Illustratology - Thoughts and Sketches

Rick's Favorite Psuedo-Christmas Movies!

2009-12-09T16:50:00.002-05:00

I was woken up this morning by the sound of snowplow blades scraping against asphalt, and looked out the window to see 5 inches of snow on my car. While mildly annoying, it is really nothing new or extraordinary to anyone who has lived in New England for any extended period of time. However, this being the first significantly-accumulating snowfall of the year, tonight I will be partaking in a long-standing tradition of watching The Shining when I get home from work.

Years ago, my friend Craig suggested this as the perfect movie for when it's snowing, and my friends and I made a yearly ritual out of it. The idea was such a good one that it has stayed with me in the 10 or so years since it was conceived. But the real connection between the film and the conditions is obviously just the snow, not anything to do with Christmas or the holiday season in general.

For some reason, this got me thinking on a tangent as I was driving to work this morning at 15 MPH. Sure, there are plenty of bona fide Christmas movies out there, such as Bob Clark's ubiquitous A Christmas Story, or my personal favorite, Brian Desmond Hurst's 1951 version of Scrooge, starring the perfectly-cast Alastair Sim. But for some reason, I have always loved movies that are sort of about Christmas, but not really. Movies in which Christmas is featured, but in a more tangential or incidental sense. So, without further ado, here is my short personal list of favorite "Sort-Of Christmas Movies":

Die Hard - NYPD Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) is invited to LA by his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) to attend her office Christmas party. It just so happens that at the same time, a group of German terrorists (led by the incomparable Alan Rickman) has infiltrated and beseiged the entire building. In a series of physics-defying Christmas miracles, McClane manages to slip away, assess the situation, and pretty much singlehandedly kill the shit out of all the bad guys, while also managing to piss off the FBI and befriend the dad from Family Matters, who seems to always play a cop in everything he's ever been in. (Cracked's Robert Brockway weighs in on this one here.)

Gremlins - Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante bring us the story of a young bank teller who is given a bizarre and exotic Christmas gift by his eccentric inventor dad, Hoyt Axton. It is an impossibly adorable little furry thing called a mogwai, which, through the violation of some logically arbitrary "rules" and Corey Feldman being an idiot, manages to reproduce and spawn an army of evil, obnoxious reptiles. Chaos ensues, of course. I love this movie mostly because it manages to combine the elements of small-town politics from It's A Wonderful Life with the campy "Monsters are invading the town and the authorities don't believe me!" premise from virtually every monster and sci-fi movie of the 1950's.

Edward Scissorhands - In this highly stylized modern-day fairy tale about a hopelessly deformed misfit adopted by a suburban family, Tim Burton manages to maintain a charming tone while teaching us satirical lessons on morality, love, tolerance, gossip, and the origin of snow. Another bizarre cross-genre film that mixes the gothic feel of Frankenstein with the small-town sensibilities of Anytown, USA. Also notable for being Vincent Price's final film appearance, and I must say that for what amounts to little more than an extended cameo, he really added a beautiful dimension to the film as Edward's creepy-cute mad scientist "father".

Love Actually - A sprawling, sappy manifesto on the many facets of love, which I happen to think is completely adorable. This movie tells the 653 intertwining stories of 1,022 characters who all know each other or are related or fall in love or whatever. The brilliant Bill Nighy totally steals the show as the burned-out former rock star hilariously attempting to use Christmas to resurrect his fame and fortune. Also features some dated and awkwardly shoehorned-in UK vs. USA political commentary between altruistic Prime Minister Hugh Grant, and sleazy US President Billy Bob Thornton, when a momentary love triangle between them and Martine McCutcheon somehow translates into a pissy foreign relations incident. (??)

Brazil - Set during the Holiday Season in some unspecified, dystopian year in the near future, Terry Gilliam's masterpiece is a sort of tongue-in-cheek version of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. In my opinion, this is not only an incredibly great movie and a chilling vision of a totalitarian and beaurocratic future, it is also the single most re-watchable movie I have ever seen (like, 50 times). If you haven't seen this movie, you haven't lived. Features top-notch performances by Jonathan Pryce, Ian Holm, Katherine Helmond, Robert DeNiro, Jim Broadbent, and Michael Palin. (Note: Also available in the despicably mangled studio edit, scornfully referred to as the "Love Conquers All" version. Do NOT watch this under any circumstances.)

So, there you have it. Something a little different for this year's Christmas movie-watching festivities, if you're in the mood. All of these movies are great on their own merits, but they are especially fun to watch during the holidays. Enjoy!

Muse Project Update

2009-10-29T09:35:00.005-04:00

After about 4 months of very off-and-on work on my Muse painting, I am nearing completion.

Life has been busy, especially at the old 9-to-5, due to the upcoming AWS and STAFDA trade shows in Chicago and Atlanta, respectively. Since about August, I have usually been too tired to do anything other than eat and take a nap when I get home from work. Shows are shipped, finally, and the stress levels are down a bit, at least for the time being.

In any case, updates on the progress of the Muse project can be seen in slideshow format here (requires Flash plugin). I have more photos in my camera, slideshow will be updated in the next day or two as I continue toward the finish line.

The Movie That Was Made Just For Me

2009-08-11T09:13:00.005-04:00

...And I don't even really know what it's about, exactly.

Mostly-genius filmmaker Terry Gilliam has a new movie coming out soon. Watch this trailer and tell me if your mind just completely explodes at the speed of light:

FINALLY, a movie in which Tom Waits plays the Devil. It's pretty much the role he was born to play, a thought that was cemented in my mind after listening to The Black Rider for the first time.

