Muffin Mumblings

Bartman part 2

2008-05-10T20:16:00.003-04:00

So, here is the continuation of the Bartman comic I'm working on. It's only three pages, but that's enough I'd say. Here are my finished pencils for the story:

Right now I'm in the process of inking these pages, and plan to have those done by the end of the week. I need to, as I want to include these pages in my portfolio for Editors Day.

Editors Day is an event where various editors from comic publishing companies come to my school to review student's portfolios and give us tips on what we need to improve on. I desperately need the advice from someone who could be my boss one day.

Dita Von Teese as inspiration

2008-05-08T01:40:00.004-04:00

Ahh fashion. I've never been one who particularly follows fashion trends. I'm such a laid-back person when it comes to how I dress myself or what I look like. My personal style could probably only be described as an art student. I really don't know what style I fir into, I typically wear guy's shorts or skirts with very basic t-shirt like tops and usually a light hoodie. Oh, and my footwear is pretty much flip flops all year round. I dislike closed-toed shoes when I know I'm going to be out walking for long periods of time. As far as makeup goes, I rarely wear it. In fact, a few days ago I wanted to pretty myself up and I couldn't find all my makeup. It was quite sad, and I hope this just means I left most of it at home.

My hair is always pulled back, but it is also muti-coloured. I've been dying my hair unnatural colours for over 6 years now and have no intention on going back to my natural, boring, shade of brown. I also sport a centred lip piercing and small streched earlobes, but that's it. That's as fancy as I get!

Even though I don't dress fashionable, I do enjoy looking at attractive women and their personal fashion. At the moment, I really like the style of Dita Von Teese.

I'm aware that she's gained immese mainstream popularity in recent years but I've always loved her style. To me, she has kind of a weird face but she's also transformed herself quite a bit from her high school days:

She's always dressed to the nines. From what I recall, she doesn't like going out without looking her best, which is quite nice. Her corsets are simply amazing, and even when she's completely nude, she stil holds a graceful style most of us wish we could pull off. Dita's fashion is actually quite modest considering her career, and I like that dichotomy. She isn't prancing about in skimpy outfits outside of her show, for that I hold quite a bit of respect.

While I know I could never pull off her style, I do wish younger girls would take a hint from Dita and realize there's a difference between sexy and slutty. Dita's classic look is perfection with modestly. This is a key element that a lot of young women don't pay attention to any more, and that is quite sad.

You know, I think I would love to see someone embody Dita's 1950's style for that Dockers contest I mentioned a few posts back. That really would be pretty cool to see a Dockers ad showing the same sort of classic fashion.

If anybody does enter into the Dockers contest, no matter if your commercial has anything to do with Dita's style or not, let me know. I'd love to see it!

Just a few more weeks 'till summer

2008-05-08T01:37:00.002-04:00

Oh good, the week is almost over. Just one more class to get to and it's free sailing for three whole days. I finished the Bartman pencils today, and I'd really like to ink them for Editors Day. Hopefully I can scan them in to send to my professor and just keep my original pencils.

I'm both nervous and excited for Editors Day. I know I'll have a really terrible portfolio, but at least I'll be getting some very useful critiques!*

*I hope.

On the Frontier of New Horror

2008-05-08T00:57:00.003-04:00

Bloodlust, it's a trait that is present in every animal's soul. Humans, especially, have a taste for it, even if all of us may not openly admit it. If something particullary violent occurs, all of us will feel at least a little pang of curiosity. This simple fact is why we still produce and watch horror films.

I'm not a huge horror fan, mostly because I dislike movies that take themselves too seriously, but I do love my guts-n-gore. I'm no expert on the subject, but I have seen my fair share of horror flicks. It seems like films made in the United States have a different aesthetic from those made in Europe or Asia. In terms of pacing, Asian horror movies move far slower than our American gorefests. European ones tend to have their own, somewhat more fascinating, subtle take on the subject. However, since pretty much every horror film tries to build off of others we get an entire amalgam of features now, where it doesn't matter what country they were produced in.

