SwitchBlade

Wow, there goes any semblance of a regular update schedule. Sheesh!

Won’t go into details, but real life has been rearing it’s ugly head again, hence the delay.  Good news is that I’m begining to feel more comfortable with the characters. Also, the drawings are coming out easier all the time.

Started a new Twitter for Rorschach. The latest posts will appear in the right sidebar in addition to it’s own page.

Picked up a new neck pillow this week. Starting to feel almost human again. Would’ve had a perfect night’s sleep if i hadn’t just gotten billed for a medical procedure I had done a year ago…Wasn’t much, but still! How long does it take to process a stupid claim? *sigh*

Work has been nuts the past few weeks. We all had to juggle about three projects at the same time, all with tight deadlines. Will jump back onto comic again this weekend. Ought to be easy since I have to spend part of my weekend catching up at work, where we all use Cintiqs ^^. That always inspires me to draw more.

Comic’s coming along in between stretches of work and neck induced headaches.

Just saw an advanced screening of Watchmen.

Good News: Rorschach, and the actor who played him, kicked major ass.

Bad News: Everyone else sucked, and sucked hard.

I guess I’m prejudiced because I read the book, but the performances were all flat, like they were just breezing through the script. Revelations that were supposed to be shocking ended up being anti-climactic, in part because they cut out so much of the side story. Basically, the book is just impossible to condense down to movie form, even at 3 hours. There’s too much you have to know in advance in order for the answers to the questions that drive the plot to have any weight. I think this lead to the acting coming off as phoned in, since the actors might not have read the book and only knew what they read in the script, thus they didn’t understand their characters like they were supposed to. The end result being that the actors didn’t sell it and I for one wasn’t able to buy it.

Long story short, they should’ve made it as a 12 part mini-series.

The worst offenders acting-wise were Laurie Juspeczyk (they just call her Laurie Jupiter in the movie), The Comedian and especially Adrian Veidt. His performance in particular during the climactic scenes at the end were just plain wooden. Again, they cut out most of his backstory, so he just came off as Mr. Creepy Guy.

Again, the guy who played Rorschach definitely got him right. He was obsessed with a black-and-white view of justice, damaged, ragged, uncompromising, quick on his feet and just plain psychotic; just the way I like him . His performance, especially during his final scenes, stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of the mediocre acting he was surrounded with.

Plus, the movie does LOOK good, and there’s plenty of geeky details for fans to pick out, but that sort of thing is par for the course anymore. Eye-popping effects and gratuitous sex/violence are a dime a dozen, even when they’re good. If they just gave a damn more about telling a halfway decent story with all that technology. After all, It’s a STORYTELLING medium, Mr. Snyder.

I also noticed that Alan Moore didn’t allow his name to be put into the credits, as he is well known for disavowing any filmed versions of his works. Between this and the film version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I can understand why. The only film of his comics that was any good to me was V for Vendetta, which is strange considering how overhyped the Wachoski Brothers have turned out to be.

Just read that there’s going to be a Director’s Cut coming out in July, plus the DVD’s going to have the Tales Of The Black Freighter side plot as an extra. Will have to wait and see if this redeems the film in mine eyes, though I don’t see how it’ll fix the flat acting.

Wellllllllls, been almost a month and those plucky Kiers are still stuck up on that overpass… What can I say? Work has been kicking my ass lately, in a good way. Got a lot of cool stuff finished, but it’s sapped my energy for my beloved comic. I’ve been working on it, but it’s in those small, minutes-long spurts in between work and passing out on the bed after work. (Oh and my Yuukied friends getting me hooked into L4D may have a bit to do with it too *shakes fist*).

Rest assured that there’s an update coming and it should be up for next Tuesday. Lineart’s all done and I’m messing with shadows, which is one of my favorite phases because you can really see a scene achieve physical depth once you know where the light’s coming from.

More and more, I’ve diverging from the ’script’ up on the forums. You’d think this would be a bad thing, but I seem to operate best writing-wise when I can improvise off of a fixed set of circumstances. I don’t enjoy things so well with everything written in stone. I can do it, but I’d feel like a hired artist in my own comic. There’s all sorts of variations and oddness that come swimming through my oversized noggin’, and it’d drive me batty (er) to just ignore it, which would defeat one of the main purposes for doing it in the first place.

