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07-31-2010
San Diego Comic Con. It's big. No way around it. Really big.
It is also pretty fun. I met a lot of interesting people, bumped into famous people and bought a lot of comic books. Scott Pilgrim was huge this year. I understand there is a big movie coming out in a couple of weeks, but the extent of this little independent geek comic's presence at the biggest annual comic industry gathering of the year was impressive. Scott Pilgrim is a great book though, so it was a good feeling. Even the Scott Pilgrim food truck serving free garlic bread all weekend was a good thing.
Some of my other favorites from the convention were L. Allen Williams(thank you Mu for pointing him out!), David Petersen and all the people in Avatar - The Last Airbender costumes.
All in all, a success. One of these years, I'll probably be working at a booth for Megamoth Studio at SDCC, but it was nice to go to a convention just to be a fan for once.
I finished reading The Ghost King by R.A. Salvatore after coming home from SDCC. I have heard rumors this is to be the last novel about Drizzt Salvatore is going to write. If this is true, I am very disappointed. I am not against the idea of ending the long running series. I like it when things end. Except when the ending is terrible.
I want to be clear about this. Salvatore has been tackling complex social and personal issues in the last few novels, and this one is no exception. I am a little impressed by this, considering how Salvatore's early work was a largely hack and slash affair. The Ghost King deals with dementia and Alzheimer's disease in a fairly effective way. The Ghost King is not a bad installment in the saga of Drizzt. It would just be a terrible way to end it.
I could go on, but I'd rather show you this:
Until next time....
07-24-2010
I am currently at the San Diego Comic Convention. It has been a blast so far, what with the awesome artists I've been able to meet, the costumes all around and seeing the San Diego Symphony Orchestra play a concert of Final Fantasy music.
My time here is almost up now. I wouldn't mind staying longer, though my stamina accountant doth protest this week's exertions. I am also very much looking forward to being home.
For now, here is a quick something I whipped up for you all. There will very likely be more news about Comic-Con at a later date.
07-17-2010
Picture the cookie monster from Sesame Street. The creature is scarfing cookies, eating them at top speed and with much abandon. There is much lip smacking and grunting. Crumbs of broken cookie bodies fly around the room. It is Armageddon for sweet, saucer shaped pastry snacks.
Most of us can relate to the orgiastic gluttony on the part of the cookie monster, great feeding beast that he is. Cookies are so very yummy, after all. In the end, the cookies are gone. No cookies for anyone else.
My day job is like the cookie monster, but instead of fresh baked chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies, it eats time. Complete with grunting and lip smacking. I would probably be pretty amused by it all if I had the time for it.
I suppose I could us all of this as a reason or an excuse to allow me to post a small, quick drawing, or even skip the art portion of the post entirely. You are all overjoyed to know I will do no such thing this week. We're here for the art, so that's what we're going to see:
See?
Next week I will be in San Diego at Comic Con. I will try to make a proper update, but I may be trapped in a solid brick of comic book fans...
Have a great week, everyone.
07-10-2010
I just finished reading John Crowley's Love & Sleep. I enjoyed reading it, but perhaps, like Pierce Moffit the main character of the novel, I should say only that I have read in it.
The narrative style is quite nice. There are some really fantastic passages and great imagery. It was both a fantasy about how the world and magic works (or could have worked) and a story about what happens in the search for love. I'm just not sure what to think of it. Maybe I need to go study ancient systems of hermetic magic and philosophy more and come back to Love & Sleep later.
General understanding aside, the book had some great concepts in it. One of the central ones is that the nature of the world, how it functions both physically and spiritually, goes through fundamental changes through out history. At one point in time the world is made of the four elements and the heart is the seat of all emotion, then the change occurs and the four elements notion is rubbish and the heart is just a muscle for circulating blood. The thing is, once the change occurs it retroactively applies itself to all of history so the current system of function is the only system there ever was and the previous system never actually worked. Complete rewrite.
As the book says, it is the perfect system to satisfy believers and skeptics alike.
Strange foundation for a novel in a lot of ways. I did enjoy reading in it.
This week's image is just a hint of work to come. I hope you don't mind. In fact, I hope you enjoy it.
07-03-2010
The Last Airbender movie was disappointing. There is a lot of talk about casting and acting ability and so forth, but these things aren't what sinks the movie. I know some people are upset about the ethnicity of some of the actors, but it's really a pretty diverse cast. As far as acting quality goes, fantasy epics have never been the place to go for quality acting and there are many examples of good, solid, enjoyable fantasy movies that do just fine with mediocre to bad acting. It's actually hard to tell how talented the actors in Airbender are because of the real problem with the movie: the scripting.
The cartoon series is a fun adventure with solid character development, lots of humor and a strong sense of rising action throughout the series culminating in a satisfying and impressive climax. All of these things are missing from the Airbender movie. They were all written out. I would not have believed it possible, given the source material, but this movie relies almost solely on flat, expositional dialogue and narration to explain what is happening. Two characters meet for the first time, the narrator says they become really close and then we are supposed to care when they may have to part ways 10 minutes of movie later? Leading characters decide to help or hinder other characters seemingly at whim. I could go on.
I know they had to condense a full television season of plot into a single movie. They cut a lot of things, and I understand why. I'm actually happy with that. I don't understand why they couldn't take the core of the story and tell it like a story instead of a like a news summary.
If you were interested in watching Airbender the movie, I would recommend skipping it and watching the original animated series instead.
