A cool blog about phones and gadgets and stuff

A friend of mine started this blog where he talks about a lot of things that I can't afford because I'm poor.  If you're less poor than me, this might interest you.


http://www.techminnow.com/


If you like it, make sure you leave comments mentioning my name.  That way he'll buy me beers which will let me forget that I'm poor

Justice League CG Movie Concepts

A few weeks ago, just for fun I started doing concepts for a faux Justice League CG movie. I've always been a huge fan of Bruce Timm and the DC Timmverse he helped create, and I thought it would be cool to basically design the JLA movie that I would direct if given the chance. I didn't do any huge drastic changes because I didn't want to betray the characters in terms of who they are and what they're about. I just wanted to build on what's already been established and tweak things the way I saw them. I was going to wait until I had more artwork before I posted this, but with all the freelance I've got, I don't think I'll be able to work on this again for a while.

 

Clark and Bruce face shots: This pic is kinda what started the whole thing. I always thought Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were a great opportunity to play with contrast. They both have similar features in a broad sense (Caucasian, black hair, relatively good looking) but I don't think they need to be drawn to look the same! These characters couldn't be more different, and so I tried to play that up with the shape language used in their design. I made Bruce primarily out of triangular shapes to associate him with danger, and I made Clark mostly out of chunky block shapes to emphasize a sense of protectiveness (which I think is what Superman is all about). I rounded the corners off on Superman's "blocks" to make sure the shapes were still comfortable and friendly.

I also made Bruce slightly more pale than Clark because I feel like it emphasizes the lack of warmth and is another way to appropriately add contrast to the characters.

Superman:  Superman is a wholesome, good-natured guy with antiquated notions of heroism, and that's what  I like about him. He represents a more honest hero, and SO many people don't like him because he's too corny, or not badass enough, and I think that's ridiculous. I hardly touched his costume at all because I wanted him to look corny and I wanted his image to reflect the dated quality of his beliefs. I really don't like when people try to make him like, this dark, violent, angry guy just for the sake of making him cooler.

Anyway I tried to make him primarily out of chunky square shapes, and I went as far as taking away the angles on his boots to make them a little more chunky and plain. I think he should be a big character to emphasize the fact that he's all about IMMENSE power and protectiveness. I know a lot of people say that he shouldn't be big because nothing would give him a workout, but I disagree because

1) Every time I see him lift something, he looks like he's straining real hard. Whether it's a car, a piece of rubble, a building, it all seems to be difficult for him.

2) The design reflecting the spirit of the character is more important to me than whether or not he'd be big in real life. He's powerful and he's protective, that's what I want my design to emphasize.

 

Green Lantern:  I thought it would be cool if his outfit was more of a manifestation of the ring's power as opposed to just cloth. I think that's the angle the live action movie is taking too, so I thought I'd do my version of that idea. I thought it would be cool if the green parts were constantly shifting, and seemed like you were looking inside some kind of unstable, nebulous energy reaction. I went with the spots because I was paying homage to that swiss cheese effect that Jack Kirby used to do whenever he drew energy.

Wonder Woman: I went with angry, warrior, man hating Wonder Woman. I feel like if you're raised your entire life immersed in bigotry, you're not just going to change your beliefs after a single adventure. It's not gonna be like "oh these guys fought with me to save the world, men aren't so bad." Nobody just drops prejudiced opinions like that, they skew and distort things to keep supporting and maintaining their discrimination. I feel like her acceptance of men would be a very slow, gradual thing and it would never be 100%. I was mostly inspired by Darwyn Cooke's design with some tweaks here and there where I thought it made more sense or would add some appeal.

Batman: I wanted Batman to be composed of triangular shapes to emphasize how dangerous he is. I also didn't want to draw him big and bulky because in my version he's primarily an acrobat, not a bodybuilder. He's constantly doing flips and jumping off rooftops, so he'd be extremely lean. I also gave him the more armored costume because

1) It looks cool

2) Having an outfit that looks more like protective gear while everyone else is wearing more "costume-y" outfits visually reinforces the fact that he's human and mortal. It reminds us that he NEEDS this to protect him and that's a trait that I (and I think most people) like about batman.

I also made Batman's skin even more pale here than in the Bruce Wayne pic to further emphasize the lack of warmth in Batman, and it also helped to add more contrast against the darkness of his suit. I like the idea of his face being that one little speck of pale, cold, humanity peeking out from this huge enveloping shroud of darkness.

