Happy Halloween, babies!

Or if you're me, happy load-stuff-into-the-car-because-you're-moving-tomorrow day!

I'm pretty sure I've linked to this before, but here are some rockin' halloween mashups that I still listen to frequently:

The Bride of Monster Mashup

Enjoy!

ericadams and my short comic Reflection has been nominated for a 2009 S.P.A.C.E. Prize!



Sample pages and ordering information are available at Eric's website.

Help!

I'll be carving my jack-o-lantern tomorrow, and I want to make a significantly nerdy picture on it, but I can't decide what to do! I'm thinking of putting my favorite emoticon on it, but that's fairly simplistic and I have a fairly large pumpkin to work with. (Maybe if I did a whole bunch of emoticons...)

Does anyone have any truly dorky jack-o-lantern ideas? I'm up for anything.

Quick rec, guys:

Not something I wrote or drew, but I did the lettering and touch-up art for Inio Asano's Viz Signature series, What a Wonderful World!, and as such, I have probably read it more closely than the average bear. And despite spending a ponderously long time with the words/tones/sfx, I truly enjoyed the stories, so yeah. Thought I'd just pay it forward, because who doesn't love good comics?


1. 2.


More info heeeere. :)

AND SO.

I am back from England! ....with the flu! Or something. Seriously, my sinuses ache like burning, and I have borderline ring-around-the-mouth for how terrifically chapped my lips are. No chapstick seems strong enough for this business.

Anyway, I went to a bajillion museums, had lots of great adventures climbing stairs and riding trains and fending off Aussies in the pubs and Scots on the London Eye. There are no actual English people in London, didn't you know? (And somewhere in there, I even saw Kevin Spacey live!)

And speaking of live, my little party of travelers and myself looked into seeing Eddie Izzard live, but it ended up not being terribly feasible. Someday, I tell myself, someday.

Until then, since I have uploaded no pictures yet, here's Eddie Izzard doing his comic rambling on one of my favorite subjects: Star Trek.



Hee hee. ...Oh god, I have so much art to catch up on.

PS. I have my computer back! (And there was much rejoicing.)

Oooookay, I won't flatter myself by suggesting that people have actually noticed my absence... but I've been computerless for a week, and thusly internet-less, email-less, livejournal-less, AIM-less, facebook-less, etc etc. (And god forbid I want do things like watch TV or post art, because I need my computer for that stuff too. sob.) But anyway. If anyone has missed me, I apologize! I'm sick of finger-typing on my ipod, and I don't like having to go to my parents house to use their laptop (the space bar and the shift key stick horribly) either. Also, I miss you too.

Broken computer means I've been doing a lot of working and reading this week. The repair guy says that my computer's "Logic Board" is kaput, so in addition to being cut off from the world I'm out at least $600, because that's what it apparently costs for my computer to make sense. How depressing.

Less depressingly, I'm leaving for England on Saturday (I'll be gone for two weeks) so this is sort of doubling as my bye-bye-see-you-later post. While I'm gone, try not to have too much fun without me, okay?

*waves*

Okay, I know feels_like_fire has been wanting to see me do this meme forever, and I resisted... until of course yawmin and maypirate did it, and then I have to just, like, copy everything they do so that I can be one of the cool kids.

( So without further ado, here's the Star Trek Reboot Art Meme: )

Newsarama chats with me about Happy Birthday Michael Mitchell ...and makes me sound all cool.

Special thanks to chrisarrant!

Does anyone know if there's a way to get .txt files onto one's ipod touch? I've seen that you can buy books-as-applications in the itunes store for lotsa $$$, but I'd rather upload/read stuff that I already have on my computer.

...is there maybe an application I have to buy/download so that I'd be able to do this?

Q: What horrible song do I have on repeat while I draw things today?

A: ..."Pop Lock and Drop it".

Taste my shame. I swear my taste in music is better than this.

Anyway, I'm done with pencils for Ghost Medicine, woo wooooo! (It's only 13 pages so no one is actually impressed, but I'm still pleased.) I'm also over the hump on inks, so this comic might actually be done soon. I feel kind of busy for the first time in awhile.