I could write about sixteen thousand paragraphs here about Terry Gilliam's body of work, which is pretty much hit-or-miss: in his case, "hit" equals mind-blowing film genius, and "miss" means it's just not his best work, but still pretty great. "Dr. Parnassus" looks to me like it's getting filed in the "hit" column for sure.

I Quit

2009-08-05T12:16:00.010-04:00

I quit smoking today. For realsies. I also found a nifty little gadget that helps me appreciate the progress I'm making and the money I'm saving.

Wish me luck, although I honestly don't think I'll need it. I read Alan Carr's "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking" and it really did help change my mindset about quitting. Of course, I did have to read the book about 4 times for it to really sink in, but it was totally worth it.

With cigarettes in Massachusetts going from 5 to almost 8 dollars a pack over the last 2 years, I really had no choice. But also, I kind of don't want to die. I did some basic math last night before bed, and calculated that at the very LEAST, I have smoked about NINETY-FIVE THOUSAND cigarettes in the 13 years since I've started. That scared the living shit out of me, especially knowing what a cigarette filter looks like after you smoke ONE.

My girlfriend Andy and I made a deal last night, since we're both pretty much dead broke at the moment. "I'll quit if you will." The thought of us quitting together is a helpful one, but I mostly have Alan Carr to thank for my attitude this time around. Last time I tried to go cold turkey was New Year's Day, 2007. Total disaster. I was feverish, shaky, sweaty, and irritable all day long, and I caved. This time, none of that. It really does make me believe in mind over matter more than I ever have before.

So like I was saying, this little meter thing (below) is actually kind of helpful. It will be super-awesome when I can forget about it for a couple of weeks or months, and go back and look at it and realize the money I have NOT spent on cigarettes is in the hundreds of dollars. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a "live" version of it, so you have to refresh (F5) the page to keep updating the meter if you so desire.

Oh, and one other thing: I actually quit at 12:30 last night, but I figured it would be kind of cheating to count the 8 hours that I was asleep. I set the meter to start this morning when I woke up, just to be extra fair.

Adios for now.

The Onion Sells Out

2009-07-21T15:33:00.008-04:00

For any form of satire to be considered truly great, I believe it has to walk so close to the truth that it's barely distinguishable from it. Whether exaggerated or slightly understated, satire is probably my favorite form of comedy. It often brings about some of the most sophisticated, clever, and disturbing genius comedy has to offer.

Many years ago, my sister introduced me to The Onion, and its brilliant satirical walk through fake journalistic history called "Our Dumb Century". By creating imaginary past issues of a newspaper that would often make either terrifyingly true or intentionally false predictions about the future (which was actually the past or present), "Our Dumb Century" underlined much of the stupidity and ridiculousness of human progress and historical events. The 1969 Moon Landing, for example. Taking into account the entire scope of human history, it seems a little less exciting today than it probably did 40 years ago.

Today, after a long hiatus from reading The Onion, I clicked on it this morning before heading off to work, and was simultaneously awed, disturbed, and greatly amused by the Onion's latest meta-joke. The owner of the Onion, one T. Herman Zweibel (think the Simpsons' Monty Burns with a bad case of Alzheimer's) has sold the paper to China. Today's issue features disinformation, propaganda galore, self-aggrandizing nationalistic rhetoric, harsh criticism of Americans and American culture, and a lot of censorship. Included are such hilarious articles as:

Internet Adds 12th Website (see next paragraph for more on this)
China Strong
Nothing At All Happens to 28 Tibetan Protestors, Their Families
Weakling President Asks Imaginary Man In Sky To Bless Nation
And much more.

This "sale" comes on the heels of many terrifying stories reported from China, such as the blocking of the wildly popular micro-blogging site Twitter due to the fact that it seems to have allowed too much communicating between Chinese citizens that directly contradicted official, sanitized government reports. The paper's sale also seems to have roots in the many shutdown scares of long-respected American newspapers on the verge of bankruptcy.

In any case, I applaud the Onion for bringing attention to such full-blown fascism, and doing it in such a way that makes us laugh instead of cry. The political and social climate in China remains fascinating food for thought, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop and have a few much-needed laughs along the way to whatever solution might lie on the horizon.

Theft or Flattery?

2009-07-16T09:34:00.004-04:00

After reading an interesting article on spam email and how it is generated, I decided to Google my email address. I was a bit disturbed to find that one of the search results was a post on some weird Italian pop music discussion board containing an outright theft of one of my favorite design pieces, a CD cover I made for a dear friend a few years ago.

Although I'm a bit annoyed that someone would steal my work without my permission, I realized that in this age of 1s and 0s, "borrowing" someone's digital artwork is only as easy as the artist allows it to be. I have been neglectful of this until now, thinking not only that my work was not popular enough by any stretch of the imagination to be stolen, but also that nobody would have the gall to do such a thing.

Part of me is also somewhat flattered, however. The idea that someone looking for an image to illustrate the phrase "Rainbow in the Dark" stumbled upon my work in a Google search (or whatever) and decided it was a perfect match, well... it's reaffirming in a way. Perhaps theft is an even more sincere form of flattery than imitation.

My solution at the moment strikes me as inelegant but necessary, at least until I find a better one. I plan to watermark all of the work on my site. I hope to achieve this in a manner that is subtle and obvious at the same time. Apologies in advance.

