Chronicling his attempts to become a comic book artist, to become a real boy, to overcome a perspective of insoluble doubt, and the feeling that nothing of interest will be said here at all... ever...
One day you wake up and realize that the most important thing in life is following your dreams. You make rash decisions, burn bridges, and run headlong into what other people would consider the dumbest possible outcome they could think of, and it's freaking fantastic.
I feel more myself now than I have in years. It's like waking up from a coma and realizing everything that came before was a dream. Your path is clearer, mind sharper, and heart lighter than it's been in a long time. It's hard knowing that I'm happy and I'm gonna get my nuts kicked in for it because the world around me does not understand it.
Art wise, I'm still hammering Lina's world into something manageable that I can get to drawing, but I'm working on some test bed pages to try out the style & look of the world to see if it's anything like I want it to be. You folks will see some of that coming down the pike in the near future.
In the meantime, as stated in a previous blog, here is a Wonder Woman piece I did for a friend. You can click on it to go to the page to see a full view of the piece since it is pretty big. More coming in the near future.
G'day boys & girls, Welcome to another horrible disjointed babbling session.
Last night, I went and saw the new Harry Potter flick. Visually, it was a feast and they did a great job of making it into something that grabbed the attention of the audience. Obviously, I miss a lot of what was cut out of the movie & the pacing seemed strange because of it, but I can see why they did what they did.
To put it succinctly, I will just use a quote my friend, Larry, said as we were leaving the theater. "It was like reading every third page of the book."
I loved seeing Draco as someone who seemed genuinely menacing and really did feel for the character by the time you get to the end of the movie. Luna was amazing and that lion headress rocked. Overall, it sort of feels like a half-remembered dream. I'll have to see it again before I really know how I feel about it, but I know, either way, I did like the movie a lot.
I'm still pounding out the details on the world & story that I want to work on right now, but it's coming along. I was sketching the main character today and had one of those rare "Eureka!" moments that really cemented a lot of the ideas I was working on. Lina is one of the characters I've been casually playing with for awhile and it was great to really see the character come together for the first time. I should be starting on the test pages tonight or tomorrow, so there will be stuff to see from that online in the near future. Who knows what changes will be made from there, but, if nothing else, at least I'll have some new sequential pages online for folks to check out.
The more I work on stuff now the more I find I am drawn to drawing sci-fi books, which is miles from what I thought I would be into drawing. Part of the fun of this concept is that it is a story in a real sci-fi world. I will get to draw flying cars, neon-cityscapes, gun play, and hot women kicking ass. Really, at the end of the day, what more can you ask for?
In other art related news, I asked some folks I know stuff they want to see me draw and will be hammering those out now as well, probably as warm up sketches over the next week or so.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna grab a soda & get back to drawing.
You know, when faced with an endless sea of options as to what to draw and what to do to take the steps necessary to nail down some intangible path towards making your life what it is you've always wanted, one, and by one I, of course, mean me, is generally left huddled up in the fetal position in a corner somewhere, weeping softly into a pile of tarnished bristol board , futilely praying that your tears will reveal a pattern on the page that may give you some idea what the hell to do with yourself.
It's harder than I thought trying to come to grips with the idea that the possibilities are endless, my work is only limited by my imagination. The work one can do in the comics medium isn't limited by budget or actors. I can set a scene *anywhere* and can do *anything.* That sort of freedom is mind-boggling and is, for lack of a better term or a willingness to admit to already being considered it, making me crazy. When you sit down to create something, the process is somewhat aleatoric and can be either a masterpiece or self-aggrandizing fluff that forces onlookers to jab nearby objects into their frontal lobe to avoid being forced to view it again.
This is why I am probably going to be a plug & play penciller for awhile. I'm great with coming up with scenes or characters, plotting is fun and interesting, but sit me down to create a complete work and I can't seem to do it. The ideas are plentiful, but I am not a writer. Creating realised worlds to inhabit and a story worth following is something I am not good enough to do at this point. This fact makes me sad, since it doesn't seem the rest of the comic industry is very interested in the kinds of stories I want to tell.
I am a fairly typical guy when it comes to this stuff. I like hot chicks & men dripping with machismo. I like trenchcoats & purple prose. I adore cyberpunk and cityscapes that go on for days. I swoon over kung fu, gunplay, fully realised violence and wanton destruction. These disparate elements are not all very good at meshing together in my brain in anything resembling a coherant story structure. I have 3 pretty well realised concepts that I would love to working on at this moment, but instead I am sitting here , babbling the madness into the internet, trying to get a handle on my own sanity through forcing thoughts into sentences that others can read and understand. This is the blog version of babbling about your problems to friends, not so much so that they can respond or help in any way, but just so that you've had a chance to say the things on your mind and really get a handle on your problems.
I'm going to go get something to drink and sit down to draw now. Hopefully, I'll have something to scan & get online to show folks in time for the podcast tonight. I'm getting tired of becoming a ghost on my own damn show.
Hello all. Hope you've been well. I'm burning the candle at both ends & once in the middle , so I haven't been around to blog as much as I'd like to. I'd love to say my time away has started a tsunami of anecdotal events & stories that I could share in a fun and meaningful fashion, but that would be a giant lie, and I can't lie to you, dear readers, never to you.
