Bobby is my favorite illustrator, and has been since I first found his work when I started with Ballistic 3 years ago. Then I just came across this great interview with him from Comicon done by the CG Channel guys...
http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=8820
I really want to get my book funds together and get him to do the artwork. I just know it will be fun, amazing, and more importantly, will capture the sense of humour I want there...
Ah, to dream...
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Graphic novels
I can say with some certainty now that I am a huge fan of literary graphic novels and my interest in traditional comics is waning. It is easy to see why the former are easy to fall for, but why am I finding myself bored with superheroes and splatter comics?
I can't get enough of books by Delilsle, Satrapi, and Joe Sacco, I find this is such a striking and pared back way to tell your own story. Delilse and his expat adventures in Asia are fascinating and yet so mundane. Satrapi's simple drawing style and characters enhance her story, and Sacco tells the most horrific yet uplifting stories, making his point in many ways far more effectively than any normal reporter sent into horror zones.
I just finished Paris by Andi Watson and Simon Gane. They really captured the Frenchness of Paris, without sounding too cliched, the market scenes, the street scenes, museums, the expressions, and the drawings themselves, they just dragged me in and I wanted to try drawing so many of the scenes myself. And the story is not typical, other than a foreigner going to Paris to paint and going to a classical painting school, but it is the finer distinctions that make it stand out. I like that she has to paint portraits of rich people to pay for her tuition, because I sense that this is not normal. Granted it is set in the 20' or 30's (I think, maybe a bit later) and there is a sense of cool style throughout.
Alex Robinson, of Box Office Poison fame, followed it up with To Cool to be Forgotten, a cross with a time travel story and therapy trip, really won me over with the honesty of the story. I hate the title and was not expecting much, especially after starting and putting down his first book, but now I want to go back and have another look. The theme of if only I had not made a particular decision is one worked pretty heavily, but I certainly did not see the true purpose of the story coming at all.
Yet, then I started and put down Rex Libris 'I Librarian' by James Turner. Great idea about an near immortal librarian, but in fairly short order I just found it irritating. Maybe it was the drawing style. I don't know, but I have let it go.
So, this then leads to regular comic books. Maybe I don't find them fresh anymore. The drawing is still good, well in so many (I have no examples, I am going to have to go in and do some deeper research here rather than just blather on...) but the stories are just not engaging me... Yeah, I am going to leave this discussion for later...
I can't get enough of books by Delilsle, Satrapi, and Joe Sacco, I find this is such a striking and pared back way to tell your own story. Delilse and his expat adventures in Asia are fascinating and yet so mundane. Satrapi's simple drawing style and characters enhance her story, and Sacco tells the most horrific yet uplifting stories, making his point in many ways far more effectively than any normal reporter sent into horror zones.
I just finished Paris by Andi Watson and Simon Gane. They really captured the Frenchness of Paris, without sounding too cliched, the market scenes, the street scenes, museums, the expressions, and the drawings themselves, they just dragged me in and I wanted to try drawing so many of the scenes myself. And the story is not typical, other than a foreigner going to Paris to paint and going to a classical painting school, but it is the finer distinctions that make it stand out. I like that she has to paint portraits of rich people to pay for her tuition, because I sense that this is not normal. Granted it is set in the 20' or 30's (I think, maybe a bit later) and there is a sense of cool style throughout.
Alex Robinson, of Box Office Poison fame, followed it up with To Cool to be Forgotten, a cross with a time travel story and therapy trip, really won me over with the honesty of the story. I hate the title and was not expecting much, especially after starting and putting down his first book, but now I want to go back and have another look. The theme of if only I had not made a particular decision is one worked pretty heavily, but I certainly did not see the true purpose of the story coming at all.
Yet, then I started and put down Rex Libris 'I Librarian' by James Turner. Great idea about an near immortal librarian, but in fairly short order I just found it irritating. Maybe it was the drawing style. I don't know, but I have let it go.
So, this then leads to regular comic books. Maybe I don't find them fresh anymore. The drawing is still good, well in so many (I have no examples, I am going to have to go in and do some deeper research here rather than just blather on...) but the stories are just not engaging me... Yeah, I am going to leave this discussion for later...
Friday, August 21, 2009
District 9 - At last a monster movie with a story!
