Game of Thrones Is A Tad Boring

Yup, I'm saying it right now, Game of Thrones (the tv show) is boring. The only way it could be worse, was if that fat bastard George Martin was being filmed reading his work to us, the audience. No, I haven't read the books, and this is because the tv show is so boring right now, I'm afraid the books will be worse. I would have to be paid to read them, and then it would have to be a sum the likes of which even a Lannister would have trouble repaying (see, that? I worked that extremely fucking tired line into my writing). 

Yes, yes, the dialog between characters is witty at times, but honestly it's like watching Downtown Abbey minus the sophistication, and with the addition of swords and CGI dragons. Speaking of swords, just about everyone in the show carries one, but they're only used (maybe) once every eight episodes. We hear about the war between the North and the King's men, but all we ever see of it is the inside of the Lannister's tent. 

I can see why HBO decided to add gratuitous nudity to the show, because otherwise it would just be people talking constantly about a war that the audience only sees five minutes of every season. Excuse me, talking about war, and going on endless walks. I swear, this show has more walking in it than all 54 hours of the Lord of the Rings movies combined. SNL hit the nail on the head early on with this show when they did this skit.


Here we are in Season 3, and we've seen 5 minutes of one battle (yet not this season), a couple of glimpses of the White Walkers (well, ok, one glimpse), and a whole lot of people walking and talking about a war we never get to see. I'm sorry, but there comes a time when political intrigue becomes boring and drawn out, and I think the beginning of Season 3 is exactly that time. 

Again, I'm reminded of the great George Millus' words to his film students, 'Show, don't tell.' Why? Because telling is fucking boring. Take the movie "Die Hard' for example. Would you rather have seen McClane jump off the roof with a fire hose wrapped around his waist as the roof explodes and takes out two helicopters, OR would you like to have it explained to you in detail verbally while McClane talks to Powell over the walkie while taking a smoke break? 

Yeah, I get budget restraints, but look at shows like 'Justified' and 'Banshee' and 'The Walking Dead'. Ok, maybe 'The Walking Dead' has a bit more talking than action in it, but at least there's a zombie kill every episode. Hell, this last week's GoT had people walking and talking about a war that we see no action from, and all we get is a half-heartedly lame sword fight in its place. Find a balance between story and action that works within your budget. If you can't, don't do the show. 

If you've made it this far through my ranting, congratulations. You may think I'm nuts, but if you go back and watch GoT, you'll see that I have a very valid point. A sword and sorcery story needs to have some more sword in it, or at the very least a little more frequent sorcery. Again, look at the 'Spartacus' series. It does a lot with very little story, and I would dare say that it's better than GoT. For one, it has Jess Whedon (Joss' brother) as a producer, writer, and sometimes director; and two, they have a finite number of seasons. In other words, they have a planned beginning, middle, and end. That alone already makes it a better series than GoT. 

Now there are going to be a lot of you out there that are going to try to shout me down, or belittle me (the obligatory, "Well, you just don't *get* GoT.", etc.), and frankly I really don't give two fucks what you have to say about my opinion. Why? Because it's my opinion. I gave the series a better than average chance, but I'm not seeing any change from the first season to this current third season. Except for a lot more people walking. Get on with the action, or get the fuck off the pot and let HBO throw all that money into something better and less drawn out.

GI Joe 2 Review

 I fell asleep about 4 or 5 times during this movie, and it didn't affect the plot at all. 

That said, the first movie was just more...fun, for lack of a better word. This movie was just a generic action movie (which explains why Willis was in it) that happened to be sprinkled with characters dressed as GI Joes. It was messy, loud, and fairly stupid. Once again, the action scenes were filmed with a camera that was thrown into a blender that itself had been thrown into a tumble dryer. That alone made me grateful I didn't see this shitburger in 3D. 

And for people who'll say "you didn't know the GI Joe cartoons if you didn't like this movie". Fuck you. It's a bad movie in every sense of the word. It wasn't even remotely fun as a generic action movie because the story, editing, and acting were atrocious  It didn't even work as a movie based off of a fun, but hammy 80's cartoon series, OR the comic series, OR the revived 90's cartoon series, OR the kick ass animated mini-series written by Warren Ellis (yeah, like *I* don't know GI Joe history). You know a movie is bad when even Arnold Vosloo won't be in it, since the guy is the king of direct to dvd movies. 

