Moving along... How Soon Is Now?

Just got a new Mac. The old one was getting stuffed with crap - music software, art software, I was running games off of an external HD...

So it's all wired in via DVI so my colours are much more colourful. My software runs blazing fast... yummo.

But that's not what I want to write about. I have a bunch of old comics I drew several years ago that I need to get around to tidying up and lettering. And then put 'em online. A 30 page black and white 'Nemesis The Warlock' kinda fan-fic thing. 'Judas Lucy', a couple of fully painted long-form stories. I still have 'Soft' as an ongoing 'Thing' as well... somewhere around page 80 or so of... 400?

So, I have a LOT of content that needs to go online. And that's why I stand knee-deep in oily water, greasy wrench in hand beating away at MySQL and PHP... WordPress, you WILL be my bitch, as I have Important Comics that must go online. Now.

Currently playing with MAMP (Mac Apache MySQL PHP) Virtual Server, WP, ThemeDreamer & DreamWeaver, and Artisteer 2. Maybe I have too many options...?

Caving in is so easy to do...

So I caved and re-instated my Twitter account and feed.

I feel like such a worthless whore, but if I can use it to find work...

Egad! Followers!

So I signed in to write a quick post, only to find I had followers. It was a sensation akin to coming home from work, randomly looking behind the sofa, only to discover an undiscovered tribe living there, cooking dinner over an open flame.

Being a social sort, I gave them a widgety thing there on the right.

This of course means I have to imrpve mii riting skillz and learn to type complete sentences as I am now being watched.

Back to my original post. I have renounced MySpace, and Twitter. I hardly visit them, and while I might miss out on opportunities via Twitter - writers looking for artists for publishers, that kind of thing (true story, folks! Coming soon.) So my Twitter widget has gone bye-bye.

More theatre posters...

Despite my prior comments, for a laugh I decided to email New Line Cinema. Let's see where that takes us...

More posters, please!

We have the redesigned images for Freak Storm and Terminus Americana, for Broadway Publishing. Both by Matt Pelfrey, first performed by Lodestone in 2002.

The Mikado Project and Trojan Women were from 2007. Oddly enough, part of my design process for Trojan Women saw me in Turkey, looking at 11C. Roman ruins for reference. Unfortunately, Lodestone refused to pay my travel expenses.

Oh well.

In a previous post I showed one of my earlier concepts for Trapezoid. Here's the final image, from 2008. It's all 3D graphics, tweaked in Photoshop.

I'm really, really good with Photoshop. I've been using it since 1991... 17 years. Crikey!

What did I say about posters looking similar?

Okay... spot the difference...

One was created in September, 2006. The other is a shitty rip-off.

(hint: 'The Final Destination' is the ripoff)

I *know* that if I contacted these bozos and tried to sue, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Okay, the film production company and the theatre company are both in LA. But they have enough *big money* behind them to tear me a new one.

So why bother, right?

Ten, no, Nine Years of Theatre

As I outlined in my last post, I'm in the process of designing the postcards and posters for Lodestone Theatre's penultimate season. Here are few of ...well, most of my favourite images from the last decade in no particular order.

2000: American Monsters. My very first gig with Lodestone. This was 3 plays, for Halloween, hence the overt horror theme. Each image is a hand-drawn black and wh

ite piece, tucked safely away in the depths of my portfolio.

2001: A Dirty Secret Between The Toes.

The graphic designer did just about everything possible to destroy the image I'd so cleverly come up with, leading to me taking the reigns of the graphic design role for the next 8 years.

Thanks, nameless half-wit! Recently, I was asked if I might have the poster or some file somewhere of it for a reprint. I found my original art, scanned in the single postcard from the play I had... and actually respecting the nameless graphic designer, I carefully recreated it. In colour, to poster size. It was something of a feat.

*ah ha, ah haha ha*

See, the image has feet in it... it's a pun. It's punny.

Freak Storm. This image is just one reason why the writer, Matt Pelfrey, has mad man-love for me. I recently revisited it for the cover to the book of the play, from Broadway Publishers. I finally got to use the original artwork I'd done for the woman's face.

