Either way, I hate you.

The big misconception very early on, and I’m guilty of this myself, is that the finished art is supposed to be painfully faithful to the reference material — which, of course, isn’t the case; otherwise you’d be better off simply photoshopping the images into the panels or going full-on fumetti.  No, the ideal way of using the reference material is to stare at it, absorb it, digest, and then put on paper what you, as an artist, believe to be the key components of what you saw.  Sure, that sounds easy enough, but what you learn very quickly is that what you leave out is just as important is what you put into the drawing.  There is such a thing as over-rendered.  Temper it.

To draw from Asterios Polyp, as something is recalled, the brain has a chance to refine it.  In that sense, every memory is a re-creation, not a playback.

Why all this talk about the use of reference and such?  On my desk is a stack of authentic crime scene photos from the Autumn of Terror.  Wolfgang and the 1888 team just recently ran a successful funding campaign over at Kickstarter and everyone’s stepping into place to get the cogs running on the book.  The bastards have done it!

***** ***** *****

Went to the mall the other week to get sleeping masks for me and Jad coz we’re going to bed at sunrise more often these days.  It’s frustrating how them clerks don’t know if they sell them along with the bed linens or in the cosmetics section.  Turns out it was in neither and I found them in the toiletries.  Go figure.

***** ***** *****

PLUCK chugs along once a week at Zuda.  Lately got to draw a splash page showcasing Trugg One-Eye, as well as a sequence featuring many a half-naked lady.  Gabe White is a good man.  Home stretch for JUDAH pitch as Ian Areola joins the team as colorist.  After he colored the JENNY STRANGE pitch, I simply had to work with him again.  That project, however, is on hold as we wait for Zuda to officially post their new submissions policy, given that they ended their competition format a month or so back.  Got other pitches waiting to be worked on, so the Fort Bastard docket for 2010 is pretty much closed as far as new projects go.  You know who you are, and you are Saints of Patience.

***** ***** *****

Wedding preparations are officially underway.  It’s fun and exciting and scary and stressful, but if you can’t mentally see me dancing through this journal entry, you don’t have a soul.  Yeah.  Jocular Johnny finally got one to stick around.  Learned from what came before.  Absorbed it.  Digested.  Built something better. Built something stronger.

Like I said… Reference.  It’s good for you.

Back to work.

You may be drawing images of fantasy, and the creative potential in that is near limitless, but I find it difficult to allow myself to get lost in that frame of mind when things are rough in the real world.  Of course, I may just be one of these overly dramatic types who can’t separate their lives from their livelihood, but consider this — how safe would you feel jumping into the deep blue depths if you weren’t sure you’d have a boat to swim back up to?

There is no spacewalk to fix the Hubble if the shuttle is not in place.

Once I started page nine, it had already been agreed that Gabe’s brother Matt would be coming onboard to provide lush colors for the comic.  So there’s a steady and very slow transition of me doing less and less blacks so that the line art can let a bit more color in.  Gabe is pretty hands on with the layout process and usually does his own set of layouts that I later build on, but we’ve gotten to a point in our creative relationship that we can pretty much riff on each other’s ideas very freely.  We’ll probably be moving in together soon as well.

Be good.  Go here.  Read PLUCK.

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There’s been a bit of a lull in the art posting here on the journal.  I’ve been pretty swamped with the pitches I’m handling and making sure PLUCK comes out on time.  I should be able to post some really neat stuff momentarily though.  More than anything, it’s just a matter of permission.  Soon though.

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I got caught up on Hickman/Eaglesham’s Fantastic Four this week, and recent reviews on the podcast have made me see more and more the Pinball Nature of mainstream comics.  I mean think about it — If you start reading a book at its five hundred and seventieth installment, there’s no logical reason why you should understand what the fuck is going on.  But I did.

What does that mean?

Two things.

First off, every time a new writer gets onto a book, it’s a soft reset.  Hickman may be following up on some of Millar’s Nu-World stuff, but really, everything else can be latched onto quite easily by any new comic reader or fanboy who has just come back to the medium after an extended absence.  The FF is still a family of explorers.  Ben’s still ugly, Johnny’s still a dick.

