Just watched Boy A and Straightheads back to back and I think I need a lie down. Seriously, when your movie double-bill ends with a screaming Agent Scully raping someone with a shotgun, it really is a sign to take a break, and thanks to the wonders of 'save now', I'll do just that and repair to the conservatory(1) for a snifter of port(2) and ruminations upon the subtext of Yeats' Innocence section of the classic 'Songs of Innocence and Experience'(3).

(1) kitchen
(2) Fanta
(3) Ratatouille, PS2

And now I'm back, fresh from the sheer majesty that was Black Samurai, which I finally got to watch in it's entirety.

Yeas, Black Samurai is pretty awesome right up until the bit where the main bad guy - a warlock no less - exchanges glances with his henchman and his pet when faced with the righteous fury of the Black Samurai, and makes what I consider to be the only sensible decision when deciding which of the two to throw at his most excellent and unstoppable foe:

And at this point YOU ARE GOING INSANE.
The pipes bit in Ratatouille royally own me. And this is a game for kids?
Bah.

Sunday 30th August 2009

Ahhhh, Sundays. Not much doin', just sketching, wondering what's worth drawing up and using as samples somewhere down the line. I have surprisingly few superhero samples, I'm noticing.
last week of the work placement begins tomorrow, then back into the loving arms of the dole office - ach! Still, time at last to get that GN drawn up.

Note to self: when shopping, buy stuff like food, drink, household cleaning products. Do not buy High School Musical 3: Dance for the PS2 on the offchance younger relatives may take a head-stagger and subject themselves to it just because it's 'only' 3 quid.

Saturday 29th August 2009

Just watched Bring It On: Fight to the Finish in its entirety, and surprisingly, it wasn't good at all. Yet I can't seem to stop myself watching it and crap of its ilk - it's quite bizarre, and in more enlightened times would be considered a mental illness for which I could seek and expect to receive help.

Doodling - God I hate doing single-shot sequences: it's murder getting stuff to line up from panel to panel and the repetition of background elements always looks wrong to me in the end product.

Learning curve, Learning curve, Learning curve...

Friday 28th August 2009

Slooooowwwwwww. << me <<
Bring It On: Fight To The Finish is not shaping up so well as a viewing experience thus far. It may pull a rabbit out of the hat in the final reel, though...

And those are some long in the tooth-lookin' high-schoolers.

Thursday 27th August 2009

I'm happy to report my viewing of Bring It On: All Or Nothing was a rewarding and enriching experience. I'm happy to say it, but that does not make it true, sadly.
'Painful' just about sums it up, and I'm surprised that I can say this because I'm not entirely sure why I would ever have expected better from a film starring Hayden Panatierre. My main impression was "oh that's her from Secret Life of the American Teenager and God, but she ain't half skinnier than I thought she was."

Wednesday 26th August 2009 - 100th post, bi gawd!

100 posts and nothing to show for it!

Tuesday 25th August 2009

Thumbnailing the last of my 'clear-up' jobs as a break from the current (penultimate) one that's basically a 'one camera' story over six pages and a bit samey to draw for too long, or possibly I'm just being arty-precious or something about having to sit my arse down and focus on one thing for any length of time. It probably has more to do with the next job being what amounts to a lifelong ambition - drawing four pages of bear-related massacre for something other than my own amusement.

Monday 24th August 2009

I'd do a review of the last restaurant meal I had if I thought it'd take up a paragraph or two, but I leave that level of self-affirmation to the Twitterverse - I totally need to know not just what you recently ate, dude, but your considered opinion on the merits of the Reggae Sub!
I know I find it hard to write anything on here and the cardinal sin of blogging is 'blogging about blogging', but I'm coming to suspect that the reason for that is so that no-one ever points out you need not so much confidence in your work or lifestyle that it be of interest to the web at large, but also a certain level of self-importance plays no small role in the posting of daily musings, and I really am the more reserved type even if I have managed to post something each day for the better part of three months now. Oh I'm blogging about me, now! Took a minute, but I got there.
Scribbling away at a more cartoony approach than usual, but much of my time was spent getting an eye for the differences in colour palettes between RGB and CMYK, and for the most part I'm flummoxed by the differences in the tablet display, the monitor at home, and the monitor at work. Learning curve.

