drsketchy - the final countdown w Steam!

Been meaning to go to a Dr, Sketchy session for a long time now.

Keep missing them. Was late to this one, missed the first hour, but finally made it today.

Really need to go do more live drawing in general. Getting stiff. Had a hard time getting into it, but at the end was in the swing.

Trying out some new Pentel brush pens, same tip as my pocket brush but these have refillable reservoirs rather than cartridges, put wash water in one and pure India ink in the other. works OK, need to work on my technique though.

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SEA OF RED SLIPCASE COLLECTION

Nice. Only 1000 copies, so get you're orders in now me hearties.

Story RICK REMENDER & KIERON DWYER

Art KIERON DWYER, SALGOOD SAM & PAUL HARMON

Cover PAUL HARMON

MAY 10 - $39.99 - LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES

The year is 1533. Deckhand, Marco Esperanza's shipping vessel is sunk in the dead of night leaving him, the sole survivor, left adrift in the Red Sea. His prayers are answered when a strange ship impossibly cuts through the night fog saving him a watery grave. However, his elation soon turns to horror when he discovers he has been brought aboard the dread pirate ship, The Black Galleon. There is more to Captain Lesser Blackthroat and his evil crew than mere piracy, these men are damned -- these men are vampire.

The year is 2004. Since being turned undead by Blackthroat, Marco has spent the past 400 years tied to the bow of a sunken vessel, clinging to unlife in the dark, briny, deep. His confinement at the bottom of the sea ends when film director Joel Cameron's submarine discovers him while location scouting. Hungry to film a live vampire battle, Cameron agrees to aid Marco in seeking out the eternal monsters responsible his fate that he might have his revenge.

COLLECTS SEA OF RED, VOL. 1-3

RETAILER WARNING: MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AGES

Previews Interviews and Reviews: GHOSTBUSTERS SPECIAL: TAINTED LOVE

cool: Newsarama is previewing our book this week, and saying nice things. Always awesome, thanks guys!

Also kind of awesome, we got a good review on Hypergeek, 4 out of 5 stars! Glee!

More kinds of awesome, another Review here by J. Caleb Mozzocco on EVERY DAY IS LIKE WEDNESDAY! AND, he did an interview with Dara on Blog@Newsarama! Nice.

Not as cool: IDW strangely sent out a horrible pdf to use for the preview!
Huh? Rats, they make my hand lettered text look like MUD! Mentioned this to the PR folks at IDW when i saw the pdf myself but....hmmmm...hurrrm...hum.

Well, not to gripe to much or look the gift horse in the tonsils, here's the preview page, but read the one's i posted here below, ok? Images link to lage files on flickr that will open in a new window. Also you can use this full screen slide show, which includes all the other art I've posted from the book so far. These versions of the pages are from before final proof readings so some typo's may be included.

You like?

There was an awful truck accident and problems with customs that's resulting in delays in shipping, but it is on it's way. Ask you're local Brick and Mortar shop about it, or order online.

$3.99 - Diamond Code: DEC09 0906

News on Ghostbusters: Tainted Love

Crap. We busted our asses to get it done in time but the last people, officials, or weather events in the food chain always have the last say. I was assured it was on time last week, but i just read this from Dara....

Hey guys, Dara here. I just found out the scoop on this book's erratic ship date. Apparently what made it miss the original ship date for the week of Valentine's Day is that it got held up in customs. But here's where the story takes a tragic twist: it is officially hitting stores this week (17th), except for most of the East coast. The truck from Diamond Distributors that had all of IDW's books on it for the East coast stores was involved in a very bad weather-related accident. My understanding is that the driver(s) are in critical condition in the hospital.

So needless to say, it's a very unfortunate event and I hope that everyone involved pulls through and makes a full recovery.

Man, that sucks. Hope the drivers pull through.

Customs on the other hand, I've no love for those guys, give people like little sisters grief all the time. What in the world they held us up for god knows, but nothing new.

Piles of Inking...

...man, kind of cutting it close for the trip. Getting there though, doing a dragon right now, in a novel pose i think, never seen someone do what we're doing in this scene. Fun.

Can't show you thought, sorry, secret stuff now, save for the big tada.

Took a few moments from some heavy inking work today to play though. Took a stab and composing the cover for one of my two projects for TCAF.



