
Sunday, May 30, 2010
beanbots #29

I forgot to post this one when it went up: The toddler masters the phrase "Uh-Oh", and makes extensive use of it.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Lost 6/15: Jacob

The two brothers seem to be representative of duality. The simple read is that Jacob is good and Brother is bad. But I'm starting to sense a more complex thing going on: The simple white and black represents how Jacob sees things, while MiB's outlook is more... complicated. Jacob represents dualism--the tendency to classify phenomena into "good" and "bad". Exemplified by the frantic impulse in monotheistic religions to categorize everything in the world either as holy/good/Godlike, and unholy/evil/Demonic. MiB represents non-dualism, the idea found more often in Eastern religions that everything in the world exists on an axis between the sacred and the profane, but all originating from the same source. MiB sees everything in shades of grey. He chooses to be with his Roman people, but he's not blind to the flaws in their character. He believes his "mother" to be hopelessly insane, but when she's right, she's right. Mother appreciates the mix of light and dark that burns so strong in MiB; it makes him special. It makes him the ideal candidate to stand astride this twilight realm between heaven and hell, taking on the souls of those who can't let go of this life, adding them to his strength to protect the source of all life. Jacob--poor, simple Jacob--played his part because accepted and continues to accept his mother's cover story. He sees himself as the good one and MiB as the bad one because he is incapable of seeing complexity. I guess he plays his part still in some way, as he endlessly scours the human race for "good" candidates. Meanwhile MiB rages helplessly, just fucking stop it. He's enraged at Jacob and enraged at himself for having unwittingly played into his mother's scheme.
There, I defy you to make sense out of that.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
"Robin Hood" Illustration

Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Robin Hood sketches
Sunday, May 09, 2010
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Iron Man sketches



I was really hoping to use an image of Gwyneth Paltrow in the final illustration, because her scenes with Robert Downey Jr. were actually my favorite part of the first film. I thought the two of them played off each other beautifully, almost a throwback to couples you'd see in old-time movies, when the dialogue was rapid-fire and genuinely witty. It's so rare in a blockbuster-type film to see a romantic pairing that's even age-appropriate, let alone intelligent and self-aware (as opposed to say, Downey Jr. and Rachel McAdams in "Sherlock Holmes"). You felt they wanted to be together, but their own intelligence kept sabotaging it. Each time things threatened to get steamy they both looked mortified that they almost let thier emotions take over.

Sunday, May 02, 2010
Iron Man 2

I did this for a movie blogger who expressed interest in adding my stuff to his site. I was into it but unfortunately a bunch of paying work hit at the same time, which I had to prioritize, and I didn't get it done before the review went up. I actually could have gotten it done a lot quicker, but I succumbed to the pitfall of trying to find just the "right" image, and thus did a boatload of sketches when it probably would have been just as well to do something simple off the cuff. I have to break myself of this tendency.
I hid a little easter egg on War Machine's armor-- on the shoulder where there's some letters & numbers I instead spelled out the name of my old-time Marvel colleague Len Kaminski (I spelled his last name in 'leet'). My understanding is that Len was the person who came up with War Machine back in the early '90s. But because he was a staffer, War Machine was technically the creation of the 11th floor of 387 Park Avenue South, and long story short he gets no credit on the film. That's showbiz, folks.