Bah, I'm babbling. Like I said, I haven't seen enough horror films to really be a great critic but I do know what I like!

A new foreign horror flick is going to be released this Friday that I am curious to see because it's a decidley European take on the genre, Frontier(s). This film carries a bit of controversy with it as it was supposed to be released along After Dark's annual 8 Films to Die For for Horrorfest 2007, but due to its MPAA rating of NC-17 (i.e., the rating that all films fear but audiences look forward too), it was held back and is now being released in select American theatres under "unrated".

You can view the uncensored trailer on the official Frontier(s) website, along with other little clips to get your bloody palate salivating. It does look like quite an interesting film, as it involves great horror/thriller staples:

1.crappy, tenuius relationships
2. hicks
3. a group of shady 20-something kids
4. Neo-Nazis

Sounds like a proper horror film to me! I do want to check out all 8 films to die for anyway, and Frontier(s) is on that list.

Along with checking the select theater listings for Frontier(s), be aware that the DVD will be released on May 13th, so you won't miss out because you're local theatre isn't playing it.

Is there anything more satisfying than watching people get brutally murdered over ~2 hours? Why, yes, yes there is. For one, you could do it yourself. However, due to our basic moral standards, most of us will not decide to go down that path. For good reason, this is not a socially acceptable option as most of us don't want to go through all of that gorey mumbo jumbo. We do have video games! Like the great Silent Hill series...ooo yeah, nothing like staying up all night watching horror films interlaced with horror games!

For other general horror film news, the website Bloody Disgusting looks like a great source for reviews and information regarding all things horror. Just don't visit if you have a weak stomach and can't handle a whole lotta' gore at once.

The Simpsons make it all better.

2008-05-07T23:05:00.003-04:00

Mhm...it's the little things in life that make me happy. Knowing my schedule for next quarter is one of them, another is watching fabulous Simpsons episodes.

I've watched all of Series 4 a few times and it's definitely up there among my favourite seasons of The Simpsons.
Here's one of the great Treehouse of Horror episodes. The Simpsons 405 Treehouse of Horror III

Hosted by the wonderful, Watch The Simpsons Online, the best website I've found to find streaming videos of all of The Simpsons episodes.

Oh, also, this isn't from Season 4, but it's probably my favourite Treehouse of Horror story:

Homer: No Beer and T.V. make Homer go...something...something...
Marge: Go Crazy?
Homer: DON'T MIND IF I DO!!!BBWWAFDAKJKJKLDAHK

See more awesome random screencaps at the LiveJournal community, Simpsons Fix

Dockers Contest!

2008-05-06T01:11:00.003-04:00

Ahh, jeans. The fall back pair of pants that almost everybody owns. From the cultured runways of Paris, to Aboriginal tribes of Australia, there are few clothing items as ubiquitous as jeans. Well, everyone except me that is. I grew out of wearing jeans once I hit that certain age where a girl gets lazy and doesn't feel like tight-fitting women's pants really accentuates her assets. Main point is that I never feel comfortable in jeans, or women's pants for that matter. I tend to buy my pants in the men's section, favouring khaki loose cargo style over straight-legged denim. But I'm probably a minority in this sense, but just because I don't wear jeans doesn't mean I can't appreciate their commercials.

Right now, there is a Dockers contest taking place at NBC.com for a great commercial spot to be shown during the Jay Leno show on June 13th. Pretty exciting to have a commercial you made appear on national television eh?

All you have to do is submit a 30-second advertisement for Dockers, pretty simple right? Surely this contest would look great on a resume, or maybe even an addition to a portfolio reel for those film students out there.

Below are what other entrants have submitted. My personal favourite is the "Historically Pants Have Had Many Names" one. Perhaps I just love hearing old words. Oh trousers, what a lovely description of pants.

If commercials are not your thing, take a trip to the Dockers website anyway, they've got a great Dream Vacation contest going on now too. However, while you can have a lovely vacation, you won't get a chance to show your fantastic and creative commercial on t.v. Hard decision, right?

