Typical Wednesday

Finished off the High-Def Digest article, though I’ll sit on it and give it the once over tomorrow before sending it off. Also started on a script for a comic the Wife’s been meaning to do for a while now. This is always fun. We make a good team. In other Wife-ly news the picture below that I once featured:

Has been selected to appear in a Street Fighter Tribute art book by Udon Entertainment.

And I should really get around to checking out Sunshine now that I’ve got that Blu-Ray disc sitting around…

Bears On Parade

The Wife agreed to contribute to a “tour of bears” that’s going on in Toronto. Seems a company has created Do It Yourself designer bears known as Bax Bears that are essentially blank slate plastic bears that are meant to be drawn and/or painted on. To kick it off, the Vancouver-based company that created the bears asked Canadian artists to take a bear and do what they would with it.

This is the Wife’s end result, which was put on display at a neighborhood gallery when the show went up today:

Again With The Comics

First, there is this:

As with most artwork here, you can click on it to enlarge it, but that’s a sample of character designs for the story the Wife and I are working on for Sonny Liew’s comic anthology. I really like how long the lines are, and how it just screams elegant. I’m really happy with this.

Also, there may be still more scripting to be done. As I mentioned yesterday the visit to the Royal Ontario Museum got a lot of ideas flying around in my head, so I sent an e-mail to one of the other artists participating in the anthology and asked him if he’d be interested in collaborating on the idea I have. He seems receptive, so I’m just going to wait and see whether or not he actually wants to go ahead with this, and if he does, then I’ll have two stories in this anthology. Admittedly, it will be weird if he goes for it and I don’t see my stories being crafted under the hands of the Wife. I doubt this is something I could do with any regularity as it just feels off kilter thinking she won’t be drawing it.

Aside from that, it was a quiet Saturday run down to Bloor where movies were returned, more were rented, art supplies were purchased and, on the way home, we finally had our first run with a Crazy Lady. It’s not that she seemed particularly wild eyed, or smelled of the streets from Europe during the plague years, but the fact that she stopped to talk to us while we were looking at bug spray, then told us not to buy it, then talked about the dangers of synthesized materials, then jumped over to the NAFTA agreement and how Bush has a plan to take over Canada and that all of this is a big secret, and the fact that she calmly did all this while we put the bug spray away, said “We gotta’ be going now,” walked to another part of the store where she followed us, then walked out of the store, where she kept right on following us, then half-way down the street before finally giving up was the indicator that perhaps she wasn’t merely trying to make polite conversation in the aisles.

I TOTALLY have to use her in a story some time, but I don’t know when.

Artist Day

Today was spent largely living in the Wife’s world, that is to say, the world of an illustrator. We hung out with a guy named Huan, a very talented Vietnamese-Canadian artist who’s part of an artists group here called the Sketch Motel of which the Wife is a part of. We had a fine meal at a restaurant who’s name escapes me, which is situated on College Street, the somewhat more upscale version of Bloor where the Wife and I usually frequent. After that, it was sitting around at his place while all kinds of artsy things were discussed. Being a geek, I perused his collection of DVDs to borrow a few things and made off with the Sci-Fi triple pack of The Last Starfighter, Titan A.E. and 12 Monkeys. It’s nice to be able to see a real community of like-minded people all just pulling together like this and sharing, talking and generally encouraging each other.

In other news I also just found out that mutual friend of ours in Singapore by the name of Sonny Liew, a comic book artist, just got nominated for an Eisner Award for best penciller. If you don’t follow comics, that’s basically the equivalent of an Oscar Nomination, so I’m mightily impressed, especially considering that Sonny is such a nice, humble, obscenely talented guy that quietly goes about the business of creating some drop dead gorgeous artwork. He’s amazingly talented, and completely deserves the nomination. And, if nothing else, he’s another one of those annoying stories about what happens if you just knuckle down and decide “I really want this,” and then go on to get it through sheer hard work and love of the craft. I know of too many stories of folks with aspirations to writing, art or film who don’t make it, citing various reasons like how insular their particular chosen industry to break into is, or how unfairly stacked against them the odds are, when all it really boils down to is their just not willing to do the work, and would rather just watch movies and or distract themselves with other pop culture pleasantries rather than simply sit down and sweat it out. I’m really happy this is happening for Sonny.

And here’s the latest from the Wife. Actually, it’s one of the first things she drew when she arrived in Canada, it just took her a while to finish it, but now that she has discovered the wonders of Canadian beer, I guess she felt obligated to finally color and finish her interpretation of Canada. Witness, Beer:

Just Another Tuesday

Which actually feels like Monday, since the World seemed to have really “woken up” today. There’s only been work, GameAxis articles, the novel, and some typical errands, like running down to the post office to pick up a package (which turned out to be our Peter S. Beagle signed copy of The Last Unicorn) and the usual grocery store run.

