Archive for March, 2010

Okay, I’ll admit that I’m a Harry Potter freak now, as my friend Alice says. I recently finished the series. I know — I’m like 5 years behind on popular culture. I’m glad to have read it all though. While JK Rowling isn’t exactly the greatest author in the world (see dialogue attributions like “Ron ejaculated loudly”), I felt growlingly attached to the imaginative plot and endearing characters just by breezing easily through page after page (too many pages).

Anyway, I was bored last night and thinking about the last film after coming across its trailer in my nightly Google Reader browsing. I picked up my sketchbook and made a quick sketch of that one confrontation scene at the end of “The Forest Again.” Then I started playing around in Photoshop and applied base colors and found a neat forest background.

While it’s not perfect, it feels good to mess around with drawing/coloring digitally again. I’m going to mess around some more with the original drawing (and fix things like Harry’s giraffe neck, Voldemort’s limp hand, funky folds, etc.) and sketch some more stuff.

Drawing notes:

  • I originally had Harry and Voldy closer, but it sort of looked like they were about to lock lips. Um..
  • At one point I had Harry wearing a North Face fleece, so I gave him a cape to make him look less like sorority girl and more wizardly.
  • I think my Voldy is part Martian Manhunter, part Skeletor.
  • I think Nagini is supposed to be in a cage in this scene. Whatever.
  • I had Nagini coil around sort of funkily. It looked like Voldy had a coffee mug handle popping out of his back.
  • Coloring with the polygonal lasso and paint bucket tools seemed easier to me than using the brush and eraser tools with a mouse. I miss having a Wacom tablet.

Novel Artists

March 27, 2010

On Thursday night I went with my friends to help support our friend, Angela, and her artwork at a show near downtown Chicago. Peter took some photos of her wonderful work that was displayed. Here’s one of the few good photos I took from that night (it was way too dark to be a gallery). It is a “traditional japanese dance” and was actually sort of boring, but it made for a cool photo op. Oh, and it was open bar from 9-10. :D

Johnny was in town and we ate a bunch of times, went to Chill, and watched Jurassic Park III (ugh). I awesomely got rid of the $1.81 left on my sandisk rebate card and it wasn’t awkward or weird at all.

Some friends wanted me to draw up a t-shirt design for their pubcrawl. I designed this simple one pretty quickly, but it does the job.

I hope a few will appreciate the Cooper Black everywhere. What a kitschy font. But I’m especially proud of the baby seal. If anyone wants to start a softball team that’s our logo. And our name will be the Nippon Seal-Fighters.

The Best Camera

March 23, 2010

… is not an iPhone! Go buy a Hasselblad.