A video "trailer" I did for Teshkeel comics (motion graphics by Lorenzo Campanis). It basically summarizes the backstory to their comic book and sets up the first issue. I had planned to cannibalize all the art from the comic book and set it up for a little animation to be added. But nothing can be so easy. Each shot in the video had to communicate multiple story points clearly, and be set up in such a way that a lot of action could be implied using very little animation. The panels in the comic weren't tailored for a video animatic of course. So in no time I talked myself into doing almost all new art.
I'm currently failing to finish the second trailer in the series.
On the same day I ran across some old art of mine on two different blogs.
One from someone I know (thanks Dan)...
...and one from someone I don't. Mine is the image of the pink-haired lady near the end of the post. Done as a pinup in the G.I.Joe book at Marvel many years ago. I can tell from the hair that I was in my phase of trying to draw like Larry Stroman would draw if he were much less talented.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
1/1/08
New Year's Eve, 2008:
Picking our way through the East Village bar crowds, we walk through a cloud of Marajuana smoke. I almost asked them to give my wife a hit.
Screaming up the West Side Highway (literally, my wife was screaming), trying to get to St. Luke's while avoiding drunk drivers, passing a stone's throw from Times Square about 20 minutes before the ball was going to drop. I tried to make Faith laugh by telling her that we'd probably hit gridlock and the whole thing would end up like a Very Special Episode of some terrible sit-com: I'd wind up delivering the baby myself on 42nd Street at the stroke of midnight, perhaps assisted by a tart-tongued but lovable hobo, or a gruff kebab vendor who, it turns out, used to be an obstetrician in his native Pakistan. Laughter and tears abound, followed by slaps on the back and confetti from a Greek chorus of drunken frat boys.
Edie was at home under the care of her Russian babysitter. Zina is the kind of neighbor who usually only does exist on TV. I don't know what we would do without her. I called her at 11pm New Years Eve, and she toddled up the stairs in her bathrobe with a stack of magazines, thrilled to be able to help.
I called Zina from the hospital the next day and she told me that they had been having a roaring good time as always, but that Edie had fallen asleep exhausted because of "tension in my apartment". I don't always track Zina's use of English and I figured she meant that there had been some kind of drama with her adult son who lives in her apartment with her. "Tension?" I asked. "Yes, my God, she is tense like a professional." Okay, I thought, no doubt a trait she inherited from her mother, but I still asked her to clarify. "She tense! You know, I put on Ukranian music in my apartment, and she tense all over the room!"
Faith came through like a champ once again, powering the baby out through some difficulty, without the benefit of drugs. She has since announced her intention to retire from the sport while at the top of her game.
I have discovered that the second child's birth is every bit as meaningful, but perhaps not the same pan-dimensional spiritual mind-blast that the first one is. The first time around, we laid there all night in the loudest silence you ever heard, completely existing in another dimension. This time, after the nurses finished up and left the room, I dug my laptop out of my bag and we finished watching the episode of Lost we had been partway through when she went into labor.
Picking our way through the East Village bar crowds, we walk through a cloud of Marajuana smoke. I almost asked them to give my wife a hit.
Screaming up the West Side Highway (literally, my wife was screaming), trying to get to St. Luke's while avoiding drunk drivers, passing a stone's throw from Times Square about 20 minutes before the ball was going to drop. I tried to make Faith laugh by telling her that we'd probably hit gridlock and the whole thing would end up like a Very Special Episode of some terrible sit-com: I'd wind up delivering the baby myself on 42nd Street at the stroke of midnight, perhaps assisted by a tart-tongued but lovable hobo, or a gruff kebab vendor who, it turns out, used to be an obstetrician in his native Pakistan. Laughter and tears abound, followed by slaps on the back and confetti from a Greek chorus of drunken frat boys.
Edie was at home under the care of her Russian babysitter. Zina is the kind of neighbor who usually only does exist on TV. I don't know what we would do without her. I called her at 11pm New Years Eve, and she toddled up the stairs in her bathrobe with a stack of magazines, thrilled to be able to help.
