http://www.multiplexcomic.com/strips/233.php

Related strips: #23: The Dementor’s Kiss; #56: Blast from the Past; #145: The Last Kiss; #193: The Death of Franklin, Part One; #195: Oh My God; #199: Ledgerdemain, Part One; #211: Forgive and Forget

Obviously, I redesigned Kina a bit (of course, she's also a year and a half older than the last time she appeared).

http://www.octopuspie.com/index.php?date=2008-05-12

Recently a few dudes have been making some pretty sweet live streams of their comic drawing process. For today's comic I recruited a small number of readers via Twitter to watch me tinker on uStream for a few hours. It was lots of fun interacting with some of you and it really kept me focused on getting the comic done! I anticipate there'll be more screenings in the future.

Congrats especially to the brave few who stayed for the entire screening -- I warned you I ink slow. :)

And thanks so much to everyone who ordered something last week! Your support is greatly appreciated. I have to take this new lifestyle a day at a time, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the coming months.

http://www.overcompensating.com/posts/20080512.html

Goal Teefs

Hope felt a bit sick today (for which there a multitude of reasons - travel, germy convention-goers, etc), so we took it relatively easy. I got a good night's rest and avoided "Con Sunday Syndrome", feeling bright and rested as I got to the show. But Hope felt ill, came for a few minutes and couldn't hack it. I only stayed a few hours and packed in early to nurse her back to health.

I only bought one thing at this con: a GETTER 1 REVOLTECH robot toy. I am very stoked about it.

I also had a chance to stop by Urban Outfitters and pick up a totally awesome Japanese Tony the Tiger Frosted Flakes t-shirt.

Thanks to everyone who came out, and sorry to anyone who missed me late in the day after I'd left. Fortunately, it was a much slower crowd than yesterday, so I'm not too ashamed. Most of you got to me on Saturday.

Con exhaustion has caught up to me, too. I feel half-dead, and we're waking up at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow to sit in airports and on planes all day long.

http://comikaider.blogspot.com/2008/05/speed-racer-i-get-it-but-no-one-else.html

I went to see SPEED RACER yesterday with my friends Jerry, Murray, and Carlos, and it was pretty much exactly what I both expected and wanted from the movie... which is why I can understand the intensely negative critism the movies been getting (seriously... 35% at Rotten Tomatoes is a little harsh....), because what I expected and wanted from this movie is vastly different from what your average critic, or even your average movie goer, is looking for.

See... the problem is that SPEED RACER is a PERFECT adaptation of the cartoon. It is EXACTLY like the cartoon in every possible way. Nothing was really done to tone down the 1960's absurdity of the material they were adapting... no effort was made to make this movie darker or more realistic, or in any way more palatable to a 21st Century audience. Characters have names like "Inspector Detector", or "Crusher Block", Racer X is still has an incredibly melodramatic back story, and Spriddle and Chim-Chim are still annoying but somehow endearing. Some of the movie's humor involving Spriddle and his pet monkey was positively groan worthy at times, but obviously appeals to a younger audience (they literally throw monkey poo at a guy... kids LOVE that kind of shit, pun intended). The improbable stunts, the simplistic, "Everything will be ok if I can just win this race..." plot... it's all there.

Everything about this movie was exactly like the cartoon... which is awesome if you've got that prior knowledge. It was actually interesting going with Jerry and Murray, because it perfectly illustrates the divide between someone with an affinity for the original content, and the average movie goer who never watched SPEED RACER, or even any anime at all, and thus just would not "get" a lot of the movie's visual cues, in-jokes, and homages. In the end, Jerry ended up enjoying the movie a lot more than Murray did, and that's exactly how it's going to be for EVERYBODY. This movie is just going to fly right over people heads. Which is too bad, because it was actually pretty entertaining, and I really enjoyed the visual style... my only real critism with the movie is that it starts REALLY slow; especially for a movie about RACING. It took at least 15-20 minutes to get all of the plot setup out of the way and get to the shit you actually came to see... absurd car stunts, ninja's, mobsters, secret identities, cute girls flying helicopters, race-car vikings (YES... VIKINGS), melodrama, speed-lines, and a pounding orchestral (the chimes and harps make it sound very Hanna Barbara) soundtrack. Which this movie delivers in spades. It's a slightly deeper and more complex story than the cartoon (a parable about Big Business VS the Little Guy, corporate politics, and cheaters never prospering), but it still has that childlike sense of focus... "If I can just win this one race, everything will be ok."

