Hindsight

I finally got around to watching the last POTC movie. The plot and editing were a complete mess, but of course it was visually very cool. I drew these in OpenCanvas 1.1, which is a fabulous freeware drawing program. It’s not very feature-rich, but there’s a lot of control over the behavior of the pencil/pen tool, and I think it gives better results for digital “inking” than any other program I’ve used. I tried coloring the shot of Geoffrey Rush with both OpenCanvas and ArtRage for comparison.

One of the perks of living with Alison is that not only does she bring home a lot of books, she brings home books that aren’t out yet. These are called “advance reader copies”, or ARCs. Sometimes they are things I’ve asked her for, but more often they’re things I didn’t even know about.

This week she handed me an uncorrected proof of Doug Tennapel‘s new book with Scholastic, Ghostopolis. I would give you a link, but it’s not up on Scholastic’s website yet.

Now, I’m mostly familiar with Doug’s video game work, as Earthworm Jim came out during MY first year working in video games, and caused quite a stir. But I also know that he has a following for his comics, and I recently watched a nice video of him inking. So I started reading Ghostopolis right away instead of throwing it on the “to read eventually” pile. Here, then, is my review/preview. You will only have to wait until July to read the book yourself (sorry).

Ghostopolis is the story of two unlikely heroes: a young boy named Garth (it’s hard for me not to type Gareth) who lives with his single Mom and has an unspecified terminal illness, and a slightly over-the-hill ghost hunter named Frank. Frank works for the Supernatural Immigration Task Force, and his job is to banish ghosts back to the afterlife where they belong. (He’s more like a kid-friendly version of Harrison Ford in Blade Runner than Bill Murry in Ghostbusters.) Frank is trying to banish a particularly pesky skeletal horse when the unthinkable happens — he accidentally sends Garth, a living boy, into the afterlife. Rescuing Garth will require herculean efforts and lots of help from his ghostly ex-girlfriend Claire Voyant.

It’s a very involving story, pretty fast-paced with lots of humor but also a slight undercurrent of “hey we’re talking about death here”. I read it in two sittings. There are a few plot points I found hard to swallow, such as how ghosts and people can touch each other, and how you can ride a skeleton horse at high speed without the spiky vertebrae ripping your groin to shreds. And the ending has a huge, double deus ex machina. But hey, the story makes no pretense of being realistic, so I still enjoyed it quite well. The characters are fun and convincing, and almost all of them get their own story arc resolutions by the end of the book.

The artwork is excellent. Tennapel has lovely fluid brushwork, and the characters are well designed and always recognizable. Backgrounds occasionally get shortchanged, but not enough to be a problem. Only the first 16 pages of the ARC are in color, but I believe the final book will be full-color throughout, and the coloring is very well done.

The book is aimed at grades 5-7, which seems about right. Adults will probably enjoy it too, but find it a bit light and fluffy. By the way, that cover above may not be the one on the final book, as ARCs often don’t have final covers.

Supposedly Ghostopolis is also being made into a movie with Hugh Jackman. No idea what age range that will be aimed at, but clearly Tennapel is popular in Hollywood. I’m sure my review will now push him into superstardom.

The story is a bit unsatisfying (some might say very unsatisfying, but I’m okay with ambiguous endings) — but JCVD, the film about an aging Jean-Claude Van Damme (or Van Varenberg, his real name) getting mixed up in a desperate hostage situation in a “real life” post office, sort of does for Van Damme what The Wrestler did for Mickey Rourke, i.e. makes his aging face the star of a raw, honest performance that shows he can act in a grown-up film. It is beautifully directed, and the story is twisty and subtle and nonlinear. There is a scene near the end where Van Damme spills his guts about what his life is like, and it hits home.

I painted this from a still frame, using Sketchbook Pro and ArtRage. I love ArtRage for its oil-painty-ness, but still find it a bit hard to control. The likeness is only so-so. It never ceases to astonish me how hard it is to get a likeness (especially when not working from life).