Scenes: These were (relatively) quickly done pieces to give an idea of mood, lighting, and color. I'm not 100% happy with all of them, but for the most part I like how they turned out. More than the other stuff, I wish I had time to do more of these. I feel bad that Green Lantern (black guy) is the only character who doesn't have one, but I was going to do another set of 3 with Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, and Flash. Maybe I still will.

More...

Spaced

Being a huge fan of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's work on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, I decided to check out Spaced. Spaced is a sitcom about twenty-something year olds written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and directed by Edgar Wright. It's got a shitload of movie/geek references (Simon Pegg's character is an aspiring comic book artist) and it's 14 episodes of fucking awesome. 

You can really tell that it's made by a group of friends who are writing a lot of themselves in the characters, and that makes it hard not to care about them. The ending of the last episode totally got me emotional as hell. It's not that the ending is depressing or anything, but the finality of it just kinda leaves you feeling sad and makes you as a viewer wish you could hang out with these guys just a little longer(and musical montages at the end of good shows will ALWAYS work on me). Every artist and child of pop culture should go buy this show right now. 

Warm up

My warm up today

AFI Top 100

  Over the past year or two, I've been made painfully aware of just how many movies I should have seen, but haven't.  This is pretty ridiculous for someone with the aspirations that I've got, so to rectify this and to expand my cinematic IQ, I've decided to go through the AFI Top 100.    Here are the movies I've watched so far

- Citizen Kane
- The Godfather
- Schindler's List
- Star Wars
- Chinatown
- Apocalypse Now
- The Godfather Part 2
- North by Northwest
- A Clockwork Orange
- Taxi Driver
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (saw this one for the first time in its entirety today)
- The Silence of the Lambs
- Pulp Fiction

I also saw Yojimbo Sanjuro, and the Seven Samurai which I feel should be mentioned as part of a list that all storytellers should see.  A few of those movies I had seen before, but the majority of them are all new to me.  I think it's interesting that the film I enjoyed the LEAST out of that list was Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I'm sure must be blasphemous to a lot of people.

I think I'm going to have to go back and watch a lot of these movies a second time to try to take them apart and do my best to analyze them.

Influence Maps

I thought this was an interesting and useful exercise.  Here's a little info on my choices:



1. DICE TSUTSUMI - Brilliant painter currently working at Pixar. I love his lighting schemes and have been totally ripping them off lately.

2. GLEN KEANE - The weight, fluidity, appeal, and gesture in each of his drawings is insane.

3. BRAD BIRD - The Incredibles is my favorite of his movies, and in general I think he's my favorite director in animation right now.

4. GAINAX - Specifically FLCL, Gunbuster2, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Awesomely dynamic stuff.

5. BRUCE TIMM - He might have come up with the perfect simplification for animated super heroes.

6. GOBELINS, l'école de l'image - All the shorts coming out of that school have been absolutely ridiculously amazing. 

7. HAYAO MIYAZAKI - I know it's blasphemous to say this, but Miyazaki's movies really had to grow on me because I was NOT a fan at first. My initial impression was that his movies went off on long, slow, unrelated tangents and that his endings were too "deus ex machina" as a friend of mine put it. I still feel that way about some of his movies, but the charm, whimsy, and complexity of his characters have won me over. 

8. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN - Brilliant writer/director. There's not much that needs to be said really, I'm sure everyone has seen Dark Knight and Inception. I REEEEALLY like The Prestige though, and it may be my favorite of his movies despite that ending.

9. EDGAR WRIGHT - BRILLIANT writer/director. His sense of comedy and story are just absolutely amazing and I love that even though his movies are comedies, they have a surprising amount of heart and depth to them. He creates parodies without being condescending or pretentious, and he has these constant "loops" in his movies where dialogue from the beginning is repeated at the end under completely different circumstances. Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are each so densely packed with hilarious scenes and really clever little lines that it always amazes me. I've seen both movies so many times I could probably talk along with the characters on screen.

10. FINAL FANTASY VII - This game DEFINED my middle school years and has had a huge hand in influencing my aesthetic sensibilities. I never really let go of the giant weapons/high tech/swords and sorcery stuff that this game introduced me to.

DOODLES

Randomness done today in Photoshop with a Wacom Bamboo Fun. I gotta get me one of them fancy cintiqs one day.