Something A-Muse-ing

2009-06-15T09:35:00.014-04:00

I have a new project underway, one that I'm pretty excited about. Having just received my glorious Adobe Master Collection CS4 package, and subsequently having to add another gigabyte of RAM to my computer because one of the boards died on me, I am completely geared up and rearing to go on my latest brainstorm.

Not being quite the prolific illustrator I had once hoped to be, projects involving the use of my hands and a paintbrush tend to be rare. However, they are almost always something I dive into with passion and enthusiasm, and I always find painting to be an enjoyable and very Zen undertaking.

This latest painting is a tribute to inspiration, and to someone who has been a constant source of ideas, feedback, and collaboration on some of the most important work I've done over the past year. She is my own personal Muse, and a damn good one, responsible for such varied inspirations as an idea for a movie script, comic strips, and input on the redesign of my website, portfolio and resume, and the recently completed trailer for "A Band of Roses". I'm hoping to have this thing done in time for her birthday (Guy Fawkes Day).

Lacking the convenience of posing living human models and costumes for this piece, I've been using Poser as a digital substitute. So far, so good. I intend to finish the poses, lighting, perspective/camera angles and a final render, and bring it into Photoshop to add a decent background and any image adjustments or effects I deem necessary. All of that will merely serve as a reference photo for the final phase, which is to transfer it to canvas and repaint it for a more organic finished piece. As it stands, here's where I'm at (still needs a lot of refinement, especially the lighting):

As for the painting itself, I'm currently leaning toward either oils or acrylics. Acrylic seems more likely, but I must admit my technique in that medium is pretty weak compared to working with oil. Oil is messy and takes forever to dry. I could switch to alkyds, but that would probably mean an investment of money into a completely new and unfamiliar medium, so I think I'll just stick with what I know. If I need it to dry faster, I'll just stick with my old standbys of liquin dryer and varnish.

More on this as I progress. In the meantime, you can view a running slideshow of the various phases on my Photobucket account.

A New Era of Illustratology?

2009-05-20T09:15:00.010-04:00

The trailer is done! It's posted on YouTube, and the customer, Pat McDermott, seems to be very satisfied with the results.

Upon uploading this video initially, I was faced with a major disappointment. For some reason, the video appeared blurry and pixellated, until I clicked on the little "HQ" toggle on the lower right side of the movie player frame. I was scrambling to find out what had gone wrong, and apologizing profusely to my customer for delivering a sub-excellent product.

It all made a little more sense after finding this blurb in the YouTube Help forums:

We made improvements to standard quality for video uploads! Unless there is a large difference between standard quality and HQ , the upload will produce standard quality by default (and not HQ as before).
In other words, the bar has been raised and you're going to find it hard to get HQ encoding at present, with the "upgrade" to "standard (normal) quality." It can be done but you may need to search the forum to find out possible ways that could work for you. Most of us are too tired to repeat ourselves on this, and no one I know is convinced they have a foolproof method forrendering that will ALWAYS give you HQ encoding.

In other words, the resolution and quality of my uploaded video was TOO GOOD. So good that YouTube split it up into high-quality and low-quality versions for the benefit of people with slower connection speeds. I will have to keep this in mind for future projects, as I think the whole HQ toggle thing is obnoxious, and frankly, unnecessary. If anything, the HQ display should be the default setting, allowing people to lower the quality if needed for streaming speed, etc.

Regardless, this is a very exciting milestone for me. I have been interested in working with video for many years, and have never really had the opportunity. Now I am dying for my recent purchase of Adobe Master Collection CS4 to arrive so I can do even cooler stuff from here on out.

Ms. McDermott is currently on a rampage (in a good way), posting this link on her site, her Facebook page, and sending it out to a staggering number of colleagues, web loops, discussion groups, and a company called Blazing Trailers that specializes in showcasing exactly this kind of media.

I am proud of my work on this project. If it generates some more work of this nature in the future, even better. I look forward to creating more trailers for Pat when she rolls out the remaining books in her series!

Another Summer For Screaming at My TV

2009-05-14T09:07:00.007-04:00

Just a quick one today. And, I must be honest, this thought has been on my mind for the last two weeks or so, but it took me popping over to Swaim's new article today to remind me. So, if it seems like I'm just copying him, I'm not. Swaim is a comic genius. I'm just an annoyed blogger.

Anyway, he just reminded me that if I ever find the guy at ~~Time Warner~~ Premier Parks who greenlit the UNFATHOMABLY OBNOXIOUS ADS for Six Flags all last summer, I'm going to kick him in the crotch repeatedly, until he begs me to kill him. Then I'm going to find some Japanese guy and pay him 100 bucks to just stand there and scream in the ~~Time Warner~~ Premier Parks guy's face for a couple of hours.

So this year, apparently the ad agency decided that people weren't responding well to the disembodied head of a Japanese hipster from the future screaming in your face about flags:

They've replaced it with the screaming disembodied head of an unbelievably creepy-looking bald fake old guy, hoping that it would be more user-friendly. It's not. It's worse:

Burn in hell, Six Flags commercials.

EDIT: Apparently Time Warner sold the Six Flags chain to Premier Parks in 1998, something of which I was completely unaware until today.

Coming Soon to a YouTube Near You

2009-05-12T08:58:00.013-04:00

I have spent the last month or so working in a completely new medium: video. Author Pat McDermott is shouldering a huge amount of the responsibility of promoting the re-release of her novel A Band of Roses, and as her graphic/web designer and marketing consultant, I have offered to try my hand at the trend of creating a video "trailer". Apparently it is a hugely popular marketing tool in the independent publishing world, typically a series of still images panning across the screen or zooming in/out, with accompanying captions to give the gist of the story.

