Monday, July 27, 2009

SO much!

First, to make this legit here's a doodle.
I'm reading The Wind in the Willows, for the first time (yeah I know: FOR SHAME), and naturally was compelled to commit some silly sort of Mole and Water Rat to paper. These are only first sketches and I should return to this subject.

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My birthday's coming up. Few things would have been more glorious than spending it in San Diego visiting HMS Surprise, but that plan was woefully dependant on my finding a summer job. Can't afford it this summer -- I'll leave it for some school holiday!
Wondering what to do... For various reasons I'm not crazy about hosting a soirée at my place. And I can hardly invite people whose situation is no better than mine, as far as I know, to a restaurant. Who's reading this in the Vancouver area and would like to do something like a beach day or a sketchcrawl or another cheap thing this coming weekend? (...Jesus. :[ Some host.) Or a movie -- I love movies. As you can see I am easily amused and persuadable. No gifts. ...Because you would be left to pay for your own refreshments, so.....
Oh wait. Actually I am fascinated by "Altar Boyz". Could be funny. There's a performance almost every day. I hesitate to ask people to pay $38 for one, but would anybody be interested?

Of course, if I get this temp job I've applied for, I'm gonna go to work on my birthday. Not that I mind, and I would welcome a job even if it was friggin Christmas, but I just wish I heard from them soon one way or another, so I could know which days I'm free.

I know this whole post sounds like a cry for attention but I swear it truly is just social awkwardness. :]

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Oh yeah, by the way, I liked Moon, and Sam Rockwell is just as excellent in it as he can be expected to be. I was much more impressed by the atmosphere than the plot, but I'd like to recommend it anyway. First and foremost for Rockwell's performance, which makes you forget 100% that he is mostly interacting with a special effect.
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As soon as I read George Clooney was playing Mr. Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox that I wrote about in the last post, I got this dreadfully unshakable image of Ocean's 11-13 with animal puppets (as avid readers know, the original book revolves around a heist).
On the one hand, like I said: DREAD. On the other, there is something undeniably fabulous about the idea. Now I think Ocean's 11-13 with animal puppets should be done -- at some point, but not at this point, not on this movie!? "Dread", I repeated with a Jerri Blank -voice.
I told myself to calm down, Wes Anderson would not do something like that. ...And then I saw this photo.

I'm hoping it only looks worrying because it's out of context. No way is Anderson sneaking in a single Ocean's reference. By the way, yes, those animals are wearing ski masks. While that is ridiculously unnecessary, at least I can't remember any Oceanites wearing ski masks -- there may yet be hope. :P

Saturday, July 18, 2009

I feel kinda write-y

(I know. SUCH quality. But what am I gonna do, go all the way to school to use a scanner? It's only friggin biro.)


My "new-old" cat -- if the tail looks short, it's because she only has half a tail.


I tried to draw caricatures of the mains of My Life in Film. Obviously failed. It's terrib messy too. But, you know, biro, so there was little chance of correcting myself. Even weirder: although the caricatures are so not and it looks like a bleeding panda fight, I kinda like it! Mostly because I was overjoyed by the mere memory of the show. Anyway, it's the first thing besides life drawing that I've drawn in so many days.
They're all looking somber due to the death of Hugo the fish (in Beth's hand there).

My apologies to Alice Lowe, who's quite possibly the most adorable actress I've ever seen, and to beautiful Andrew Scott, for not doing them justice. Little bit of apology to Kris Marshall as well.

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Two images of Wes Anderson's upcoming Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox have popped up on movie sites. I like the look of'em.


I knew it was going to be stop motion animation, but I didn't expect this kind of look, like a dollhouse come to life, instead of ...well, what we've seen in Henry Selick's films or in The Life Aquatic. Not that I didn't love those, but this look corresponds much better with my personal images of the book -- almost perfectly, in fact. So quaint and intricate. I'm swooning over that little badger painting and the realistic-looking miniature books.

There are things that could go wrong but not horribly wrong, I think. No Mark Mothersbaugh and an animation director (Mark Gustafson) whose work I happen to be completely unfamiliar with, but we'll see. George Clooney as the voice of Mr. Fox? I think the whole cast is going to sound American (or, in keeping with tradition, the villainous farmers will have British accents). That's one disappointment. Still, if the Brits never filmed the book during all these years, all can I say is you snooze you lose. Waited since Giant Peach for a Dahl adaptation that looks this promising. I love Tim Burton's take on the Chocolate Factory, it's a darling, funny film but there's an abyss between the book and the movie. More animated Dahl adaptations would be awesome. In my mind I keep seeing Quentin Blake's illustrations of BFG and Witches moving.

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[Oh and since I'm going on about book adaptations... One of the Pitch Party judges this year had a blurb where it said she's currently producing an animated series based on the Little Nicholas -books by Goscinny! FREEEEEEEAKOOOOOUT! :D ]

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Pigloo is going to be huge: T/F?

Good news, I've got the flu! I have no idea if it's swine-y or just regular, I don't know how to tell. Whichever it is, I feel nowhere near death. = Good news. Good in the sense that it gives me a legitimate reason to slack off, so I don't feel as guilty about doing that as I usually feel.

My pitches see dem here!




For readers other than schoolmates, these were my entries to the "preliminaries" determining which six pitches our school would enter to Animation Magazine's annual Pitch Party contest. Obviously I didn't make the six, because Mr Wells' composition sucks, TLB was slapped together in about half a minute (not the idea but the drawing!) and Pigloo probably wasn't original enough (Pigloo is totally my own little bundle of joy, but let's face it cartoons are so overpiggisized even if the pig in question happens to live in an igloo) -- whatever, they have a slewwwwwww of faults besides the ones I've already mentioned -- but even in spite of that, the whole experience was positive and I definitely look forward to pitching again next year.

I wish I had something new to post. I am lazy and my brain is even more muddled than usual. I don't even have the energy to check if muddled is a real English word.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

How do I reech tees keeds?!

Hey alles, come to life drawing club and bring your friends! :D Seriously, we'll even move it to 6:30 so you don't lose as much super fun Summer Sun Time -- or work, if you're lucky enough to be working. Otherwise, the summer LDC may not continue past a couple more weeks because of the money situation. Waaaah


Anyways, this week at LDC I was utterly out of the zone. Which is evident in how unfinished all my drawings from that session are. I do like ^this one though, because I managed a pretty good facial likeness.
I also indulged in some old school shading which I used to do with a pencil; here I used the conté like a pencil. I don't usually do that nowadays because it's slower, but I was all slow this week to begin with, so what the hell. Kinda nostalgic.