2002 was a bit awkward. For Lodestone's next play, "Refrigerators", I had this tasty image all lined up, and being a smart-arse, decided to go with 3D graphics - a woman trapped in an ice-cube. I created skins for the character, rendered an ice-cube in Photoshop, all kinds of clever stuff, and the dear little G3 laptop I was using decided to take dump and so I missed my - I think - only deadline.

I later managed the whole 3D rendering thing to much greater effect in Trapezoid.

Below is a concept 'sketch', incorporating a photo for the face, 3D for the cube and figure, all joined together in Photoshop. Again, for Ten To Life, I used similar processes for an even tighter

effect.

For When Tigers Smoked Long Pipes, I went back to a hand-drawn style. The tiger was photo-referenced at San Francisco zoo... (which later went on to international fame for mauling to death a couple of teenage jack-asses) with lots of references to Korean folk art. I think nowadays I'd have used vector images to tidy up the gouache backgrounds.

Claim To Fame - I asked that all the actors have their pictures taken from above, looking up at the camera. I was 500 miles away at the time, and couldn't really describe how it was going to turn out. One photo-session later, and I came up with this awesome image.

American Monsters 2 was basically a red bed-sheet thrown over a door, and two pictures of my hands with the actor's face added in. Everything else was done in Photoshop. The invite was a little creepier - a skull, th

e mirror shattered, combined with the head of Aleister Crowley. Oooooh, spooky! Halloween, right?

Funnily enough the latest poster for Final Destination looks oddly similar.

OMG, whadda ya mean it's June already!?

So... this is embarrassing. The WORK! project is almost a year old, now, and both Eric and I have done literally - fucking sweet FA on it for at least two months. If not three. There are random threats coming from Eric - oh, and a Facebook page.

That and here will be cross-posted to... if nothing else.

I'm slowly settling into the realization that thanks to Obama's extension plans on my unemployment, combined with the lack of hiring in construction now, my two alternatives are: Go back to retail, save up some money, buy a gun and shoot myself IN THE FUCKING FACE BECAUSE RETAIL IS SHITTT!!! Or face up to it - I'm an artist and I should try and make money as an artist. So far I'm circling around on a couple of commissions, and once things develop to a critical mass, I might even be able to do this for a living...

*pause for nervous laughter*

Or at least pay down a credit card or two. A little bit.

So, WORK! is currently on hold. Until I wake up one morning with a pile of other things to do and get around to emailing everyone angry emails asking where their work is.

I'm currently designing my penultimate campaign for Lodestone theatre - Closer Than Ever. This makes me sad, because I've been designing for them since 2000, and 9 years with a bunch of great people who put on awesome plays - you'd like to see it go on. Their next play is 'Grace Kim And The Spiders From Mars'.

I really enjoy working with theatre (and film) groups - getting a highly abstract concept like a play, and realizing into finished project, soup to nuts.

I'm also working on a B/D comic - no, not a bidet, or a bédé (bande dessinée) although I'd like to... as it's a private commission I'm not at liberty to discuss it too much, other than there's nudity and people being tied up. Look, it's B/D. If you don't know, ask a grown-up. Or Google. Or Wikipedia. Or Bing.

And in case you're still wondering, no, I don't. I might know people who do. You might know people who do but just don't tell you. But I don't, I just draw it well.

And finally, as I live in San Francisco, and given my positive support for all things LGBT (which, for those still confused about the B/D stuff above, is not a kind of sandwi... okay - it might be a kind of sandwich. Just not THAT kind of sandwich) I'm doing a book project. That is, a series of chapter headings, for a book. Proper, black and white ink illustrations. No super-heroes, no creepy monsters, just good old fashioned illustration. Just like what I went to College, got drunk, slept around and got in a band to do.

As this is fast becoming a monthly update, here's a couple of other things I've done this month. Warren Ellis, each week, posts up a random, obscure character that is out of copyright. Here's last weeks' - Gerry Carlyle.

She's a Big Game Hunter for the London Interplanetary Zoo, and wears an unfeasibly laudable mini-skirted space-suit. In the space of a few hours, I speed-painted the image - around 4, 5 hours, and in about another, what, 90 minutes? did all the typesetting and effects to give it that old-comic look. It was, as some might say, a piece of piss.