I was really looking forward to this movie being good, and instead I got some generic, macho, bullshit that even has fat, geriatrics being enlisted to fight in the battle. Cobra Commander was boring, and really wasn't necessary except for the MacGuffin of him being needed to launch the missiles from the satellites (why? it's never explained). A cardboard cutout could have done the same job as the guy that played Flint, and other than supplying guns and fat, geriatric 'soldiers', Willis' character was a complete waste of screen time. 

Do yourself a favor and skip this one. Wait for the redbox rental, which should be very soon. Hell, better yet, wait for cable.

Posting lag

Sorry for the big lag in posting, but I have moved. That's right, I'm no longer in San Francisco. I've moved to sunny (well, not for the last week) San Diego for work. Once I get properly settled in, I'll start posting a little more regularly. 

The Goon

If you haven't seen it, or don't follow comics, there's a comic book out there called The Goon by Eric Powell. Dark Horse Comics puts it out, and Powell is even trying to get the funding together to put out a CGI animated movie with Paul Giamatti as one of the voices. Well, Dark Horse has a little contest to draw The Goon and win a bunch of swag, so I thought I'd take a shot at it. Here's my entry.

A little bit retro, but I liked how the skull came out. Not as happy with how Goon himself came out, but I can live with it. Done with watercolors and markers (of which I'm diggin the new Copic markers I used on this piece). The piece itself looks better in person than it does in the scan for some reason. Maybe I need to work on my Photoshop skills for levels on scans a bit more. Anyway, here it is, enjoy.

T-Shirt Design Contest I'm In

Being the self-promotion whore that I am (because let's face it, no one else is going to do it for me), I entered a  T-Shirt design contest on Threadless. Here's the embeded crap leading to it.



So go in and vote, pass it on, etc. If I win, I get cash, and my design gets sold at the Gap locations. 


Enjoy.

Throg! Frog of Thunder!

A couple of nights ago I decided to try screwing around with pastels again, especially since it's been a few years since I last touched them. So I cleared off the workspace, plopped down the pad of 19" X 24" I had lying here, and went to work. 


Recently, I've been watching the animated Ultimate Spider-Man online (because for some reason Disney XD is a 'premium' channel, and I don't get it). One of the last episodes I watched had Thor being turned into a frog by his brother Loki. For those of you that don't know, there's a long story behind Throg and the other Pet Avengers. Suffice to say, that was my inspiration in today's piece. Behold! Throg! Frog of thunder!

I had forgotten how hard (and messy!) it was working with pastels. I actually had to go out and buy some blending sticks since I didn't have any laying around (again, it has been a few years since I've touched pastels). Once I got into it, I had a bit of fun. Working with pastels harkens back to finger painting as a child, except that if you want anything recognizable to come out of the effort, you really do need to plan the composition ahead of time. 

So there you have it. Let me know what you think in the comments section below. 

Enjoy.

Guess What Movie I Want To See Tomorrow

If you guessed "Step Up Revolution", well then you obviously haven't been reading this blog. Here's a little artwork I did last night to give you a hint:

"The Dark Knight Rises" is the correct answer. I had the opportunity to see a sneak preview last night, but the showing was at 10pm. For a nearly 3 hour movie. I passed on it so that I could see it at a decent time, without having to wait a couple of hours in line to boot. 

I'll probably wind up working on this pic a little more to get some color in it. Still not sure if I'm going to go digital or the more traditional route that I've been doing lately. Anyway, hope you enjoy the pic.

Belated 4th of July

If you live in a large city like I do, then you probably have various illegal fireworks going off all around the city at various times of the day and night during the weeks surrounding the 4th of July. So that was my inspiration for this quickie piece I did. I finished it in gray markers instead of my usual watercolors, because I had recently been reminded of Tim Sale's work. Now if you don't know who Tim Sale is, go check out his artwork. Go on, I'll wait for you....


Back? Good stuff, huh? You probably noticed that most of it is in black and white, and grays. There's a reason for this..Tim is color blind. His work gives off a very noirish feel. I wanted to see what I could do with just grays, black and white. So here's Captain America.