I called Zina from the hospital the next day and she told me that they had been having a roaring good time as always, but that Edie had fallen asleep exhausted because of "tension in my apartment". I don't always track Zina's use of English and I figured she meant that there had been some kind of drama with her adult son who lives in her apartment with her. "Tension?" I asked. "Yes, my God, she is tense like a professional." Okay, I thought, no doubt a trait she inherited from her mother, but I still asked her to clarify. "She tense! You know, I put on Ukranian music in my apartment, and she tense all over the room!"
Faith came through like a champ once again, powering the baby out through some difficulty, without the benefit of drugs. She has since announced her intention to retire from the sport while at the top of her game.
I have discovered that the second child's birth is every bit as meaningful, but perhaps not the same pan-dimensional spiritual mind-blast that the first one is. The first time around, we laid there all night in the loudest silence you ever heard, completely existing in another dimension. This time, after the nurses finished up and left the room, I dug my laptop out of my bag and we finished watching the episode of Lost we had been partway through when she went into labor.
We read some dopey book that says you should let the older kid discover the baby in its bassonet. Edie knew something was up, but was too young to really understand our explanations. She had been using the new co-sleeper as a play house. When she caught sight of the new occupant, she froze. She turned around, sank to her knees and stared into the middle distance. I don't know how to convince her to be excited about not ruling the roost anymore. I just held her for the longest time and told her how much we love her.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Excuse of the Weak
The blog has fallen off lately because I'm really pushing on the latest version of the cartoon pitch. When I'm not busy earning a buck I'm just writing on this thing. I figure, this is the third chance someone's given me, and I better goddamn well kill it this time.
It's Christmas eve morning and I've been working all night. Edie came down with a raging fever yesterday. We're due to have a second kid in the next 48 hours.
IMPORTANT CONSUMER NEWS: Apparently my seething hostility to Whole Foods has finally paid off. I evidently made one too many incoherent sarcastic remarks under my breath while shopping there, because they finally broke down and asked themselves, what can we do to make a believer out of Kevin. Frankly it's a little embarrassing the way they're showing their hand. First they opened a gigantic store a block away, which the wife is delirious over. But still wasn't convinced, and in their desperation to convince me they don't totally suck they pulled out all the stops: the corner of the store closest my house has been converted into a stand-alone beer shop. It even has a separate entrance: I don't even have to go into the main store and get smothered by the overwhelming smugness of it all. They sell you craft beer in re-fillable half gallon jugs, which lends an agreeably white-lightning feel, and by the way, really isn't as much beer as you think it's going to be.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Aflac Duck!
I'm told that this ad is on TV all the time. So I guess it must be okay to post the original boards now. The AD I did these for is one who really rides me and makes me work my butt off, but he always pulls the best work out of me (what a collision of metaphors that was). I always wind up with something I want to show off.
In case you're curious, those backgrounds that look like I went and took a picture? Those are usually cobbed together from a drawing and several different photographs, then beat to within an inch of their lives with photoshop filters.
I would be watching out for the commercial, if there was some way to do that without, you know, actually sitting down and watching TV.
**********
I'm in Galveston, TX today (I know I must be in Texas because the baristas at Starbucks are discussing automatic rifles). We took a night flight from JFK to visit my in-laws. On the flight Edie was being a total crab and wouldn't lay down and go to sleep. We gave her a double dose of Benadryl, to no effect. Finally I decided to take the bullet and I just picked her up and walked her up and down the aisle over and over, hoping I could lull her to sleep. A half hour or so later I'm just standing in the crew galley with her and I feel her head start to bob onto my shoulder. Getting there... getting there.... almost.... almost..... and what does she do, she voids the entire contents of her stomach all over my shoulder, everyhting she's wearing and everything I'm wearing. It was runny and chunky and just gushering out of her mouth. Now I'm frantically tearing at her clothes and mine and trying to sop up what's on the deck. The stewardess came back and took in the scene and almost lost it herself. I throw Edie, naked, at her mom and now it's laundry day in the airplane bathroom sink for the next hour. The stewardess lent me a t-shirt to wear for the rest of the flight while mine hung drying from the crew seat.