District 9 - absolutely amazing! Such a fresh way to tell the story, even if it nods to Alien Nation (and even a bit of Starship Troopers), and the parallels between real world aparteid and refugee treatment made me very uncomfortable. I can only imagine that A LOT of this really happens, except to people in refugee camps worldwide...
And the mayhem is superb and completely over the top, yet believable because they are alien weapons, so you almost expect them to do horrible things...
But mainly, it was a great script/story. This drove the film and tension, not the carnage, like T4 and Transformers, and made the whole thing more enjoyable and 'meaningful'. For me, the mindless mayhem movies utterly bore me now, yes, the effects are great, but they are empty, pointless, in the big blockbusters. In District 9, the effects were used to fill in the blanks (or create blank space, like where a soldier used to be). Maybe a bit more character stuff with the aliens would have been good, like even finding out what they call themselves, but no doubt the sequel will answer a few of these queries.
On the character building note, the characters were utterly engaging, and I felt genuine sympathy for the aliens, they grew to be personalities as the film progressed, were far deeper than we were being led by the 'narrators' in this documentary. So we have the alien and his son escaping to go get help, our hero is turning into a 'prawn'. During the whole story we never find out what they are actually called. So what happens now? Who do we cheer for? If it was a human and child escaping to go get help, we would be cheering them on. And we cheer the aliens. In the sequel the aliens shall return to rescue their own, and then what happens? Do they lay waste to humanity for being so terrible to their people? This will really test sympathies and I have high expectations that they will pull off a remarkable conclusion. Or is this jaded soul going to be utterly disappointed by a lazy second movie...well, with Peter Jackson running the show, I imagine he simply will not allow this.
Now I worry about the sequel. What style is it done in? Is it another documentary, examination in retrospect, or is it run like Cloverfield, a running live style film capture...the charm of this movie lies in the documentary style... this is key! A regular simple linear story will lose all the ground this one covered so well...
As you can tell I like a decent movie, but I want monsters too! Why do directors automatically get lazy when it comes to making a great monster movie?
And the mayhem is superb and completely over the top, yet believable because they are alien weapons, so you almost expect them to do horrible things...
But mainly, it was a great script/story. This drove the film and tension, not the carnage, like T4 and Transformers, and made the whole thing more enjoyable and 'meaningful'. For me, the mindless mayhem movies utterly bore me now, yes, the effects are great, but they are empty, pointless, in the big blockbusters. In District 9, the effects were used to fill in the blanks (or create blank space, like where a soldier used to be). Maybe a bit more character stuff with the aliens would have been good, like even finding out what they call themselves, but no doubt the sequel will answer a few of these queries.
On the character building note, the characters were utterly engaging, and I felt genuine sympathy for the aliens, they grew to be personalities as the film progressed, were far deeper than we were being led by the 'narrators' in this documentary. So we have the alien and his son escaping to go get help, our hero is turning into a 'prawn'. During the whole story we never find out what they are actually called. So what happens now? Who do we cheer for? If it was a human and child escaping to go get help, we would be cheering them on. And we cheer the aliens. In the sequel the aliens shall return to rescue their own, and then what happens? Do they lay waste to humanity for being so terrible to their people? This will really test sympathies and I have high expectations that they will pull off a remarkable conclusion. Or is this jaded soul going to be utterly disappointed by a lazy second movie...well, with Peter Jackson running the show, I imagine he simply will not allow this.
Now I worry about the sequel. What style is it done in? Is it another documentary, examination in retrospect, or is it run like Cloverfield, a running live style film capture...the charm of this movie lies in the documentary style... this is key! A regular simple linear story will lose all the ground this one covered so well...
As you can tell I like a decent movie, but I want monsters too! Why do directors automatically get lazy when it comes to making a great monster movie?
I seem to have lost a few months of entries
I have sat down to add another entry and somehow I have lost everything since the end of April. This is so bizarre!
Well, I guess I am going to have to rewrite my District 9 review...I loved that movie...
Well, I guess I am going to have to rewrite my District 9 review...I loved that movie...
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Twittering- End of one week (subtitle - Addiction)
Last time I wrote about my Twittering, I really had no idea what I was doing, and missed the fine points of this amazing tool. I started with the scattergun approach, got a few follows, but did not really understand how it worked. I was just amazed that people found me at all. I had no name, no cred, no industry followers (from any industry) but plenty of internet entrepreneurs wanting my attention.
