So there's this, too.

I've been watching and surrounding my thoughts with an independent production out of Denmark called "Tales from Alethrion." These folks really have it all together in my opinion. Link to their Kickstarter right here. Their first film, "The Reward," was a successful KS project and now they want to do a web series. I love their mix of anime, European and even a little American styles, I like their characters, their world and really, just about everything about what they're doing. I want them to stay independent and I want them to succeed. That being said, as is often the case, when I see something I like, I tend to want to play in that sandbox if even for a little while. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it gets me to think about my approach, flexes my skills and allows me to experiment. Bad because it causes me to doubt my way and my own work. Regardless, as I was sick over the weekend, I didn't draw anything for awhile so when I was well enough, I drew some stuff in their style to play around. Now I'm done. I have to keep focus. And really, I DO like the style I came up with for Ghiroy. This was fun, though. And I can see where there's a lot more room for expression in the way they draw things than, perhaps, the style I've chosen. So we'll see.

That other thing I do

Here's a link to the latest episode of my movie review blog, "The Movie Wrench." This time around, I tackle, "The Man of Steel." Came out a little longer than I wished; perhaps I had too much to say. Probably did. Next one will be shorter:

Movie Wrench: Man of Steel

So, this. Got a new Tom and Jerry DVD in the mail today. They're not as good as the Looney Tunes for sure, but the animation, at least in the ones done by Hannah and Barbera is really good and sharp. I like the music and hey, I don't have to explain. I like Tom and Jerry. So I did this. Tried to adapt the Smatt and Terry style to these two. Strangely, I like Tom better than I like Jerry. Oh well, back to the comic.

Haven't had anything visual to show lately as I've been writing and re-writing the outline to Ghiroy. For some inking fun, and connected to the last post, I did a quick Marcel and then I re-drew it, pushing the pose and coloring it. Nothing new, but still fun. I like to up the number of posts I made over the past year, but this one might be mostly about development. Written first, visual later.

This is a little one day diversion. Someone I follow on tumblr is doing an animation project where each frame is planned by him but drawn by different people. Seemed something I could contribute to easily enough so I signed up yesterday. I had some time in the evening, so completed and sent back the assignment. The pose and placement is his, mine is everything else. I'll be sure to post a link to the final project. For now, people can follow along at the project's bloodspot: Art-Imation

Finally got back to these guys. There's only a couple more pages to do. As should be obvious, this is another little comic about nothing at all. I think it's sort of a theme about comics I do set in the present day. Anyway, included the pencils for these, which I really enjoyed drawing. There's something about the physical act of drawing that really just gets to me. These guys have been very freeing in some ways. Scott McCloud (McLeod) saw these recently as we had dinner after a talk he gave and he said one of the things he liked most about the pages was the small areas of blank space in the compositions. I'll take that as a good thing. I don't think they were purposefully left in or decided upon but I'm not going to go back and fix them either. I think these look better with the contrast turned up a bit higher than they are here. Maybe I'll go back and do that. For now, two more pages.

Also, it might be noted that the finals are somewhat different than the pencils. Illustrator has become more and more like an inking stage for me; final decisions have always been done here, but now I have no problem taking elements and resizing them or moving things around. That's a major benefit of the tool, right? Composition always seems to be done up til the end, though now at least I'm drawing the characters together and not on separate pieces of paper.