This version I tweaked in PhotoShop to get rid of the blue pencil marks. Unfortunately, as a result, it also lost some contrast. One of these days I'll learn the right way of removing blue pencil, but for now, it looks like I'll have to keep trying by trial and error. Here's the same picture taken with the camera from my phone:

So, while this one is darker, a lot of the original contrast is kept intact giving it a better feel.

Finally, you may have noticed my logo in the bottom right of the picture. Maybe it's vanity, maybe I saw a cheap deal, but I had rubber stamps made of my logo so that I could stamp my work when I was done. Too arrogant? Does it take away from the artwork, or is it no different than a signature? Let me know what you think below.

Enjoy.

The Amazing Douchey Hipster Spider-Man (Review)

Take a guess at what I saw last night at a sneak preview? Yup. This was an IMAX showing. I'm going to try and keep things as spoiler free as possible, but I am also going to talk about the Spider-Man origin story as if everyone reading this already knows it (especially since Raimi went over this in 2002, but it gets rehashed again in this movie). 

To start with, the origin story is changed a little with the addition of Peter's parents, and how Peter's father worked for Oscorp. Peter's parents went on the run, leaving him with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. Ben is played very well by Martin Sheen, but Sally Fields looked at times lost as to what role she was playing as Aunt May. To say she was miscast is an understatement. 

This version of Peter Parker finds him to be an 'edgy', brooding skateboarder who you get the feeling doesn't exactly do well in school. When he finds a bag belonging to his father in the basement, his brooding becomes a tantrum about his parents. This Peter gets into Oscorp by pretending to be someone else (screwing that person in the process, which we're supposed to find funny), and then breaking into a 'high security' lab. Now I say 'high security' because even though every employee is issued a magnetically striped key card, the labs with the sensitive experiments are guarded by a touchscreen with a pattern recognition lock. Much like you'd find on a smart phone or tablet. So greasy fingers would show you the simple pattern needed to unlock the door. 

Now comes the part that really didn't irk me until I thought about it later, how Spidey gets his powers. We all know that Peter gets bitten by a spider and gains his powers, and that the spider died after biting him. Well, what if there were a whole room filled with dozens of these very same spiders? Spidey wouldn't be so special now, would he since pretty much anyone could gain those powers by wandering into the poorly secured room and getting bitten. 

Moving on...now that Peter finally has his powers, again, he gives Dr. Conners (who worked with his father at Oscorp) a formula that his father wrote and had hidden in the bag in the basement. So supposedly this smart kid, who reads everything Dr. Conners has written over the last 15 years, and in those writings mentions numerous times the equation needed (by name) to complete his life work, which was hidden in the basement, hands over the equation to Conners. No questions asked. Seriously, I thought I was watching Episode three of Star Wars all over again where Anakin turns to the Darkside for no good reason whatsoever. 

Not to mention that this kid with a supposedly moral upbringing, uses his new powers to get revenge on the school bully. This gets him community service and a stern talking to (which he immediately brushes off and ignores) by his Uncle. He then just seems to brush off all his responsibilities to hang with a guy his father kept secrets from and whom he doesn't know. Again, common sense in the script is ignored.

Uncle Ben finally kicks the bucket (changed a little from both the book and the first movie), so what does Peter do? You guessed it, he leaves his newly widowed Aunt to fend for herself while he goes out night after night looking for Ben's killer. There's no comfort or sympathy from Peter to his Aunt (at least not on screen) like we saw in the 2002 version of this movie. This Peter just becomes an angry dick with powers.

The Lizard comes about thanks to Peter handing over his father's formula, and Conners being rushed to produce results. Long story short, Peter has to find a way to stop and reverse the problem he created in the first place. 

I'm tired of heroes and villains being intertwined so intimately in their co-creations in movies. In comics, the hero stops the bad guy because it's the right thing to do, not because the villain is his mom's former boyfriend's cousin's room mate who accidentally drank the same radioactive Kool Aid mixed with cat feces making him all crazy for scratching posts in the nearby tri-county region. 

Anyway, there's a sewer scene that further shows the screenwriters don't know how to do subtlety with their plot devices, so once again they make this version of Peter do something incredibly stupid involving his camera. More CGI hi-jinks ensue. 

Speaking of CGI, there's a lot of it in this movie. It looks like CGI, and you'll go with it, or you won't. The animation is good, but I could have done without the constant freeze frames of Spidey in mid-leap just to recreate a classic pose or comic cover. The Lizard still looks like a Goomba from the 1990's Super Mario Bros. movie, no matter how hard they try to make him into a bad-ass. See for yourself.