My crappola movie of the day was the 'pish but nice gimmick all the same' Ready 2 Rumble starring David Arquette, some guy, Oliver Platt, and the cast of then-ECW before the merger with WWE. To call it utter crap is an insult to bowel movements, and I sure am glad I missed that one during my 'anything with a fight scene gets a viewin' period of filmic evaluation.

Sunday 23rd August 2009

I don't know what shames me more - that I willingly watched Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: the Movie, or that I enjoyed it, post-production sound and visual edits to the kung-fu and all. Well, maybe not that last bit, but the nostalgia factor for the movies - tosh or not - that I and my mates sat through for the odd decent bit of kickery punchery is good to experience once in a while. We put up with a LOT of crappy movies during our kung-fu phase (because everyone goes through a kung-fu phase), our tolerance even extending to a brain-amnesty for the films of Albert Pyun, the non-budget Segals, the Eastern Van Dammes, the careers of Cynthia Rothrock, Gary Daniels, Mark 'Iron Chef' Dacascos - all glorious to the growing mind of the pre-interweb kung-fu fan who's willing to overlook their craptitude for want of anything else to watch, but not something to revisit too often in adulthood, or what laughably passes for that in a household where a sizable portion of the living room floor is taken up by Playstation peripherals shaped like guns, guitars and drum kits.
Still doodling away, aimlessly as it's the weekend. Come the weekdays and we're back to the deadlined material. Gettin' closer, that deadline...

Saturday 22nd August 2009

Scribbly day as the oft-delayed webcomic got a momentary bit of attention. Otherwise, a gratefully sedate saturday spent mostly playing the Escape from Butcher bay segment of the Riddick game. I remember not taking to it on the Xbox many years ago, but it seems to be going down fine now. I suspect it comes down to the familiarity of the Playstation controller, as I've never really taken to the alternatives. Odd what makes something for you.
Otherwise I've been catching up with me telly.

Watching: WWE, Metalocalypse, Stormworld, Harvey Birdman, Dark Blue, Royal Pains, Monk
Reading: Spider-Man/Human Torch, 2000ad, Judge Dredd Megazine

Friday 21st August 2009

BAH!
No scribbles today as I'm only just in from work.
Even leaving aside that a 13 hour day of overtime sucks when expected, not even being consulted on the possibility you might have other plans - eating, perhaps - and getting paid less than a paperboy for the privilege just about caps the shitty day I've now lost. I suppose it's actually possible that what remains of the day can get worse - my doctor could ring and tell me I have cancer. And that he should have told me six months ago. Because it's a six month cancer with a midnight deadline.
It's 11:58 - suppose I could boil an egg.

Small beans in the greater scheme of things, I suppose. Annoying, though.

Thursday 20th August 2009

Back to the grindstone, loosening up a little, I hope.

Watching: CRAP as usual, but enjoying it
Listening: Within Temptation, Deathklok the album
Playing: Red Star, Chronicles of Riddick

Occasional reviews: All Star Superman

Taking it's cue from Grant Morrison's JLA, which itself was influenced directly by the Silver Age influence of Alan Moore's hugely-influential Supreme, All Star Superman pairs Morrison with fellow Scot Frank "not my real name" Quitely and closes the circle in returning the much-needed Silver Age imagination and enthusiasm for the characters and medium that has been largely missed from Superman for decades, bar some schizophrenic throwbacks in the hands of Superman think-tanks that sadly come with too much gore and sadism as part of the parcel to make whimsy work alongside the concepts involved.
With All Star Superman, Morrison pretty much states the case for the character's continuance and enduring appeal, not only making no apology for it's nostalgia-tinged storylines, but also drawing a line under the oft-cited writer's moan that Superman is too powerful to write stories about by making Superman more powerful than ever in the first chapter and pretty much hitting it out of the park in every issue that follows, with even the lows of the two-part Bizarro World storyline merely being not as brilliant as what precedes and follows it.

I love this comic because it loves me - it knows that at heart someone who reads novels about hateful misogynistic pricks solving crimes is going to love a comic where Superman can use microscopic supermen to cure cancer and "the American Way" is simply the ideal it always was and not just a cheap shot by liberal poseurs to decry US foreign policy or an embarrassing throwback that writers are too gutless to get behind even if they had the imagination or enthusiasm to do so.