The only problem is, many of these trailers aren't really very well done. I have watched several, and been disappointed (and occasionally embarrassed) by the lack of finesse, subtlety, pacing, and dramatic formula they tend to exhibit, making some of them seem more like PowerPoint presentations than marketing pieces. There are a few I've seen that are outright embarassing, and seem to have been composed with a sledgehammer and a shoehorn.

One in particular tells the story of a psychic of some kind who is on vacation. Slow, lilting music, scenes of stucco neighborhoods slowly panning by... and then, at about 1:00, scenes of lightning, zombies (using images from Resident Evil and other video games) and demons flash by on the screen accompanied by terrifying loud music. This goes on for maybe 5 seconds, and then abruptly returns to the previous music and pacing. No transition or even editing of the soundtrack. It was as if the zombie scene came from another trailer completely and was ham-fistedly pasted over the original piece.

I mean no disrespect to the creator of said trailer, but I do feel justified in offering some very frank and objective criticism when I see something like this. I suppose it's a side-effect of having the no-holds-barred Murray Tinkelman as my college professor, a guy who would just as soon throw a chair or tell you to get the hell out of his class than explain to you why what you did was wrong. Man, I miss that guy.

In any case, yes, there are elements of these trailers that are well-done, and I do like some of the photo choices that are vague and archetypal enough in nature to intrigue the viewer. Others are oddly out of place, too specific, and seem to completely kill the atmosphere of the overall piece. It's a book, after all. You can't show the viewer what the character is supposed to look like based on some available stock photography. I consider it far better to leave things as vague as possible and let the reader's imagination paint in the details.

The general problem with many of these efforts is one of presentation, and craftsmanship. It's entirely possible that the book the trailer advertises is a great one. But that will never matter if the marketing is no good. I consider myself lucky to have a formal education in art, design, and illustration, as I feel the concepts I learned over the years apply to this type of project just as they would a painting. I try to be conscious of the importance of the work as a whole, not just a string of "cool ideas" laid end to end, but a complete composition.

With that in mind, I took this project on, my goal from the start being to attempt to use the conventions of existing book trailer "culture", but present the finished piece in a way that was more dramatically relevant to a trailer you'd see for a big-budget film. I dusted off a 2-year-old copy of Adobe AfterEffects that I had been meaning to immerse myself in for some time, and a couple of textbooks I had bought when I planned on learning AfterEffects a while back (that never really materialized). I dove in, learned the basics, and progressed from a bumbling hack to a fairly competent craftsman within a week or so.

The trailer project is still in the draft stage, although not much remains before it's completed. I'm very excited to add this piece to my portfolio, and the skills of video compositing and animation to my general repetoire. You can see the current work-in-progress here.

More on this as I near completion. I have already added some live-action video and filled in the missing 15-second gap towards the end with the remainder of the captions, which Ms. McDermott and I ironed out to perfection over the weekend. I'm currently having a teeny bit of trouble getting a render of the most recent version completed (something wrong with the way AE is processing the soundtrack source file), but I'll continue to update the WIP link as changes are made.

Oh, and I forgot to mention... working on these may be a bit tedious, but it's fun.

Hollywood Must Be Destroyed

2009-04-13T15:42:00.012-04:00

Just need to flame off here about a commercial I just saw for a "new" movie starring apparently desperate actor Matthew Perry and "doesn't-yet-realize-he's-just-a-fad" Zac Efron.
Are you wondering why I put the word "new" in quotation marks? Here's why:

Oops, I'm sorry... I meant:

Screw you, Hollywood.

UPDATE: Apparently Gladstone over at CRACKED either had the exact same idea as me for this week's "Hate By Numbers", or he read my blog and totally copied me. Either way, it's an honor to have the same idea as one of the CRACKED Staff.

Blogging About Blogs

2009-03-23T12:54:00.019-04:00

Quick news flash! As of yesterday evening, author Pat McDermott now has a fully functional blog, which I suggest you read. Pat is the author of "A Band of Roses", and the upcoming "Fiery Roses", two action/adventure stories set in an alternate world in which Brian Boru survived the Battle of Clontarf and propagated the rule of Irish monarchy to the present day. Good stuff.

Her book can now be purchased as an e-book through Red Rose Publishing. It's very obvious after reading a single page that her novel is the result of a lot of hard work and research. The sequel, "Fiery Roses," is coming soon!

Lion vs. Lamb 2009

2009-03-18T09:23:00.021-04:00

March of this year has definitely followed the old adage thus far, not only in terms of weather, but also the general climate of life and work.

Kicking the month off with a bit of turbulence was an excellent trip back up to Rainbow Ridge for a pleasant weekend with some old friends. A new addition to the group this time around was Jack, the 16-month-old son of Brian and Amy. (More on this trip in a future post...)

On the heels of that, there has been getting back to reality and back to work, to finish up the website that I have been working with Matt Harkins on since the end of January. Final changes were completed on Sunday, and the maiden voyage from my hard drive, through the tubes, and out into the Internets was completed Monday night. Here's the finished site if you'd like to check it out. This guy does some pretty fabulous work. Of course, I'm hoping he feels the same about me... ha ha.

Next on the agenda is finalizing the blog architecture and template for author Pat McDermott. She has just completed a publishing deal with a new publisher to redistribute her first novel as an e-book, and the second installment is ready to launch. She asked me to help her get into the world of blogging, and remarked that it seemed a little odd for so many people to write about stuff and expect everyone else to actually care. I agree, for the most part. I blog for my own enjoyment, I honestly don't care all that much who reads this or why. However, in Pat's case, I think it would be roughly the equivalent of a veteran actor doing standup comedy gigs on the weekends to stay on his toes.

