fragment to amuse you, from a show that never got made:

(A heavy-set woman in chef’s whites with white hair and a maniacal grin enters the stage.)

CORA            Allo, my name is Cora, and I want to invite you to my restaurant for breakfast.  Notice ze colourful décor.  I designed it myself.  Doesn’t it remind you of visiting your nana and papa in zeir beautiful country home, having breakfast on ze Sunday morning.  Look at ze letters drawn wiz my own hands.  I’m just a zimple old woman who wants to remind you of zimple old things zo you won’t notice that you’re paying twelve dollars for a breakfast zat costs fifty cents to make -

(JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME runs onto the stage and kicks CORA in the face, knocking her unconscious.)

JCVD            Dat’s what I tink of you, crepe lady!  Roll dat in your stinking crepes, you fruit chopping fraud!  And you! (Turning on audience) You want de big bicep like mine?  You tink you get dem from eating de whip cream and de smoothies?  No!  You eat de waffle, de steak, de frites, de mussel!  Den you are a man!

(He looks left and right, motions the audience to come closer, and leans toward them:)

You know who is eating de crepes?  Jean Reno, dat’s who.  Mister tough guy.  He tinks he’s so big wit his stupid little moustache and his dead eyes and his Hollywood movies.  I bet he eats de crepe for breakfast, de crepe for lunch, de crepe for dinner, and he bite a little chocolate mint crepe on his pillow while Luc Besson fuck him in de crepe-hole!

You tink Jean Reno can do dis?  (Does an unconvincing spinning roundhouse kick, winces)

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Haiku Review: The Expendables

20 Sep

Stallone, Statham, Li
Roberts, Austin, Rourke and me
Van Damme? no fool he!

How to Draw Comics the Marshall Way

18 Sep

So, I’m working on this graphic novel thing called The Last Day. I thought you might enjoy seeing how it’s going so far.

It has been a little while since I have created a long-form comic and when it’s done, this will be the longest I have ever finished. When I started drawing comics nearly 20 years ago, I used to plan everything far in advance, as if I was doing all the jobs in a standard Madison Avenue publishing house: write a script, draw the page in pencil, ink with a brush, add lettering and balloons, etc.

I found myself blocked at the script stage, and then I remembered how one of my idols, Jack Kirby, used to work with Stan Lee back in the early 60s on the classic Marvel comics. They would meet in Stan’s office and talk about the story for a given issue of The Hulk or X-Men or Captain America and then Jack would go away and draw the comic based on the outline they came up with. Stan would THEN write the dialogue, sometimes necessitating some redrawing but generally fitting that bombastic prose around Jack’s equally energetic art.

So, I decided to try that, and it was a revelation. I had a general idea in my head of what the story was, but as I started storyboarding, I made discoveries that I simply wouldn’t have otherwise. I wound up with about 80 pages of thumbnails. Here’s the first:

So then I thought about how to create the artwork. I’ve been tinkering with a software application called Manga Studio, and I like it a lot, but I also like drawing on paper. I thought about what style it should be (cartoonish, realistic), what media to draw with, whether or not the final art should be in colour or duotone, etc. etc. etc. I am still pondering some of those questions; but in the meantime I realized I was blocking myself again.

So, this week I just started drawing. Here’s what I came up with for the first page based on that thumbnail.

Again, I am making discoveries, as I realized in drawing this page that I didn’t need to put in dialogue at all, and I decided to change the order of t he panels.

I like how the second panel turned out: the composition, the energy. But I didn’t like the first or third. The perspective is weird in the first and the anatomy is way off in the third. This is a book where facial expressions will be very important, so the giant doll-eyes had to go.

So, I redrew panels one and three on a new piece of bristol. But first, I took a piece of tracing paper and sketched out the correct perspective for panel one. Here it is:

That big rectangle in the middle is the area that would be used in the final drawing. Note how in the correct perspective, the entire bed and the windows don’t fit into the frame. The anatomy is also fixed up in panel three; still not perfect but certainly good enough for now. Here are the final pencils for page 1, combining the original panel 2 with the new panels 1 and 3.

So, that’s a start. I think I will pencil a few more pages like this and then try creating the finished art, either through digital inking or actual inking or both. I’ll keep you posted.

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Stressed on a Thursday

16 Sep

Ah, the joy of working for yourself. Doing a bunch of work and then waiting a month or two to get paid. Sometimes not getting paid at all. Regular chats with creditors who don’t seem to comprehend not having a regular paycheck. Bidding for jobs. Being underbid by dilettantes and lesser talents. Paying the bills while banks and millionaires declare bankruptcy and restructure. Taxes. Scope creep. Difficult clients.

