Posts filed under "artwork"
Joshua Middleton Website Revamped - Have always loved the man’s minimalist style. If I had a comment, it would be that the blog was actually properly integrated into the site, rather than bringing it in via a frame (or whatever is being used). The gallery section is the place to head first to though, with the ‘Sky Between Branches’ section as the top area to look at (damn that’s been in the making for close to a century).
Google Holiday Logos - For my own records. My only complaint is that you can’t see all the logos on one page.
Process Recess 3 - The third in a series of art books from the insanely talented James Jean. What I hadn’t realised was just how much these books were actually going for online (amazon is listing volume 2 for £225).
The art of UP - It’s all in the details, and this gives a small glimpse of that detail. Like they say at Pixar, sand the underside of the drawer.
Been a while since I’ve written anything significant on the site, but alas I’ve been busy with the task of creating Aitus Moralis. The big significance is that after nearly 6 years of talking about this story, I’ve finally finished the first fully pencilled page of the book. I’ll probably post it at some point once I’ve sorted out the best way to show my artwork in an easy to maintain gallery (I’m leaning to using Google Picasa at this point in time).
This is significant because I’ve managed to do this page of art while working. This kind of dispells the thoughts that i had previously that my brain cannot cope with splitting engineering in the day and artwork in the evening, but actually it can.
The real issue is finding the muse to get on and do it. I found it by going to a course. The energy of the people around me creating artwork was enough for me to actually get on with it and move forward. I’m still learning but if you don’t draw you’ll never learn, you’ll never get any better. Nobody created their masterpiece from day one, or even day two, but you have to start somewhere .
Danny Gardner concept spaceship art - Bastard is only 19 years old. How depressing.
http://www.brokenkode.com/danny-gardner-concept-spaceship-art
8 Min Gambit - Jim Lee draws Gambit in 8 minutes. Seriously, if he’s this fucking fast, why did it take him like 7 years to publish a comic back in the day? I doubt he’s gotten faster with age.
Kuniyoshi - Saw a poster for this on the tube the other day. Definitely going to this.
Travis Charest’s Blog - Seems it’s only been up for a little over a month. The good news is that the man seems to be getting more drawing done now than I’ve seen from him in years. The better news is that he’s even more depressingly good than what he was a few years ago. If anything the little Metabaron sabbatical did him some good in honing his already IMMENSE talent. Park this one under easily one of my favourite artists of all time.
Switch Display Options - Added to my collection of options I might use for my eventual illustrations category on the site.
That’s what I want to be surrounded by right now. Creative brains drawing, sculpting, moulding, painting, etching whatever. Over the years I have definitely understood that your enthusiasm and energy is boosted by those around you. You gravitate to people with positive energy because they make you want to actually get on with life as well. Your surroundings play such an incredible part in this.
For years I have been lamenting the fact that I’ve not been able to get creative with my art. I’ve not been able to nurture the graphic novel that I’ve been writing for nigh on 5 years now. The truth the story is all the better for this incubation time because although the idea was sound (the very basic idea) the execution was lacking.
Yesterday I went and saw a collection of student movies (this isn’t a review of the work that was presented, but more of an observation, when you have no budget, the story has to work cleverly within these constraints - which i don’t feel was captured). The one thing i took from the evening however was the collection of minds in the room and how they all fed off each other.
So I’ve decided (and I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier) to try and find a studio to share with a bunch of artists. Now if it was up to me I’d round up the crazy Danes, maybe a couple of Americans get a big warehouse in London on the waterfront and have us create awesome stuff, pushing each other creatively…something which clearly cannot happen.
I’ll be sure to post the results of my research in my hunt for a design studio to get creative in.
Images Reveal McG’s Terminator Salvation Vision - The last time I saw something like this was the production art for ‘The Matrix’. Hopefully the story won’t suck.
In anticipation of the new Watchmen movie (hopefully coming to a cinema near you), there is actually a slew of great books on offer to enhance the whole experience. If you’ve not read the source material, SHAME ON YOU. Your homework is to buy the Absolute Edition of this masterpiece and get reading. If you’ve already done that, don’t forget to grab the Dave Gibbons artbook, Watching the Watchmen.
If you are more into movie related books (I personally do like a good one), there is the standard Film companion (which is probably the weakest offering actually) as you can have the Art of the Film which is bound to be more interesting, especially when you get work by such greats as Adam Hughes (who has always been one of my favourite artists of all time). But possibly my favourite tie in book of the entire movie might have to be the Portraits book, which is a collection of black and white photographs taken during the making of the movie.
Don’t forget to read these books while listening to the official soundtrack. Yeah this movie is going to make someone a TON of money, some definitely from me.