In any case, I will certainly make the announcement when her blog is complete, because I am sure she will have a lot of interesting things to share and talk about, her numerous travels not being the least of them. The work on my end is about 95% completed, we have a meeting scheduled this weekend to finalize it and run through her preferences, tweaks on fonts, colors, etc. You can see a preview of the work-in-progress here.

Point is, after a hectic start to March, I think I'm over the hump, at least for the moment. I have a few odds and ends to attend to, and the recent frenzy at my 9 to 5 gig has died down considerably. It's nice to be busy once in a while, but with the lovely weather of Spring just around the corner, it's also nice to be able to relax and enjoy doing nothing, which is what I do best.

Something Very "Funny"

2009-03-11T20:50:00.006-04:00

I am something of a grammar and spelling Nazi, and find myself ashamed beyond words when it's discovered that I've accidentally butchered the English language in some way. For the rest of you Nazis out there, have you ever seen a sign in a store, park, marquee, etc. that had unnecessary quotation marks around it? I have, far too often.

Looks like someone of like mind has created an entire blog dedicated to the discovered use of unnecessary quotation marks. After my difficulties with Jiffy Lube a couple of years ago, (yes Jiffy Lube, you suck shit and everybody knows it), one entry in particular caught my eye: A quick-lube place proclaiming, in gigantic plastic letters, to be The World's "Best" 10 Minute Oil Change. Killer.

Anyway, check it out, and think carefully about the unintentionally implied falsehoods contained in each example. They'll make you laugh.

Sorry for the whole Jiffy Lube tangent. I'm still pretty pissed about that whole mess.

A Look Into Our Insane Future

2009-03-04T09:28:00.034-05:00

I just took a peek at my Netflix queue to see what was headed my way once I return the movies I have at home. I was a little disturbed to find out what was destined to arrive in my mailbox in the very near future.

THIS:

In case you were wondering, yes that is Sean Connery. The movie, which I had until yesterday completely forgotten that I had ordered, is called Zardoz, a post-apocalyptic commentary on caste systems, organized religion, and apparently, fashion dos and don'ts.

Being a fan of the whole dystopia genre, my curiosity (which later deteriorated into morbid curiosity) was piqued when I heard about this supposed cult-classic by the guy who directed Deliverance, featuring former James Bond and future Juan Sanchez Villalobos Ramirez clad in a red diaper and suspenders. Um... apparently there's also a lot of stuff about penises in the movie too. At least, that's what I've heard. Based on that picture up there, I can hardly say I'm surprised.

In the last few years, I've been quite an avid fan of movies predicting bleak futures for humanity, mostly because of how plausible some of them seem. Before I continue with the real reason for this post, allow me to list a few of my favorite films depicting utterly insane, and largely believable, scenarios concerning the future of mankind:

The whole Mad Max trilogy: An Australian highway cop in a really awesome car goes nuts and exacts gruesome revenge after a biker gang kills his family. Later he becomes a legendary messiah figure, pisses off Tina Turner, and battles a retarded giant in a steel cage.

Logan's Run: The entire population of the US lives in a huge domed city controlled by computers. To stifle population growth, people celebrate their 30th birthdays with a mandatory mass-suicide ritual.

A Boy and His Dog: Don Johnson and a talking (?) dog named "Blood" try to survive as scavengers in a nuclear wasteland, and end up discovering an underground community of bible-thumping nutcases wearing clown makeup and overalls.

Equilibrium: To put an end to man's predisposition to violence and war, people are forced to take drugs that suppress all emotions. Christian Bale is a lawman who arrests/kills anyone who goes off their meds.

Wizards: Millions of years after humankind is wiped out by nuclear war, the forces of good (magic) and evil (technology) battle for dominance of the world.

THX 1138: Robert Duvall is a bald drone in a society of bald drones who is tricked into going off his mandatory mood-suppressing drugs and gets caught, sentenced, and imprisoned for his crime of having feelings and falling in love with his roommate.

Minority Report: Tom Cruise yells his way through this adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story of a future police department that can accurately predict the future and pre-emptively arrest criminals before they've even done anything wrong, opening up a whole messy philosophical and moral can of worms.

Demolition Man: Basically a re-telling of Huxley's Brave New World with guns, explosions, and Denis Leary. 'Nuff said.

And the list goes on and on, some examples being, of course, infinitely better than others.

So to all my friends, family, and loved ones: In case my mind does not survive the journey of Zardoz, know that I love you all and will see you on the other side.

Keeping Myself Busy

2009-02-24T16:07:00.007-05:00

In the past month or so, I've been doing some work on a few new projects and ideas, in addition to keeping (thank God) my regular 9 to 5, bill-paying job.

Keep an eye out for a more smoothly integrated photo gallery system on my site. I was using Web Gallery Creator, but I hate it. I mostly just used it because it was easy, but I had major annoyance issues with the fact that it wasn't possible to work with the code so that it fit into my own site template. At the moment, I'm screwing around with a nifty and simple little freeware program, which bears the hilarious title of "ThumbaWumba" (link here). I have one test-gallery posted already, but I need to perfect the HTML template before I take the time to process the rest of them (they've been taken down for the moment). I do NOT like the text-based controls(next page, previous page, etc.) and am planning to replace them with graphics.