The characters never really seem fleshed out beyond the contrived plot devices. The rehash of the origin didn't need to be retold, especially not since it was only ten years ago it was told in the first place. Forty five minutes could have been cut from this movie to make it tighter and less...dull. The 3D is interesting in parts, but completely unnecessary. The script could have used some polishing from an actual professional writer instead of a scriptwriter, just to remove a lot of the boredom in the dialogue of the non-action scenes. 

Rating: Bargain matinee. Only if you really want to see it. Avengers set the bar extremely high, and this movie didn't even come close to it.

What the Hell Are You Looking At?

I kid, I kid. 


I've let my blog linger for quite some time, and a lot of it was due to apathy towards art for a while since I still haven't found a job (oh, Christ! he's gonna talk about this shit again!). The other part was due to me working on again, off again on a little project I set before myself because it came to me in a dream. Well, not entirely...let me explain.


You know how sometimes your body jerks you awake just as you're about to fall asleep? Well, my brain tossed an idea and an image at me instead, and it made me giggle awake. Yes, you read that right...giggle. My brain tossed me a character mash-up that I couldn't just do one and be done...no, no, this had to be a whole series that had to be released in its entirety. Why, you ask? I'll tell you even if you didn't ask...I had to release it as a completed series, because once the idea was out there, the characters keep flowing. 


Others will run with it, and I'm perfectly fine with that, but I just wanted to get my list of favorites out of the way first. So without further gilding of the lily, and with much adieu, I present to you my mash-up...Mutant Wars.

(A bigger pic can be viewed at my Deviant Art account here. )

Yes, a mash-up of Star Wars and Marvel Comics characters. Each character was drawn with pencil and ink, and then painted with watercolors and finished with markers. I scanned each one in and set them up on a digital background. All the shadows are part of the original pieces (ie. no digital painting done). 

Let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

Why Hello Again. Long Time, No See..

You're probably wondering what in the hell happened to me (or you might not even have noticed that I haven't posted in a while). Well, long story short, still job hunting, a little depressed that nothing is coming up, still drawing a line of concept art that I'm two characters away from finishing (since it really needs to be released as a set), came up with an idea for a comic strip AND a series of video shorts in the vein of the Uncle George video. 


Other than that, nada. Watching movies, tv shows, and playing a few video games sporadically while waiting for job interviews that I get close to getting, but ultimately go to someone else. Anyway, enough of my depressing kvetching. You still there? Good. Here are a few quickie reviews:


"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter": Rating - Matinee ticket price. Not as good as the book, since the director (who also directed "Wanted") pretty much copied "Wanted" only with Lincoln and vampires. It's fun, but a little too long.


"Ted": Rating - Full price ticket. Yeah, I know, I'm just as surprised as you are about this rating. I'm not a big fan of Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy, but this movie was actually funny if you like stoner comedies. The best part of it is that has a recurring Flash Gordon theme running through it. Yes, the cheesy 80's movie that we all know and love. The only turn off is the Giovanni Ribessi subplot. 


Finally, I'd like to leave you with a trailer for a movie simply titled "The Prototype". Sci-fi goodness.

THE PROTOTYPE - TEASER V.3 from Andrew Will on Vimeo.



Enjoy.

Amazing Spider-Man new trailer is up

I'm still not really getting into this movie. We didn't need another origin story just a mere ten years after Raimi's first movie. Sally Fields and Martin Sheen as Aunt May and Uncle Ben? Really? And then there's the whole 'in 3D' aspect that I could really do without.

I like Spider-Man and the Spider-Man mythos a lot, but I'm finding it hard to get excited about this version.

Chronicle Review (Spoiler Free)

Just got back from seeing a sneak preview of Chronicle, and honestly all I can say is 'Wow!' Before I get into the review (which as always, is free of any spoilers), I just want to rant for a minute on the asinine policy some screeners have for cell phones. This particular screening security was wanding people as they went in, and if you had a cell phone or tablet, etc. they wanted you to check it in with them. The only thing was that the 'contract' they have you sign says that if your electronic device goes missing, it's not the theater's or the employee's responsibility. Having seen this game before, I knew at the end of the screening, they dump all the phones, etc. on the table and rely on the 'honor system' of people to not steal someone else's stuff. Long story short, I ran a little confusion play that got me past the guards with all my electronic stuff firmly in my bag. Seriously, the projectionist is more liable to record a bootleg version at a sneak peek than someone in the audience. 