Bartman Part 1, pages 3-5 of Crime Spree on Springfield 2

2008-05-01T18:33:00.002-04:00

Here are my tight roughs for The Simpsons comic we're currently working on. I do love The Simpsons, but I have a really hard time drawing in Matt Groening's style:

I tried to clean them up a little, but this is pretty much how dirty my drawings end up getting anyway.

We're drawing pages 3,4, and 5 of The Simpsons comic Crime Spree on Springfield 2! Sorry, that's apparently the best link I can find pertaining to the story. The pages are broken down like this though:

Page 3- Bartman and Houseboy swing heroically down the zipline into Bart's backyard and follow Bartdog through a fence.

Page 4- Bartdog goes into a sewer pipe and Bartman and Houseboy follow. Houseboy, being the nerd that he is, is afraid and fantasizes about unicorns and waffles as they walk through the nasty pipe.

Page 5- They exit into a bizarro Springfield, wander around and try to understand this new, oddly familiar, place.

Our finished pencils are due next Thursday so I'll post those when I get a chance as well. They'll also be much cleaner and hopefully easier to understand than these roughs.

Gotham by Gaslight Part 2

2008-04-30T22:17:00.002-04:00

As a follow-up to this post, here are the completed inks for my Gotham by Gaslight page.

After viewing other people's results, I decided to run out and pick up some expensive, but good, Escoda brushes. These have been recommended by all of my Sequential professors, so I really hope they last me a while and I can actually get good results with them.

I'm not too disappointed with my piece though, it's alright. I'm quite happy with the first panel though. I like working with inks, but I'm not completely used to just black and white.

Oh well. This is the one and only time in that class we're inking a piece, so now it's all about pencil. Our next project is a few pages from a Bartman script. That'll be...alright. I love The Simpsons, but I have a hard time drawing in the Matt Groening style.

Sparky

2008-04-30T21:39:00.002-04:00

I'm always happy to take on ideas to blog. My mind is too tired to create anything with real substance, unfortunately, so prompts are fantastic. Which is primarily why I signed up with Izea, PayPerPost and SocialSpark. I'm pretty happy with Izea's companies, even though I've only been blogging with them for about a year, every post I do is met with excitement. No matter if it's a mundane subject or not.

What I like about Izea, and especially SocialSpark, is their focus on the blogger. The forums are filled with people who are both pros and newbies at blogging, and conversation is promoted well. If you have something negative to say, you won't be censored. If you have a question regarding a post, you will be answered with bloggers and Izea staff alike. It's great!

SocialSpark is kind of like PayPerPost Vr. 2.0, in that it is set up a little differently but still works basically the same way. Social Spark still provides:

-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

It also utilizes Izea's blog rating system known as RealRank, which is an improvement over using Google's PageRank. If you're in the paying blog universe, you're probably well aware of Google's PageRank drop last summer, where a lot of us lost our coveted pageranks or the number went down. To non-paying bloggers, this massively effects what kind of posts you can take, and hurts us. RealRank is an improvement, and SocialSpark utilizes it well.

I'm really happy I signed up with SocialSpark, having a little extra income while blogging is a fantastic thing.

Quick Quick

2008-04-28T21:32:00.005-04:00

Just a quick update, I'm still around, but last weekend was just...bleh. I really didn't feel like getting anything done, and so, I really didn't. Unfortunately I'm paying for being lazy now and have a bit of homework to catch up on.

Ugh, I love my classes this quarter, but it needs to be summer already.

Poor Girl

2008-04-21T00:59:00.002-04:00

Speaking of my last entry....

My poor roommate has had quite a weekend. Her cold, fever (which, thankfully, seems to have gone away), and then a bad cut on her thumb. She was in the middle of cutting a large piece of matboard, and slipped.

I think my "motherly" side comes out when people get sick or hurt. I end up knowing what to do and can take charge of the situation and help as best I can. With my roommate, this included having several medicines and band aids on hand, while being able to tend to her wound because she was too dizzy to look at it. I never really got into being a mother. All things considered, I don't want to be. I don't want to deal with children, never have. I'd much rather deal with an adult, or person who is older than 10.

Oh well, all things considered, I help where I can.