I don't really have a punchline or a heart-warming finish to this story, it's just that it happened to me, and I need to tell people that.
In case you're curious, those backgrounds that look like I went and took a picture? Those are usually cobbed together from a drawing and several different photographs, then beat to within an inch of their lives with photoshop filters.
I would be watching out for the commercial, if there was some way to do that without, you know, actually sitting down and watching TV.
**********
I'm in Galveston, TX today (I know I must be in Texas because the baristas at Starbucks are discussing automatic rifles). We took a night flight from JFK to visit my in-laws. On the flight Edie was being a total crab and wouldn't lay down and go to sleep. We gave her a double dose of Benadryl, to no effect. Finally I decided to take the bullet and I just picked her up and walked her up and down the aisle over and over, hoping I could lull her to sleep. A half hour or so later I'm just standing in the crew galley with her and I feel her head start to bob onto my shoulder. Getting there... getting there.... almost.... almost..... and what does she do, she voids the entire contents of her stomach all over my shoulder, everyhting she's wearing and everything I'm wearing. It was runny and chunky and just gushering out of her mouth. Now I'm frantically tearing at her clothes and mine and trying to sop up what's on the deck. The stewardess came back and took in the scene and almost lost it herself. I throw Edie, naked, at her mom and now it's laundry day in the airplane bathroom sink for the next hour. The stewardess lent me a t-shirt to wear for the rest of the flight while mine hung drying from the crew seat.
I don't really have a punchline or a heart-warming finish to this story, it's just that it happened to me, and I need to tell people that.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
My Empire of Cute
Awwwww, who's the cutest widdle army of intergalactic space Nazis? You are, yes you are!
This is my latest ebay haul of Star Wars "Galactic Heroes" (in)action figures. Origiinally these were marketed for toddlers, I guess as sort of a gateway drug to hard-core Star Wars collecting. But they must have caught on with collectors, because they no longer go under the Playskool banner and they've ballooned into a staggeringly complete line of their own. Ironically, though they're targeted at little kids they're the only collectables I can't seem to age out of.
I made a decision to quit collecting fanboy crap awhile ago. I just decided that for me it was over. God knows it wasn't related to any kind of societal or peer pressure. I happen to work in an industry where it's not only tolerated but somewhat expected that one adorn one's work station with movie- and comic book-related toys. Apart from that, half of my primary social group these days is two years old, and the other half is contractually bound by the State of New York to continue living with me no matter what kind of garbage I see fit to waste our money on.
It's just that--for me--it stopped being great fun. I realized a long time ago that nothing entertainment-related was again going to give me the kind of transcendant joy I experienced as a young Kevie living the Star Wars experience. I'm not going to piss away what chance my kid has at a college fund by chasing a cycle of diminishing returns, buying more and more sophisticated crap liscensed from less and less entertaining movies, tv shows and comic books. I mean, who the hell is buying photo-realistic 12" maquettes of Black Canary in a sexually suggestive kung-fu pose? Isn't that sort of like putting manniquens in your apartment and pretending it's a cocktail party, except kind of more creepy? I don't know, but I swore off the stuff years ago.
Then my man in Portland, Lee Dawson (the only person I know who can have an apartment full of toys and memorabilia that somehow looks like a happening bachelor lives there), showed me these cute-ass little figures of Luke and Han riding on big-eyed Tauntons and fighting an adorable little Wampa monster, and my newfound maturity folded faster than a phalanx of Democratic senators fighting an appropriations bill. Now any time I'm in Target or K-Mart I'm back to stalking the toy aisle like a pathetic goon, looking to see if a new lot's been released and hoping I look like I might be on the way to a child's birthday party.
These things put me right back in '77 or '78 when that first pre-release of Star Wars toys (if you tell me it's called "Episode IV: A New Hope" I will stop typing on this laptop right now and beat you over the head with it) came in the mail to those few lucky kids who had saved up enough box tops, or gum wrappers, or hair, or whatever it was you needed. There they were in a plain cardboard box (no bubble packs): four completely awesome, barely-articulated bits of plastic that looked nothing like Luke, Leia, Chewie, and Threepio. Decades later people in their forties would be clicking a link to buy 12" figurines from "Prison Break", digitally sculpted from laser scans of the actors' faces and featuring working zippers and hand-sewn prison beanies (I am not making this up), in an attempt to recapture that first high.
