Beanbots #30

"Mommy Has to Leave", and the world promptly comes to an end.

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.

Lost 6/15: Jacob

Okay, I'm back! What'd I miss? Ten episodes? And the show ends forever in a week? Aw crap. That plan of mine for illustrating an episode a week didn't really pan out did it. I must have driven myself a little batshit trying to do the first four of these, because I haven't had the stomach to attempt another for the last two months.

And speaking of batshit: by way of commentary on the most recent episode, "Across the Sea", I'd like to copy and paste verbatim what I posted on Nikki Stafford's "Lost" blog late last night. I don't pretend that it makes any rational goddamn sense whatsoever, I merely offer it as evidence that this show is melting my brain out my ears and really does need to come to an end as swiftly as possible:

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.

I mock because I love.

Frank Frazetta will always be my main dude. R.I.P. big man.

Steve Jobs

"Robin Hood" Illustration

I was hoping to post a link to a film blog that was going to run this illustration next to their review of the film from Cannes. Well the review's up, they didn't run the piece and I haven't gotten so much as an email back. It's not like I was even trying to get paid. I guess the takeaway here is that when I venture out of storyboarding I literally can not give my work away, but I had fun doing it anyway.

I succumbed to the urge to paint over the drawings a lot in Photoshop, and I may have overworked it and lost a bit of the 'zing' of the marker sketches. One problem with using a Cintiq is that it becomes devilishly easy to give way way too much attention to every little highlight on Russel Crowe's nostril.

Robin Hood sketches

Sketches for a second piece I did for Obsessed With Film, we'll see if the final makes it in this time. If not I'll just post it here.

Gratuitous Nudity

Iron Man sketches

Some of the sketches I did while trying to find the right design for the Iron Man illustration (previous post). Rather than sketch out a bunch of designs, I thought I'd just generate a bunch of images in marker and then try to combine them and find the design after the fact.





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.

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.