weee

I’m really excited by the weird symbolism that slipped in here.

for a long time, the final “frame” area here was blank. the rest of the page was roughed out (this includes the last two strips, mind you, because all three are drawn at once – as one continuous piece of art).
I don’t know why the candle sprang to mind. but I ran with it.
I like how the pain of the monkey’s knee is framed by candles. It seems to suggest some sort of symbolism around the spark of inspiration. the light of knowledge. in my mind at least, this is what it suggests. i drew the first (smaller) candles simply because the monkey in the Closer video had some candles nearby. But add a major focus on giant foreground candle in last frame, and suddenly the first two don’t seem so random.

i don’t know why the test tube closed and test tube wide open and leaking strike me as a brilliant summary of the the doctor’s mad state of mind. I love the way it’s contrasted with a weird note about emotions sneaking into his dreams. I like the idea that he could be a better scientist if he was maybe a little less sensitive. less human?

also, i like the “kneedle.” it is an image that just sort of gives me the willies. (well, the way i drew it kinda sucks and looks childish. but the idea gives me a personal sense of ick. likely due to my past knee surgery).

wee

weee.

i must confess, I sat down tonight to whip out this strip, and the following two. and I never thought they would spill out so easily.

these “doctor” sequences were scripted very poorly. Often with dialog between the characters and no direction.
soooo. it is sometimes very taxing to translate the guts of the scene from sappy dialogue exchanges over to gothic descriptions and mutating interlinked distorted art.

I’m very happy with how these three turned out.

hmmz.

sooo, the idea of this strip was really “we didn’t escape unharmed.” because their little rat-thing prisoner is dead as shit.
thus, he pulls his hand out. pop. he lifts the rat’s mangled corpse out. slurp. they amble off outta that one-horse town.
wee-oooo.

this strip, and the last strip, feel kinda mis-paced. I feel like there was a good action flow going, and then it stopped dead, and we returned to boring-guys land. hmm. not sure if this is just in my mind (including the idea that it was EVER exciting), or if I could really be doing something differently.
hmmz.

… it occurs to me I really should be using onomatopoeia in these “two dudes” story lines. hmm. debating whether I should go back and add this into each strip. or just start adding it from now on. orrrrr maybe let it go. hmm. (i’m thinking of V for Vendetta’s postscript, where alan moore mentions that they strove to avoid sound effects and thought bubbles. I feel like i’d be failing as an artist if I indulged such things. … which makes me want to do it. out of childish anger). hmm.

okkkkk,
So maybe this transition is abrupt…

I had once planned to show them hiding in cars. but. that’d be hiding from some large legs walking by. doesn’t sound very compelling. So I’m compressing time yet again and saying “ok they escaped.”
in the second panel, my script said “one-armed dude gestures, as if to say ‘are you ok?’”. and it wasn’t until I sat down to draw this that I realized i don’t know how to draw that. hmm. so this is more of a “uh, what next?” gesture. maybe?
and the final frame is meant to be “i’ve still got this goddamned carrying case stuck on my watch arm”
weee.

It was kind of meant to be exciting that we’d get a glimpse at the walking beast. but. it doesn’t quite feel epic enough. Maybe i need to shrink the guys? shadow the beast more? maybe show more of it’s centipede-like limbs? hmm. HMMM.

weee.
watched “Give ‘Em Hell Malone” last night. (well. I’m writing this on wednesday morning. sooo, time is… VAPOR).

The first half hour of GEHM was AWESOMEZORS. !
really. I had to take a break at the half hour point, while a flat mate cleaned the litter box next to the tv, and I was really excited to watch the rest of the movie. Starts out with bloody brutal violence and delicious hard nosed film noir dialogue. but then it starts to drop the ball by letting you flounder for far too long with mysteries about “the meaning of love”. This turns out to NOT be as lame as it sounds. but. it lets you think that maybe the filmmakers are sappy poet morons for quite a long time. SIGH. (they also put this in the trailer. twice. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM??!?!?).
Anywho. It’s still interesting. Despite the introduction of some shitty/camp actors.
and then the final half hour just craps all over your face.
like, (SPOILERS)
-there’s a scene where they drive around in circles to shake a guy up. They cut back and forth between external car shots and inside-the-trunk shots, and nothing seems that bumpy or dangers. so they crank the music up. ugh. painful.
then there’s a sequence of driving fast in traffic. it should be intense. They’re driving into oncoming traffic, and someone’s seatbelt has been cut. but. meh. it’s boring. you’re waiting for them to stop cutting back and forth between actors breathing heavy and lookign around and external car shots. it was was weird.
(END SPOILERS)
and then it ends.
in fact. the final 5 seconds is such a huge fuck-you to the audience that it’s kind of overwhelming. I was watching it with 2 flat mates at this point, and we literally each turned to each other and angrily exclaimed “What?!”" repeatedly as the credits rolled.
damn.
I guess the editing was a clear problem. Also some of the weird processed/lit shots. but. I dunno. something very strange about how this movie fell apart.