I love that these aren't replicas, they're goofy caricatures. But they nonetheless capture all that was wonderful about the glorious production design of those early films, for which my affection is bottomless. Middle age be damned, as long as they keep makin' em, I'll keep buyin' em. (I only turn my nose up to anything prequil-related. Wookie please!) As time goes on they keep getting deeper into the minor players in the first three movies. Every time I check online and see that another series has been released all work comes to a dead stop, and I might as well be tying off my arm right there as I hunt down the latest incredibly cute cantina extras.
And best of all, they're designed for little kids, with safety in mind, with the result that you can't lose the friggin' guns like you always used to!
**************************************************************
Today on the playground Edie started to seriously investigate the sideways tire swing on a chain thing. Even after she got done being pushed on it, there were the hours of fun to be had trying to push it herself without getting knocked over by it. At one point she even asked me to sit on it ( "Da-ee, swing") and did her level best to push me around until that got too taxing ("Da-ee, aw done"). We moved on and when we came back she was somewhat baffled to find a few bigger kids using her swing. "Edie swing?" she asked, hoping I'd make sense of this confounding turn of events. I tried to tell her about sharing and taking turns, and she soon decided I was useless as a consigliere, and really only fit to be an enforcer. To that end she walked around me and started trying to push me toward the group of big kids. "Da-ee, swing." Eventually a little lesson was learned about sharing the park facilities with the other kids, or at any rate that she really needed to look into hiring some better muscle.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sunday, August 19, 2007
I been busy
My posts ground to a halt a while ago because I've been spending my free time getting a new home page up and running. After five goddamn years I finally got the thing looking halfway respectable. So run, don't walk, over to www.keviemetal.com, and bask in my creative compromise!
So far there's a page of comp art and a couple of pages of animation design, with new stuff being added all the time, uh, being added occasionally, er, I'm sort of thinking about adding something, and I forget what was the question?
So far there's a page of comp art and a couple of pages of animation design, with new stuff being added all the time, uh, being added occasionally, er, I'm sort of thinking about adding something, and I forget what was the question?
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
HITCHHIKERS GUIDE
Here's something fun to post! If you're a Douglas Adams fan, you might enjoy seeing what the HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY movie would have looked like in an alternate universe.
Back in 2003 I got a call from Christian Charles, whom I'd done some promotional work for on COMEDIAN, the documentary he directed for Jerry Seinfeld (highly recommended btw). A lifelong fan of "Hitchhiker's Guide" (and a Brit who'd geek-gasmed to the original BBC series) he was on a short list of possible directors for the movie, and he wanted some concept art for his presentation. I did the work for free since he would have been in a position to hire me if he got the movie. That didn't happen, but I spent a fun couple of days having the book explained to me (Yeah, I never read it! Fuck off!) and bouncing designs back and forth. He later made good on the favor by hiring me on a McDonalds commercial.
Christian pictured Hugh Laurie as Arthur (pre-HOUSE).
The Vogon design. We pictured them as beat-down warehouse drones. The idea for the cut off tusks was to suggest that they were a race of once-majestic creatures who'd neutered themselves. No longer having use for their tusks they harvested them from their own kind. Their workspaces would be decorated with romanticized posters of tusked Vogon warriors on the wild plains of their ancient homeworld. Kind of like the Aztec warriors that decorate the taco place near my apartment.
Marvin the depressed android. Christian put a 70's camera in front of me to demonstrate the old-school, chunky-tech vibe he'd envisioned. I really love this design. But I have to admit the movie Marvin was brilliant.
Slarty. In the original sketch I had him holding a toilet brush in the other hand. For some reason that was funny enough to me that I fought to keep it. It's not a toilet brush, I explained, it's a super computer that only looks to you like a toilet brush because you can't comprehend it. That sounded pretty Douglas Adams to me. (Christian gave me a withering look.)