Visually, I found the movie went back and forth between looking garish and looking stylish, but I really enjoyed a lot of the anime style wipes and transitions. The cast was perfect, and everyone played their parts to a T (particularly John Goodman, who I always like anyways, but seemed to be really channeling something as Pops Racer). This is a movie that will appeal greatly to children, who will appreciate the bright colors, fast paced action, and monkey-poo humor, and adults with prior knowledge or fond memories of the series, or at least some exposure to oldschool anime, and it's conventions. The only thing this movie really needed was to end on a watercolor still of Speed jumping out of the Mach 5 and taking his iconic pose.

I'm still having fun "blogging", but Jerry informed me that he doesn't check my blog unless I post that I wrote something on it on my LJ, which puts me in the awkward situation of plugging my blog on my LJ... which seems redundant.

Anyways... yeah, I posted some more stuff to my Blog in the last two days... a little thing about the WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN cartoon trailer, and some thoughts on the SPEED RACER movie... not really a review, but more some thoughts on why the general public doesn't really seem to "get" it. The movie itself was enjoyable, but not, like, utterly fantastic. It was everything I thought it would be, and sort of wanted it to be... so unlike IRON MAN it only met my expectations, and did not exceed them, like I had hoped. It was fun, though, and will make a great DVD.

http://comikaider.blogspot.com/ For those not in the know, as it were. Enjoy!

PS: Eric Kim... what happened to your blog?

i've been having a crisis of faith or something recently because i feel like i'm not happy with anything i'm putting out but i don't know what i want to be putting out instead or how to change it. i can't tell if what i'm doing is good or if i like it; i'm speaking mostly from a writing perspective, although i'm questioning my artwork on some levels, too. i can't tell if anything i'm doing is good, i can't tell if Wet Moon 4 is good or this zombie book i'm working on is good, sometimes i feel like i'm going through the motions but i don't know what i'd rather be or should be doing. i feel "fine" with what i'm doing, i don't dislike it necessarily, but i want to love it, i want to be "this is awesome."

so then the other day i read a scathing, terrible review of one of my books, and usually i don't care when i get bad reviews or criticism or whatever, because i don't agree with them from an artistic standpoint and it's just this person's opinion so it's no big deal. i've gotten negative or mediocre reviews before, or bad comments on deviantart or there's a whole lot of people who hate the work that i do for White Wolf and i've heard some brutal things said about me and my artwork. but it's cool, i have no problem with people disliking my work, i even welcome it. different strokes for different folks, two sides of the same coin, can't please everybody, all that stuff. i know what i'm doing, it pleases me, and that's what matters.

but this reviewer guy was right on the money and i pretty much agreed with almost everything he said about why he hated the book, and now i feel i really crummy and embarrassed about it. i'm not upset about the review at all, i'm upset with myself for producing this book in the way that i did. so that's compounded this faith crisis and now i'm considering putting Wet Moon 4 on hold even though i have it all thumbnailed and about 15 pages drawn already, and maybe rewriting it or putting it on hiatus or something. i can't put my new zombie book on hold because it's contracted, but i'll do the best i can on that and hope it turns out good.

anyway, i don't know. guess i'll keep pushing through it.

tearing my hair out here trying to type a character in wingdings on the mac. can anybody help a fellow out?

a key combo or link to a vector-outlined version of the character would equally earn you my gratitude!

We went to see Iron Man last night, at the drive in. Superhero movies are just better outdoors.

The scene that struck both of us, though, was when ( spoilers )

Mauritius! I got back to Seoul at 6:00am today after an epic layover and all-nite flight, still crusted with brine, Indian Ocean protozoa, airport scum, and Korean Airlines' bibimbap breakfast. What a filthy and bedraggled urchin bade goodbye to the hot photographer at the Incheon Airport bus stop this morning! Oh yeah, about that? Nah. He was nonresponsive. Unreactive. Benzene on benzene. No joke laughy-at. No Mauritian cane liquor drinky-with. No afterdark ocean divey-in despite a most enthusiastic invitation. I went and dove in the afterdark ocean anyway, concluding: what-ever!

At dutyfree on the way home, he bought a Marc Jacobs dress and some girly accessories, so it was probably the existence of his girlfriend and not my ludacris beachwear (and sandy right buttcheek) that put him off:


Or was it?

( Read more... )

http://www.onipress.com/blog/?p=234

 
 
 
An excellent artist spotlight on Oni creator Marc Ellerby:

“Marc Ellerby is a young cartoonist from Essex, probably best known for his work with Jamie S. Rich on the Oni Press series Love The Way You Love. But I first noticed his self published books a little while back and wanted to share with you…..” -ForbiddenPlanet.co.uk

Check out the Entire Article Here!