With that said, Chronicle is a story about three high school guys who get super powers. Yeah, yeah, you've seen this one before, right? Nope. First off, the whole movie (or at least a good majority of it) is filmed by one of the guys named Andrew. Andrew isn't a nerd, but he isn't popular mainly because he's withdrawn due to a fairly shitty home life. Matt is Andrew's cousin, and they go to the same school. Matt isn't popular, but he isn't invisible like Andrew. Matt is the average high schooler. Then there's Steve. Steve is popular, running for class president, but a genuinely nice guy, not a douchebag. Steve knows Matt, and that's how this trio ends up together at a barn party where they get their powers.


Their powers are actually telekinesis. Telekinesis (for the uninitiated) is the ability to move or manipulate objects with the power of the mind. A majority of the movie is spent with the guys learning how to control their powers and use them in different ways. It's through this growth that the guys start to realize that Andrew is not only strong, but he lacks a few morals as well. This does lead to a final scene that is laden with special F/X and a fight that is not only well done given the small budget, but makes you feel for the characters as well. 


The refreshing thing about this movie (besides the lack of shaky cam), is that the writers deliberately avoided mentioning comic books, pop culture references, or any other superhero kind of reference that lesser writing nerds would have been leaning on as a crutch since page one. Why is it refreshing? Just because it's a movie about guys that gain superpowers, doesn't mean that we need to carpet-bombed with hackneyed references to Superman, Spider-Man, or Star Wars. Even those of us that read comics and play video games get tired of the, quite frankly, insulting pandering writers will shoehorn into a script just to try to make it feel like a 'comic book movie'. Stop the self awareness, we get it already.


There's one scene in this movie which has become my favorite. Andrew is dressing up into his dad's old firefighter outfit set to the strains of Ziggy Stardust while the camera floats and circles over his head. Trust me, when you see the scene, you'll wonder why no one ever thought of it before since it works so well in its simplicity and the song works oh so well in a superpowered movie. 


So in conclusion, the movie is more character development BUT you do get action dispersed throughout with a huge explosion of action at the end. Very well done, and well balanced. When you can feel empathy for the bad guy, you know the writer has done a great job. I would say that if there was one drawback to the movie, it would be the CGI. It's not great, but given that the movie was made for a rumored $15 million, it can definitely be forgiven. 


Rating: Full price ticket, multiple viewings. Get out there and see this one if you want to see something different.

MI4: Ghost Protocol (Spoiler-Free) review

I was able to catch a sneak preview of Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol on Wednesday night. It was in the IMAX theater, so it had all the appropriate bells and whistles. 


I'm not a big fan of Tom Cruise. I AM a big fan of Brad Bird, and seeing as how this was his first live-action movie, I wanted to see how he did. If I was pressed for my initial reaction to the movie, I would say it was okay. Not great, not mind-blowing, not spectacular....just okay. 


First off, I'm not a fan of the MI movies. Why, you ask? Because Abrams pulled a dick move in the first movie and made Jim Phelps (the original MI agent from the classic tv show) the bad guy. He essentially just took a gigantic shit on all the fans of the tv show (which he did again with his version of Star Trek, but that's for another story). So the two things compelling me to see this installment was Brad Bird, and The Dark Knight Rises prologue. BUT, I still went into this movie with an open mind and treated it as a spy movie that had nothing to do with a great tv series.


What I got was a lot of people running after and away from each other on foot. Actually a shit-ton of running. In a movie that has a run time of 2 hours and 13 minutes, one hour was just of people running on foot. The chase scenes were so long they actually got boring. The most exciting scene in the movie you've already seen on tv commercials. It's the skyscraper free climb. That was also the most stunt-intensive scene in the movie. 


In other words, for a big budget, spy-action movie, it was strangely devoid of big scenes that made the audience go 'wow'. Which I found very disappointing. 