Maybe later I'll actually post something that will inspire people to talk to me!

Okay, two pages left to pencil on my jungle story that I've finally decided to call Ghost Medicine. If not for the plethora of errands I have to run, I'd slap on an audiobook and just get it done.

I've been really down on myself lately for how un-productive I've been, regarding comics.... or just art in general. I need a kick in the pants, though I suspect the impending school year is going to rigid-ify my schedule again, so I'll be getting more done. When Ghost Medicine is all inked up, I'm going to dive straight into my title-less new story. (The one I'm really excited about.)

I don't know. I just sometimes feel like I should be more than I am. I should be out there slaying dragons! I feel like I'm wasting my own talent. I should be busy as hell, but instead I'm just wandering aimlessly.

Time to go drag my sorry emo-butt home now. :P

Oh wow. I just realized that I go back to work in 9 days. Gone are the idyllic days of summer!

...Yeah right. I miss being busy. I look forward to the end of my leisure time, because as I prove to myself time and time again, I actually get more comics done when I have a lot of other things to do.

I've also got another England trip to look forward to in September. :)

****

I have been enjoying my chapter-a-day pace at which I've been writing. This comic is looking to be somewhere between 60-90 pages long, which I suppose is that awkward "novella" length that nobody knows what to do with. I have decided that I don't care. I just need to decide whether or not I want to run it page-by-page on the web, or finish all the artwork and then hunt for a publisher.

Well-meaning friends tell me I ought to do a daily web strip, but I have learned from experience that I should not listen to well-meaning friends. The only way I'm ever going to re-grow my affection for comics is if I do things my way. Otherwise, it'll grow back twisted if it grows back at all. Marketing and branding be damned. This is my time to do what I want.

American fliers turned in their uniforms and became highs school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve.

So it goes.

I have busted out my old external hard drive, and have been inspecting some of the music I used to listen to in college. Do yourself a favor and download this little gem:

Tock Tick - Kurt Vonnegut & Simon Heselev

My icon has never been more relevant.

Some Not-Terribly-New Movies I've Watched Lately and/or Seen Before:

The Wrestler
Okay, I'd been wanting to see this forever, and while it didn't exactly disappoint, I think it's the most un-Aronofsky movie by Aronofsky that I've seen. I did hear, however, that he had this career-long obsession regarding The Fountain, so now that that one's finally done, maybe he's switching gears? Also, maybe it was the gin talking, but it was the only instance that I can recall liking Marissa Tomei in a film.

Event Horizon
Sadly, I remembered this being a lot cooler. This time around it just sort came off as a cheap-thrills horror flick with really dated CGI.

2001: A Space Odyssey
"Daaaaisy, Daaaaaisy, tell me your answer, dooo..." Have I mentioned lately that my love for this film just exponentially grows? I totally understood it this time, which is more than I can say for my first, second, or even third watching. This movie manages to be a thousand times creepier than Event Horizon, if only through the careful use of long silences and heavy breathing.

Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier
McCoy: Hey Jim! Spock and I were just speculating as to whether or not God exists.
Kirk: Of course God exists. ...WITHIN THE HUMAN HEART.

.... .... .... 8D...

...*facepalm*

"please captain, not in front of the klingons."

DAY 4: This was the porch scene, and we kept getting the lines mixed up and the actor/body double mixed up regarding who was supposed to say what... and in the end we all sort of got the giggles and fought valiantly against our technical difficulties. It was also a fairly emotional scene, so I was a big meanie and made the actors run laps so they'd sound more breathless and desperate when they spoke their lines.

Okay, and this is the last film post I'm making, so I'm including all the photos! Please beware, there are a LOT of pictures behind the cut, so watch out dial-up users!

( Pics pics pics! )

Okay, so movie chatter resumes soon, but I'm breaking really quick to post a photo of what I found in the garden upon my return home.


WHAT. WHAT. I have so many cucumbers. I can't give them away. (Also, some of my jalapenos were finally ripe!) I'm too lazy to learn how to pickle them, so can somebody please come over and take some from me?