Exterior and interior of the Vogon ship. The concept was straight up Wal-Mart; horrendously ugly, depressing, soulless, lots of wasted space, absolutely nothing cool about it. (Finally something I feel qualified to draw.)
The desing for Deep Thought: a single eye at the focal point of an immense technological cavern modeled on a logic flow chart (or something)...
...and another scene where Deep Thought has detatched his core from the rest of the computer. I think the idea was that he had a little workshop in the basement somewhere, where he'd occasionally take a break from computing and watch a little TV.
******
Edie's latest obsession is one of those little toy strollers that a kid can put a doll in. She pushes it around the apartment all day. A few times we let her bring it out on the street and push it down the sidewalk, but decided to stop. There were some mighty tantrums about leaving it behind, I can tell you. But she really does learn if you're firm about enforcing a rule. Now when we're leaving she takes hold of the toy stroller and looks at me imploringly. "Ah Shroyer?" ("Want stroller?") I tell her no and carry her out the door. In a tiny voice, to herself, she says, "bye bye... shroyer." And that's that.
Back in 2003 I got a call from Christian Charles, whom I'd done some promotional work for on COMEDIAN, the documentary he directed for Jerry Seinfeld (highly recommended btw). A lifelong fan of "Hitchhiker's Guide" (and a Brit who'd geek-gasmed to the original BBC series) he was on a short list of possible directors for the movie, and he wanted some concept art for his presentation. I did the work for free since he would have been in a position to hire me if he got the movie. That didn't happen, but I spent a fun couple of days having the book explained to me (Yeah, I never read it! Fuck off!) and bouncing designs back and forth. He later made good on the favor by hiring me on a McDonalds commercial.
Christian pictured Hugh Laurie as Arthur (pre-HOUSE).
The Vogon design. We pictured them as beat-down warehouse drones. The idea for the cut off tusks was to suggest that they were a race of once-majestic creatures who'd neutered themselves. No longer having use for their tusks they harvested them from their own kind. Their workspaces would be decorated with romanticized posters of tusked Vogon warriors on the wild plains of their ancient homeworld. Kind of like the Aztec warriors that decorate the taco place near my apartment.
Marvin the depressed android. Christian put a 70's camera in front of me to demonstrate the old-school, chunky-tech vibe he'd envisioned. I really love this design. But I have to admit the movie Marvin was brilliant.
Slarty. In the original sketch I had him holding a toilet brush in the other hand. For some reason that was funny enough to me that I fought to keep it. It's not a toilet brush, I explained, it's a super computer that only looks to you like a toilet brush because you can't comprehend it. That sounded pretty Douglas Adams to me. (Christian gave me a withering look.)
Exterior and interior of the Vogon ship. The concept was straight up Wal-Mart; horrendously ugly, depressing, soulless, lots of wasted space, absolutely nothing cool about it. (Finally something I feel qualified to draw.)
The desing for Deep Thought: a single eye at the focal point of an immense technological cavern modeled on a logic flow chart (or something)...
...and another scene where Deep Thought has detatched his core from the rest of the computer. I think the idea was that he had a little workshop in the basement somewhere, where he'd occasionally take a break from computing and watch a little TV.
******
Edie's latest obsession is one of those little toy strollers that a kid can put a doll in. She pushes it around the apartment all day. A few times we let her bring it out on the street and push it down the sidewalk, but decided to stop. There were some mighty tantrums about leaving it behind, I can tell you. But she really does learn if you're firm about enforcing a rule. Now when we're leaving she takes hold of the toy stroller and looks at me imploringly. "Ah Shroyer?" ("Want stroller?") I tell her no and carry her out the door. In a tiny voice, to herself, she says, "bye bye... shroyer." And that's that.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Macbeth
A test page for a proposed adaptation of "Macbeth" that I want to do. This is a scene in Act 1 where Macbeth finds out that he's getting a promotion because another guy has been convicted of treason.