Second (and this is really just an expansion of the first point), nothing really changes in mainstream comics.  You can take away Wolverine’s adamantium; You can turn Superman into an electric gimp; You can kill the goddamn Batman.  But it all goes back to normal eventually.  Give it a coupla months, give it a decade (hey Bendis), but things will reset.  Now raising these two points may sound suspiciously jaded or cynical, but there’s something about this cyclical nature that’s comforting.

And this is why comics are like a pinball machine.  It’s not a question of how many pinballs you have left, or of how long you kept one ball live.  No.  What matters is where that pinball went.  What did it hit?  Where did you think you were gonna lose it?  And most importantly, How did you save it?

The answer to that last bit, of course, is that it saved itself; but you were along for a great ride.

Drawing at three in the morning, it gets to a funny point where I just put the headset on even when I don’t plan on listening to anything — the extra weight and pressure on my head is comforting.  Helps me focus.  Like a soft vice.  Or a tactile laser.

By the bed is a stack of trades I haven’t burned through yet.  Giffen-Maguire Justice League is about done, but catching up on GL will have to wait… and that Frank Frazetta Testament book looks fatter every time I ignore it.  Reading Comics? Serious Business.

Alex made me read Grant Morrison’s New X-men five years ago, and that’s what brought me back into comics.  This is all his fault.

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Two days ago, had a sitdown with Politician XOXO’s people about putting together campaign strip.  On the fence about the whole thing, and still feel a little dirty.  Fairly certain candidate isn’t all that bad (as far as candidates go), but that substrata of professional cartooning just registers as… soupy.  And not in a good way.  Comics should be fun.

Dad bought me my first trade when I was eleven.  Finished The Dark Phoenix Saga in one afternoon.

I can’t stop watching videos of mice getting eaten by piranhas and snapping turtles on Youtube.

Roby let me read his Teen Titans comics when I was too young to care about the words, and George Perez Starfire had a weird habit of making me feel funny in the middle.  Stupid alien.

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PLUCK went live on Zuda twelve hours ago.  I am irrevocably valid.  It’s funny working with a weekly deadline.  You’re forced to parse your style down to its essential components and bare necessities.  You draw three lines where two years ago you would have put six, and an alternating crosshatch.  You develop go-tos — fixed solutions for compositional problems.  A mental laundry list of Wally Wood shots.  Grids.  You read Blacksad and anything Quitely to keep from becoming repetitive and boring.  You devour Stuart Immonen.  Because you still have those four other pitches you’re working on, and you sure as hell don’t want those falling flat.  It’s a constant and hectic chase of self-criticism and improvement.  This is the lab, and the scientist is the rat.

Glad I’m seeing my girl this weekend.

Transformers

I know, I know.  But like I said in the previous post, these are my favorite work themes precisely because they’re not iconic.  They don’t muddle what I’m working on, creatively.  Jablonsky filled this score with powerful anthemic melodies that helped me enjoy reading the Sinestro Corps War like a pig in shit.  And that’s a good thing.

-

Neon Genesis Evangelion

And while we’re dealing with big robots and proud majestic themes, we contrast good guy music with my absolute favorite bad guy audio.  Anytime an angel shows up in the cartoon, the music jacks up the tension ten-fold, which is why the Eva OST always has to be on queue for sinister shots.

-

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

But sometimes ominous music has to be big and grandiose too, and that’s where Jin-Roh comes in.  Evocative of dystopian scenery, this OST has a healthy balance of destructive melodies and sentimental snippets.  And on a side note, this feature had one of the most man-tear choking endings of any animated film.  Ohgoddamnit.

-

Iron Man

Among the most recent of my favorite scores, Djawadi’s compositions had the upbeat feel of Ghost in the Shell, but de-personalized it to the point where it feels more like an anthem than a personal soundtrack.  Conversely, while GITS has a more textured feel to its sound, Iron Man’s as sleek as the hotrod-hued suit itself.

