World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks.

Where to begin?  A book of fiction that reads like really well written non-fiction.  Written in the style of personal interviews, sewn together to provide a narrative from the beginning of the war to it’s end, where the main character is the war itself rather than any single character.  Or, alternatively, you can think of it as a bunch of well fleshed out pitch stories for a mass of zombie movies, varying in locale and scope, with a variety of character types from homemakers to politicians to soldiers.

Now, did I like it?  Yes I did, it reads smoothly, was enjoyable and was for the most part, and most importantly it was hard to put down a lot of the time.  There are times an interview ends with me wanting more of that person’s story, but Brooks moves onto the next interview to keep things rolling along.  Interviews range from several pages to one sentence.

A dark sense of humor pervades, allusions to modern day people without naming names leaves much to your imagination.  A hefty dose of political and social commentary is present, as often is in works involving the big Z, but it’s not heavy handed.

I’d recommend it to anyone with of love of the undead shuffling masses, and even those that just need something good to read!

This years E3 has come and gone and after watching all the videos and the coverage on G4 here are the things that are coming out that I’m excited about:

• Assassin’s Creed II: If they truly have cleaned up some of the repetitive game play, I will be losing some productivity time to it, definitely looks cool; plus who doesn’t want to traipse around renaissance Italy?
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow:  I loved the original Castlevania all those many years ago when it came out.  This game looks fantastic, if it can deliver, I might just love it as much as the first.  Plus, hello, Patrick Stewart doing voice work!
• Brutal Legend: Jack Black and a bevy of metal gods… ’nuff said.
• Dragon Age Origins:  I love me the BioWare guys and I don’t know about this spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate but if they get me fun gameplay, they can call it whatever the hell they want.

Now you say, what about Mass Effect II, or Left 4 Dead 2 or Halo ODST?… yes, they look cool, but I never played the first ones. shocking, I know, but I have limited time and budget… I’m not some lazy bones 20 something with nothing to do and their parents money to blow, and if I’m going to blow my money and time, it’s gotta buy me dinner and tell me I’m pretty!  I’m also looking forward to how Natal develops but I’m remaining skeptical until I see an actual game I want to play that uses it as a control mechanism.

Now, did Sony come out with anything that would make me buy a PS3 for something other than being an overpowered BluRay player?  God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 were the only things to really catch my eye… enough to make me buy a PS3?, only if they drop the damn price.

That leaves Nintendo.  Oh big N, you only had Super Mario Wii and that isn’t going to make me drop one cent for your console.

I’m not usually one to give a crap when some Hollywood celeb dies tragically.  It’s not that I don’t care that a life has ended but it’s more that I just don’t form personal connections to celebrity, I just have trouble being a rabid fan of anyone or anything.  I was never really a huge admirer of David Carradine’s other works, the Kill Bill movies being an exception, but I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Kung Fu tv show, due mainly to it’s connection with my childhood.

When I was young, read grade school age, in the summer my brother and I would spend the mornings at my grandparents house, watching cartoons in the morning while we had our coffee (milk with a splash of coffee and a lot of sugar) and then things like Bonanza and Kung Fu until grandma’s soaps came on.  It’s hard to find that kind of programming anymore without sitting on TVLand, but that’s a different rant.

So you see, I associate David Carradine with a very happy time of my life and for that, I will miss him, and every cheesy Kung Fu typecast, martial arts related piece of poo he has done since.  With that I say, rest in peace grasshopper, thanks for the good times.

I have finally done some actual work on the comic that wasn’t “prep”.  Here is a sneak peak at page 1, panel 1. Tip for aspiring comic creators, don’t make the first panel you draw a big detailed establishing shot that’s going to take forever to ink.

It still needs color as I plan on doing a full color comic, and some of my inking decisions were based on that fact, for example the trees in the background will be more numerous but the furthest ones will just be light shades of gray and won’t actually get ink lines.