So thanks to all who’ve kept up with me so far as I figure out the best way to do this. I have every intention of sticking with it and I hope you’ll come along for the admittedly slow ride.

Finally, out the frakking door! Hope the extra detailing makes up for the wait somewhat.

Going to be redoing the titlebar in the near future. It looks great, but it’s too tall, taking up precious screen space that should be set aside for the comic. It’ll probably look quite a bit different since the graphic elements don’t look nearly as good shrunken down to fit in a narrower space.

Battlestar’s back on and it’s a beautiful thing. I’m sad that it’s the last episodes, but I’m glad they seem to be heading for a very strong finish. Plus, there’s another TV movie and the series ‘Caprica’ coming up to keep my BSG fix satisfied for a while yet.

Wonder if future generations will even know of the original Battlestar series, or even of ‘Galactica ‘80′ (Ooh, on second thought, some things are best left gratefully forgotten). The first series still occupies a warm place in my cheesy heart. Lloyd Bridges is still the best Cain. The new one is a frakking psycho.

Feeling good about the story. I’m beginning to go off script a bit, but the overall idea should still be intact. Still have to re-invent a few things on the fly, which is tough because you want things to be consistent and to make sense, so you have to plan ahead a lot.

…and there goes my buffer. Ahh well, t’was nice while it lasted.

Due to family stuff, I’ll probably have to resort to filler for the post coming up on the 20th. I’ll probably go with a preview of the page I’ve been working on, or maybe I’ll do something with an Inauguration theme.^^;

Been busy at work, which given the current state of the economy, is quite the good thing. However, I’ve only had time  to do comic work in small bits; an hour here, 20 minutes there. It’s amazing how all those little drawing patches add up, inspiring me to keep plugging away at it. Still working out what I REALLY have time for production-wise, which was a handy bit of advice I got from Piro at Megatokyo many moons ago. It’s been a useful axiom to have, as I’m prone to a bit of denial concerning how much work a project may actually take to pull off.

As of now, I got most of the lineart done. Still one or two things to figure out, but it shouldn’t take long. Had to do a bit of rewriting on this to make it work.

In less than a week, we get to install our brand new president. Ought to be quite the upgrade from the last one…

First page, at last! Sorry it doesn’t look like much right now, but it should get better in the next few pages. I’m still figuring out what kind of pacing I want storywise, and right now I seem to be favoring ’slow-but-steady’.

Hope everyone had a great holiday. Got to play with my mom’s new kitty when I went back to the Motherstate for a visit. Took a while, but she (the cat) finally deemed me worthy enough to sleep on. Of course, this meant I could no longer move until she felt like getting off.  Still, I miss having a kitty of my very own, but that might just change in the near future…

Also, finally went Blu-Ray this year. Best Buy had a sale on some Sony models and I jumped. Got Wall-E, Dark Knight, Iron Man and Hellboy II already along with some other stuff. Looked freaking awesome on my mom’s HDTV, but only average on my old Sony Trinitron CRT flatscreen. Going to have to get an HDTV of my own soon, but I feel guilty, as there’s nothing broken on my current TV. Usually, things like DVD players, stereo receivers, or iPods end up breaking down on me just in time for a tech upgrade, even if it’s bad timing for my bank account ^^:. I’ve had this TV for at least 6 years and nothing’s wrong with it, other than it’s now outdated. I’d sell it on craigslist, but with the big upcoming switch to digital occuring soon, I don’t think I could give it away now. Guess I’m just too sentimental towards any technology that has served me so well these many years. Feels kinda crappy to reward it by just dumping it off at a recycling center, assuming I can find one.

At least you can usually count on Sony making durable, high-quality product, unlike some other manufacturers I could mention… (see Samsung).

Anyway, comic-wise, stay tuned for a dose of high-octane, heart pounding, gridlocked-in-traffic, family dysfunction action for next week!

If all goes according to plan, a sufficient comic buffer should be built up in time for the launch. Now that the site is more or less barebones ready, I can focus more on drawing.  Of course I pick the holidays to do this, so plans may yet change. Will post updates as they happen.