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. :)

Found the grind stone

I'm not as scared of the internet as one might think..Okay maybe I am. BUT Look! I'm making an effort. Prepared the next ten pages of Friendly game for toning. Working backwards and taking them one "scene" at a time. That also will hopefully make the task of this book less daunting.

And looking at other people with awesome toning skills for inspiration...

Like this guy! Rafael Albuquerque!

The beginning of the semester was a bit of a blitz. Long story short- Savannah is going to be my home for a while longer and SCAD will be graced with my presence for a semester longer. I realized that there shouldn't be any kind of rush to move back home and away from other artists that can help/ inspire me. Looking for a new place to live however will be....an exciting adventure

Staying Positive

-Affe

Inking Blues

I'm bad at this writing frequently thing....The last couple of weeks, I put Friendly Game pages aside to compose and ink the above illustration for an art competition. It's around 8.5 x 15 inches, which proves I'm still attached to comic-page-ish dimensions. I actually blew up a doodle from my sketchbook and finished the actual pencilling in Photoshop to print out and ink the final image.

Unfortunately, when I went to get my ink refill at Wal-Greens that I was so excited for in all it's inexpensive glory, I learned that the company stopped refilling the apparently single use cartridges due to "electrical problems". Apparently though, all the different cartridge refill outlets both online and in-person have convinced HP to lower the prices on new ones a bit, as well as advertise about their inks being 65% better than those bargin ones.....Considering a large portion of what I print is going to have black ink drawn over in anyhow, it's not that much of a deterent to find some sort of refill station. The claims that refilled catridges sometimes broke printers howerver.....that's just rotten. I dunno how true they are.

Anyhow, I seem to take longer in inking things that are mine as opposed to inking over someone else. Most of that is the nasty habit of leaving things only kinda-drawn in because "I'm inkin' it, I know what it does, dur dur dur!" Somehow, I still find myself slowing down and questioning things too much though. Which is why it's important to always have that cut-off point of "NO. It's DONE and if you do anymore, you'll mess it up, so don't pick at it." You could work on a page forever and never consider it done.

Reading wise, I finished Stephen King's "Different Seasons" a week or so ago and enjoyed getting multiple good stories. Essentially, the book contains four nouvellas - the awkward middle child of the short story and the novel. They weren't all the level of super-awesome, the final story "The Breathing Method" took a while to get going and get to the meat of the story, but overall really good stories. Of special interest is "Apt Pupil", featuring a creepy kid and a disenchanted old Nazi. Probably not the best summary, but I'm sure you're interesting in finding out more now, right?

Anyhow, scanned the new pages for the start of the book. It will probably be a few weeks before I'm done inking the end of the book and can get to inkin' these new beginning pages, so here's a puppy for you till then:

AHUGE late congrats to lindsay who turned a different age last tuesday!
we love her!!