Anyway, this one's pretty easy to use, and the templates are completely editable using HTML. One slight problem though, which I am amazed the program's author didn't foresee: The HTML template editing feature limits each line of code to a specific number of characters... let's say it's 60 for the sake of argument. This means any HTML tags that exceed those 60 characters get chopped in half and moved to the next line of code. Long lines of script and the finer details of image and href tags are destroyed in the process. Since my website's template uses a ton of rollover images, meaning tons of long-ass script in the head content, that does not make me happy.

I am about 99% of the way to finding a way around this using a system of Dreamweaver templates, because creating customized, easy and fast image galleries is going to be a huge factor in...

My latest project, which is a full start-to-finish website for a local custom homebuilding company. I'm very excited about this, I think I can safely say it is my most professional-grade freelance project to date. I would post a link to the test-site here, but I prefer to wait until the site is completed and the owner, one Matt Harkins, is satisfied with the results.

Beyond that, I have been learning SQL and ASP at work, and I find it both fascinating and mind-wrenchingly irritating. Luckily, I'm a quick study, because my knowledge of this stuff is quickly inflating my value to the company at a time where many people are uncertain if they will even have a job in the near future. (We'll see how well they remember this when I'm up for a raise in August.)

A few days ago, my boss said he had some bad news for me. I jokingly asked him if I was fired, and he said there was no way I was losing this job, even if I wanted to. Then he went on to tell me the REAL bad news, which was that he had somehow screwed up the data source for our current ASP project, meaning my entire day's worth of work on the company website had to be done over more or less from scratch.

Something a Little Scary

2008-10-30T20:41:00.012-04:00

In the spirit of Halloween and scary thoughts in general, here's a sketch of an in-progress piece that I consider something of a departure for me. It all started about a year ago after a few terrifying nights reading H.P. Lovecraft stories before bed. I decided to create something of my own based on all of the elements of Lovecraft's work that I found most terrifying.

At the moment, it's just pencil on newsprint, 18" x 24", and I must say, it is far more striking and disturbing as a real-life drawing than on a computer screen. Something I hope to remedy as I progress, obviously, but unfortunately it is a pitfall of displaying work in digital format. Something always seems to get lost in the translation to 1s and 0s.

Anyway, Happy Halloween, and enjoy.

Technical Difficulties

2008-10-29T10:29:00.004-04:00

Due to some incredibly frustrating coding problems with my blog template, I have opted to temporarily roll with one of the icky pre-fab Blogger templates (chosen more or less at random) to avoid potential glitches until I can figure out what the hell I'm doing.

Apologies, the Illustratology-style format will be back as soon as I can manage a rewrite.

Happy Halloween...Again

2008-10-28T20:52:00.004-04:00

Wow. Haven't blogged since last Spring, but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things. I have spent a significant amount of time since March/April reorganizing my entire life, from finances to bookshelves to digital photos. I also found a box of old sketchbooks, which was a weird trip down memory lane. I'll post a few pages when I get around to scanning them in. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of me, approximately age 4, dressed as Superman for what I believe was my first "official" Halloween outing, back in Braintree.

At any rate, recent events, travels, opportunities, projects, and relationships have inspired me to get back into the habit of blogging on the regular. After a mind-boggingly frustrating series of edits and modifications to my homemade blog template (I refuse to use any of the pre-packaged stuff that Blogger provides...ewww), I think I'm ready to begin. All I need now is the spare time, which lately has been a most precious commodity, but I feel it is necessary to make the commitment.

So-- Check back for more soon, my friends.

Time For a Change

2008-03-26T21:15:00.005-04:00

After some constructive criticism, a too-long hiatus from blogging, and an in-progress effort to organize my life and career somewhat, I wanted to announce some forthcoming changes to the site.

Effective immediately, or as soon as I get to it, the Blog will most likely be split into two separate blogs, and all unnecessary posts removed temporarily, until I can find a new home for them. Due to the lack of any apparent relevance between my social and political rantings and my graphic design/illustration efforts, I have decided to rein in this portion of the Blog to act as a self-serving promotional tool. Keep an eye out for posts including sketchbook pages and journal entries, info on projects in progress, and announcements of new clients, completed work, and general scuttlebutt about life in general.

Other changes to the site will be somewhat more subtle, but my aim is to increase the fluidity and navigability of the site overall, clean up outdated links and remove old and unimpressive projects, and make the experience of visiting Illustratology more interesting for any who dare to enter.

Thanks! Check back soon, changes will be ongoing for the next couple of weeks.

Apparently, 9/11 Changed Everything

2008-01-21T08:54:00.001-05:00

Apologies for no posts in several months, life has been a little rough on me lately. perhaps I'll elaborate on this in a future post, but I kinda doubt it.

So, I saw "Cloverfield" this weekend. When it comes to movies, I know myself pretty well. I have a fairly good radar for knowing which movies I'll like, and which ones look just plain idiotic. In the case of "Cloverfield", the intentional shroud of mystery and almost complete lack of description did exactly what it was supposed to: intrigue me into wanting to see it.

As I explained to my friend Becky, I tend to go for more artsy or dramatic movies, the occasional smart comedy, or maybe a surrealist mind-bender like "The Fountain". Honestly, I don't have a favorite genre, as long as the movie is good. In the case of big-deal blockbusters like "Transformers" or "Terminator 2", I also have moments of weakness, when something looks just so god damn cool that the possibility of not seeing it on the big screen is unthinkable. "Cloverfield" struck me as one of these. I did not have very high hopes, as these larger-than-life (in this case, literally) flicks are almost always a bunch of awesome eye-candy sprinkled over a plot that is so weak and full of holes that I have to groan aloud.