On Wednesday I went to see Sleep No More for the second time. Still great. Still confusing, still almost no narrative, but still spooky as hell, with dancing that still blows my mind. I’ve done aikido for 10 years, and if I tried some of the stuff these folks are doing, I would break numerous bones.

I mentioned previously that this show is (sort of) Macbeth mashed up with Hitchcock’s Rebecca. You can watch Rebecca on YouTube, which I did. It’s pretty good — the story is just a watered-down version of Jane Eyre, but it’s Hitchcock, so it plays out well. Here are a few sketches I did while I was watching.

Then on Saturday we went to see The Donkey Show, completing our experience of the ART’s Shakespeare Exploded festival. We’d heard great things about this show. It was a TON of fun. Basically the equation is Dance Club + attractive half-naked dancers + a very rough approximation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The last part of the equation was probably the weakest. The rendition of Midsummer as simplistic enough that I think we would have had about as much fun with just the dancing and the eye candy. Certainly there were none of Shakespeare’s words in evidence. It was really just a highbrow excuse to ogle shapely torsos and dance for a few hours. Which is important, because that’s the kind of excuse I need sometimes! In summary, Art: B-, Entertainment: A+ (if you like dancing).

I only did a few quick sketches at the beginning. Because, really, it’s more fun to watch people dance than to try to draw them.

I went to the dress rehearsal of ASP’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and did lots of sketches. I’ve seen this play so many times,  that I found myself focusing less on the story and more on the differences and surprises in this production. The main plot is solid and moves along well, with good performances and some very nice blocking in the “forest” scenes (read: urban jungle), but what really stand out are the scenes with the players. John Kuntz and Robert Walsh are two of my favorite ASP actors, and they are hilarious as Peter Quince and Nick Bottom, along with their troupe of misfit tradesmen-actors. The end of the play is a masterpiece of comic staging. I also liked Marianna Bassham as a punked-out Titania.

I’m trying to do less sketches per page, so that each piece stands on its own a bit more. Consequently I filled a prodigious number of pages. I’ll put a few highlights above the cut, and the rest below, for those who are interested.

more below the cut:

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I saw Mongol recently on DVD. This movie is absolutely gorgeous. I just wish the story was as good as the direction, cinematography, costumes, etc, etc. They whitewash Genghis Khan, and they completely skip over the most interesting part: how did this guy rise to be leader of the most feared army in the world? However, like I said, it’s gorgeous, and I had a great time drawing from it. These sketches are all digital.

Anyone want to recommend a good book on Genghis Khan?

For those who aren’t aware, the American Repertory Theater is in the midst (or really toward the end) of a program they call “Shakespeare Exploded.” I previously blogged about the reading of Robert Brustein’s play Mortal Terror, but that reading series is the sideline to the three main shows, which are: The Donkey Show, a dance club musical remix of Midsummer Night’s Dream; Best of Both Worlds, a gospel / R&B musical version of Winter’s Tale, and Sleep No More, a sort of… well, not a play, and not Macbeth, but… more on that in a moment.

I bought tickets to all three shows, and I’ve now seen Sleep No More and Best of Both Worlds. Below the cut is my full review, with some mild spoilers and more detailed advice. Here is the summary: unless you are easily freaked out AND really don’t like art that freaks you out, DROP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND GO SEE SLEEP NO MORE. Bring someone with you, but be aware that you may be separated in the course of the evening. Also you will be walking around, not sitting in a theater. DO NOT waste your time on Best of Both Worlds (unless you like really cheesy imitation Broadway stuff —  and don’t say I didn’t warn you).

Unfortunately it’s too dark to draw in Sleep No More, but these blind contours came out okay. More drawings below the cut.

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There is a cool comics group called the Boston Comics Roundtable that meets in Cambridge. I’ve been to a few of their meetings, and it’s quite a large and enthusiastic group. They range from the young and ambitious to the professional, and they publish an anthology called Inbound. The first two issues were un-themed, but the third issue was about love, and the 4th issue is about Boston history. This excellent theme brought a lot of artists out of the woodwork, and is generating a lot of community interest in the book. It’s their first graphic-novel-length book, at 144 pages, and contains 36 stories about Boston from the early 1600s to the present.