I struggled with the tree. The sun is right behind it and I’m not really satisfied with how I inked it, but I need to move on, I’ve spent enough time on this panel and want to get the rest of the page done!

Update: To answer the question below, the “ink” in this instance is digital ink.  I am completely digital at this point doing both my rough drawings to final inks completely inside Photoshop.

An update to the update I previously updated: I fixed the ground shadow of the tree and did some work to ground the trees in the background, sorry for getting rid of the older version of the image, but I was rushing a bit. To those who saw it, lucky you.

In the process of planning out the comic I’ve been working on, I have been trying to commit to a medium to actually produce the comic in.  When I first thought of doing a comic, I wanted to do it all in traditional media, Bristol, pencils, inks, etc.  Then, after reading about so many artists digital workflows I thought, “hey, lets try to do it digital”, at least for the inks.  So I whipped out Photoshop, scanned in some pencils I had done for character designs and started doing some tests, with less than stellar results.  I think some of those early failures was simply me not having the experience necessary to “ink” in Photoshop.

I didn’t realize it then, so I went to something else and tried “inking” in Illustrator.  I got better results mostly because Illustrator smoothed out my shaky lines.  I thought “great, I can ink in Illustrator and I’ll have easy to scale line art!”.  Only problem is, Illustrator is the most artist unfriendly piece of software on the planet.  It’s interface just doesn’t make sense (don’t believe me, without looking in the manual or using the help, or Googling, find the toggle that will make a brush stroke maintain it’s transparency setting, go ahead, I’ll wait). Plus the more I worked with it, the more I realized it made my stuff too clean.  I did get to the point where I was even sketching in Illustrator, but I just wasn’t happy with the final product.

I thought about going completely traditional again.  Then I gave Photoshop another chance just the other day.  I started just doing some pencils in it, using some of the lessons I learned from Illustrator (zooming in close is your best friend).  Wonder of wonders, I was enjoying myself and more importantly, getting results I like.  I haven’t tried inking yet but I think I’ll have better luck this time.  I’m even thinking of doing the comic in a more painterly style rather than the traditional black lines and shiny color.

Then again… maybe I’ll just draw it all on bristol and ink it with a brush.

There are a few podcasts out there that I listen to regularly that I’d like to give some linky love to, because frankly, I love listening to them, they have turned lights on if not outright taught me something and most of all, they are entertaining.

Art & Story:  A great podcast by Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph where they talk about their process of making comics and telling stories.  Just about every time I listen I want to get back to work on my comic.  This podcast more than any of the others has really greased the wheels about story telling for me.

Webcomics Weekly: This podcast is hilariously funny due to the characters involved in making it, but within all the yucks and guffaws is a ton of knowledge about the business side of creating comics.  Great podcast even if you never plan on making a comic, they are just that funny.

Chris Oatley’s Artcast: This is one I just recently started watching.  I can’t honestly say I’ve listened to his audio only episodes, but the video podcasts are fantastic.  I love watching other artists work to glean how someone else does something or find a new way of doing things.  Plus, he has a lovely set of Photoshop brushes you can download for free off his site, well worth a visit.

Sorry for the lack of updates, day job has kept me busy, but speaking of, here is a peak at a piece I’m currently working on for the campus’ 50th anniversary (the day job is at a university).

Digital painting, done in Adobe Photoshop

UPDATE:

Some progress made on the portraits and a bit of the background.  This will eventually be part of a banner for a website.

This is an older drawing done in a life drawing class I took after college just to keep my skills sharp and for the extra practice. She was one of my favorite models, very fun to draw and I just couldn’t resist doing a portrait of her if her face was near me when she changed poses.

Graphite, 2B, on Strathmore drawing paper

Female portrait sketch, still pretty rough, guide lines are still there. Not of anyone in particular, just out of my head, working out what I want one of my characters to look like

Non-repro blue in a moleskine

Sketch of an angel… possibly an angel of death.

Non-repro blue in a moleskine