Going from bad to worse

2008-04-19T11:38:00.001-04:00

Well, unfortunately, my roommate has a bit of a fever. She's been battling a cold for a few weeks now. There's a flu that's been going around the school again. It's pretty bad, as in unable to eat bad, and we were worried it might be that. However, the only symptoms she has are a sore throat and loss of voice.

In fact, earlier today she said she was feeling better. But, night rolls around and she gets the typical fever problem of feeling hot and then cold and then hot, etc. etc. Being the mini-pharmacist that I am, I had a thermometer and a big bottle of Ibuprofen on hand so she's all set.

I feel terrible for her, and a bit worried about my own health of course, but mainly I hope she gets over this quickly and that it doesn't escalate into something worse. Hopefully, this spike in temperature is the worst of it and she'll quickly recover.

I really don't need to battle a throat cold on top of my sneezy allergies >.<

Oscar, World's Ugliest Bird

2008-04-18T17:46:00.003-04:00

This is both sad, cute, and funny.

It's Oscar, who has been deemed the world's ugliest bird!

Poor girl seems to have the bird version of Trichotillomania, which makes her compulsively pull out all her feathers because of irritation.

She can't reach the ones on her head, for obvious reasons. Oscar currently resides in the Humane Society where she's stayed for 12 years. She seems like a real sweetheart, and her condition is quite unfortunate.

Birds look quite odd featherless, would you agree?

I can feel cool air again

2008-04-18T17:34:00.002-04:00

Finally, after over 6 months of living with a crappy air conditioner, our unit got replaced.

Oh it's marvellous, you can actually feel cool air! The old unit we kept on high constantly, even during the winter months, and you could barely feel it. Even my roommate, who's head is right over it when she sleeps, couldn't feel much air. It was ridiculous.

When I first complained and got a maintenance guy to come up, he just said "oh, some units don't work as well"...thanks guy, great answer. Bullshit. With a little over a month left in the school year, we've had it with this air conditioner and I went back down to residence life and complain. We're planning on spending next year in the same room, so there's no need to be stuck with a crappy A/C unit.

This time they sent a maintenance guy who actually took the unit apart to see what was the trouble. Within a half hour of his active repair attempt, he decided to bring us a new one. Or, well, a refurbished one.

Finally! Now that wasn't so hard, was it school?

Now my roommate needs to get her bed fixed (it's dangerously wobbly) and we should be all set to have a comfy stay next year.

Gotham by Gaslight part 1

2008-04-18T01:40:00.006-04:00

At the moment I'm working on a Gotham by Gaslight page for my inking class. It's fairly boring, but here's my tight rough:

From there, I blow up the image onto a 10 x 15" piece of Bristol board and start my pencils. Right now I've only got a basic outline draw in, but over the next few days I'll have the page finished.

Anyhoo, Gotham by Gaslight takes place in a Victorian version of Gotham city with a Jack the Ripper-esque character going around killing women. As in, it's not bloody London, it's not New York, it's an amalgam of the two resulting in an antique style Batman.

We had to restyle Batman's outfit as well as come up with character designs for the Jack-like character and a simple prostitute. I came up with a sort of mix between Sherlock Holmes and Batman, I'll post pictures when I have time to scan it in.

A few nights ago I stumbled upon a really interesting site which features some very cool action figure designs. Sillof's Workshop takes such classics as Star Wars, The Avengers, and the Justice League and creates awesome steampunk style toys.

He has a section for the Gaslight Justice League featuring his take on Batman:

I'd like to point out that I did my design before finding this site and I'm happy that I did, because the only similarity between our two designs is his cape. And even with that, mine's a tad different. I'll post my Batman design when I have time to scan it along with my finished pencils.

I suppose I'm a bit of a steampunk with my artwork. I really thrive on creating mechanical beings and am a fan of Victorian fashions. I suppose I should expand more on this style in the future as it's really quite fun to draw.

One of my favourite sections of Sillof's site is his section on Steampunk Star Wars. His redesigns of C-3PO and Darth Vader are fantastic.