The problem is that 2008 lacked focus for these areas, so it’s time to provide them with a slight bit of structure. I doubt I’ll be able to meet these deadlines, although I might try and attempt to do something about it, the harsh reality is that life will no doubt get in the way; however it’s better to have some structure than none at all.
Japan Photo Album
Compile my Japan photos into a book. I’ve been meaning to do this for over a year. I can’t imagine this taking much of my time, except now that I’ve said that it’s bound to take a great deal of time.
Finish the script
This blasted thing has been waiting to be finished for months. In order to do anything I need to get some discipline. Therefore once a day for 1 hour (be it early in the morning or late at night), I will write for 1 hour. No internet breaks. Coffee break is at the beginning. Nothing but writing.
Clemency
This is the working title for a little book that myself and Stathi will be working on this year. It’s a very fringe project but I think it could be extremely good fun as we’ve been talking about this for years.
Character Designs
This is something that I hope to get into, although probably the toughest thing to do really, as I’ve not drawn anything properly for nearly a year. Hopefully I won’t suck too much at the beginning to discourage me. The creative process for me is something that is sorely lacking in my life right now. While I don’t want to put something like a number of sketches/drawings per month or per week, I do hope that I surpass last year’s tally, which came to a grand total of zero.
Broken Kode
Continued development of the ‘Kode goes without saying. The building blocks for version 8 have been established. I don’t intend to change anything in this design, except enhance it. Add more pages and consolidate the sheer amount of images and work I’ve created these past 6 years. It’s a tall order, but again not really in a rush, as I’ve got loads of other things to keep me occupied. However it’s important to make sure that i don’t let the work here eat into other projects time. Therefore the amount of time I’m allowed to tinker with the site, will again be limited to 1 hour maximum a day. This includes blogging/tweeting time.
Where the hell did a year go? The general consensus I’ve established from people close to me and others not so close to me is that this year has been a bit of a mixed bag in terms of whether I would consider it a classic year or one to put to bed and try and forget as soon as humanly possible.
Work
2008 started on a bit of a high professionally. I was coming off my largest project (and probably my favourite project) but the future looked equally fun and challenging. What I considered a complete dream team of engineers started work on a pretty prestigious project in early January. Unfortunately the project didn’t continue. As they say when one door closes another opens. I had my fair share of these this year. One lead me to Dubai, another lead me to Abu Dhabi, others kept me in London.
Ultimately however my absolute biggest achievement was finally getting chartered (which funnily enough had a lot to do with that project at the start of the year). The whole process took me around 8 months to get done and another 2 months to get a certificate from the Engineering Council. So a tip to all your prospective chartered engineers out there, it takes the better part of at least half a year to get this stuff sorted out.
Inbetween all of this I was able to actually continue teaching (and learning from) the younger generation of engineer working up through the ranks, which is something I’ve always enjoyed, especially with those that I can see the changes happen.
Pop Culture
The year can only be described as the year of the 1hour drama, or more accurately, it is the year I discovered HBO and everything was right with the world. For the first time in a really long while, I can probably count the number of movies I was genuinely excited about watching in the Cinema. Obviously the ‘Dark Knight’, ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Iron Man’ come high on this list, but in addition you had a Lebanese movie ‘Caramel’ and the excellent ‘Persepolis’. I found ‘Juno’ incredibly well put together and enjoyed it immensely. In terms of anime, there really wasn’t much new going on for me to get excited about. And of course my surprise movie of the year, SuperBad. It should be just that, super shit, but it ended up being extremely good fun to watch. The only anime movie I watched this year was ‘Origin’, but that movie doesn’t come close to ‘Paprika’ from last year.
However what I wasn’t ready for was this attack of truly inspired 1hour dramas from HBO. To kick it all off I started watching ‘The Wire’ The problem with starting on ths series is that everything else doesn’t come close to it’s perfection, it’s character development and it’s overall 5 year story. I could go on and on about the Wire but it would take too long. Shortly after that I followed it with ‘The Sopranos’. Now this was a series that I had started watching when it first came out, but the Greek television networks fucked it up and I lost interest. Finished this series as well and while most got annoyed by the ending, i thought it was masterful.
Following on from ‘The Sopranos’ was ‘Entourage’ and ‘Oz’. I’d never seen any of these series before, and they all blew me completely away.
The writer’s strike did one thing, and that’s give me the chance to actually discover previous gems from HBO. In my search to fill the void that Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Prison Break, Heroes had left I discovered the best television series ever made.
Speaking of Battlestar Galactica, only a couple of weeks to go before the start of the new series, and that is something I’m seriously looking forward to for the start of 2009…thankfully not a moment too soon, because I think I’ve run out of good HBO series to watch.
