I did the above and the below drawings while at my day job. Not sure what gave me the energy, sitting under the hot flourescent lamps of that cave of an office, to keep going on, but I did and I’m pretty happy with the results considering the resources I was using.

This is Mako, the leader of the Tigersharks, an 80′s superhero cartoon I used to love. This was painted quickly for the Drawing Board forums jam.

Will be back with a few more including a sketch from 33 Revs of the store and my sketches from the SF Sketch Crawl.

One of the more recent habits she’s formed, a habit that spans my whole family actually, is one of gift-giving. Not of giving gifts just to be nice to someone, but because it’s an obligation you must keep, no matter what. In Hawaii, food is almost always the gift given. And if you refuse, then you go to hell! Well, no. You don’t. But, you might want to after taking the massive amount of guilt the gift-bearer will ultimately lob in your direction. We cannot live with ourselves if someone refuses a gift from us and if one refuses food, especially hand-prepared food, food made with our loving hands, then, we might as well not exist anymore.

This little strip was done with all that in my mind. It was meant as an experiment on technique more than anything. I just wanted to see what it would take to do a strip once, then on a regular basis.

Random Acts

In light of all this, I started drawing for myself again. doing a lot of warmups and drawing more on instinct than for perfect proportion, perspective, etc. All the things you’re supposed to learn in school, but, for some reason, have ultimately crippled me. Not that all of that isn’t important, but I found myself focusing way too much on those details and my drawings ended up looking stiff and lifeless. This is me going back to what I know. What looks good and dynamic to me.

Trinity Batman

Trinity Superman

Trinity Wonder Woman

I have a tone of sketches to put up here, but have been too busy to scan them in. But, it’s spring break now, so I’ll be up here more. Here’s the first:

This was me just playing around and getting used to drawing some characters for a new project I’m pencilling now. Yay me!

Click on it to supersize.

I did this sketch during my first class of the semester. I was “listening” to the introduction lecture which was just the same old speech every instructor gives during the first week. Needless to say I was bored. Not that the class wasn’t interesting. I think it’ll be pretty good as the semester rolls on, but for now I got time to do stuff like this.

Some more coming tomorrow.

So, the project is an online, downloadable comic called Squared Circle. The general premise is that it’s a WWE-style wrestling show in comic book form. We got crazy steroidal dudes (and one healthy girl) in crazy getups battling each other in the ring. We got the not-so-witty banter between the overexcited commentators. We got the over-the-top scripted behind-the-scenes filler. We got it all.

I am putting up a couple of the characters that will be appearing in the comic.

Johnny Hemo is a crowd-favorite. He has cancer and is always over-playing his illness and other injuries and ailments he might or might not have. I have him with the patch monitors on his body and a hospital wristband for good effect. He’s also trying to look emaciated with the dark eyeshadow and sunken eyes.

Murray Boothwater, AKA The Hypnotist, is kind of strange. He was described as having a starry cape, a handlebar moustache, and wearing a top hat. I didn’t know what to make of it. But, I think I captured some of the kooky nature of this one.

This is a sketchblog so these are just that. I may change them before the final product is done but mainly they will change very little.

OK, obviously there are going to be some minor flaws in the film. Nothing’s perfect. Especially in the horrid quagmire of commercial filmmaking called Hollywood. But, what producer JJ Abrams and his director and writer Matt Reeves and Drew Goddard (who honestly don’t get enough of the press love that they so clearly deserve) have concocted is a miracle of popcorn moviemaking out of what could have been a big blockbuster mess. The film zips by and a breakneck pace making all the right decisions along the way right up until the heartbreaking end which I’ll speak about later.

For those of you who have been living in the middle of the Antarctic watching penguins tapdance for the better part of a year, we’ll update you. The story concerns a young man named Rob Hawkins, who gets a major promotion and is leaving for Japan in a few days. His brother and friends throw a surprise going-away party for him and in the midst of the celebration is when the movie’s events start going to hell. First, a giant earthquake, r something, rocks the city. Then, we find out that something has landed in the middle of the city and is proceeding to turn it into its personal little sandbox. The rest of the movie concerns Rob’s attempts to get to his one true love before being evacuated from the city. His friends, obviously, go along for the ride. There wouldn’t be a movie otherwise, right?

From that simple premise we, as the audience, tag along as these friends experience everything one might expect from a mysterious, possibly terrorist attack on a big city. The filming technique of using a home video camera and watching the proceedings from basically a first-person perspective make the shocks and terror much more palpable. It’s to the writer’s credit that they did not fall into the Blair Witch trap of letting the movie completely lapse into a coma in between shocks. There are no long, interminable shots of people’s skin pores as they contemplate the situation they have put themselves in. The main scenario in Cloverfield lends itself to a quicker pace anyhow. There’s not much time to sit around and wait for something to happen when the military is shooting thousands of rounds and missiles at a giant monster trolling the streets right around the corner from you. The home video angle also allows for a subtle message of how technology might keep us at a distance from even the most immediate dangers. Hud, the main character’s best friend, takes the camera for most of the movie and his insistence in “documenting” everything that happens gets him close to death several times in the movie, and SPOILER AHEAD…

ultimately brings his comeuppance at the end of the film when he goes back for the camera and ends up in the giant monster’s insides.

The decision to keep the monster under wraps until the movie came out was brilliant. As a movie geek, I wasn’t expecting much going into this one. I figured that the moment I saw the giant lumbering through NY that that would be the movie and there was nothing more to see. Boy, was I wrong. I loved how little details about the thing leaked at different points as the video camera lingers on a news story or a TV showing footage of the monster in closeup. Bringing in the little baby ones was not the “baby Godzillas”-type disaster I thought it might be at the beginning. There’s something to be said for the fact that for most of the movie the monster is in the background. It’s never right in their faces until near the end. All I can say is I will never look down a subway tunnel the same way again.

One more thing on the monster. I immediately stayed for the credits at the end of the movie. I needed to know the name of the creature designer, the brilliant mind that came up with the idea for this massive city-leveller. That guy’s name happens to be Neville Page and his website looks like it might have just gone up, but the gallery is definitely worth a look. I can’t wait to see what he does with his other future projects such as The Hulk 2, Watchmen, and Avatar. The link is right here.

The ending was the only problem I had with the movie as a whole. MORE SPOILERS…

I understand the filmmakers having to end the arc they started with the two main characters, Rob and Beth. Going from breakup to realization of love and rescuing his one true love, to finality in the end, I understand the need to go back there and sew things up nice and tight. The problem I had was that as soon as Hud oes back for the camera and gets eaten, the idea that Rob would go back and pick up the camera and keep filming threw me way out of the reality of the film’s world. In those last few minutes I kept thinking, no matter how loyal I was to my friend, I wouldn’t go back for the camera. I’d try to get the hell away from there. As futile as that plan would’ve been considering the circumstances the movie puts them in at the end, I still would’ve done that. I do have to say though, that after all that, I did like the sappy end as a scene unto itself. The tragedy of these two coming back together just to die in the end was hard to take the first time and a little easier the second time I saw it.

OK, I’m a fool romantic, so go ahead and shoot me. Or feed me to a giant alien monster.

OK, all pau.