We see here Joss Whedon, whose art has touched me, touching my art!
He got the NE Browncoat package today. Thanks to Shelley and Holly from the NE Browncoats for sending this and to Jaime Paglia for making the hand off.
My glee is euphoric.
Funeral For a Friend. 01/28/08
My submission for the Channel Frederator “Throwback Thursdays” contest.
There’s a great story in the first 22 issues of the 80s Marvel G.I. Joe comic that follows the Joes dealing with eskimo (inuit?) tracker/mercenary Kwinn. He becomes a “friend” of sorts of Snake Eyes and they cause all sorts of mischief. It ends badly for Kwinn, but he gets some good revenge with “a grenade fallen from a dead man’s hand.”
Snake Eyes and Wild Bill give him a burial at sea, which is the scene for this little illustration here.
Wolverine and Superman. 1/14/08
This fall on ABC, the New Adventures of Logan and Clark! No, not really. They’re just posing and emoting.
I read Superman Annual #13 today, and the story at the end of the book, “The Best Day,” is everything that is awesome about Superman: family, kindness and hope. It helps that it was drawn by Renato Guedes. It’s a short story about Superman and Supergirl taking the Kents, Lois and Chris to a planet for a picnic.
The panels at the bottom of this page touched me. Kara is always trying to impress Clark, and Martha’s there to put her at ease. More and more, these types of moments are worth more than ten pages of Wolverine’s berserker barrage.
… he said in a high-pitched voice following a suspicious noise from Rygel. 01/05/08
The Scifi Channel is bringing back Farscape as a series of 10 “webisodes.” Not the exact format I was hoping for, but better than nothing. If they are as well-produced as the Razor “webisodes,” this should be frelling sweet.
The caricature will be back soon!
This past Friday (12/14) I joined a bunch of fans in Cambridge and we marched around the Harvard Lampoon building, picketing and rallying for writers to get a fair deal from studio corporations. At the heart of the matter is the piracy the studios are committing by selling the work of the writers on the internet, but not giving the writers their share of the money they make.
Hey, greedy media moguls, Rob Kutner said it best: Learn to share.
This article and video at wickedlocal is a great recap of the event: Backing writers, fans march on Harvard Square. I took photos, but none turned out as good as the photos in this great photo album of the rally.
Here’s my no-frills, unedited audio recording of the rally inside the church, with speeches from Jamie Paglia (Eureka), Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly) and Rob Kutner (Daily Show) and a question and answer session with the supporters.
Download: WGA Rally, Boston MA .mp3 (1:16)
This is the only video I shot, but it’s a poignant moment from Joss Whedon’s speech. Sorry for the shakiness.
Springtime Obstacle: Flood, First to Find Card Game
Photoshop, 10/23/05
Today, some links of interest…
Joel Hodgson was interviewed over at Starwars.com, and he talks about creating MST3K and what he’s working on now. My favorite part of the interview is his description of his initial ideas and how they eventually turned into MST3K. He mentions a book full of his conceptual stuff he’s developed with his brother for their company, Visual Story Tools. It’s called “Rides and Attractions” and might be out sometime next year.
Curt Schilling tells an inquiring public what race/class combos he likes to play in World of Warcraft and Everquest and where he’s gaming now in an interview at Allakhazam’s.
I’ve been using a website called Slimtimer to track my time and it’s perfect. Very simple to use. It sits in a small window on your desktop (either in a browser or in a Bubbles window,) and you just click the task on and off as you work. At the website, you can run reports of your time to print invoices, timesheets, etc. Hopefully it stays free-to-use.
One of my favorite gaming illustrators spoke at the Eric Carle Picture Book Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts today. Tony DiTerlizzi (site blog) has worked on numerous games throughout his career, such as Magic the Gathering, the Planescape Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting material and White Wolf’s Changeling game. He’s on to books now and has received kudos in the picture book field for The Spider and the Fly, among others.
Besides talking about his childhood love of DnD and Star Wars and the influence they had on his artwork, Tony talked about a childhood book he created. It was a 75-page field guide of mythical monsters, some from folklore and some from his own imagination.
Many years later, after years of illustrating their game books, he tried to pitch the idea of a monster field guide to the makers of DnD, but they passed.
In time, he found great success with his picture books. After The Spider and the Fly won awards, his editor asked him an open-ended question, “what book would you like to do next? You can do anything you’d like.”
Again he returned to the idea of the Field Guide as written by Arthur Spiderwick on several adventurous expeditions, with tips about how to handle various monsters. The editor liked the story, maybe even more than the field guide idea, and told him to work it out. That’s when the Spiderwick chronicles were born!
He worked with Holly Black to create the chapter books. He said he wanted to fill the books with illustrations because, as a visual kid, when he turned 10 years old, he stopped reading books and switched to comics. He just couldn’t get into the words-only style! When do we stop appreciating illustrated books? I don’t think we do, we’re just tricked into not expecting them.
He showed us a piece from a new project he’s working on called “Kenny and the Dragon,” a retelling of “The Reluctant Dragon,” with a rabbit as a protagonist.
The exhibit featured photographs and maquettes from the upcoming Spiderwick movie and best of all, lots of original paintings and inks from Tony. His ink and watercolor pieces were lively … you know the energy you get from your original sketches sometimes? He keeps that energy throughout the piece.
He mentioned Arthur Rackham, an illustrator from the early 1900s as an inspiration to his artwork for the series as well as the design and typography of old books from the period.
His gouache on bristol paintings were the real draw for me. The field guide pieces showed a deft and subtle handling of color with beautiful neutrals and hints of bright colors throughout. The Seeing Stone cover piece was really amazing, showing his ability to really push a brush around a piece of board.
© 2008 Eric M. Smith
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