I only wish he had more in his about me section. I'd love to know what tools he uses or have a tutorial on how to customize action figures like this. For now I'll just have to settle with his pretty pictures and hope he continues to update more in the future. Go check out his site if you're into Steampunk or just good customized action figures.

$240 worth of pudding

2008-04-18T00:17:00.004-04:00

So, I think I'm going to start featuring clips of shows that I partically enjoy and wish to share. Last post I shared the cutlery barn sketch from The State, a sketch show that had a lot of great comedians on it.

Well, here's another clip from the show where Barry and Levon do a sexy little dance with ...well...you'll figure it out.

I don't remember ever watching this show when it came out in 1993 on MTV, but I love Stella and Reno 911!, so naturally The State is right up my alley.

There's something endearing about silly sketch shows. Odd humour is what draws me in, surreal humour is even better.

The State: Season 1 is supposed to be out on DVD any time now, but it's mysteriously absent. Oh well. Until then, I'll always have Wet Hot American Summer

I was just at the Cutlery Barn...

2008-04-17T00:13:00.002-04:00

I've become addicted to finding weird comedy shows. So far I've developed quite a collection of British funnies, and recently I happened upon the old Ben Stiller Show and The State, which has several members of Reno 911 and Stella! in it.

I leave you now with one of the weirder skits from The State. Simply titled "Cutlery Barn". See if you can spot Lt. Jim Dangle and Deputy Trudy Wiegel!

Cutlery Barn

Wacom sadness.

2008-04-17T00:12:00.002-04:00

I think my wacom finally kicked the bucket.

aw poo.

I suppose this is to be expected of course, yet another expense I need to factor into my budget this year.

At least we had a good 8 years together.

Lovely Black Box

2008-04-17T00:04:00.002-04:00

Well, the year of large purchases continues. The t.v. in my dorm room recently had the evil problem of getting green corners on the screen, caused by magnetic interference from my fridges. It's a CRT, and we've had it off the fridges for a little over a week. It's gotten better, but I know it will come back.

Which is why I offered to buy us a new one.

A new LCD HDTV that is.

It was a hard choice between the 23" Samsung and the 26" Toshiba, but after viewing them in Best Buy, I'm pretty happy with my choice to go with the Samsung. Yep, I'm quite excited about this new t.v. However, now we have to try and sell the 20" Magnavox CRT t.v. Hopefully this will be a good time to do so, when kids are moving out of the dorms and willing to buy stuff.

it's like that one but black instead of white.

Although now my roommate is considering just keeping it to use the year after I graduate. Since I'm a year ahead of her.

I look forward to many years of happy television watching with my baby.

June Love

2008-04-17T00:02:00.001-04:00

June needs to get here ASAP.

I'm really looking forward to this summer. I only hope everything works out for the best.

Scarfe Night

2008-04-16T16:43:00.004-04:00

Gerald Scarfe's talk was fabulous last night. He basically showed a lot of his illustrations with personal commentary on each one.

His personal views on politics I think aptly resembled that of everyone at the lecture. He really does believe many to be asses, and his comparison of George Bush to a scared, confused little chimp was received with much applause.

Perhaps what I found most interesting about the evening was when he touched on the subject of animation and his work with operas. Gerald was the character designer on Disney's Hercules.

He said that Disney treated him well, which was nice to hear since I've heard many horror stories about the company. He also talked about his experience working for several years on The Wall with Roger Waters, which gave some insight into that type of long-term work.

His resume is quite full, and worth a read if you've never heard of him before. Probably one of his best illustration artbooks to date is Drawing Blood.

The room, which was only set up to hold about 300 people, became packed with standing room only available. Perhaps the coolest part of the evening was hearing Scarfe mention my friend Anna. She's the one who originally contacted him for a school project, and from there her professor took over and they succeeded in getting him to visit.

After the talk, Anna ran off to have dinner with him and a few of her professors. I'm sure it was a dream come true for her and I'm glad to have had this opportunity to meet him.