Sports
This year saw me quit basketball. This was a tough decision to make and I actually went back in September only to remember the reason why I quit in the first place. It’s about the people now not only the sport. I have to make a great deal of effort to play (compared to Greece or Uni) and the problem is I can’t bring myself to keep going in week after week for a sloppy game with stupid egos and arguments. Maybe (like a Phoenix) I’ll grab some games this year, but I’m not very hopeful.
Family
I was meant to go down to Lebanon for my cousin’s wedding. However due to complications with the groom’s health the timing never came about and I didn’t end up going, which is a shame. However in a weird way I was able to see several of my cousins that i hadn’t seen in years (some bordering on 10 years). I also lost a grandfather figure in my life and my grandmother suffered from a stroke. Thankfully I didn’t have too many health issues, except my ongoing saga with my teeth, which I should be sorting out in the new year when I get my wisdom teeth taken out.
Internet
Without a doubt this has been the worst year for the ‘Kode. For some reason I couldn’t get around sorting out a design for the bloody place and that had a serious effect on the place in general. I had a huge amount of work done on Habari in the opening months of this year, and then I moved on to other things as I continued work on the ‘script’ (more on that in a while). I don’t intend to increase my exposure on the net, but rather i intend to consolidate all my efforts for the past 5 years. I want to make sure
Artwork - Sadly this was probably the one area of my life that really took a serious hit this year. I don’t actually know if I actually got around to drawing anything significant in 2008. A couple of sketches here and there, but nothing of any significance - easily the most disappointing aspect of the year for me. Here’s hoping 2009 can be completely different.
Story
There is a threshold. For me to write anything, I really need to disassociate myself completely from my daily life for me to create. My brain just cannot handle the onslaught of information. I need to time. This year I had the opportunity to do this in Greece a couple of times, however the first script is not done yet but at least some decent progress has been made from the year before and the general building blocks are apparent.
So was it a classic year? From a creative, productive pov, no it wasn’t. This was the year that I burnt out, or at least felt like I was close to burning out. I think I achieved some goals professionally that I’ve been working towards for the past 6 years, which I feel great about, and getting citizenship will change my life completely.
I view 2009 as a year for regrouping and a year for consolidating my thoughts, efforts and creativity into one goal, and I view it as a year for focus.
Kickback Exhibition - Art from David Lloyd (you know of V for Vendetta fame)
Awesome work from Audrey Kawasaki - I especially like the colour palette that she chooses for her work.
The art of Pixar - A fan-curated gallery of inspiring artwork, good stuff in there.
Continuing my illustrators you should look at theme comes the awesome work of Jake Parker. I really like his pen and ink stuff more than his painted work, however both are all shades of great. Definitely going to pick up that little illustrated book of his.
Ian Kim based out of LA is definitely a rising talent to watch in the illustration work. His stuff does have that James Jean quality to it.
I saw the PATH graphic novel in the comic book store the other day, but the cover design left a lot to be desired from. However I am all over the artwork on the inside. I’ve got to say that those are some of the funkiest character designs I’ve seen in a while and the colour tones that have been chosen for the art really work with the character’s expressions.
The latest Banksy art is a stonker. I’ve not seen this up close yet, but I’m definitely going to be going down the road and checking it out. One Nation Under CCTV is an awesome feat of getting something done undetected in this city. I get pulled on camera something like 300 times a day! And that is what I love about Banksy, there is a message, which he does in a very funny way and presents some magic, in a ‘how the hell did he do that?’ sort of way.
Awesome.
It’s been a while since i’ve done something like this, but I can’t help myself, i’ve been sitting on this for months now.
Freakangles by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. Freakangel is a long form weekly comic (seems like 5 pages a week) that’s going to debut in February 2008. At some point I’m sure it’ll come out in print. This is pretty old news, but I only just noticed how good that bastard kid Paul Duffield. I know age shouldn’t matter much, but at 23 the little runt is far too good for his age. Go have a look at his stuff. The good news is that it seems that Paul will be doing some cover work for Ellis’s usually visually sub-par work published by Avatar (and also the reason I’ve only ever brought one Avatar book by Warren). It’s not that I think the art that’s published by Avatar is bad as such, it’s all technically adequate I guess, however it lacks a certain amount of finesse and class that Paul is bringing to the table, especially with his cover work for the new Ellis series, Anna Mercury.
Comics are just as much a visual medium as they are a written one; if the creators forget that, and see the art as something any monkey can contribute towards, they’ve missed the point COMPLETELY. It’s something I’ve noticed recently. When was the last time comic artwork truly inspired the reader? From my point of view, there are few artists that do that currently. Joshua Middleton is definitely one of them, as is James Jean, Tony Harris is always incredible to look at, Tomer Hanuka is another up and comer.