Through a Scanner Darkly

Thanks to the folks at artprintasia , got a high-res scan of the painting.

For the french edition of 'wonderland', out in 2010...still needs some colour correction though i think

Noughties are go!

Its farewell to the noughties and david tennant in doctor who!

Saw Avatar over xmas and wasn't really be sure what the fuss is about. Somethings that might have made it a proper movie:

-  Amazing 3D. There were some effective depth of field shots... but having watched movies like Coraline, Bolt and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3d, I wasn't sure what the technological breakthrough in Avatar was. An improvement in degrees perhaps, but it didn't feel like  a major advancement from recent 3d movies.

-  Convincing human CG characters. Some like Roger Ebert have argued that the movie overcomes the problem of the Uncanny Valley with improved motion capture techinques etc. But this seems overblown and misguided - the characters still looked CG, and the idea of the Uncanny Valley I think refers to Human duplicates that we find odd because we're so attuned to reading human expressions and movements. The aliens in the movie however are just that - aliens, and therefore were never going to face a stringent test of the Uncanny Valley problem in the first place, any more than Jar Jar Binks. Also: was it really a huge leap from LOTR's Gollum?

- Something to tie Jake Sully to his human side; no wife, no kids, no parents, just a bunch of greedy war-mongering capitalists - it made the choice of joining the Na'vi too much of a no brainer. That aside the story was  kinda predicatable from beginning to end, with cardboard characters and wooden dialogue. Some argue there's some sort of message about Gaia and the environment , but I'm not sure what that is. There' s a Luddite angle idealising primitive cultures, but the movie itself was made with cutting edge technology. For real tribes facing extinction by loggers, the movie  doesn't seem much help either - what, pray to the trees and hope the forest animals fight off the loggers? :p

Anyway that's my Avatar rant. High horses are go too! Except: there is no horse. :p

Happy 2010!

Money Buys Things

Various pages of original comic art (Wonderland, Regifters, My Faith in Frankie and Malinky robot) now available at Graphic Collectibles :)

Here's the link.

rabbit redux

Did a painted version of the wonderland cover, mostly for the French edition that's due out next year. Oil on canvas, 30x40 inches.  It was also a chance to see if I could replicate in traditional media a piece that was coloured digitally before, and whether it was a process that I'd enjoy. Mixed feelings ultimately I guess; on the one hand it was an interesting challenge somewhat simplified by having an original to refer to , but that also meant a kind of constraint, so maybe there wasn't as much a process of discovery and figuring things out as there usually is when painting.

DVDs watched whilst painting: season 1 of Battlestar Galactica (Edward James Olmos is great, mixed feelings about the religious angle) and seasons 2-3 of the Wire. Which felt a lot like the brilliant  Homicide Life on the Streets, which totally made sense when I found out that Homicide was based on a book by the creator of the Wire :p

Janed

The hardcover trade of  the Marvel Adaptation for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has been out for a bit, and seems  to be going down like gangbusters, if this NYT article is any indication..

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/jane-austen/

Having worked on 3 of 5 covers for the series, I'll be working on the interiors as well for the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation, also with Nancy Butler. No sea monsters unfortunately :p

Regency Reference Book Hunting is go! :p

Bucket Lists

One advantage of being a Causeway Child, you get to be both Singaporean and Malaysian :p  Though not speaking much Malay I've been told by Malaysian  immigration authorities i should throw my  passport away, and by Singaporean ones to 'go back to your country' when I inadvertently entered Malaysia with an expired passport and tried to travel back to the little red dot :p So maybe its still neither here nor there... Anyhow a couple of lists that kinda blow things  out of proportion....

The Singapore Hotlist

20 Under 40

Utopiales 2009

The Malinky Robot French edition won the "Prix de la meilleure BD" (Comic Album of the Year) at the Utopiales SF Festival in Nantes!



First stop though was Paris, where me and dad visited the Eiffel Tower, which is where zombies like to come after they destroy the UK.



Have to admit I'd not heard of  Utopiales  before, but its apparently the largest SF con in Europe. Anyway this year's special guest was James Gurney, so he did the illustration for their poster and there was lots of original art by him on display.



The event itself is a lot more low key than SDCC, which would mean more opportunities for interacting with the writers and artists there, if only I knew any french :p I did get a chance to talk to writer Stephen Baxter though, who happens to be from Liverpool so we commiserated a little on the sale of Alonso and liverpuddle's woes this season.



I'd hoped to meet Philippe Druillet, whose Loan Sloane I'd picked up at a flea market in Cambridge years and years ago, but he had unfortunately taken ill and was unable to attend. Enki Bilal was there though, that's him in the background  having breakfast at the hotel we were staying. Best described as... aloof :p



There were orginal comic book art on display at the event, and I particularly liked Yoann's lively, brushy drawings.



Some of the other nominees included Fergus and Ikigami (which picked up the Special Jury Prize).



I had very little idea what anyone was saying during the awards event but it was still kinda fun  :p





Back in Paris a couple of days later I had a chance to see a small exhibit of old video game consoles, including a 1977 Atari Pong Machine and the Odyssey.



There was also a Galaga arcade machine (me and Rich Nehmad used to play the one at RISD after lunch every day) and a handheld Galaxy II unit in which i kept getting destroyed by aliens :p



Finally a vid put up by Manga News of a robot sketch. Plus an interview of some sort here. Or click on the image below....