That said, next week I am going on vacation. I am heading to Heroes Con in Charlotte and I am eagerly counting down the days until I leave. Actually, I'm eagerly counting down the hours left to work before I leave, but it all evens out in the end. I, apparently, have to go pants shopping because my pants, while somewhat baggy before, are now in the realm of embarrassingly large on me. It's a nice problem to have, but still fairly weird. I don't *feel* like I've lost that much weight, but my entire wardrobe looks like I embiggened it in the laundry. Impossible, I know, but that doesn't mean I won't say it. That and I like using fake words like embiggen.
The closer I get to my vacation the more I stop caring about my job and start feeling more myself. I've been in this slump so long I had forgotten what it was like to feel that way and I'm getting greedy for it. I'm sleeping less and I'm going out more. It's tiring, but it's worth it. It's not healthy to have your social interactions be ten hours a day on a phone listening to people bitch about their television service. I missed my friends, I missed having time to think, and, mainly, I missed having time to sit around and draw. It's all I want in my life and I haven't truly had time for it in months, that's just not right.
Anyway, I've ramble/bitched for long enough for one day lifetime
Just got home from Terminator Salvation. Definitely had a good time and it was much better than I thought it would be. Seeing an entire movie set in the post-apocalyptic future of the Terminator series was an idea that filled me with some dread, being a fan of the series and getting pretty heavily invested in the world again due to the Sarah Connor Chronicles, but McG actually pulled it off and it was a fun ride, second only to Star Trek as far as movies I really enjoyed in '09. Sam Worthington really added a lot to the flick and one of his fights was a particular highlight of the movie for me. The actor that played young Kyle Reese was really good and Moon Bloodgood reminded me why I liked her in the first place. If you are on the fence, I would say go ahead, hop off, and go see the flick. Besides, sitting on fences can't be all that comfortable.
In other movie news, watched an anime flick I'd been wanting to catch, Vexille, with my friend, Larry. WTF?!? I am sad I finally watched it. The idea I had in my head of what it would be after seeing the trailer and hearing the plot synopsis was much better than what I was actually treated to. Where are the good sci-fi yarns? We have the technology to make some amazing things and I get stuff like Vexille and Babylon A.D.
Urge to create random comics just to play with my own ideas of sci-fi, cyberpunk, and gun-fu rising rapidly.
Anyway, I have to get up for work in 4 hours. Will try to remember to actually make some posts here in the near future.
Yup, that's right, I lost my voice. I was forced to leave work after I coughed so much and so hard that I outright lost the ability to speak. I didn't feel that bad to begin with, but coughing with the consistency of gunfire and explosions in a John Woo/Michael Bay marathon means your throat gets odds prickly by the end. Apparently, it's next to impossible to do technical support by phone when you can't *speak* to the customers. I tried for 2 hours, but I just got progressively worse and the number of times my directions were met with "I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said" was rising exponentially. Now, I'm home, lamenting the fact that this means I am going to have to bust my butt the rest of the week to make up the hours. At this point, I just hope to get it back in time for work tomorrow, so that my week is not entirely shot.
I'm supposed to see Star Trek tonight with some friends, but that is entirely dependent on how I'm feeling later. I will, more than likely, go anyway, because I am incredibly psyched to go see this flick. For the most part, I love J.J. Abrams, and the idea of him directing a new version of Star Trek has me giddy like a schoolgirl.
Speaking of Abrams, anyone ever used "Abram men" in a sentence before? It's supposed to be an old idiom for fake or pretend crazy men. I have no idea where I heard it first, but it sneaks out in conversation every once in awhile and I have *never* had another person know what the hell I was talking about. Sometimes, I think there is a part of my brain feeding me misinformation, so, now I end up saying things that make no damn sense. Like there is a rogue sector in my brain creating colloquial metaphors only I will know. You might think that would be fun, and sometimes it is, but, for the most part, it just means I am saying what I mean but I just come off as crazier than I am... making me an Abram man?
Okay, not really, but I felt I needed some way to bring closure to the blatant digression there before it veered too far off into the realm of schizothemia.
Anyway, I'm gonna go drink some tea and try to find music I can listen to, but that I won't try to sing to.
I think my grammar, syntax, and punctuation is actually getting worse. I'm fairly certain that I'm actually becoming stupider by repeated exposure to certain facets of the internet. Thank god for the Nerdfighters. Without them, I would probably be eating Cheetos, drinking frat house levels of beer, and watching nothing but reality TV.
Okay, I'm babbling. Goodbye. Anthony
Song of the Day: Lacuna Coil - Enjoy the Silence
To stay with the theme of today's post, the song of the day is one of my favorite bands, Lacuna Coil, with their cover of Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence.
Listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, making plans to break down the walls and build my life anew. Scary stuff.
I'm actually having issues with my scanner right now, which is a big part of why you haven't seen new art here recently. Got a friend coming by later tonight who said it may not be as bad as I make it sound, so here's hoping I get to put up new stuff in the next couple days. It would also help to be able to get my art to Grace so she can color it before the deadline, you know, so I can get it printed and start building a resume/name for myself.
Hope everyone in BEDA land is well. I needed the break to recharge creatively. I was so far beyond burnt out that being creative the last 2 weeks of BEDA was damn near impossible. I'll be back soon with a little more of the personal psychosis that you all know and love... Watch and fear? Are inured & apathetic to...?
Whatever, I'll be back soon.
Song(s) of the Day: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll/Zero
You keep building them Jell-O Ponies and I'll keep eating em, Anthony
(No, there is no real explanation for that one, I just like Jell-O in animal shapes)