As for the actors, Tom Cruise played the agent that has everything well in hand (which became kind of annoying because it meant the character is never in any real danger...except for the skyscraper scene). Simon Pegg played......Simon Pegg. He's supposed to be the techie of the bunch, but he's throwing out little one liners and even a few lines from movies he's made in the past. Paula Patton was pretty, but never any real personality for the role. In fact, a female assassin played by Lea Seydoux not only upstages Patton, but makes me wish that their roles had been reversed. Jeremy Renner was the only star in the bunch that actually shined brightly. Not only did he do a great and believable job, but he even conveyed the fun that he was having with the role as well. The guy who played the villain was so bad, that I didn't even bother to learn or look up his name. Nope, I have the IMDB page open, but I'm not even looking at his name because he played an easy role so badly that you could easily interchange him with any James Bond, low rung lackey and get a better villain in the trade. 


In the end, I walked out of this one tired, not pumped (which I usually am after a good action movie) with kind of a 'meh' indifference to the whole thing. Or let me put it another way....the night before I was fortunate enough to see The Dark Knight Rises (TDKR) six minute prologue in a sneak preview in the IMAX theater. I waited in line two and half hours for a t-shirt and a six minute preview. That six minutes had a tighter action sequence and an spectacular stunt that left me floored than the entire two hour and thirteen minutes of MI4 did. In fact, as I was leaving the MI4 screening I actually was running the prologue back through my head and marveling at how much better (and tighter), and how much more exciting that six minutes was compared to all of MI4. 


MI4 could easily have been trimmed down to 90 minutes, since the plot really isn't anything you haven't already seen before in a Bond movie (which is better anyway (even the shitty ones with Brosnan as Remington Steele...err...'Bond')). So the bottom line is is it worth the IMAX ticket price? That depends. Do you want to see a spectacular six minutes of action with TDKR only to be let down with the mediocre action and questionable special effects of the two hour movie that follows it? If your answer is 'no', then I'd say this is a bargain matinee only if you're really super bored during the holidays and you've already seen everything else in the theaters at least twice. Otherwise, I'd say skip it and watch it on DVD or pay-cable movie networks.


Oh, I'm aware that some you out there think I hate everything (which is far from the truth, I'm just so good at crucifying the bad stuff that you remember that much more vividly), but I overheard more than a few people leaving the theater saying that it was boring, with a few even saying they fell asleep. For a 7:30pm showing. So I wasn't the only one. 


Rating: Bargain matinee only if you've seen everything else in the theater, otherwise wait until DVD. 

Enjoy.

Retro Girls

I decided to try something a little different today, I decided to try and go a little retro in my drawing. This came about mainly due to two reasons; 1. most comic artists (that are male) tend to draw women on the slightly more masculine side (I've been guilty of this too), especially if that woman happens to be a super heroine, and 2. I've been reading a lot of Ghost Rider from the 70's lately, and I've been digging the way the artists were drawing women back then. So I decided to give it a shot. Here's the result:

As you can see, I started from the top and worked my way to the bottom. The top one, not so great, but not horrendous either. She looks a little too cadaverous or even strung out. 

The second one gets better, but there's still something wrong with the way she looks. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's either her nose or her mouth (or both) that don't work for me. 

Finally, the third entry is what I was looking for. Leave it me to get the results I was looking for while using my least favorite (or comfortable) format of forced perspective. The crazy glasses that I thought were going to be a huge pain in my ass, actually helped guide me as to the placement of the rest face. Plus, the third face had the least erasing on my part (as you can see from the white eraser marks (I was using an off-white color paper)). 

So there you have it, a little bit of warm up work AND a try at a little bit of a different look. Let me know what you think.

Enjoy.

The Dark Knight Rises poster

Earlier we had the new poster for the Spider-Man remake, and now we have the new poster for the last Nolan Batman movie. Which looks pretty cool. Truth be told, I'm MUCH more excited about TDKR than I am for the Spidey remake. Mainly because Nolan hasn't steered the franchise wrong...yet.

Enjoy.

New Poster for Spider-Man Reboot Movie

Let's call it what it is, a reboot (or a remake if you will) of a movie that's just a decade old. Starring a guy with a nose so big you can park a '57 Chevy in the left nostril and still have room for two stretch Humvee limos. How anyone won't know that this isn't both Peter Parker and Spider-Man just by his ginormus nose is beyond me. Anyway, here's the new poster...which is actually cool. 