Oh, and here, belatedly, is the Wife’s Easter Picture. As usual, you can click on it to enlarge it:

And On A Comic Book Related Note

The Wife’s rendition of Psylocke, she of the Psi-Blade, the focused totality of her psychic power. As usual, you can click on the picture to enlarge it.

Also, there’s this…

The first of the AAA titles for the next generation of consoles finally has a trailer. It’s also the first of the big league franchises to have a locked down release date of October 16, but that’s only if you’ve got an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3. Still, it’s looking pretty sweet, and they’ve finally stopped messing around with fictional cities and just dropped you in the middle of New York, so you can bet the anti-game proponents are going to have a field day with how this will be a simulator for terrorists to conduct practice runs on their next 9/11 tragedy…

Also, Lost In Loveless finally has some good momentum going behind it, as I’m now moving into the juicy stuff that motivated me to write this book in the first place. It’s always fun when you finally get to the moments that inspired you, and I’ve already had a couple of surprise moments on the way that have shed more light on the story. Whoo.

Work, Movies and Velma

As you can see, the Wife suddenly got motivated to finish the sketch of Velma that she did in black & white way back when we were still in Singapore. I don’t remember Velma looking quite this slinky, but I sure ain’t gonna’ complain about it.

Other than that, this was another delightfully boring Friday where we didn’t hit the town and do all kinds of urbane, cosmopolitan things. Instead, I finished up my articles for GameAxis for the month and then after that, powered through Tetsuo The Ironman, which is another Japanese WTF film that I simply cannot describe. Except to say that only the Japanese would decide to give a man a giant drill as his new genitalia, and only they would be curious to see what it would look like were he to use it on a woman.

‘Nuff said…

The other movies that were viewed were all existing ones in our collection, simply because I’m slowly going through all our films now that we can watch them in widescreen and high definition, just to see what they look like. Today was bits and pieces of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (okay, I admit it, once again, the Spock dies scene moved me to tears, dammit…) and The Matrix, which, since I hadn’t seriously looked at it in years, actually had improved. I mean, I liked it a hell of a lot before, but in light of recent “science fiction” efforts like The Island, The Matrix is a freakin’ masterpiece in that it does manage to combine some amazing action with some actual intelligence and a really, REALLY interesting idea.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch Clash of the Titans.

Tomorrow, The Last Unicorn and how you can help Peter S. Beagle…

Not A Cartoon Character

Instead, The Wife started wondering whether or not them crazy female devils ever decided to take up new and interesting hobbies. Like bodybuilding and professional wrestling. Y’know, wholesome stuff like that…

Also, after tabulating all the “funny books” I have now arrived at the grand total of us having approximately 160 graphic novels between us, most of it English, some purely in Japanese for art reference. Of those, there are two separate copies of the entire Sandman run, one in trade, which is mine, and one in hardcover, which is hers. Am now tabulating DVDs, and just. Doesn’t. End. So far, the only noticeable casualty of borrowing seems to be our copy of Triumph The Insult Dog, which was loaned to someone and for the life of me I can’t remember who it was anymore. Oh well…

Also, in retrospect, it was naive in the extreme to believe we had less than $3000 worth of stuff… So much for cheap insurance…

Nowhere Is Still Going Somewhere

Just veeeeeeery sloooooowly. The sketchy artwork to the left (clickable as usual for enlargement) is a rendering of Fen, one of the main characters of the story. Yes, he is an Elf with a katana. No I am not going to explain why, not here. There’s a fairly lengthy story behind that, and it will have to wait for the comic to be told.

Speaking of which, yes, the comic. It is still sitting on a pile over at Slave Labor Graphics, a smaller, indie style publisher, and we have been told that the Chief Guy Who Picks Comics, Dan Vado, has indeed seen the submission sitting on said pile. He just hasn’t looked at it yet. Having had much experience with the speed with which book publishers work, this comes to me as no surprise whatsoever. When you actually have a buzillion other things to do–like making sure your existing titles come out on time, for example–finding some time to look at new stuff and consider it can take a while. Still, at least that’s not a “no.”

At least not yet. Oh well back to tweaking some scripts…

Wendy Is No Longer Good And Is Very, Very Naughty.

The wife has gone and done it again. For reference, here’s the old, traditional version of Wendy, the good little witch, friend of Casper:

And now here’s new Wendy, as done by The Wife. Which is the tastier cola?

I vote new. Once again, you can click on it for a larger view.