After the frist 30 minutes, i was thinking “i mayyyyy have to buy this”. and as the credits rolled i had changed my tune to “I mayyyy need to avoid ever watching another film by this director.” (and after watching the disc’s previews, I think i’ll stear clear of this production company. bleh).

anywho.

regarding the striP:
k, this is meant to be the point in the action movie where, you’re like “i thought he was dead! no, ok, he’s fine.” That’s frame one, where one-arm climbs out of the hole.
Panel two is: OH SNAPS IT GETS WORSE! that bigger more dangerous monster is back!
Panel three is : let’s hide in these cars. We’re separated. oh dear.

I’m very curious if these strips “read”. or if they’re just horribly confusing.

…
welcome to the pre-GDC queue, in which I spend more time drawing than typing.
…

The idea here was:
1. the one-armed-dude looks out the window after the friend who has just abandoned him.
2.Then he jumps too.
3.Then we see that he missed the ground and fell lower into a car. with some great force.

These boys are tough! (to survive such falls).

…

k, the idea here is that the watch-dude grabs a filing cabinet, throws it at the door, then jumps out the window.

one-armed dude is like “uh, wut?”

Alrighty. Just finished this strip, and the two that will follow. Planning to do 3 each night this week, so I will have a buffer built up for my time at GDC next week. man. lots of work.

Decided to revamp the “dropping” color effect. light power green just wasn’t menacing, and wasn’t showing up. Soo i tweaked it. (rendered fibers, then faded them back off a bit, then rendered difference clouds, then inverted and boosted saturation).

hmmf.

and in other news, earlier tonight I realized I’d made a major mistake in my numbering of scripts. such that, in the countdown, I jumped from 1059 back up to 1078 (instead of 1058). Thus adding 20 more strips. sooo.
That was interesting. trying to cull 20 strips. woof.
Actually most of them sucked, and it was probably for the best. I’ll try to mention them as we pass them by.
But mostly it was some lame (dirty) jokes for the family, which were the wrong tone anyway. and some weird redundancies for family. Originally I’d planned for the family to have no idea they were suffering invaders. soooOOOOooo there were a few more invasions. And more of an attempt at “mystery.” but. since I jumped right in and had them set up a gun to shoot invaders, there will need to be some changes.
hmmm…
I also had to cut a sequence with the man and his mummy wife. Which pains me greatly, as that is my favorite story. It’s about to change tone abruptly soon. sooo it was good to notice this and make some notes about easing the transition.
…
still feels like there are too many damned man and mummy wife bits. mostly because they’re so hard to draw. i think. hmmf.
…
I suppose everything is too hard. :)

blah! and i suppose this vague babbling probably isn’t interesting to you, since you haven’t read the scripts. weeeoooof. sorry.

Hayyyyy, I watched “Ink” tonight and accidentally enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. Also watched another delightful episode of the old BBC show “Connections” (and episode titled “The Long Chain”, Which induced me to nod off half way through and miss the connection from denmark’s coal tar to germany’s cloth dye boom. whoopsy daisy!)(weee!)
uhhh.
ok, i’ll stop typing.

… hmmm.
Still debating if I want to keep drawing the big beast as full strokes, or if i should apply the photocopy affect to it as well. hmm.

if it’s not clear…
the idea is that the dudes immediately jump through a window into a nearby building. Because there is something(s) dropping from the beast.

- just made the dropping into green thing on a whim. to make it stand out. I suppose this could be written off as an effect of the birthing, and needn’t be kept up. we’ll see. weee.
- should probably add a second (and maybe third) beast leg, to reinforce that it is continuing to walk by.
- should probably add a puddle where the dropping landed. and maybe another dropping. and some reflections in the dudes’ suits. blah blah.

in theory I need to start cranking these out much faster, to prepare for the Game Developer Conference next week. hmm. HMMM. (eek).