The text i laid-out a while back, didn't know what art i wanted to use though at the time. So been sitting on it for the last two years. After i drew the page, it struck me it would be perfect for the job, need to shade it still for the interior, but might use it like this for the cover.

 Want this to be ready for TCAF 2010, thinking probably a small run self published deal for now. Like this, looks handsome and would be easy to get printed well. Going to think on it for a bit but it feels right.

Oh my god, Brendan McCarthy.

Hit this page - "Brendan McCarthy Talks Spider-Man Fever"

...and had a little geek fit, oh yeah, yes, Brendan McCarthy is drawing two of Steve Ditko's best characters, Spider Man and Dr. Strange in one book.

And i must must must have!

Last years of high school was when i first found out about Brendon's work, it was one of those revelatory encounters. The preview art for this is beautiful. He's perfect for this. So jealous. :)

 

Tainted Love

When does Ghostbusters: Tainted Love Come out in comic book shops?

The guys at IDW tell me it should hit the stands on the 10th. That may vary in some Canadian locations but I'm assured it will make it. I'm crossing my fingers and things.

It was made with love, and can be yours just in time to be a gift for that special geek in your life. :) Along with the art here below, you can catch a preview of the book on brokenfrontier.com, and a few words from Dara about his story!

$3.99 - Diamond Code: DEC09 0906

Also pretty cool, is you can get this book as an App for you're IPhone, Touch, or Pad eventually, just $1.99 for that. My first app, didn't have much with formating it, will have to get my girlfriend to get it so i can see how it reads.

I just read something wrong on wiki...

...to be fair they we're quoting the ROCK and RULE DVD.

"According to the commentary on the DVD release, the effects for the demon in the movie's final sequence were produced by smearing cow brains over one plane of a slit scan multiplane camera."

Well, that's cute, but quite true i think. I'm getting old but this is not how i remember it. They used photos of cow brains alright, thought that was really cool! But i doubt it was smeared on the Multiplane camera directly. :P hah!

I was around as a little kid at the time at Nelvana, 8 or 9 years old. 10 or 11 maybe by the time that part was being shot. Watching that film get worked on was the highlight of several summers - my mother was on the crew and we didn't have daycare. Remember the crew working on that part in particular, it made an impression.

The demon was drawn on black paper with red and white pastel, or something like. Lot of smudging was involved. Crazy hard work for the artist. I recall they were copying from pencil drawings done by the animators who had worked out the mechanics of it traditionally on a light table. Think it might have been the first time i saw someone make tracing paper by rubbing something [chalk in this case i think] on the back of a page and re-tracing the lines of the drawing. Only way they could get the animation onto the black paper.

But it didn't look intense enough when they were done that. I recall the big debate in the paint department about what to do after the first rushes came in. People who worked on it still talk about that part of the production wide eyed about all the work that went into it. So, that's when the guts came into it.

The pastel art was shot on to full size transparencies, the blacks blacked out solid leaving the demon translucent on the films/cells. Making an overlay layer.

The photos of guts n' brains was shot in a bucket as i recall, poked and sloched to make it unduatle. That footage was terned into large stills and were under the cell art, lit from below on the Multiplane. It was footage of moving guts, so they would have to change the photo of the guts for each new frame shot, far more often than the animated demon's cells had to be changed, making it slow going.

Have a clear memory of the camera guy showing me what he was doing at the time and making eyes about all the work involved with perverse pride. Pretty awesome stuff.

But they loved that machine, maybe something happen when i was not around and i never heard about it. But I kind of suspect they could just shot the bucket of stuff with a regular camera, be a heck of a lot easier, and doubt they'd have gotten that gunk on the machine, it was huge and expensive.

One line of common wisdom...

...I've seen run true in my own lifetime, is that humans are boom and bust creatures, with a well documented tendency to ignore folly and run after the endless return. Not a revelation. Not everyone all the time or anything, but yeah, as a general thing just about all of us some of the time.

There's a real strong, but kind of late push towards electric renewables these days. But sadly we're far from braking point with Gass just yet. Got some more rev to grind out of those hot old hot rods.

There's also a kind of particular level of crazy fascination that we often associate with greed for things like gold, that inevitably heralds the bust of these booms. And that's what i thought when i saw this.

A rare Ferrari 250 GTO comes to market with a supersize price tag of $20 million dollars, more than a thousand times its original value.

It's a lovely machine without a doubt. not sure i say the same for the trend. A sexy growling herald of autopocalypse she is, all nice and red.