The thing about anthologies is that there’s always a range of styles and abilities. You won’t like everything, and you probably won’t like the same things I did. Overall, though, I think the quality of Inbound 4 is excellent for an anthology book, even leaving aside that many of the creators are still “emerging”. The artwork ranges from very good to rather poor, but even the pieces that are weak visually are clear enough to tell their story, and the stories are mostly quite good, which is the important thing in my opinion. The printing and design are good too, so the overall impression is professional.

I especially enjoyed the first half of the book. My favorite section is probably the 17th-18th century, with “The Granary” by Eric Heumiller providing a strong start. I also really enjoyed the well-summarized “Mrs. Henderson’s First Grade Class Presents: Shay’s Rebellion” by Will Clark — but all the stories in this section were solid. In the 19th century there were pieces with excellent art by Richard Jenkins, Ellen Shaw, and Braden Lamb, but my favorite was Franklin Einspruch’s abstract watercolor rendition of Thoreau’s “Heywood’s Brook”. Using the words of a great writer may be a crutch, but it’s one I make no bones about using myself, because it works. There were also good pieces in this section about Dungeon Rock and John Wilkes Booth.

The next section covers 1900-1949, and I really liked BK Smith’s “Moxie”, Dan Mazur’s “The Amazing… Story of Charles Ponzi”, and Cathy Leamy’s “The Old Howard”.

The last section, 1950-2009, I found less engaging, though there was a lot of humor in “In Da Chowda: A Rough Surf History of Boston” by Kevin Kilgore, and some nice narrative techniques in “William Moulton Marston” by Raul Gonzalez and “A Day in the Life of Al DeSalvo”by Lindsay Moore and Roho.

Scattered throughout, you’ll find many gems of Boston trivia. At $12 I think it’s a fine price for a Christmas present to all the Bostonians, Bostonites, and Bostonophiles in your social circle. You can get it from the BCR’s website or from many local book & comic stores.

Also, they’ll be having a book launch/signing at Porter Square Books on January 21st.

As I finally wrap up this monster of a book, I’m struck by the quantities of materials consumed in the process of making it, including physical stuff like pencils and tape, and also the numerous audio books I listened to while drawing & painting in the studio for 9+ months. For the interested, here’s a (fairly comprehensive) list what I consumed in the course of creating the art for The Odyssey:

40 Cretacolor Nero pencils (#3 medium – make a blacker line than graphite)

5 Plastic erasers

4 rolls artists’ tape

4 75-sheet pads of 12×16″ Fabriano 90lb. cold-press watercolor paper (each pad is about 1″ thick)

Upwards of 120 bags of chips (corn, potato, pita, root veggie, etc.)

3+ reams of printer paper

At least 22 inkjet cartridges and 1 laserjet cartridge

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The following audiobooks, listed by author (good unless otherwise stated):

Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

Anonymous – Gawain and the Green Knight

Bill Bryson – A Short History of Nearly Everything

Cervantes – Don Quixote (switch to an abridged version after seeing how funny but long-winded it is {which makes it good fodder for adaptation})

Eoin Colfer – Airman (didn’t like)

Daniel Coyle – The Talent Code (simplistic premise, but some very valuable insights about learning and teaching)

Joseph Delaney – The Last Apprentice

Corey Doctorow – Little Brother

Arther Conan Doyle, Sir – The entire Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, for the umpteenth time.

Kathleen Duey – Skin Hunger (lamest “ending” ever)

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

John Flanagan – The Ranger’s Apprentic, books 1-4 (fun but highly predictable)

Jostein Gardner – Sophie’s World

Hermann Hesse – Siddhartha

Laura Hillenbrand – Seabiscuit (fabulous)

Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird (excellent, of course)

Geraldine McCaughrean – The White Darkness (excellent)

Frank McCourt – Angela’s Ashes (great, depressing), ‘Tis

LA Meyer – Bloody Jack, books 1-4 (great reader, gets better as it goes)