This is... this is a comic. Everything about it screams the strengths of the medium, from the ability to flip back and forth between pages to check for clues laid earlier in the little mysteries of the heartbreaking Smallville-set issue, or the use of bigger and smaller panels to portray scale in a way that no amount of CGI ever could, and every last bit of it is so gloriously, anachronistically, and unabashedly without shame.
Morrison writes a blinder and Quitely never sets a foot wrong, it's just a perfect creative marriage, and alongside Alan Moore's few forays into writing the character, I'd happily say it's the definitive picture of the Man of Steel in a modern age that's supposedly outgrown him.

Monday 17th August 2009

Doodling mondays...

Sunday 16th August 2009

How long can I pad out the blog posts with grabs from the same page? Considering it's the weekend and it's a minor miracle I'm drawing at all, I have to say "as long as I bloody well feel like it."

Weekend over now.

:(

Saturday 15th August 2009

Friday 14th August 2009

Ah, colouring: for when you can't be bothered drawing but your day is going too well.

But, y'know: learning curve. No biggie.

Watching: Dollhouse finale (Lost has a lot to answer for), Drop Dead Diva 1-4, DOA (1949), Weeds, RAW, Dark Blue, Royal Pains, Monkey
Reading: Ultimate Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man, lost At Sea, Scott Pilgrim vs the World
Listening: Mushroomhead, Killswitch Engage, Taproot

Thursday 13th August 2009

Note to self: in future, "just draw half, then copy, paste, flip and redraw" is a great timesaver and will keep you on schedule when you have to draw chaps in a Jesus Christ pose.
Usual workday, followed by games, gym, drawing and television featuring - and quite possibly made entirely by - hormonal women.

I really should stop watching crap.

Wednesday 12th August 2009

Just doodling and working off my daily quota of panels...

Tuesday 11th August 2009

More "just got back from work and I'm too tired to be drawing" drawing, but it helps tie me into a work routine, I suppose. Two panels a day and at least a page per weekend is the provisional schedule I'm aiming at while I'm still at t'job, with a step up once the inevitable hulking shadow of unemployment falls across me in a month or so. Although there may be a tad more Playstation involved in any schedule made after that point. And anime.

Watching: Defying Gravity, Metalocalypse
Listening: Japanese show themes, amateur covers of sad alterna-rock songs
Playing: Jak 3 - AGAIN.

Monday 10th August 2009

One day I will be both fast and finished the jobs I need to deliver to the people I promised I would. This panel isn't even remotely finished, but the rest of the page is at least talking heads, which should go fast enough, hopefully.

Sunday 09th August 2009

Random scribbles to keep the fingers working, mainly revisiting old gag strips I attempted to draw in various styles but couldn't for various lack of ability-related-reasons, but it all helps in the great learning curve.

Unrelated stuffs: Monk is back on, Watchmen: the Game is bloody terrible (though it might just be the two-player mode), and Gaelic is not real football.

Saturday 08th August 2009

Must learn how to draw bears better - anatomy research and figure drawing FAIL.
Nice quiet weekend so far, and barring someone kicking the door in I'll enjoy an early night.

Watching: RAW, Sealab 2021, Brak, Metalocalypse, GI Joe movie for theatres.
Reading: Gen 13: Meanwhile, The Boys

Friday 07th August 2009

Work work work. Bahr humbug!
Birthday today, which I kept quiet about, but still accrued cards and the always-welcome gift of money that comes with being an unknown quantity to your family. Well, that and Cookstown's last bookshop closed years ago (and reopened as a card shop selling oversized novelty romance gifts, despite the new shop being located directly across the road from a shop selling exactly the same things and that's all you need to know about Cookstown) so they're stumped from the off.
A quiet stout tonight, then tomorrow the whole drawing shebang begins - one day I shall shall actually be finished with the bits and bobs I promised people and can get started on that GN...

Watching: Philanthropist, 10 Things I Hate About You, Dark Blue, Battle beyond the Stars, Day the Earth Caught Fire, Sealab 2021
Playing: Shaun White Snowboarding, Resistance 2
Listening: Youtube amateurs
Reading: Judge Dredd Megazine, 2000ad, War of Kings, Captain America: Reborn, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man

Tuesday 04th August 2009

Finally wrapping stuff up and ready to get down to brass tacks for the ogn.

Watching: Weeds, Secret Life of the American Teenager, Metalocalypse, Kamen Rider Decade (x RX!)
Listening: Arcade Fire covers via Youtube, Tori Amos, Tsunami Bomb
Reading: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Northlanders

Saturday 1st August 2009