"Hobbit" thoughts

I got back from seeing "The Hobbit" today and I left with mixed feelings. Overall I'd say it was a fun romp, but there were a few things that kept me from fully enjoying it. This can be attributed to two things:

1. Jackson and co. treating the film as more of a children's story. I know Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" for a more juvenile audience. I've read the book multiple times (still haven't touched "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, though. I want to, but I find it too intimidating of a tome, like it's so densely packed my brain would explode trying to process everything. I'll read it one day, though, one day...), and it definitely isn't stereotypical kids literature. It doesn't pander to them and deals with subjects that are mature for its intended demographic. It's smart and nothing stupid's put in there because "the kids'll like it." I felt that that was what was going throught Jackson and co.'s heads when they developed the character of Radagast the Brown and his bunny sled. I first saw the bunny sled in the trailer and for some reason thought nothing of it, then I watched the movie and wondered why I hadn't realized "Hey, this is pretty dumb" up until that point. If I ever meet Peter Jackson in person the first thing I'd say, well actually the second thing because I'd be gushing about how much I loved "King Kong" first, is "a bunny sled? Really?" If Jackson really needed to include him that badly then he could've been better written. It's not like he was being loyal to the source material, as Radagast's one mention in original novel is so slight that I forgot he even existed until I read this movie's press. Radagast the Brown just doesn't feel like he belongs in Middle Earth. Which is really my main complaint here. The juvenile stuff just doesn't belong in Middle Earth. It feels like a it comes from different world entirely. Particularly the Goblins and their king. They didn't feel like the same race as the ones in the trilogy, and I don't mean the Orcs because, though I'm no Tolkien expert, I'm aware of that distinction. They were just too comical and felt like they stepped out of another fantasy series. They were even designed differently, I think. I guess you could rationalize it by saying they're a different race of Goblins in the same way the Wargs, the giant wolves ridden by Goblins, looked different. But you shouldn't have to do that. Same with the Deacon Alien in "Prometheus," and don't get me started on that film!

2. All the scenes feebly trying to connect it with "Lord of the Rings." I know that sounds weird because I was just complaining about how this didn't feel like it was in the same universe, but in the original book all that connected the old with the new was Bilbo's magic ring, which eventually became the Ring of Power. I thought that was cool, how something so big could arise out of something so small. I don't need an entire scene of Gandalf debating with others whether Sauron's returning or not. Get back to the quest! The book didn't dwell on that. In the book when such meetings took place Gandalf just left for a while and came back and mentioned the meetings in passing. The meetings weren't the meat of the story and don't further the narrative. Tolkien knew what to focus on. It's like how the "Star Wars" prequels suffered from lack of focus. No one person was the main character. Now you've got an enitre subplot about characters separate from Bilbo, who's supposed to be the main focus, trying to prevent the rise of Sauron. Granted, it's not as bad as in the "Star Wars" prequels, but it certainly runs the risk if this is going to be the same with future films. However, I understand this problem, and it's inevitable given Jackson's tendency toward overindulgence, which I usually enjoy and is why I loved his "Kong" interpretation. He obviously loves the material, and when he loves something, he basks in it for as long as he can. As a Tolkien geek, he made this for other Tolkien geeks just like "Kong" was for Kong fans like me. But the problem is that by adding all this extra stuff from the appendix of "Lord of the Rings" (and probably from "The Silmarillion but I haven't read that, either), it's not really "The Hobbit" anymore. It's just a bloated mess. That's not to say I won't be looking forward to that, or at least parts of it. The more Orc battles, the better. But... I don't know, it's complicated.

Anyway, here are some positive things about the movie:

1. Gollum, Gollum, Gollum. Best scene by far, especially for being the first one they shot. It was like seeing an old friend again. He was my favorite character of the last three movies and he's my favorite here. I love Andy Serkis by now. First Kong, then Caesar (the ape not the emperor), and now back to his finest! Really I can't praise him more than what's already been written.

2. The sub-plot with the pale Orc that Thorin has a blood feud with was kind of take-it-or-leave-it for me. It wasn't crappy like Radagast or the Goblins but its addition left me scratching my head. Like Radagast there's no real point to him being there as the story would be just as riveting without him. But he is kind of cool so he gets somewhat of a pass from me.