This project is something that's been in my head and my notebooks since about college. Modern dress, super dark, super political. I'm hoping to keep posting these steadily, since a lot of the book is blocked out in my head. I'm thinking of this as more of a comp or mockup than a finished page. I can do these pretty fast in my spare time, so I figure I could get through a good chunk of the book this way and at least have something to show to a publisher.
*****
Cute Edie story for the day: We're walking past a strip mall in Kingston, and out of nowhere she drags her mom into Ann Taylor Loft, and won't come out. After 10 minutes of browsing I finally carry her out and she throws a total cow. I mean it could just be a random thing. But she didn't demand to go in Barnes & Nobles, or Sports Authority, or Pottery Barn. She's already displayed more than a passing interest in shoes. Now this little 19-month-old absolutely had to shop in Ann Taylor. How can that impulse be there already in someone so young? I'm going to be so screwed later on.
This project is something that's been in my head and my notebooks since about college. Modern dress, super dark, super political. I'm hoping to keep posting these steadily, since a lot of the book is blocked out in my head. I'm thinking of this as more of a comp or mockup than a finished page. I can do these pretty fast in my spare time, so I figure I could get through a good chunk of the book this way and at least have something to show to a publisher.
*****
Cute Edie story for the day: We're walking past a strip mall in Kingston, and out of nowhere she drags her mom into Ann Taylor Loft, and won't come out. After 10 minutes of browsing I finally carry her out and she throws a total cow. I mean it could just be a random thing. But she didn't demand to go in Barnes & Nobles, or Sports Authority, or Pottery Barn. She's already displayed more than a passing interest in shoes. Now this little 19-month-old absolutely had to shop in Ann Taylor. How can that impulse be there already in someone so young? I'm going to be so screwed later on.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Bend it like Jack Hamm
Another recent job. The client here was operating with limited bugetary resources (i.e. no money), but he provided me with some great photo reference, and I wanted to experiment more with the brush markers. I figured since he was only paying me for pencils I could mess around a bit and he'd still get more than his money's worth.
I just let the pencils be part of the final drawings here. I like the stray sketchy lines because you can see the energy of the drawing as it happened.
Doing comics in the 90's I used to try so hard (and fail miserably) to emulate the super-polished, super-anal ink lines that were popular at the time. As I go on I'm less and less enamored of that "finished" look. Anymore I usually prefer looking at people's sketches rather than their finished work, because the sketches are alive and raw and real. I wonder if that's a function of getting older. Or just getting tired of seeing the same thing over and over. Or just realizing that I'm Not That Guy.
In any case I'm really comfortable with this style and I'm curious if it would translate into comics. God knows I can work faster this way. If I ever get my "Macbeth" book off the ground maybe I'll do it like this. I figure the audience for comics that look like advertising marker comps is roughly as big as the audience for Shakespeare comics, i.e. nothing, so I have nothing to lose.
Edie sometimes gets bored in the car seat and starts fussing, and you have to sing some horrible children's song to quiet her down. If she likes the song she asks for an encore ("Ah-gain?"). And another and another. If you try to sing a different song she cuts you off ("Noope") and you have to go back to the one she likes.
I just let the pencils be part of the final drawings here. I like the stray sketchy lines because you can see the energy of the drawing as it happened.
Doing comics in the 90's I used to try so hard (and fail miserably) to emulate the super-polished, super-anal ink lines that were popular at the time. As I go on I'm less and less enamored of that "finished" look. Anymore I usually prefer looking at people's sketches rather than their finished work, because the sketches are alive and raw and real. I wonder if that's a function of getting older. Or just getting tired of seeing the same thing over and over. Or just realizing that I'm Not That Guy.
In any case I'm really comfortable with this style and I'm curious if it would translate into comics. God knows I can work faster this way. If I ever get my "Macbeth" book off the ground maybe I'll do it like this. I figure the audience for comics that look like advertising marker comps is roughly as big as the audience for Shakespeare comics, i.e. nothing, so I have nothing to lose.
Edie sometimes gets bored in the car seat and starts fussing, and you have to sing some horrible children's song to quiet her down. If she likes the song she asks for an encore ("Ah-gain?"). And another and another. If you try to sing a different song she cuts you off ("Noope") and you have to go back to the one she likes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