There are good points, of course. I don’t like being tied to a cubicle. I like meeting and working with different people. I like being able to take a day (or even just an hour) off if I feel like it, or to take a trip or look after my son. I like working at home or in a library or on an airplane.

It’s not for everyone. But I guess it’s still for me, for a while.

Video Game Roundup

11 Sep

After a bit of a drought, I find myself doing a fair bit of gaming lately. Here’s what I play the most (and I recognize that many of these are hardly new):

Lego Harry Potter, Years 1-4 (PS3): As always, fun to play through a series of beloved films in Lego form. The cutscenes have some amusing comments on the story; for example, when Lucius drops Tom Riddle’s diary into Ginny’s cauldron, she shrugs and smiles.

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3): I quite enjoy how this game works and I enjoy most of the characters, but as with many of the FF games, I find it hard to stay motivated during that long middle period where you level up for the final battle. Still, I think I will push through, and I am looking forward to the new online FF game.

Monopoly (iPhone): pretty much the board game. Fun though. You wind up doing a lot more auctioning than when you play against people.

Critter Crunch (PS3): fun and cute puzzle game with anime stylings available from PSN for just $6.99.

Scott Pilgrim (PS3): another PSN game, based on the comics and film, basically an 8-bit fighting game with some very cute touches. Very fun and well-made for a film tie-in.

Art Style: Cubello (Wii): this is not a new game at all but I still play it quite a bit and am approaching the last levels (I think). It’s a puzzle game where you try to remove groups of coloured cubes from a slowly rotating mass. Available through WiiWare. The other Art Style games, Rotohex and Orbient, are fun too.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes (PS3): Jack is primarily burning through this one, a series of missions based on the Clone Wars cartoon where you alternate playing as a jedi or a clone trooper. Pretty well designed and not super hard for kids.

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One Bloody Thing After Another

9 Sep

Joey Comeau, writer of the great webcomic a softer world and a couple of other short novels, just spent the summer promoting a very disturbing little book called One Bloody Thing After Another. It is primarily the story of Jackie, a teenaged girl with anger issues; and Ann, the object of her affections. Both girls are dealing with horrifying circumstances involving the deaths of their mothers, one of whom had cancer; the other is, well, some sort of zombie chained in the basement.

While Jackie breaks windshields and tries to figure out how to ask Ann for a date, Ann and her older sister are preoccupied with their mother’s grotesque demands for food. Things get progressively worse for the girls – and everyone, it seems – in a short period of time.

One Bloody Thing After Another is a delightfully creepy book, in much the same way that a softer world often is, playing with the conventions of hauntings while weaving in a coming of age story. I was reminded of films like The Reflecting Skin or Ginger Snaps, where characters are too young to fully comprehend what is happening, or even to realize that their torment is greater because of their age; but we know, and are more horrified because of it.

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Haiku review: Machete

9 Sep

No matter how sharp
The blade, nothing surpasses
Michelle Rodriguez

Cemetery Junction

8 Sep

This is a pleasant surprise of a film, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (“The Office”, “Extras”), about a trio of friends in early 70s England who want to escape their little hometown. It is certainly not a new story – in fact, it felt like a remake of the sort of films that Gervais and Merchant probably watched when they were young toffs – but the smart script and detailed production make it a fresh and quite enjoyable picture.

The principals are Freddie (Christian Cooke), who decides to sell insurance as a leg-up to a better life; Bruce (Tom Hughes), the factory worker with a chip on his shoulder; and Snork, the awkward but good-hearted bloke who is rubbish with birds (ie., unable to talk to women). Gervais provides solid support as Bruce’s working-class father, and Ralph Fiennes channels Gervais’ David Brent a little as the successful bastard that Bruce initially wants to become. Instead Bruce falls for the boss’ daughter Julie (Felicity Jones), who would rather be a traveler and photographer than a housewife. The cast is rounded out by a host of fine British actors including Emily Watson, Burn Gorman, Matthew Holness, Steve Speirs, and Matthew Goode. Stephen Merchant and regular Gervais/Merchant foil Karl Pilkington also have cameos.

I think what I appreciated most about Cemetery Junction, apart from the production values, is simply that despite the familiarity of the material and the many homages, they still managed to steer clear of the truly predictable, walking a difficult line between romanticism and darkness. But then, I would expect nothing less of them. Check this film out, you’ll be glad you did.

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War Memorial Drawing

5 Sep

I drew this today with a Pentel brush pen during the annual Harvesting the Arts festival in King’s Square, Saint John:

war-memorial

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Haiku review: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

4 Sep

Humourless, charmless
A cure for insomnia;
It’s no Inception!

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