3. Lack of Smaug. I already knew he wasn't going to fully appear until film 2, but damn it I wanna see him now! They're really hyping up his appearence, aren't they? I just hope it doesn't turn out like the American Godzilla movie where the design was a disappointment when revealed. This is probably one of cinema's only shots at an iconic movie dragon. Film history's filled with iconic dinosaurs, but no dragons in cinema have left any (scorch?) marks. They tried with "Beowulf" in 2007, but we all know how that turned out (not the design, but the movie itself. I loved the design). "Dragonslayer" may have been the exception if it hadn't opened against "Raiders of the Lost Ark." The dragon in that film takes the cake in terms of awesomeness. Can Smaug top that? We'll see. I also wonder how motion capture is going to play into this. Dragon anatomy is of course different from human anatomy, so how is that going to work? And Benedict Cumberbatch isn't only playing Smaug but also Sauron, so I wonder how they're going to differentiate his voice?

4. That fucking bunny sled! You're telling me it can out-run a gang of Wargs? I mean-- sorry. I'll stop now.

So that's just my overall impressions after my first time of seeing "The Hobbit." Just thought I'd post a review. I was actually thinking of turning this from an art blog to a more general blog. There'd still be art, there would also be reviews and observations and stuff. Part of my motivation for this change is, as you can probably tell from lack of updates, I haven't been drawing much lately. It's not enough of an excuse to say college burned me out, since it ended about 8 months ago. It's more complex than that., but now's not the time to talk about it. All I can really say is hopefully I'll update more because I just realized that a few people in my family actually read this (hey, guys!) and I wouldn't want to disappoint them with lack of content. If they still read it.

Kaibutsu changes

I've been gone on vacation for two weeks, and I got some time to sketch (something I really need to do more often, I'm starting to get rusty) Anyway I ended up coming up with a lot more new ideas for "Kaibutsu," which I'll post once I get some finished artwork. I'm redesigning Luctandor (now named Fulgurah), giving him a sidekick, scrapping Arunah for a much cooler monster, and tweaking Fragorsidus's origin and design. I actually really like where it's headed now. All the parts are starting to balance. I still don't have a design for the aliens, though, but I was thinking of giving them mecha based off of pillbugs that roll around like Anguiras and shoot lasers out of their antennae. On the one hand I still think it needs more kaiju, but on the other I feel that it's enough characters for a good narrative flow.

I think the plot most resembles the movie "Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster" since it's all about a threat from the cosmos that unites the kaiju against it, but then again that's like a lot of Godzilla movies.

Who knows when it will all be finished, though. It's almost fall so that means job searching time. Which means job. Which means less time on my hands.

Kaiju Manga Reviews

While most G-Fans like to collect toys, and I have quite a few, my passion has to be aquiring rare kaiju books featuring unseen artwork. In that spirit I just recieved three kaiju manga, two Gameras and one Godzilla. I'm pretty sure people are already familiar with the Godzilla one, but the Gameras were news to me. Some of the only info I could find on them was in French!

The Gamera on the left is pretty cool. It's "Gamera vs. Barugon" but set in the Kaneko trilogy between Gamera 2 and 3, hence the little logo at the bottom left hand corner christening it Gmaera 2.5. It begins with Gamera killing Legion then cuts to an expedition to an island where they discover a jewel within a giant skull, which of course hatches into Barugon. The art is pretty good, if a little sketchy. Barugon's redesign is really good, he kind of reminds me of a giant thorny devil lizard. He still has his tongue power though, but he wouldn't be Barugon without it, I guess. We even get a short Gyaos battle as a bonus. Then in the back there's a short interview with Shinji Higuchi, but like the rest of the book it's in Japanese

The Gamera on the right is a spinoff of "Gamera: The Brave," taking place between the scenes of the movie when Toto has been captured by the government. As a consequence there's no kaiju action except for when the characters watch secret government footage of the old Gamera's battle with the Gyaos from the beginning of the movie. There's also a cool scene where we find out that the government has recovered a severed Gyaos head from the battle, which is really well-drawn. The art is typical modern manga style, as are the characters. There's even one of those anime girls with an awkward love interest typical of most manga. Not that that's a bad thing, in fact it's cool to see kaiju and manga merged like this. Whatever shots there are of kaiju look great, too, and only strengthen the fact that there needs to be a Godzilla or Gamera anime pronto.