Well, the movie exceeded all of my expectations. Plus, it scared the living bejesus out of me, which is not easy to do with celluloid.

I can't really say much more about the movie itself, that's kind of the whole gimmick. The plot is really too simple and straightforward to elaborate on, but basically think "Blair Witch Project" meets "Godzilla". However, there is one thing that really bothers me about the whole concept, which has little or nothing to do with the movie itself. Apparently, some critics out there have accused "Cloverfield" of being "opportunistic" and insensitive to the memories of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and intentionally recalling images of dazed, bleeding people wandering around in a cloud of debris and dust to invoke those horrific attacks.

My personal response to this: So fucking what?

As we have heard countless times (especially from Rudy Giuliani), 9/11 Changed Everything. Did it also change us into a bunch of self-indulgent, crippled babies who will gladly use 9/11 as a pretense to endless warfare and xenophobia, but express outrage and curl up into a fetal ball when it's even hinted at in a film? Perhaps people of this bent are not familiar with the phrase "art imitates life". 9/11 happened. It's not forbidden to allude to it in a film. Look, "Cloverfield", regardless of the secrecy of the plot, is obviously about some kind of giant thing making a huge mess of New York City. You'd have to be an idiot not to realize this. If it bothers you, don't see the movie. Simple as that.

I understand it's a sensitive issue for many of us, but this should not, and MUST not dictate, what is acceptable or not in the arts. Hell, Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle were in a film last summer that was entirely based on the concept of a guy losing his family in the WTC attacks, and going totally nuts because of it. At least, that's the impression I got from the trailer.

Take a look at Japan. Their culture, especially in the realm of film and animation, has become completely infused with the idea of nuclear war, nuclear apocalypse, and nuclear weapons bringing about catastrophic doom. Ever wonder why? It's because we DROPPED GOD DAMN NUCLEAR BOMBS ON JAPAN, completely vaporizing two of their largest cities in a span of 3 days. Of course it's going to be on their minds! Yes, it changed everything.

We are not the only culture or the only nation that has experienced horrible attacks. In fact, perhaps the reason 9/11 is such an effective bogeyman for us is that it's the first time we can remember that WE weren't the ones blowing some shit up! Firebombing in Dresden, aspirin factories in Sudan, god knows how many hundreds or thousands of buildings in the Middle East, bombings and destruction of villages and mass-murder of civilians in Southeast Asia, two entire CITIES in Japan. The list could go on forever. But when someone attacks the US, we imagine that we're somehow special; exempt and perfectly insulated in this regard. Yes, it was tragic, yes it was horrifying and bloody and unbelievable and BAD, but the idea of editing the Twin Towers out of films that had already been shot at the time, and expressing outrage and pointing a finger of shame at those who would revisit that scenario seems a little ridiculous to me.

A Special Halloween Message

2007-10-30T14:29:00.000-04:00

Courtesy of my favorite Halloween movie ever, "Halloween III - Season of the Witch":

If you think Halloween III was stupid, you're wrong. It has the greatest ending of any horror movie ever made, compounded by the fact that I met a 60-something Tom Atkins at the "Rock n' Shock" show two years ago. He autographed my t-shirt, and did me the great honor of re-enacting this famous scene right to my face. Watch it here, and oh yeah-- don't forget to watch the big giveaway at 9!

What Happened to the Four Freedoms?

2007-10-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

I have just returned from a quite enjoyable Columbus Day Weekend in the Berkshires. Becky and I spent a few days driving around, swimming, eating, exploring, and just "getting away from it all". Our modest sightseeing adventures included a pleasant hour or two in the amazing Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, where I was reminded of what may be Rockwell's most touching and familiar works, the illustrations for the Four Freedoms put forth by Roosevelt during World War Two.

I found a site detailing the Freedoms, the essays on each one published in the Saturday Evening Post (as part of a massive and hugely successful campaign for Government War Bonds), and most importantly, Roosevelt's elegant definitions of each. While not explicitly stated in our Constitution, these Freedoms are more of a moral imperative for humankind than any freedom that can be granted by the words of legislative documents.
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression
-- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way
-- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants
-- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor
-- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
excerpted from the Annual
Message to the Congress,
January 6, 1941
After seeing these paintings once again in person, I was struck by their universality, and the unvarnished, straightforward way in which each relates its specific Freedom to the viewer.

Coming from a former American President, one would think that each of these Freedoms, which inspired such iconic paintings that seem to represent the liberties and values Americans hold dear, would be first and foremost granted in the nation that identified them as necessities. However, almost 70 years later, Roosevelt's vision of what might be achieved in his own "time and generation" have been eroded so gradually and subtly, that they seem to be in danger of extinction both in America and "everywhere in the world," disappearing not with a bang, but a whimper. Granted, there are certainly those among us who recognize these erosions, and aim to halt and hopefully reverse them. Unfortunately, these groups and individuals seem to be a minority these days -- not a minority in their goals, but in the mere consciousness of the need for change.

1. Freedom of Speech and Expression (Everywhere in the World):
There are a brave few who still exercise this Freedom at their own peril. Today, we live under an administration that will not tolerate dissent, and intentionally isolates itself from criticism to create a perception of infallibility, inscrutability, and a clear disregard for the will of its citizens. Protest and assembly, one of our very first Constitutional Rights, is now confined to "Free Speech Zones", which are nothing more than glorified cages to protect our leaders from dissent or displeasure. Our news organizations, once trusted to deliver the truth and to expose the lies and machinations of governments around the world, are now corporate conglomerates with close ties and allegiances to political groups. The news and information we receive, mere steps away from outright propaganda, is now carefully crafted and engineered to keep us loyal, afraid, unquestioning, and woefully uninformed.