Internet Entrepreneurs...now there is a topic for another day...
Now it is Sunday night, I am up to 270 followers. I am amazed by this and only about a quarter are random, non digital art/bookstore/library/academic/artist/designer/gamer people. I am focusing on these areas for now as they are the ones ultimately who care about the books first and my blog/rantings second. I have so far spent untold hours answering every follow, finding fresh people, exploring the followers of my followers, writing directly to people who have written directly to me, responding to tweets, writing my own about either stuff , artists I like, events concerning Ballistic, books alerts, bookstores that carry Ballistic, the list goes on. And I have only just scratched the surface here!
I could effectively spend the next month or two just working twitter, connecting properly with key news groups for retwitterings, and establishing a whole new publicity list to get our word out to. I have subscribed to a few twitter help sites to really work the business end of it, but that will take time too! All of a sudden I have an outrageously full schedule!
So to wrap it up, twitter is going to be a fantastic tool, and with a bit of fine tuning will be able to really make it sing. The key is to manage this new addiction, because it is the new crack.
Internet Entrepreneurs...now there is a topic for another day...
Now it is Sunday night, I am up to 270 followers. I am amazed by this and only about a quarter are random, non digital art/bookstore/library/academic/artist/designer/gamer people. I am focusing on these areas for now as they are the ones ultimately who care about the books first and my blog/rantings second. I have so far spent untold hours answering every follow, finding fresh people, exploring the followers of my followers, writing directly to people who have written directly to me, responding to tweets, writing my own about either stuff , artists I like, events concerning Ballistic, books alerts, bookstores that carry Ballistic, the list goes on. And I have only just scratched the surface here!
I could effectively spend the next month or two just working twitter, connecting properly with key news groups for retwitterings, and establishing a whole new publicity list to get our word out to. I have subscribed to a few twitter help sites to really work the business end of it, but that will take time too! All of a sudden I have an outrageously full schedule!
So to wrap it up, twitter is going to be a fantastic tool, and with a bit of fine tuning will be able to really make it sing. The key is to manage this new addiction, because it is the new crack.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Mike Hepburn - illustrator and now Animator!
Mikey used to work with me at Ballistic, as my web designer, but on the side he worked to create his own truly amazing designs. Big Fat Robot is the result and he just comes up with one awesome design after another. I just think that here is someone who is well on his way to greatness.
Today a workmate pointed me to the Doritos commercial he did for a competition, and after looking at the the others, his is actually the best and most fun. So I twittered it hoping we get some more votes happening!
Here is the link. http://www.doritos.com.au/index.cfm?sq=1775
You can vote up to 5 times a day!
Today a workmate pointed me to the Doritos commercial he did for a competition, and after looking at the the others, his is actually the best and most fun. So I twittered it hoping we get some more votes happening!
Here is the link. http://www.doritos.com.au/index.cfm?sq=1775
You can vote up to 5 times a day!
Twittering
I have spent days in Twitter, trying to figure it out and think I have it. After all that, it is not that much to figure out, but is it just going to be the greatest waste of my time since Puzzle Quest? Let's face it, this is social network crack. I have spent many hours already searching for like minded souls, vetting people who wish to follow (like there is any vetting at all...), hunting down bookstores (not nearly as many as I would have hoped), and there are still a jillion art schools to follow. And I have not even started on the design studios....
So now I have a plan. To connect with as many art world people as possible, and with a bit of luck people from outside of our pond will start paying us more attention. And at the same time those in our world get even more excited about what we do. I really feel that we are at the edge of greatness, we are so close for our books to simply click with art lovers out there.
And have a bit of fun while I am at it. The tally now stands at 33 followers and 137 following...and 35 updates
There are more reports yet to come on all this...
So now I have a plan. To connect with as many art world people as possible, and with a bit of luck people from outside of our pond will start paying us more attention. And at the same time those in our world get even more excited about what we do. I really feel that we are at the edge of greatness, we are so close for our books to simply click with art lovers out there.
And have a bit of fun while I am at it. The tally now stands at 33 followers and 137 following...and 35 updates
There are more reports yet to come on all this...
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