Speaking of Godzilla, man "The Godzilla Comic" is an interesting book. It's an anthology of different artists doing their own spins on the King of the Monsters. And boy do they bring some interesting things to the table! The best story is without a doubt the one where all the kaiju are samurai. Not only does it have Samurai Godzilla in space, but a gun-weilding Mechanikong and Jet Jaguar on a motorcycle! And at the end Godzilla ascends to heaven to be with Biollante, who seems to have turned into a woman wreathed in flowers, at least I think that's Biollante since she came out of a rose. The story itself was drawn by Hurricane Ryu, the suit actor for King Ghidorah in the 1991 film (which he also did storyboards for) as well as Battra and other roles. He's also a manga artist and draws a mean Godzilla. My favorite, though, probably has to be one where a ship looking for Godzilla's undersea breeding grounds gets more than they bargained for when a whole herd of Godzillas comes after them in their lifeboat in an eerie shot. Add to that a story about Godzilla in ancient Japan, chibi Xians and some chick in a bunny outfit (?), and you've got one hell of a book. This has to be one of the most interesting Godzilla-related things in existance.

And that's just a fraction of the fascinating world of kaiju manga, which I've only begun to scratch the surface of. If I could read Japanese and had the patience I would make scanlations of all three of these, but I can't so I'm sorry. Ja mata!

New kaiju story in the works

If anyone's interested, I've been working on a new roster of kaiju lately. I'm going to rough out some designs pretty soon for a project in my Professional Practice class, so they'll be done in about two weeks or so.

For the story I'm going to do what Alan Moore did for "Watchmen," take different characters and base new ones off them and tell a unique story. Instead where he based his off the Charlton Comics universe, I'm basing mine off Godzilla. Kaibutsu is the Godzilla analogue, while there's also going to be ones for Mothra, Gigan, etc. 

The story is still in the planning stages, but what I'm aiming to do is depict what our world would be like if kaiju really existed. How would an engine of destruction like Godzilla or a godlike being such as Mothra influence our society? But there's a lot I still don't have. What will the aliens be like? Should I set it in Japan or America? When should it be set? Makes me wonder if I'll ever get the story complete. But you guys will get to see designs and hear the kaiju's origins, I promise. Two weeks

"Xenozoic Tales" Review

It's been about a week since I finished reading Mark Schultz's "Xenozoic Tales," so it's high time I posted a review. Well, let's see, where to start? I mean, God damn, what fantastic artwork! How fantastic you say? Well let's just say that whenever I get done working on Crocazill, if my artwork so much as looks like something Mark Schultz scrawled on a bathroom stall then I can die happy. Seriously he had to have sold his soul to the devil or something because his artwork is flawless. The only person working today that can even compare to him is Frank Cho. Sure in the beginning stories you can see he's just starting out and taking cues from earlier artists, notably Milton Caniff, and the dinosaurs don't look as impressive but that's quickly remedied a few issues in, in fact the change hits so fast that I found myself constantly going back and trying to find where it set in! I think I noticed it around the story where they meet the Grith, creatures resembling the Dinosauroid which communicate through Scrabble tiles.
And that's just one of the trippy things you'll find in this book. Never since the original "Land of the Lost" has there been such a unique spin on the lost world story, let alone the post-apocolypstic narrative. The human societies that sprung up after the mysterious cataclysm even has their own names for the dinosaurs. Pteranodons= Zekes, T. rexes= Shivats, etc. These days comics either great art or a great story, but never both. Though like the art the main narrative takes a while to get started as well, but you could also argue that that works in the storie's favor since it introduces you to the characters of Jack Tenrec and Hannah Dundee before they embark on their adventures.
That brings us to the only con of this book, the spoiler being that there are no spoilers. As of this post Mark Schultz has never completed "Xenozoic Tales." I'm not sure exactly why, I read somewhere that he just stopped one day. The final page of the last comic named the title of what would have been the next issue, but none ever came. From interviews I've read Schultz says the art is partially to blame. By the comic's end each page had become so saturated with detail that he finally needed a break in the same way that illustrated version of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" burnt out Berni Wrightson. It's a shame too because it stops right when the characters recieve the call to action and your brain says "Alright here come the thrills!" But then you end up getting the shaft. So Mark, in the off-chance that you've stumbled upon this blog by, I don't know, Googling yourself, hurry up and finish that "Storms at Sea" novella and get your ass back to finishing "Xenozoic!" I'm sure there are people who have been waiting since the 80s for you to do it.

art by Mark Schultz

By the way the video above was from a short-lived cartoon adaptation of "Xenozoic" which ran under the more popular title "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs." Also, I apologize for not posting any art lately. That'll be remedied come Tuedsay!