And have I mentioned they're enormous? That thing is at least as big as my arm. (Please ignore my face/hair/unkemptness/everything, I'd been rooting sweatily around in the garden.)

DAY 3 continued: OHMYGOD YOU GUYS WE GOT STOPPED BY THE POLICE. IT'S NOT A REAL FILM SHOOT UNTIL THE COPS SHOW UP AND TELL YOU TO GTFO. Ah, but in addition to that, I scored a cameo as the bus driver... and I have officially learned the true meaning of the phrase, "as useless as a writer on a film set."

DAY 1: We shot all (okay, almost all) the indoor house footage, and though cast and crew were sustained with an abundance of chili, veggies, and pulled-pork sandwiches, we still didn't get out of there until 4am, 2 hours past when we intended to wrap things up. ...Yeah, I didn't get to bed until somewhere around 5am. Yikers. Anyway, despite running late, there was a lot of good energy from everyone involved, and director K. Jadyk is a bad mamma jamma. I'm not really a part of the cast or the crew, but I like to think I'm making myself useful by coaching the actors a little, and making other random comments from time to time. My biggest observation of the night was that most of the time spent on set goes into finagling the lighting to look just so. Oooh, and we've got some super-fancy expensive camera lenses on loan from somewhere, and I can't wait to review the footage to see first hand what they actually do.

DAY 2: Despite having gotten almost no sleep, I was able to wake up and conduct what I felt was a very successful lecture, and drew lots of apples, rocket ships, and angry men in suits on the marker board in front of a live audience (though I must say, my life would be made better with a digital projector and a laser pointer). And upon completion, I bumbled back to the dorm and went straight to bed. I woke up again in time to go film all the diner scenes, though I hung out in makeup for a long time and got to watch the makeup artists apply "Mitchell's" wig. Its' really sort of atrocious looking and the dye runs when it gets wet. With it on, the actor playing Mitchell looks like Snape and Trent Reznor's love child, and I'm a bit anxious to see how it actually looks on camera. (Srsly, the wig is the true diva of this film. We are probably going to sacrificially burn it at the wrap party.) Other than that, I loved the location, and the owner of the diner even made us all pizza to snack on while we were working. Oh, and we got out at 1:30am, which is significantly better than say, 5.

DAY 3: Okay, so day 3 hasn't really started yet. I've got the afternoon off and am using it to catch up on sleep and blog-reading. However, I'm gonna take a tour of the makeup/fx building sometime before we get to filming the rain/bus/street scenes, and I'll try to get some more photos. Serendipitously it's actually raining right now! I've got my fingers crossed that it'll keep raining until 7 tonight.

On the whole, I am having a splendid time. I have to say, however, there is something about hearing the actors rehearse/deliver lines that I've written that turns me red as a beet, and makes me want to bury my head in the sand. In some ways, it's like the awkwardness of hearing a recording of yourself and going, "Is that what I really sound like?!" ... and it others, it's almost more flattering than I can actually stand.

Picture post comes later, after I make the trip home in a day or two. :)

Greetings from Monessen, PA!! Internet is frighteningly fickle in the frat house dorm I'm staying in and I'll get booted off any moment, so I'll be brief.

We start filming HBMM tonight (7pm-2am), and if it doesn't rain I will hopefully be attacking the actors with a hose. Heck, I haven't even met the actors yet.

Anyway, I have already gotten the grand tour of the film school, their soundstage, green screen, mixing room, etc etc (no photos yet). I've already gotten to watch the 3-hour director's cut of Watchmen on the big screen, and I'll be returning to watch Laurence of Arabia if possible.

Also, I had gnocchi for breakfast and drank orange juice out of of a bowl. Thank you, that is all.

Hey guys, I've got a question! This week I may or may not have access to a movie theater for my own personal jollies... So I feel that I ought to choose a movie to watch.

That said: If you could pick one existing movie to see on the big screen... which would you pick?

I initially thought that I ought to try and watch 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen, but my BF has expressed that he wants me to watch that one with him instead, so I may need to come up with something else. I'm considering The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but I feel like I've seen that one too recently, so I'm not sure. Any suggestions?