Act 3 = DONE

Finished inking Act 3. And on Halloween to boot. Next up is to knock out the redrawn 25 pages of the opening, whoo hoooo!!

Closing the Gap

Been missin' a while, October decided to drop some strange stuff on me, mostly in the form of health issues. After a strange day of getting excessively exhausted at work, followed by my already-scheduled-yearly-blood-work, I had a doctor warn that I was either hypo or hyperglycemic. Or maybe diabetic. Or maybe I was prone to seizures. Either way, I lost a vacation day of day-job work for a 6 hour blood sugar test and a sick day or two prior to that for brain-and-thyroid tests. Bye-bye 3 day inking buffer!

HOWEVER, I have managed to set it back to a page a day for the rest of the week. Depending on how socialable I am in regards to Halloween, Act 3 should still be finished by the end of October. But if it spans into November 1st, I guess that's not so bad....

Watched "The Pagemaster" tonight, a live-action-mixed-with-animated movie from 1994. Never had seen it before, and was actually more impressed than I originally thought I would be. The story's essentially about a boy who's too paranoid and scared of everything to really be a kid or have experiences. Winds up at a library during a storm, and BAM, cartoon world for hero's journey narrative. The animation was pretty nice, although there were a few weird spots (like a character saying a line but no lip movement...) . One of those awkward 90's pseudo-dramatic songs was spontaneously stuck in the middle of the movie, not sung by the characters (think Fern Gully). The most impressive part was the awesome use of color and silohettues to make dramatic, somewhat creepy moments. It's still kinda funny to me that one of the themes of the film involves reminding people that books are fun...seems counter-productive to the movie industry....

Back to inking!!!

where the wild things were...

last night, after a very particular week, i went to see a movie for which i had unspecific expectations. where the wild things are seemed to be one of those films that had big shoes to fill due to its immense reputation as one of the most popular children's books of all times and for being directed by spike jonze. on top of that, it did have to carry the weight of being a children's film but still make the "fans who grew up with the book." in a way, it's as if the film had the same responsibility as max did when he arrived at the island of wild things: to make everyone happy or else, you get eaten."
tho the film is quiet and a at points too subtle, it delivers great emotion and makes about as much sense as the book does. visually beautiful and in sync with wonderful music written by(surprisingly) yeah yeah yeah's karen o. who does great arrangements and combinations of tribal sounds, choir-like uprisings and indie-orienteed guitar riffs, it's captivating and grasping turning a simple plot into a sympathetic emotional journey of a 10-year-old's tantrum about what's for dinner.
in short, it's very much worth the watch and discussion over.

well, it;s been abit and so many things have occurred,but none the less... for the past week and a half i've been storybaording a couple of shorts and a music video, so, it makes these days more interesting, plus, a nice pause from cmic pages, which i still do.
because the mail is not perfect, tho they try really hard (thank you USPS for all your efforts and delivering my bills) an important document was LOST in the mail and now, we had to redo everything that was stake. it wasnt that big of a deal as much as it was something that was already out of the way, so... in the words of every punk "here it comes again!" hehehe... and now.. back to inking...

Calendared....

Since I like having pictures with posts, here' s a weird screenshot of my computer not knowing how to copy/paste files into a folder and keep things tidy....The bizarre green and yellow dots are from a service I subscribed to called Carbonite that I'm trying out. I can be excessively paranoid sometimes, even more when I consider the fact that my laptop is 4 years old (considered a dinosaur by computer standards...) and I've got waaaaaay too much digital stuff, including the soon-to-be Illustrator/Indesign/Photoshop files for lettering Friendly Game. Carbonite basically lives on your computer and shoves things into a personal online storage place for you whenever you save something. I feel better everytime that little Carbonite lock glows green after my Control-S's in Photoshop..... In short, should I set my computer on fire, this book will STILL get done. Safety!

Meanwhile, I finally pulled out one of those little day-planner calendar books and realized that I could (potentially) have Act 3 of Friendly Game inked by the end of October. Actually, at inking a page a day, I'd be done by around the 28th or so, giving a nice 3 day buffer for all the stuff that might get in the way. Barring any unforseen occurances (Like life, grrr), the redone opening 27ish pages should be done by the start of December. Which is a really weird feeling, the idea of being completely done inking the pages. I know it'll feel weird when I print out the last pages and don't have to fight with ol' HP 9800 over the fact that the pages ARE in the printer, daggnabbit.

The major concern after that would be my built-up dislike of computering after my day job. Friendly Game is (with the exception of a few sound effects and special panels) going to be digitally lettered. I don't even want to turn on my computer when I'm home during weekdays, much less have to stare at it like I'd already been doing for 7 hours at work. Hopefully, the concept of being on this semi-final piece of the book will be a boost.

Hooray for Lauren's first post! The screenshot looks super-hot lady. Sorry SCAD threw some junk at you but......colleges like to do that. Ask me about my Winter quarter of senior undergrad. Go on, I promise I won't laugh hysterically and cry about it....

Also, Joe is awesome for wishing me happy birthday a few posts back, and I say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! back for his from a few days ago. Because if Joe hadn't been born, I wouldn't have left art school with as much as I did. Hugs, buddy. :)