Thursday 15 May 2008

General Gurblings

I woke up this morning to news of a flying man. A FLYING MAN! Good God, I want that jetpack---that bloke'll make a fortune if the Japanese revolutionise his tech. A real, honest to God FLYING! MAN! Good God...

Then the rain poured down and wiped out my TV reception completely but I'm hoping it'll be clear for Heroes tonight...Bruce Boxleitner will be in the next season but following the departure of Lex (boo!), looks like Chloe will be leaving Smallville following a breakdown in contract negotiations. Great take away, the most interesting two characters in the show---at least the lovely Erica Durance will still be around, with at least one gratuitous outfit each season...

Typically, now that my TV is back again, I've struggled to find anything on at all. Last night I watched an excellent episode of the Prisoner, involving people-sized chess games and an escape attempt by boat, but have been marvelling at how cheesy Tales From The Crypt and Ray Bradbury Theatre are now. The latter I used to love (especially a creepy story featuring Jeff Goldblum being pursued by a stalker in some random small town) but god, it's cheesy cheesy stuff now. Interestingly, the first episode I saw featured an adaptation of a story I recently read in an EC comic with Wally Wood art.

Having now cleared all the EC sci-fi stuff and the few other issues I had, I progressed to Wally Wood's great Cannon series (with completely hysterical dialogue at points: when confronted with the news that he may have a sprog on the way by a girl he's been shagging, Cannon says: "I'm sorry about earlier, I overreacted--you can have an abortion!"). With that clear, I tried a few experiments in clean line art using a brush...not the best results so I tried with a pen as usual with better results, but losing the softer touch of a brush as a result. I also tried a Mucha-inspired piece...I love his style but not his podgy faced women so I did a modern women just using his thick outline/thin inner line style. I deliberately did not look at any of his stuff before knocking that one out, trying to keep in line with the spirit of his work, and it was quite interesting. Clean line seems to be the way for me to go as I enjoy using it alot.

Hopefully back to the Jock now this weekend: I've got three pages set in the station to do, always fun as there's less reliance on real life clutter. Quite looking forward to this sequence...although that'll then be finished off by a less fun bandstand-in-the-dark bit. This is only daunting as the first sequence featuring the same setup did not go as well as I'd hoped.

In the meantime, it's straight back to work as my lunchbreak is now over...

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Thought you'd turned into Hiro from your first paragraph.

Smallville's had its day, and a weekend extra thrown in. People chess, escape boat, that sounds like every Prisoner episode ever. But they're all good. Apart from that cheapo one he's not actually in.

Pen probably suits you best, as brush is a little too imprecise for your perfecto line style.

And what've you got against podgy faced women? You can't beat a good podge face.

Rol said...

Bandstands? You wanna have a word with the writer, telling to stop writing such bizarre backgrounds.

Unknown said...

Yeah, what's wrong with good old fashioned cars, buildings and podge faced women in the background eh? Rewrite issue 3 so it contains nothing but.

Nige Lowrey said...

If I'd turned into Hiro, surely it'd be "Rook! A frying man!" Or is that Scooby-Doo?

Enjoyed the BBC2 & BBC3 Heroes eps last night...as mark said, now the Taskmaster is in the cast! I can't see them killing off HRG, although they could...is there any shapeshifting character around? What happened to that illusion casting woman from season one? And I don't trust West, there's something nasty about him.

The Oirish accents continue to be this season's major weak spot, begorrah, but at least Kristen Bell's quite cute...

dave said...

I watched that episode of The Prisoner yesterday afternoon (gos bless ITV4, tho' I personally wouldn't tell anyone you'd knocked one out, that's between you and your hand, and it'll dissappoint many people who reach you through googling that phrase.

Bandstands in the dark. Simple solution, draw one, then fill everything else in in black.

The shapeshifting woman - Candice was in episode 3...

SPOILER WARNING!!!SPOIER WARNING!!!



Candice,who could bend realiy first turned into a different woman - Michelle the ginger - guessing because Missy Petridish was doing Reaper - and saved Sylar from Kirby Plaza, taking him off to recover from Hiro's swording (nothing to do with anal sex, Nigel). She nursed him in a shack in a shack in Mexico before he cut her head off with a broken cup to take her powers, only he couldn't because of the power sapping plot that's going on.


Kristen Bell was way more than cute, and she's now got that mean side to her which is heading towards the ubersexy

Nige Lowrey said...

Thanks for the Sylar/Candice update...episode 3 was the one I missed and I was left occasionally lost watching ep 4---reliably informed I will be able to catch up with ep 3 later this month :).

Still don't like the thought of HRG kicking the bucket...though yeah, Kristen Bell is somewhat attractive...but you still couldn't get me near Forgetting Sarah Marshall..