Okay, enough with the robots. For now.It's hard to believe that it's already practically July. JULY.Where is the summer going?
Between work and the weather (rainy and gray for most of the last couple of weeks), I have to remind myself that there can be a summertime that is shiny and sunny and which exists outdoors.
I keep thinking about my recent trip to San Diego. Never mind that I went in April - the weather there was so relentlessly gorgeous and bright that it just had to be seen as summery. We just don't get sunshine quite like that in NYC.
Cabrillo Park
While I was out there, I spent a lot of time with a family friend who has become very involved in photography. His specialty: photographing flowers.
As a result, I learned three things:
1. I seriously need a new camera. My previous one died a sad and soggy death involving drum corps and a tornado, and my loaner camera (a Sony pocket Cybershot) just isn't cutting it.
2. A disproportionately large amount of my time in San Diego would be spent in and around gardens.
3. California has some of the wildest plant life I have ever seen.
An Alien Plant?
Since I was spending so much time at the gardens, I decided to try my hand at some still-life flora-based photography. I've not done much of this before - my subjects are usually people, typically people running around a football field with flags and large noisy instruments. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with the results.
And here's a picture from the trip which has absolutely nothing to do with flowers:
For a while there were rumblings and rumors that DRE had notions of turning Robots of the Companyinto a book – a real book, a proper novel, even, with dialogue and descriptions and subplots and other such booky features. I’m not entirely sure where this idea originated but somehow the project wound up in the hands of my friend and frequent collaborator, Victor Alpha.
Victor is an incredibly talented writer who amazingly manages to juggle writing duties on a number of projects and audio series, including the wonderfully odd and silly Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. Plus, I am led to believe he is actually James Bond when he is not writing a half-dozen scripts at the demand of his Whiteboard Taskmaster or catering to the imperious whims of his cat.
I could not and cannot think of anyone better suited to writing the ROTC novel.
Much of the book would be written in the madness that was NaNoWriMo of 2007 and I would not get to see it until it was completed. However, I jumped at the chance for a sneak preview when I learned that Victor had already completed a prologue for the novel, a short standalone story written to set the tone.
Reading this prologue, I was utterly charmed by the tale of the lonely little robot and was quickly inspired to do some scribbly sketches to accompany the text.
Before I knew it, I was illustrating the whole prologue. It was just too much fun adding extra layers of absurdity!
I’m not ashamed to admit that I particularly enjoyed drawing the scene below. I mean, how often does one get to draw a robot talking to a plus-sized space-suited social worker, surrounded by a sky of flames?
Not nearly often enough, I say.
I especially like the pearls.
One day, I hope that this prologue and/or the full novel actually gets published.
Until then, I am perfectly happy to keep doing goofy drawings to go along with the work of a writer who always manages to make me laugh.
It would appear that my goal of updating this blog on a weekly basis was perhaps a bit overambitious.
Life-related craziness and technological fickleness seem to conspire against timely blogging. These last few weeks have been particularly marked by the demise of my main home computer – the machine on which I created and stored most of my projects from the last five years. Thankfully most if not all of my work has been backed up. However, thanks to the inexplicable way my computer area was set up, this now means that my scanner is inextricably hooked up to a large metal doorstop and will be inaccessible for the indeterminate future.
So, until things are back up and running, it looks like posts will have to be based on whatever I have saved to my laptop.
Sometime around 2004-2005, I joined an online audio drama group called Dream Realm Enterprises. The flagship series for the group was a strange and silly science-fiction comedy program called Robotz of the Company, which was broadcast online and on a few independently-run radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. In the early days of the series (i.e. when I had more time), I wore many hats in the production process, acting as script editor and casting consultant, as well as occasionally penning an episode or voicing a character.
As the series wrapped up its second season, it seemed like it might be helpful for the writers and producers to have a shared mental image of what the different characters were like. Based on what I imagined from the performances, scripts, production notes, and chats with the production staff, I worked up some concept sketches for characters in the show (all robots) and ideas for other bots which might one day exist in the series’ universe.
These sketches include several miscellaneous designs, as well as ideas for featured characters and series regulars such as Boffin the cockney engineer, Maxi the walking, talking button of unknown purpose, Captain Jammer, and Shinwipe, the administrative bot.
In truth, no one ever asked for these drawings. I just wanted an excuse to doodle the characters.
Does it count as fan art if it’s based on a project you’re involved with?
'To days of inspiration,
making something out of nothing,
the need to express,
to communicate…’
~La Vie Boheme, Rent
About a year ago, I went to an animation workshop lead by a storyboardist from Disney. I had a great time and learned a lot, both with regard to character design and the talent (good and bad) of students accepted into animation programs.
One of the things I learned was that professional storyboard artists often draw their storyboards in Sharpie. He explained that this was because Sharpies have a reasonably consistent flow and produce a very deep black which is hard to achieve with any other kind of marker. A simple little factoid, really, but to me it was a revelation!
It made so much sense!
You see, up to then I could never quite figure out what the artists used to achieve the expressive bold lines in the storyboards I had seen in books. I had guessed (and tried) a number of materials that I thought would achieve that effect, ranging from black colored pencils to charcoals, none of which I was particularly happy with.
But the idea of drawing in permanent marker seriously freaked me out. What if I made a mistake? I didn’t like the idea of having to redraw everything every time I made a careless stroke or smudge. It took me a little while to realize that the point was not to create a perfect drawing, just one that captures the moment and moves the story along. Story boards are far from the final product and will be redrawn and refined any number of times.
Energized by this session, I wanted to draw something…anything. The problem was, I was lazy and didn’t feel like coming up with anything new or original.
Fan art to the rescue!
Listening to my Broadway playlist on shuffle I found Tune Up #1, the opening narration to Rent playing: “December 24th, 9PM, Eastern Standard Time….”
That would work – preexisting dialogue and narration that could easily be converted into some sort of storyboard or comic. A quick Google search brought up the full libretto, and the result of this experiment is below. I didn’t get any farther than this opening monologue but I was happy with how it came out and I ended up a lot more confident about playing with permanent markers.
Cabrillo Park
Self-Realization Fellowship Meditation Gardens
Children's Beach, La Jolla