Kenneth Oppel – Airborn

Ovid – The Metamorphoses

Alan Paton – Cry the Beloved Country

Sylvia Plath – The Bell Jar (enjoyed way more than expected)

Terry Pratchett – Nation (awesome!), Wee Free Men

JK Rowling – The entire Harry Potter series (great on audio)

Louis Sachar – Holes

Mary Shelly – Frankenstein

Jill Bolte Taylor – My Stroke of Insight (recommended, but not on audio, as the author is a terrible reader)

Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

John Updike – Rabbit, Run (didn’t like)

Virgil – The Aeneid (didn’t like)

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse Five (great), Breakfast of Champions, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle (awesomely weird)

Jeanette Wall – The Glass Castle (great)

Graphic novels:
The Photographer, by Emmanuel Guibert – This is one of the most awesomely powerful graphic novels I have ever read. I’d say it is a very close second to Maus. Guibert is an interesting artist, because he doesn’t seem to believe in using any of the ‘tricks’ of the comic medium to tell a story like this. No funky angles, interesting page layouts, motion lines, graphic symbols… just a straight linear narration of the true story of a photographer (Didier Lefevre) who accompanied a Doctors Without Borders mission to Afghanistan. It’s a very documentary style — and I don’t mean a cleverly edited documentary like Supersize me, but a totally straightforward one like Blindsight (see below). The only thing experimental about it is that it mixes Guibert’s drawings with Didier’s photos, to great effect. Nevertheless, Guibert’s art is amazing. It manages to look both like a Tintin homage and a sketchbook of someone who was actally there with Didier. The real power of the book comes from the subject matter, though. This is an incredibly stark and nuanced portrayal of the Afghani people, and of the amazing work of the doctors who hike through physically and socially dangerous terrain to treat the casualties of the violence in that region. A must-read.

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The Eternal Smile, by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim – These two guys are part of the latest wave of comic geniuses, and consequently their collaborations are pretty darn good. This book isn’t actually a GN, but a collection of 3 short stories previously published elsewhere. All three are very impressive demonstrations of drawing, storytelling, and playing with a psychological/existential twist. The second story, from which the book gets its title, was my favorite. It’s basically a mashup of Disney’s Ducktales with a certain popular existential movie which I won’t name lest it spoil part of the story for you. As such, it’s not the most original story ever, but it’s an awesome reworking of the source material, and obviously I have a soft spot for good reworkings of source material.

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Other Books:
My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor – the account of a brain scientist who undergoes a massive stroke which disables much of the left side of her brain, and then not only recovers, but learns how to reintegrate the left brain in a way that allows her access to the blissful state of freedom-from-suffering she experienced when the voice of reason was silenced. The subject is riveting reading: directly useful for anyone interested in the brain or the mechanisms of consciousness and suffering, and also great roadmap for stroke recovery. Unfortunately, I found the writing rather weak, and the author’s reading in the audiobook version to be actively irritating. Still, with that reservation, I highly recommend the book, especially the last part about how she managed the selective reconstruction of her left brain. Her TED talk is a good capsule version of the first part of the book (you’ll see what I mean about her voice).

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Movies:
Blindsight – the story of a group of blind Tibetan teenagers attempting, with the help of a blind mountaineer and a large sighted support team, to climb Lhakpa Ri, a 23,000 foot peak next to (really part of) Mount Everest. Amazing stuff. After seeing this I decided I had to re-read my favorite John Varley short story…

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Short Stories:
“The Persistence of Vision”, from The John Varley Reader – the narrator, hitchhiking through New Mexico, stumbles upon a commune built by a group of blind and deaf adults so they can live a life more suited to their special abilities and challenges. A fascinating, albeit speculative, look at how these people might live, and how their touch-based lives appear to a sighted person. Varley gets a bit too gleeful with his ideas about their sex lives, and tacitly condones a couple of behaviors that the reader may justifiably find disturbing. But it’s still a wonderful story. Now I’m reading a bunch of the other stories in the collection. They’re quite good, and I’m surprised at how many I’ve read before. I guess the period when I was reading sci-fi anthologies lasted longer than I thought.