-

Moon

It seems fitting to end this list (for now) with my latest favorite.  Mansell’s soundtrack is lonely and emotive — equally uplifting and haunting.  The string symphonies and piano-drum pieces both succeed in saddening without being depressing, a definite must-hear.

“This ends NOW!  Face the wrath of my… MARTYYY!!!”

No.  So here I poke at you with five (of ten) of my  favorite movie scores to listen to when bands don’t cut it.  The list tends to change depending on my headspace and the actual material I’m working on, but this is the soul of it.

The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

You can’t go wrong with Yoko Kanno when you’re looking for a mix of classical and tech.  The GITS score’s rich strings inspire grand themes worthy of everyone’s inner Shirowe.  I make sure this is playing when any piece of art calls for something epic or a climactic scene needs sprucing up.

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Signs

This is probably the single most-listened-to soundtrack I own, as I most enjoy it in conjunction with a suspenseful read.  The Hitchcock-esque pulses have served as accompaniment for such books as Locke and Key, The Surrogates, 30 Days of Night, Fell, and most recently Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing.

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Cowboy Bebop: Music for Freelance

While Kanno’s original jazzy score for the series continues to be among the best ever for any animated work, I find it to be too upbeat for working late at night and can be a bit jarring.  The remixes in this volume are a great alternative while still capturing the happy-go-lucky essence of the initial Seatbelts renditions.

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The Matrix: Reloaded (and Revolutions)

Sure, The Matrix films have one of the most identifiable themes around — what I can only describe as drunken warp-trumpets on speed — but the second and third film’s action sequences didn’t use as much Manson and Zombie, and so the musical score’s energy is much better distilled.

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Now and Then, Here and There

Not since Glory have I heard so rich a dramatic symphony, and I first found it in an unsubtitled cartoon that literally got me all man-teary more than once.  I listen to this soundtrack when drawing dramatic and altogether uplifting scenes, though the darker melodies aren’t anything to scoff at either.

]]> http://johnamorartist.com/noice-part-1/feed/ 0 http://johnamorartist.com/a-b-c/ http://johnamorartist.com/a-b-c/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:36:41 +0000 johnamor http://johnamorartist.com/?p=1294 So I figure now’s as good a time as any to wrap up the 2009 set of entries to this thing.  Maybe in a year or so I can look back and marvel at how much (or how little) I got done.  Hopefully the latter, by comparison of course.  Don’t begrudge me my optimism, it is Winter Time in my Summertown Country.

As with the year prior, 2009 saw me taking on more indies as a promise to myself to build a semblance of discipline for the grind, as well as take as many shots as I humanly could.  Learning how many chambers my pistol’s got, as it were.  How much I learn and retain remains a work in progress.  That said, DAMN that was a busy year.

JENNY STRANGE is on hold as Justin and I scout for a colorist.  SOVENA RED got shopped around and may yet continue with Scholastic.  Taking Christmas breather from game design gig as suits prepare second ongoing contract.  Might shelf it or bow out if other ongoing book projects begin to pick up steam.  Speaking of which…

JUDAH trudges on in healthy machine gun spurts.  I am convinced Will is trying to see how much more he can shock me with every five-page set.

HARBINGER WAR concept art is steadily taking shape as Jad and I have poured over Moebius, Frazetta, and Ash Wood art books to see how much writing we can get done with just visuals.  If that didn’t make sense, trust us… it will.

PLUCK scripts are beginning to pour in just as I do concept sketches for characters who may or may not be little more than cannon fodder.  Yes, Gabe is keeping it THAT close to his chest since he knows I’ll reveal just about anything if I’m not careful.  The Brothers White and myself  look forward to pissing on D&D tropes on ZUDA next year!

1888 is in retool mode as Wolfgang and I are streamlining that beast of a book into a prestige-format monster and I gotta say… just because artists need to read scripts and put pencil to paper before anyone else gets to see anything, doesn’t mean all the twistedness only comes from him.  Damn it, WP.