A Simple Invitation

2008-04-15T16:11:00.004-04:00

It would be nice if Comedy Central would stop showing the same four repeat episodes of Scrubs over and over again. I love that show, but I get tired of it when I see the same episode more than 5 times. They're also episodes I don't especially enjoy, because of the plot and characters featured. Anyway, one of the episodes they showed again today is the one where JD visits a doctor convention and see the woman he broke up with who faked her miscarriage. That's not the point of this post, of course, there is a funny little scene where Elliot freaks out on her fiancee Keith, because he got the wrong font on their wedding invitation.

She goes off on a whole spiel about how if the invitations are wrong the wedding will be a disaster, she'll get fat and her life will be ruined. Now, of course this is overreacting. No wedding invitation font will destroy your life if it's not perfect. But it is funny how so many women get so caught up in their wedding planning that even a small detail like this makes the whole day feel like a disaster.

I'm not one of these women. I've never been the type to seriously plan my dream wedding, frankly I don't care. I just want a simple ceremony that isn't too expensive and that everyone can enjoy. Really, cost is the biggest driver behind my future wedding ceremony decisions.

That said, it's still fun to browse through wedding-related things. Like dress books, cake magazines, and Wedding Invitations.

I'm a fairly simple kind of gal, I don't like overtly cheesy cards, or one with traditional photos of a bride and groom. Really, I'm not a traditional type of person. I'd probably go with something simple, like this card stye.

I also don't especially enjoy calligraphic fonts, but I know it's a staple of wedding invites. I believe in looking through several kinds before choosing one. Really, this is a bit of a weakspot for 1st Class Wedding Invitation.com, they don't label their fonts or give examples. It's just "Font 1-70". I don't especially want to sit through 70 mystery fonts. I want to see exactly what the font is before trying it out. Saves time in the long run and makes it easier to compare two or more different kinds.

That said, this is probably what my invitation would look like:

The website does have a lot of options for invitation types, colours and fonts. However, I would probably just prefer to design my own invite as I do have graphic design and art experience. I know this is not an option for everyone, and I know there are millions of women out there who are just like Elliot and thrive in this sort of website environment.

It's not my cup of tea, but it's the perfect website for many women who want a lot of options in their invitations.

snifffles

2008-04-14T22:55:00.002-04:00

I've never been more certain that I'm allergic to a place than I am at this moment. Savannah, your air sucks and your poller and mold counts are far too large. I should not be sneezing this much in my own little room.

I hate you, city. Oh so very much

Excuse the dust

2008-04-12T20:42:00.003-04:00

Well, I recken' it's time to change the ol' layout here. Things were starting to get a little stale.

Hope you all like the new look. It's very....pink... I don't really like pink, unless it's in bubblegum ice cream.

[EDIT] changed the background to a more orange hue. Doesn't remind me nearly as much of bubblegum.

Hello Muffin my old friend...

2008-04-12T13:40:00.005-04:00

So! what've I been up to these past 10 days you might ask? What on Earth has been keeping me from updating this blog with new art or anything of the like?

Well!

Not much unfortunately.

School has been truckin' along. Nothing really exciting to write about though. Next Tuesday I'll get to meet and listen to the amazing Mr. Gerald Scarfe. That should be quite an evening and I hope I remember my camera. If you're unfamiliar with Scarfe's work, he was the animator behind Pink Floyd's The Wall:

As well as character designer for Disney's Hercules and artist of several politically incorrect drawings. Needless to say, I'm quite excited for this.

On my own end of art things, I spent the first several weeks of the quarter illustrating three pages of Chickasaw Adventures as an exercise. They're not very good, so I won't subject you to that. However, I also got the opportunity to draw a cartoon version of a live action show for my character design class. I chose the wondiferous, Mighty Boosh.

Those in America may be somewhat unfamiliar with the show. Don't ask me to describe it to you, because it really is something you just have to see to understand.

I drew Tony Harrison instead of Bob Fossil because I like him a tad more.

What's on the horizon you ask?

Well! Up next I've got a Batman by Gaslight page to doodle and a maquette to create. As soon as I have my camera back I'll post photos of the cowputer maquette and head-lamp I created last quarter. Soon, I swear.