I wish I had these kind of dreams more often.

In the dream I had last night a friend and I were walking down this weird section of Columbus which we had never seen before. It was much more beautiful than the real city, with wildly different styles of architecture from all over the world. But it wasn’t the same type of eclectic style that dots tourist attractions like Disneyland or Vegas, the place we were in somehow did it with more… dignity. Like it didn’t try to recreate actual structures but made instead new buildings out of certain design influences. There was function behind the form, I guess you could say. And they weren’t necessarily new, like they’d obviously been there a while, it’s hard to explain.  Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” did the same thing but this was scaled down to Columbus level. One building I remember kind of looked like Angkor Wat in Cambodia with the same weird spires which always looked like ears of corn to me. Another mimicked Ancient Greece or Washington, DC if you want to go more modern. It was glistening white with towering columns. Whether they were Doric, Ionic or Corinthian I could not tell. Then arching over everything was something like the Roman Aqueduct, only shorter. We went by a large church which I wish I could describe but I don’t think words can paint a proper picture, but I think it combined the styles of both the east and west. I just remember it was so beautiful that I turned to my friend and joked about living there some day.

Soon we arrived in more familiar territory, the area around Broad Street near the dorms where the Byer’s used to be before CCAD bought the building and made it into classrooms. To our surprise construction crews were working round the clock trying to make it like the place we had just been in, but this time it seemed like they were just adding on to old buildings instead of making them from scratch (except for these little arches that looked like the ones made in Central Park by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Once building near the State Auto insurance building already has these). For example, there’s one bridge farther down Broad Street which is used by trains, only in my dream it was much closer since dreams seem to like to compress landmarks. Anyway, construction crews seemed to be layering more bridges over it like blocks. Oh, and the same crews were unloading bales of hay and leaving them on the corner of the sidewalk. I remember wondering what the hell they were doing, and then I remembered some sort of parade was going through town. The circus? But what sort of event was so magnificent that they’d need to dress up entire buildings for it? Anyway, that was pretty much the only abnormal part of the dream, besides the fact that it was t-shirt weather in the middle of winter and we were carrying bent pieces of metal, using them as canes and trying to imitate the walk of the gang from “A Clockwork Orange.”

My dreams often feel like the last place that capture that sense of wonder I had in my childhood. Movies come close but dreams have the added bonus of putting you right in the middle of things even more than “Avatar” ever could. Could James Cameron boast that he can duplicate the warmth of sunlight on your back or the feeling of movement in your legs as you navigate your surroundings instead of staring at a screen? I don’t know why I’m being philosophical, I just wanted to get my memories of my dream down before I forgot them.

Holiday Post

A comission for the holidays, featuring a very one-sided battle between two famous stop-motion arctic monsters: the Rhedosaurus from "Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms" (one of my favorite Harryhausen movies) and the Abominable Snow Monster from the Christmas classic "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Raindeer." Whose to say the Beast didn't make a trip to Santa's Village before swimming down to New York?

I hope everyone who reads this blog is having a Merry Christmas (or a Happy Hannukah, but that's been over for a while, hasn't it?). Mine was pretty good. I got a copy of the complete run of Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz, which I can't wait to dig into.

cover art by Mark Schultz

In my opinion, any Christmas when you get a book whose alternate title is "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs" has been a pretty damn good Christmas!

Some cool sites I've come by and other things.