And 2010 will see me dipping my toes into new properties CLOSETWORLD — a planned webcomic much akin to Little Nemo, with Matt Yocum; and GEEK GODS — a contemporary fantasy combining sword and sorcery with the familiar charm of Archie, with Wade Alan Steele.

There’s a couple of other exciting things I really want to share but can’t yet, but suffice it to say that the ol’ work journal is thankfully going to be regularly updated for the next few months at least.  It seems like a ton of work… and it’s certainly not a walk in the park.  But I always take the Zen of Glengarry Glen Ross with me, and it helps to simplify what would otherwise very easily cause me to burst into flames.  It’s the closest I’ll get to a mantra when trying to simply get things done — A — B — C.

Always Be Closing, Baldwin said.  And as far as I’m concerned, it keeps you focused enough to not look back as you try to keep moving forward in a narrow and tricky road.

Always, all ways, be closing.

Gleep gloop, 2010.  Gleep motherfucking gloop.

I come alive in total darkness.  Oh yes.  Like Batman, minus a butler bringing me vichyssoise.  (What kind of idiot brings you cold soup when you’re working in a dank cave in the middle of the night anyway?) And as if I were in a cave, I like my work area to be illuminated by a singular light source, so that I am surrounded by darkness and thus almost shrouded in a cloak of indistractibility.

I don’t know if it’s an emo thing, or an eyestrain thing, or an ADD thing, or a headspace thing, or a body clock thing, or even a mixture of all of those eccentricities… but it is what it is.

And as I get ready for bed around half past four in the morning, I wait until that sliver of time between when the street lamps die and when the sun starts to rear its ugly head.  And for just long enough, I find myself in complete darkness… and it stops being a moment and starts being a place.  And it is a place no one can infect.  Because it is nowhere.  And here I revel in the lost silence of dreaming.

The night of the Watchmen premier, one of my friends asks the table if any of us thought all this knowledge of Star Wars, Marvel continuity, Mass Effect side quests, and Chuck Norris jokes actually meant anything.  There were about six of us, with a beer tower in the middle.  It was as close as we got to quarterlifing, and that tends to shake me pantsless.  “No,” I said.  Coz this stuff is important to me, sure, and I love it… but by no stretch of the imagination does it kick our IQ levels up any.  What we are, are a few of many kids hanging ten on a mortal wave.  I remember tossing the term Creative Zeitgeist out… but I don’t remember why.

See? (Read first sentence)

Been having fun lately.  Got to travel with my girl up to one of the country’s highest peaks to help shoot her music video.  Hummer was a bit cramped with crew and tech, but the view and how the music carried up there was well worth it.  Don’t get a lotta chances to do that, y’know?

PLUCK won Zuda’s October competition, so now Gabe is working like an animal for you people, making sure we give you a story well worth following.  I’m on creature design duty for the next week or so, that’ll probably gimme an excuse to update the blog. Also… FUCKYES!!!

Local comic scene has been gaining steam, and monthly Drink n’ Draws (bastardized DnD for you paladin-types) are proving fun and energizing, to say the least.  Never hurts to be around fellow fanboys to help you feel like a real person. Oh snap. Related to this, in the Public Validation Department, I recently got talked to by a local newspaper about working in comics and the scene in general.  Managed not to curse too much, so I’m fairly proud about that.  Interview should run near the end of the month if they don’t misplace the transcript amid post-Manny fight analyses and 2012 reviews.

Need to see that movie.

Looking to wrap up JUDAH and a coupla other projects and commissions by year’s end, as January is already looking busy.  Not quite ready to talk about the new projects yet, but it’s all pretty exciting.  Haven’t gotten to finish that Glutton God piece either, but it can wait.

*****

Wolfgang Parker is polishing the knobs on a previously discussed project.  Be afraid.

*****

Finally, shopping Tres Komikeros around to find it an FM radio home.  Each podcast episode runs for roughly an hour, which is way too much geek talk than is healthy (trust us, we know), so we’re looking into making only the half-hour review portion air-friendly, while the rest is online bonus stuff that’s bad for your children.

Bonus.  What a funny word.