Enjoy.

I haven't posted in some time...

I haven't posted anything in a while. Sorry about that. Busy looking for a job, curled up in the fetal position on the couch watching bad tv, and drawing on occasion. But here's a little update, Wacom has a contest going on for people to submit their art to be voted on to win some stuff. Since I like free stuff, I thought I'd enter the contest with this guy:

It's a five foot by twelve foot painting on canvas I did of Galactus for my friend's comic book store. That's a Silver Surfer statue he has that inspired the background. So what I'm asking of you, loyal (or even not so loyal) reader, is to go and vote for my artwork everyday, once a day, until Dec. 16th. All you have to do is scroll down and click on "Vote for this entry" and then follow the instructions. I'd appreciate it. 

I'll try to start making more frequent posts, and even post some more frequent artwork from me here in the near future. In fact, I am working on a few concept designs, for shits and giggles, that I'll post once I get the whole set completed. Until then, vote for me once a day, and I'll see you again soon.

Enjoy.

Batman: Arkham City (so far)

So I've been playing Batman: Arkham City for the last couple of days, and my initial reviews are pretty favorable. There are a few things that bug me though....


1. The remote controlled batarang that you absolutely HAVE to use to get past a few of the obstacles. Really, Rocksteady? It's lame, and if you get any kind of motion sickness you won't make it past this level.


2. All the dumb-ass side missions you HAVE to complete before you can carry on with the main story, even though there's an obvious time limit. Seriously, it's gotten to the point now that when I ever do get back to the main story mission, I'm just waiting for another dumb-ass side mission to crop up in the middle of everything....which it does.


3. Initially I thought the switching back and forth between being able to play Catwoman's storyline and then Batman's storyline was cool, but then you start missing Batman's gadgets and moves when playing Catwoman. You also miss Catwoman's ridiculously easy levels when playing Batman's levels. 


4. The Ra's Al Ghul level. Pissed me off to no end with the gliding bullshit. 


5. The lipsynching, or lack thereof. It's actually pretty bad. Add to it the over-exaggerated character animation to cover up the particularly bad moments of lipsynch, and it's slowly becoming my new pet peeve. Yeah, I notice these things since I'm looking for a job in animation. Seeing what employed, and supposedly professional animators do on these games mystifies me on how they get employed in the first place.


Yeah, I'm not the most proficient video gamer, but I do know what I like. Also, there seem to be a few little bugs in the game still. Every now and then Bats get caught up on something like he's half in/out of a wall. Like back in the old days of gaming. 


The settings are nicely done, as are the characters. I really dig The Penguin with a British accent ala like the pig farmer guy out of the movie Snatch. Makes him much more menacing, especially for an arms dealer. Old Gotham (under Arkham City) is a cool touch too. 


So if you haven't gone out yet and bought it, do it. You won't be disappointed. I rarely play video games, if that gives you any indication of how good this game actually is. 


Enjoy.

Batman: Arkham City

If you played the first Batman: Arkham game, you definitely know how cool it is. Well, for Arkham City, Rocksteady is throwing a whole bunch of shit at us. If you order early from Best Buy, you get to play Robin in the extra levels. Yeah, I'm not too excited about that either. In the UK, they have a bunch of different Batman skins. Batman Beyond, Dark Knight, classic Superfriends, Batman the animated series, etc. Now that's bad ass. IF we actually get that here in the States too.


What do we get here in the States? Well, Best Buy is offering a Batman skin if you buy the Green Lantern movie on blu-ray. Sorry, Warner Bros. I'm not buying your shitty movie just to get a skin that's going to be released in a month or so. I can wait. Hell, if I'm not pre-ordering for the lame-ass Robin add-on, what makes you think I'm going to spend more money for a shitty movie just because you dangle a shriveled, moldy carrot in my face? 


Now, if you offered me ALL the add-ons and skins to the game with your fucking disaster of a movie, then I would more than likely give it some serious consideration. Yes, Warner Bros., your movie WAS that bad. But it should come as no surprise, considering how bad the ticket sales were even with the addition of the inflated 3D ticket prices. 


Anyway, I digress. The Batman skin they're offering is the Sinestro Corps. Batman. Take a look.

Yeah, it's cool, but it's not $25 cool. Like I said, I can wait.

Enjoy.