2. Freedom of Worship (Everywhere in the World):
Today, everywhere in the world, religious groups are being persecuted, demonized, murdered, displaced, tortured, and oppressed. Our own government has used religion as a crowbar to draw moral distinctions between ourselves and our enemies. Our Presidential candidates are publicly hoping that we end up with a "Christian President", while fundamentalist Christian groups are gaining more and more political influence with each election cycle. Recently, a Muslim Congressman was sworn in by placing his hand on a copy of the Koran, and not the Christian Bible, causing a wave of controversy and intolerance, due to preconceived notions tying the Muslim faith with extremist terrorism and political ideology. In a direct and flagrant affront to the vision of our Founding Fathers, religion and politics have become so intertwined, that they are almost synonymous.

3. Freedom From Want (Everywhere in the World):
In our world right now, 2 percent of the adult population possess over 50 percent of the world's wealth and assets, while the poorest 50 percent possess only 1 percent of this wealth according to a recent UN study. This may be a difficult set of statistics to imagine, (more on visualizing statistics here), but in terms of a representative analogy, consider this: If the entire population of Earth was represented by a group of 10 people, and the group was given 100 dollars to represent all the wealth of the world, the equivalent distribution would result in ONE PERSON posessing 99 of the 100 dollars, while the remaining 1 dollar would be SHARED by the remaining 9 people in the group.
There is almost certainly going to be disparity in wealth, class, and prosperity at any given moment, but the gap continues to widen. Millions of families and children of our own nation are without healthcare and/or living in poverty. If we are all entitled to Freedom From Want, it would seem that we are a long way from accomplishing it.

4. Freedom From Fear:
Fear is the driving force behind many of our every day decisions and actions. Fear of poverty, fear of crime, theft, loss, fear of death and injury, fear of our overall loss of security. We are constantly being reminded that "September 11th Changed Everything". We are constantly reminded that dangerous enemies wish to destroy us and our way of life, and that war is the solution to any number of continually-redefined problems in our world. Fear is the primary tool of a government that wishes to control us, be it the current administration, or any totalitarian, fascist, despotic, or dictatorial government in the entire history of human civilization.
We are not free from fear-- quite the opposite. Fear is spoon-fed to us every single day, be it fear of global terrorism, or fear of dying in a car accident. Fear of killer bees, sewer explosions, drowning children, accidental fires, exploding iPods, airplane crashes, power outages, rabid dogs, sexual predators, and home invasions can be found on any nightly newscast, any day of the week.

Fear of being unnattractive makes us buy beauty products and diet pills, fear of appearing unsuccessful influences us to buy extravagant homes and luxury cars. Fear of not being loved by our children convinces us to buy them toys, vacations, and expensive birthday bashes. For centuries, fear has been the single most exploited and useful emotion of humanity. Roosevelt's narrow definition of fear as it applies to military conflict is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amazing array of fears that we must hope to someday be rid of. However, 70 years after Roosevelt's proclamation, we are no closer to shedding the fear of physical aggression in terms of the reduction of armed conflict and a continuing struggle for permanent world peace.
I am proud to be an American that embraces a vision of these Four Freedoms. I sincerely hope that within my own lifetime, I will witness--perhaps even participate in--a common effort to move mankind closer to achieving these goals. I thank Norman Rockwell for reminding me of the true America-- one that embraces our differences, not discourages them. One that promotes peace, goodwill, and prosperity, instead of the fruitless and unconscienable war that will surely define my generation.

Waste, Excess, and Consumption By the Numbers

2007-09-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

I came across an amazing photographic artist by the name of Chris Jordan. I cannot even begin to fathom how he creates his pieces, or how many dozens of hours of work went into each one, but they are truly amazing.

Jordan's apparent hope is to give us some concrete idea of what the statistical numbers we hear all the time are really about. For example, when you hear that 1.5 BILLION dollars a week are being spent by our government to fund the war in Iraq, sure it sounds like a lot of money. But really, you have NO IDEA how to process such a staggering quantity of ANYTHING. You have never seen a billion of anything in your entire life, with the possible exception of blades of grass in a field, grains of sand, and the like. Have you ever seen 2 million soda cans, 8 million toothpicks, or 426,000 cell phones? Nope. So, go check it out right now.

Chris Jordan has taken upon himself the task of translating these almost-meaningless numbers and statistics into tangible, concrete representations, usually laced with acid irony. His finished pieces are enormous wall murals and triptychs, which, as Jordan explains on his website, really should be seen in person for the full measure of impact and appreciation (mostly due to their staggering sizes).

Above: 426,000 Cell Phones.
The actual piece is about 250 times larger than this (60 x 100 FEET)

Anyway, this stuff is interesting and highly relevant, especially if you happen to be a statistician, accountant, or anyone else dealing with huge numbers. Go check it out.

Illustratology News Flash

2007-09-12T08:49:00.000-04:00

I have a new finished piece up on my Illustration page. If you haven't been over there in a while, maybe you should take a minute or two and check it out. There's some new stuff up there (newest stuff is generally towards the top of the page) that I've been too busy to announce to the world.

In other news... uh, nothing. I have some site design changes in mind, but it may be a couple of weeks before they go into effect, due to the tedious and daunting nature of web design in general. I'm also still working (sporadically) on a new pinup painting. No idea in the world when it may be finished, but I'm optimistic that it will be some of my best work.

End Transmission.