Ecofugal: April 2009

April 28, 2009

Books on film directors

Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard by Richard Brody
Amazon link

Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System by Sharon Waxman
Amazon link

April 26, 2009

Charlotte Gainsbourg

Charlotte Gainsbourg in …And They Lived Happily Ever After (2004)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381270/

April 25, 2009

April 23, 2009

scanner and printer

Epson Perfection V500 Photo Sam's scanner $400

Epson Perfection V700 Photo $900

Lexmark E120n network printer $120

www.hingeandbracket-official.co.uk/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinge_and_Bracket

Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket were the stage names of George Logan and Patrick Fyffe respectively. The characters of Hinge (somewhat brittle and acerbic) and Bracket (more flamboyant) were elderly, intellectual, female musicians; in these personae the male Logan and Fyffe played and sang songs to comic effect.

A genteel English inter-war world of cucumber sandwiches, bell ringing, church fetes and old-fashioned values was recalled through the act, although their work was frequently decorated with double entendres.

April 21, 2009

Fluorescent Black by Nathan Fox

Fluorescent Black
Art by Nathan Fox
http://www.foxnathan.com/
interview about the graphic novel

The Page Turner

The Page Turner (2006) - La tourneuse de pages
starring Catherine Frot and Déborah François.

www.imdb.com/title/tt0487503/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Page_Turner

Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels

"Idiots and Angels" is Bill's latest feature film, a dark comedy about a man's battle for his soul.
www.idiotsandangels.com/
http://www.plymptoons.com/

April 15, 2009

Ken Kelly's Micronauts

Ken Kelly
http://www.kenkellyart.com
http://www.innerspaceonline.com/KenKelly1.htm
http://www.innerspaceonline.com/s713.htm
http://comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=12102

Nicolas de Crecy

Nicolas de Crecy
http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/168_decrecy/168_decrecy.htm
http://lambiek.net/artists/d/de-crecy_nicolas.htm

Earl Norem - The Quiet Achiever

Heres an artist that has produced great work for many years but has always been a bit underappreciated.

http://www.earlnorem.com/
http://geektarded.blogspot.com/2008/06/neglected-underappreciated-art-of-earl.html

He-man posters
http://www.he-man.org/primary_sects/promo/html/posters/index.shtml

April 14, 2009

Comic tools

http://thetoolsartistsuse.com/
http://20cartoonquestions.blogspot.com/
http://comictool.blogspot.com/

April 13, 2009

Writing for Comics

I have been reading the excellent Writing for Comics by Peter David.
Just jotted a few things down which stood out while i was reading it. Hope some of this makes sense.

Developing a character
Give your character traits. Down to earth traits often makes a character memorable.
e.g: Hulk has a fondness for baked beans.

Call attention to traits. If your character has a trait get other characters to draw attention to it.
e.g: The Thing always going on about how verbose Reed Richards is.

Your hero
Give your character a family background/history.
Your character must be in opposition to something. That opposition must not be a push over. heroes must over come some personal weakness.
Writing about what you know means writing about stakes that are personal to you.

Your villain
It is often the villain that drives the plot.
What is the villains motivation?
Create a sympathetic villain.

The 3 basic conflicts
Man vs Himself
Man vs Man
Man vs Nature

Exercise
Come up with 3 conflicts
Man vs Himself
A hero struggles with an addiction
A hero has agoraphobia and cant set foot outside

Man vs Man
A couple going through a divorce.
A man who finds his long lost brothers is a bent on world domination.

Man vs Nature
A hurricane is bearing down on a small town

Preparing your sketch for inking

Here are two tips on preparing your sketch for inking.

TIP 1
http://superrobotmonster.blogspot.com/2007/01/shield-slinger.html

Create your drawing with a blue col-erase or grey lead pencil on paper.

Scan it at 300 dpi and make it into 100% CYAN image (see below Tip 2)

Print it out on an inkjet (or whatever colour printer you have) using good Bristol paper (Strathmore etc). Now you can ink on top of the print out. You can pencil as well and erase if needed, leaving an un-erasable non photo blue image beneath.

Once inked scan it in at black/white bitmap mode. The blue lines will not scan.

TIP 2
making an image 100% CYAN image.
http://gobukan.blogspot.com/2006/12/blueline-inking.html

Open the the grayscale image.

Go to layers palette - select all, copy and delete the image.

Convert mode to CMYK

In the channels palette highlight the Cyan channel and paste. The image will now appear in this channel.

Click on the top channel (CMYK) and you should have a 100% cyan image

Furthermore: (from gobukan.blogspot.com)
I scan the grey line art on the GRAYSCALE setting. My scanning sometimes doesn't pick up really light lines and I found that if there is something solid black on the scanner with my drawing more lines are "read". My solution - a post-it note with "SCAN!" written in thick black marker. I stick it on pencil drawings and they scans perfect every time. Just remember to delete the post-it in Photoshop.

Spies like us

http://spyvibe.blogspot.com/
http://permissiontokill.blogspot.com

Paul Conrad & J.Bone

Paul Conrad
http://superrobotmonster.blogspot.com/

J.Bone is a Toronto based illustrator and comic book artist.
http://gobukan.blogspot.com/

April 11, 2009

Art School Angst

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2007/09/thinking-about-art-school.html

Here's an interesting post about how art is disappearing from art and animation courses.

Some of the comments are also quite though provoking.

To the boomers, 3D is this sexy new thing, it's The Jetsons finally arriving. To my generation (born in 84), we have grown up during the rise of 3d and it's not really a huge deal to us. We can pretty much take or leave it (and most have left it). In fact, the majority of 3D fare is produced for 8-year-olds, who don't know the difference anyway! But the boomers are still reeling from this sexy new invention, and I think they're the ones insisting that it's going to be The Future.

It's all about learning programs and then you're out the door! Where, may I ask, is the art?

Last time I looked at the job listings, Pixar requires 2D experience to apply for an animation job, no 3D experience necessary.

Their practice (the colleges) to accept anyone that can come up with the money to pay the tuition (regardless of their abilities).

Any school can teach it. Well, not really, but that's what a lot of schools believe. They can get a computer lab, some educational licenses and someone who knows how to use the program, and then they can teach. Lots of people are surprisingly enough willing to believe that if you can create a simple 3D model, it's good work. Try to do a drawing of a cellphone and get to teach 2D animation. Hah! You wouldn't be put in the faculty, you'd be put in the first year of lifedrawing class. Well, with 3D, you WOULD be put in the faculty.

My brother in law just graduated from one of those fancy CG animation schools, and he sends his reel to PIXAR and they reject him. So he calls, asking me why he didn't get the job there. And I ask him who else he submitted his reel to? "No one." So I look at the reel and I see photoshop polish, afterefx tricks, but no drawing ability. I don't wanna crush him, so I tell him ALL the guys I know at pixar can draw. And paint. And design. And board. They're well rounded classical artists. He says, "I can do that stuff." He thinks manipulating photoshop and laying a texture on a model makes him an artist, but he won't take drawing classes because he says "I got my own style." Yeah, I call it the "I-don't-know-how-to-draw-so-I-ape-that-anime-crap" style. Sigh. This is why there's so much bad stuff out there.

The 10th Victim

The 10th Victim
The 10th Victim (Italian: La decima vittima) is an Italian cult science fiction film directed by Elio Petri in 1965.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_10th_Victim