film noir, baby

So. Sweet Enemy and I read the Sin City comic last year and sort of liked it. I really enjoy the whole genre of film noir. Back in July I caught the film and really enjoyed it not even one bit. It took the surface of film noir, sprinkled on some misogyny, basted it in blood put it in a Convoluto brand mixer and forced me to extend a metaphor way too far. I could go farther, but the way I feel about Sin City should be discussed in conversation, not put forth in diatribe.

Anyway. Last night I introduced SE to the wonder that is The Maltese Falcon. This is a fantastic film in or out of the noir genre and I was happy to see it again. The performances are so wonderful with all of the players at the top of their game. Sure, it's filled with the usual Dashell Hammet lingo (after a long soliloquy Bogart's Spade even pauses to ask a stenographer in the DA's office if he's "getting all this, or am I going to fast for you?"), but this dialog is delivered so naturally that it doesn't seem as stilted as it does on the page. I thought it was a bit like watching Olivier do Shakespeare.

And, line for line, there is no cooler cat than Bogart's Sam Spade. Nothing seems to ruffle, him (and the shot where he looks at his shaking hand after bluffing his way out of the Fat Man's apartment it makes him human and even cooler).

Now, I know that Sin City and The Maltese Falcon are two entirely different movies, but their placement withing the film noir universe allow me a contrast. There were many differences, but what struck me was that Sam Spade only once held a gun by its grip and he never fired one. He even mentions how he never carries one but there were "some back at the office". What Bogart does with this part of the Spade character is subtle, but watch for it.

The most telling scenes depict 'the Fat Man's' hired gun: A cocky kid who obviously has a complex. In one scene, he is escorting Sam Spade to the Fat Man's apartment. He walks in front of Spade, hands deep in his overcoat pockets (where he keeps his pistols). As they near the Fat Man's apartment, Spade pulls the gun kid's buttoned overcoat down over his arms like a straightjacket. Then he reaches in and pulls the twin Colt M1911s out and shoves the kid. He holds both guns in one hand, hefting them like they were just paperweights. When they reach the apartment, he just hands them to the Fat Man.

In contrast, later, when the entire cast of baddies (including the incomparable Peter Lorre) are in Spades apartment, the kid stalks around holding both .45s as though he were trying desperately to look as tough as Spade. Spade, of course, later disarms him.

In Sin City, EVERYONE who is anyone has a gun. It's as though Rodriguez was trying to make some sort of a post-modern feminist art-documentary on the use of firearms as phallic replacements and augmentation.

Now, for the record, I own firearms, but I do think that Bogart's spade was tougher and cooler than any gun-toting tough-guy in Sin City. Go rent The Maltese Falcon and watch it. You won't be sorry that you did.

Here's a quicky picture of Sam Spade and Wilmer the gun-kid. I did it during lunch based on a photo I found online. My scanner's still busted, so another digicam shot. That speaks to the bad quality of the image. The poor quality of the linework is all me (this actually really bugs me because I love my pencil drawing of this).


Listening to while posting: Hayden, Trumpet Concerto in E-Flat

Weekly Challenge: Spooktacular

So, here's my entry for the Weekly Challenge at Ben Caldwell's site.

This is both a quickie and an expansion of an older work. It is expanded off of a tiny drawing I did for a workmate (I've been drawing her a 'weekly monster' for about 8 months). At the time, she'd said it was the very creepy. This may be the grossest thing I've drawn since this.

It felt a bit weird to do, but I think that unreal things (like abulatory, blade-weilding teddies) are scary in a different way than, say, characters from a Rob Zombie film . An unreal evil, you can imagine what it'd be like, but in your heart you know it isn't a real threat. The new 'gorenography' films portray ordinary-looking people doing nasty things. It's too easy to believe that such things can happen in real life.

That's why I'd do an abulatory, blade-weilding teddy leaving bloody footprints, but never, ever a regular guy in jeans and a t-shit. Call me a wimp, but it creeps me out to even imagine drawing that scene...

The work itself was a quickie because I did the final pencil in my sketchbook at lunch, inked it at home with an 01 Micron. Since my scanner is down (stupid ac adapter, breaks after 7 years of being dropped over and over!), I had to photograph it with a very old digital camera.

I'm still not great at coloring. I'm still concentrating on growing my linework skills right now, so this will have to do for the moment.

So... BOO!



Also, last weekend the art supply store (with no website) that my wife (STILL FEELS WEIRD!) assistant manages hosted 24 Hour Comics Day! I'd suggested it as a good thing for the store to do, especially as the nearest one was being hosted +60 miles away. We had 11 participants including three kids. It was... not easy. It was, however, fun. Fun in that, "this is my first mountain bike race in a decade" sort of fun. I managed 11 pages and that was average for the group. The only one to complete 24 was a retired art teacher/professional cartoonist.

So, want to see what I look like? The local weekly paper Seven Days (a cool, free paper that does real news and actually has well-written articles) has a video blog and the video-blogger-girl stopped by around midnight, I think? We were all pretty loopy by then. I'm the guy who uses the phrase "It sounds cheesy". Yup, that's me.

The work is... not bad. Not great, but not bad. Worth expanding into a real story (that someone else needs to script. Anybody?).

listening to while posting: "The World is a Very Scary Place" by The Gothic Archies from 'The Tragic Treasury'. Funny how apropos that is...