For anyone interested, here are some cool art blogs and websites I've stumbled upon whule surfing the net:

http://sparthconstruct.blogspot.com/ This artist is probably the best I've seen when it comes to futuristic cityscapes and machinery. He especially has a greater sense of scope than I've seen with other artists, creating worlds so vast you couldn't possibly hope to process all their information in your feeble human brain while maintaining a strict sense of geometry. I first found out about him when io9 did an article on the cover for a new Halo novel by Greg Bear. I've never checked out Halo, and my knowledge of video games isn't as strong as your average art student (I'm more of a book and film buff), but I really enjoyed the cover image and I just had to check the artist out. Turns out he's done a lot of game artwork as well as book covers, including a nice "Dune" tribute.

http://www.creaturespot.com/ Offers a wonderful selection of monster designs from various fantasy artists, from Tolkienesque Orcs to Lovercraftian monstrosities. Some of the artists on this site are also featured in a new book coming out called "White Cloud Worlds" (below) which features the work of artists from New Zealand, a few of which worked on "King Kong" and "Lord of the Rings."

White Cloud Worlds is published by Haper Collins New Zealand, just so noone thinks I'm plagarizing.

http://illustrateurs.blogspot.com/2010/03/science-fiction-art-3.html?zx=873b0142a0d903f A French website which also features work from various people but instead focuses on sci fi in general with art both old and new that has a wonderful retro feel to it.

Also, in time for Halloween, the website Pink Tentacle recently posted some wonderful images by Japanese artist Tatsuya Morino, who is probably best known in the states for the cartoonish art in "Yokai Attack!" These are a rare departure as they feature characters from US and European gothic horror instead, including Frankenstein and Dracula but also rarely known works such as "War with the Newts" and "The Terror of Blue John Gap." Check them out if you want your day made: http://pinktentacle.com/2010/10/gothic-horror-illustrations-by-tatsuya-morino/

Before I go I'd also like to declare my love for the cheesy 1970 gem "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" which is probably one of the greatest B-movies ever. Watch the trailer on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXX5EFQAV48 Cheese factor and cave women aside, it bosts the most epic stop-motion dinosaur effects on screen not created by Ray Harryhausen, even though it's a sequel to his "One Million Years BC." I'd even go so far as to commnit heresy and say they're even better because their limbs actually blur when they move just like in real life, something Harryhausen's beasts never did. The plot isn't even that important, something about blondes being sacrificed to the sun to keep away dinosaurs and the moon gets made somehow. It's all about the dinosaurs. My favorites are the captured plesiosaur near the beginning and the giant green carnivorous dinosaur which ends up befriending the heroine. The pterodactyl ain't bad either. 

Anyway that's about all I wanted to say. I''ve got some more art projects to post in the coming days and "Crocazill" is still moving along at its own steady pace. Until next time, then.

"Night of the Living Trekkies" review- what makes it scary

io9 is one of my favorite websites because every day it seems like they always have at least one article that captures my attention. Along with DA and my email, it’s one of the things I check on every day. Case in point was when an article cropped up about a trailer for a book called “Night of the Living Trekkies.” Besides the fact that I love Star Trek and zombie movies, the title sounded so ridiculous that I had to click on it. The plot is simple enough but so fascinating that I wonder why I hadn’t thought of it myself: a zombie outbreak at a Star Trek convention.

I know that at first it may sound funny. But it’s also pretty scary if you think about it. Take, say,  9/11. I wasn’t there when it happened, let alone witnessed a building fall firsthand, so I can’t imagine what it would be like to see one. But if you made it happen at a place I’m familiar with, that makes it feel more realistic and therefore scarier. Kind of like in that movie “Jumper,” where Hayden Christianson finds his father dead and “Family Guy” is playing in the background. I see “Family Guy” on tv every day, so in some weird way that made the murder more real for me, if you know what I mean.

What helps is that the authors have obviously been to conventions themselves and they know how they work. It helps that the hero of the story is a bellhop, so he goes to all the various rooms and we hear about all the prepping involved to get the con started. And all along the way you get snippets of the outbreak to come, be it some guy complaining that a "mime" bit him to mysterious "bums" loitering in the parking lot. Since he used to be in the army, our hero has a "sixth sense" and knows something's wrong. So when the zombies inevitably attack the hotel en masse, he has to lead an army of refugees, including his own sister, to safety while using the virtues taught by "Star Trek" to survive.

Most of the characters may be cookie cutter stereotypes of survival stories but they do get in some good dialogue. There's also a lot of in-jokes to "Star Trek" and even "Star Wars" (you'll have to read the book to see why), which serves as a good counterbalance to the action. So all-in-all it's a very fun book. It's also reasonably short, so if you're looking for a light and entertaining read where people mow down zombies dressed like Spock then this is surely it.