Here's how I occupied much of my time in 1985. One of the best parts of Dungeons & Dragons was collecting lead miniatures and painting them. I still have lots of unpainted minis but here are most of the completed ones, and some closeups of my favorites. I spent a lot of time on these, being such a perfectionist, and I'm somewhat surprised today by the detail I put into them. I would definitely need a magnifying glass these days.


Jabberwocky!


Curly, Moe, and Larry.


Lizardman.


Lich Wizard.


Not quite a Rakshasa - more of a Japanese were-tiger. I had fun doing the decorative armor.


Fierce!

Have a merry one, everybody!

Dudes, I'm super excited to be telling you that me and my Friends Of the Nib chums will be doing a group show at Howard House this Thursday, Dec. 3rd (604 2nd Ave Seattle, WA 98104). There will be a ton of work at affordable prices so come on down.

Here are two of the pieces I'm submitting. Taste the excitement!

Done for the Friends of the Nib annual Halloween show. This year, the theme is "freaks" so I chose the Panamanian Blue Hills Monster. Such a pathetic creature and I like sloths, so my heart goes out to the poor guy.




9"x12" acrylic on canvas (crummy photo).

The ol' Friends of the Nib are doing some playing cards and here's my entry. It's a watercolor and I tried this technique of doing the shading as an underpainting in acrylic so that the watercolors would not activate it and I could put simple flat color on top. I've got a ways to go before I really get the hang of it (the underlying shadows don't really complement the skin tones) but it was fun to do. I did it at 9x12 in. so I was worried it would look crummy when shrunk by about 300% but I think it will be alright. I will probably do the corner "aces" in Illustrator.

Joinin' the "Draw yourself at 100" meme started by heroprotagonist. My grandma is 96 and still kickin' so maybe I've got a shot?

Quick sketch. The blue marker didn't scan too well but here ya' go.

Saw the movie on Wednesday at the Central Cinema, a cute local theater where
you can also have drinks and adult beverages (stout floats, anyone?).

The movie is beautifully animated and all the more impressive
considering it was written and produced by one person with a copy of
Flash (cartoonist Nina Paley). The story of Sita and Rama from Indian
mythology is told with musical interludes, where Sita sings with the
voice of 20s jazz crooner Annete Hanshaw (copyright snafus involving
Hanshaw's songs are the main reason the movie hasn't found regular
distribution, which is a shame). Parts of the story are also narrated
in hilarious fashion by a "Hindu chorus" of shadow puppets who keep
mixing up details and disagreeing about how things happened or why.
Another kind of framing device is also laid on top of everything, and
this is the story of Nina Paley's real-life breakup with her husband
as he takes a job in India. The animation is done in a looser style,
seemingly freehand, with very wobbly, cartoony lines. The real Paley
provides her own voice and in these segments the acting is quite
amateur - the effect to me is a like a mediocre autobio comic and
certainly would not have made a good film on its own. These brief
scenes do provide us a modern-day "in" to the story, and serve as a sort
of explanation for all the anachronisms, but I was glad when we got
back to the more colorful animation and fun visuals. Apart from that
complaint, this was a really fun and entertaining film and I'm glad I
saw it in a theater. You can also watch it online
(http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/watch.html).

Josie Cotton, of "Johnny Are You Queer?" fame. Her album, Invasion of the B-Girls, is awesome! She covers "classics" such as "Green Slime" and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls". Someone package a tour with her and The She Creatures, pronto!

Within the genre of British, scifi-themed, garage-rock girl groups, they are now #1 in my pants.
They really make me want to break out the go-go boots. So far they only have one EP, which I snagged off Amazon, and it doesn't have this song so hopefully there will be more in the future. There's a higher quality version of the video at http://www.theshecreatures.com/ (I ripped the audio to an MP3).

I was checking Youtube for more videos by 9 year-old guitar wunderkind Yuto Miyazawa when I saw this:



This person has a whole bunch of videos of themselves playing pretty damn amazing guitar along with a recording of each original song. Because the face is never shown the comments are full of speculation on whether this is a dude ("look at the hands!") or a chick ("look at the legs!"). If it is a guy, I wonder if he's just having a go at those who are ready to fall in love with any woman they see online, or if he really dreams of being a pretty rock n' roll princess. Either way, rock on, dude/dude-ess!

Here are some of my drawings for the DRIFT show at Cafe Racer this week. We'll be selling cheap art, no frames, just pinned to the walls. I decided to go with the theme of girls & classic game consoles, 'cause that's the way I'm wired.

Here's the cover for a lil' book of pinups I slapped together for Stumptown. It's all pretty much stuff I've posted here before so I feel bummed that I didn't have anything new but I procrastinated and ran out of time as usual. Still, I had fun in Portland and got excited about comics again. There is more good stuff out there than ever and there's no end in sight. I saw Craig Thompson give a talk about his upcoming book, HABIBI, and the amount of work he's putting into it is amazing and inspiring. I've decided to do the mini comic I had planned for Stumptown and bring it to the Olympia Comics Fest in June, which is a much smaller "con" but I think it will still be great time.

Go Team Comix!

OK, who's seen the GALACTICA finale? What did you think?