Dogma Redux

First, let me say that I really like 'Dogma'. I saw it in the theater in it's first run and thought it was a top-notch satire.

I only had a problem with one scene: the 'word of god'. You know, where Alannis Morrisette comes out as God, she and Ben Affleck exchange a look, he asks for forgiveness and she screams at him until his head explodes. Except for the part where Alan Rickman wipes his shirt on god's robe, I didn't like it. I thought it lacked subtlety, especially with the fantastic bit where God shows Affleck the error of his ways with just a look; you could feel the torrents of metaphysical parental shame crashing into him. Since I walked out of the theater, I thought it could've been done differently. I wasn't sure how, but my basic idea went something like this comic. I felt that a whisper disposing of Affleck might more effectively show the 'power of God' rather than a scream that sent ripples through the air.

Keep in mind,

1) it is not a storyboard and there were some narrative and artistic corners cut to fit it into a single page.
2) I was going by memory on purpose (rather than hitting You Tube). I double-checked after and think I got pretty close.
3) I really need to practice hands.

Here you go, as always, click to enlarge:




listening to while posting: 'Something to Remember Me By' by Steve Wynn off of Kerosene Man

Juggling

Ok. I'm not doing an IF work this week. Mostly because I am actually juggling. Day job, Sweet Enemy's portfolio, and a comic I'm working on with Andre Zero. I'm in the scanning and coloring phase (woo hoo!). Here is a test of the coloring. This is page 2/4:



comments very, very welcome.

Listening to while posting: "Man in a Suitcase" by The Police from 'Zenyatta Mondatta'. (to quote Atom : "Sting cannot possibly be the same guy who was in The Police)

wedding

I almost didn't do this one as I didn't care for the topic. I cared for last week's topic, but the irony was I was just getting momentum on a comic written by Andre Zero . It was actually written by him for me last year, and the recent momentum was great. Four pages pencilled, three pages inked. Yee ha.

Anyway, Sweet Enemy bought me The Crane Wife by the Decemberists and I seem to have been listening the hell out of it. Not to always good effect: it is hard to have a really good, fast mountain bike ride with the plodding, depressing Shank Hill Butchers echoing around your head.

However, it did inspire this little piece (and I mean little, the sketch wasn't even six inches high). I dragged out an old Adobe Illustrator (9) technique that is very time consuming, but yields pretty good results. So, here it is:


listening to while posting: The Crane Wife by The Decemberists. All of it. I must stop listening to it. Now.

Alphabets

This is a marvel of obscurity. Not only did I turn the title into a pun, it is a pun on a relatively obscure '70s sci-fi TV show!

Oh the horror...

If you figure out the pun and can stop groaning enough to reveal the name of the show, you win a No-Prize.

This was an attempt at digital inking with a low-end Wacom (a Sapphire rather than an Intuos). So, without all of the bells and whistles like pressure sensitivity, I did not like the result at all. The background was done in Adobe Illustrator and turned out okay.

Here you go:



Listening to while posting:
"Crane Wive 1 & 2" by The Decemberists from 'the Crane Wife"

Visitor(s)

This weeks title coincided quite nicely with real life. Sweet Enemy and I had a big 'ol party to celebrate our no longer living in sin. Big 'ol, for us: about eleven people, but all of them are on our list of Most Important People on the Planet (Non-Family). It was our first large party at our house and it was fun/hard getting ready for it. I could have done a big portrait with everyone, but, I'm lazy. So, I picked the two farthest-flung males and a nice moment that really happened.

My really good friend Kick Enemy Men came from Maine and Jason "Lefty" Williams came from Atlanta (with Rayann, Sweet Enemy's oldest friend). First let me say (if you haven't clicked on the link) Lefty is a professional musician. I play bass and managed to also score an indefinite loan of a drum set, and since Kick Enemy Men (guitar) and I played together a lot during college, I thought we could get something going. Lefty forgot the special pick harness he uses on his right stump, so chose to play bass, so I hit the drums. Kick Enemy Men blew the dust off of his Les Paul and, receiving much ribbing about the rusted strings, started playing.

We did some fun stuff, even though us playing with Lefty would be like going on a mountain bike ride with Tinker Juarez . Then Lefty noticed something odd while playing my bass; a Memphis knock off of a Fender jazz bass. So he stopped, asked for an allen wrench and began to adjust my truss rod, listing off of the the problems it would solve if my neck weren't so bent. This just goes to show how cool he is.

He stopped after a while, handing the bass off to Rayann (she met him at the Atlanta School of Music where she was studying bass) and we played late into the night. We swapped instruments occasionally and I actually sang some.

Then we went upstairs, drank lots more, ate lots more, all the time reading from a book of 1,700 dirty limericks that Sensei Pincus and Heidi brought us.

So, after all that, here's the drawing of that moment:



Not to forget the other cool people: Sensei Ben Pincus, Heidi Albright and young Caleb; James Taylor (not that one); Andre Zero and Carol; Scotty B. and Gina; and last, but certainly not least, Debi Hron;

listening to while posting: "waking up is hard to do" by +/- (a terrible name for a band that might want to ever be searched for on Google