I thought it was pretty good but I was irked at all the mystical explanations -
not just because they were mystical (the show has always been driven
by prophecy and visions) but because they seemingly* left no room for
ambiguity or interpretation and that rings very false to me, because this was a show which
always aimed at complexity.

I don't think any ending could have satisfied everyone or answered all questions.
BATTLESTAR has always struggled under the weight of its shifting
character motivations and plot twists and from what I've read, this
wasn't even the ending the show creator(s) had in mind before the
writer's strike, if they did in fact ever have a concrete ending
planned. And even from a pseudo-science-fiction standpoint, it never
really held up. Why make all the humanoid Cylons the same? Do they
age? Why can't they be distinguished from humans even though they're
stronger, have glow-y spines, and can interface with machines by
sticking wires in their arms, etc.?

Despite all the problems, I really liked the show. The
cinematography, the effects, the acting, and the characters, were a
big leap forward for TV and during the first couple of seasons, I
think they caught lightning in a bottle with the way the war was
portrayed. It echoed so much of what was happening in the real world
at the time but not in a direct, one-to-one way, like "the Cylons are
the jihadists" or something. Both sides had complex motivations and
both sides did despicable things and there were factions within each
group (and torture was handled much better than in "24", for example).
For me, the show at its best was never about man vs. machine but man
vs. himself. To wrap things up by trying to make us scared of our
Roombas is pretty retarded. I think TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR
CHRONICLES handles man vs. machine in a much better way. And its
"history keeps repeating" structure makes more sense given the time
travel element.




* the "angel" Baltar's final comment may hint that the god in question
is not a real deity after all. I'm enough of a sucker that I'll watch
the Cylon follow-up, THE PLAN, to see if this is explained at all or if
it just muddies things further.

pointyp and I went to see Cinematic Titanic last night, the live tour of the Mystery Science Theater 3000's alumni's new project. It was at the King Cat Theater and looked to be a sold-out show, wall-to-wall with rabid MST3K fans. Cinematic Titanic is a little different but shares the same DNA with the former show. The actors still riff on bad movies, while being projected in silhouette on the screen. For CT, they stand off to the sides of the screen instead of using the theater seat shadows of the original show. For the live show they had some chairs and short platforms on stage so the audience could see them and you can tell they've been honing their jokes for the movies they've been touring with according to the crowd response. The audience loved it - seeing one of their favorite shows with huge crowd, it well amplified the laughs.

Before the film, some of the guys did some warm up material for the crowd, ably assisted by Dave "Gruber" Allen , whom you might know as the guidance counselor from FREAKS & GEEKS and other TV shows (Joel and Trace also did some spots on F&G).

The movie we saw was DYNAMITE BROTHERS, a crappy Al Adamson-directed kung fu movie that mixes in some blaxsploitation elements while trying to ride Bruce Lee's coattails. The CT crew had some great responses to the some of the casual racial epithets in the movie and of course, the 70's fashions came in for sharp critique as well. The riffs were top notch and they came pretty frequently, especially now that they have five performers chiming in instead of the old one-guy-and-two-bots format. They can also be a bit saltier than they were on basic cable. They did throw in some crowd-pleasing riffs from the old days ("Rock climbing, Joel") and as I said, they've really got a practiced thing going here. I'm so glad they came to Seattle and hope they make it back again someday. It's even better live than it is on video but I recommend you check out www.cinematictitanic.com and their trailers on YouTube

After the show the cast signed autographs and took pictures. We talked a bit with "Gruber" while we waited in a pretty long line but we got in early enough that it took only about 40 minutes to get through. I had them sign my MST3K episode guide and I saw at least 3 home-built Tom Servos, and even a Gamera toy that other folks brought to have inscribed. Here's some photos, taken by pointyp (thanks, Sweetie!)

Trace Beaulieu and J. Elvis Weinstein, and Me

Trace and Josh were the original voices of Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo (as well as the Mad Scientists).

Mary Jo Pehl

Mary Jo was a long-time writer on the show and played Pearl Forrester on the last few seasons.

TV's Frank

Frank Conniff, another Mad Scientist and guinea pig for Clayton Forrester.

Joel Hodgson

Last but not least, the legendary Joel Robinson himself.

Here's a quick one done for an upcoming Friends Of the Nib project. For the final I want to roughen it up a bit, not be too cutesy, 'cuz I can't see this card without thinking, "MOTÕRHEAD, baby"!

So, we did this show at Cafe Racer for Valentine's Day. Here's my painting - acrylic on illustration board. The scan is crummy but hopefully you get the idea. I tried out the weathered-drippy-paint thing that all the kids are into these days. I like how the tree turned out.

A couple of cute girl sketches

One's plump, one's busty. They're cops!

Okay, maybe not.



Here's the last of the body type studies based on those Katie Rice drawings. These were a lot of fun and last night I did a couple more little pinup drawings based on some other Katie girls. I really like how they turned out so I'll ink those and post 'em this weekend. I may go back and ink the first sketches I did too, since I warmed up a bit doing these and I think I could make that first set look a bit better. I always forget how nice it is to draw more regularly so I hope to keep this going for awhile - I've got a big project I need to work on!