Thumbnailing is always a good idea - it lets me know what terribly neglected area of drawing I have to utilise next. Architecture, background designs and layouts in general seem to be the main things to look forward to in the new year that will end up making me lament the disparity between planning and execution.
Oh, and fire engines. I don't think I can draw those.

New year's resolutions - what the hell:
1 - Lose weight. Admittedly you could be dangerously anorexic and still be legally required to have this on your list of resolutions, but it's not like I can't use more gymtime.
2 - Catch up with my movie watching and telly. Resolutions shouldn't all be a chore, right?
3 - Get my shit together. I'm terribly disorganised as a rule, yet my life runs much smoother when I plan things out and pay attention to what's going on around me.

We'll see how well this works out by the end of the month.

Watching Push, I'm struck by a few things.
1 - This is pretty silly without being much fun, which strikes me as a bit of a waste.
2 - Dakota Fanning seemed to be doing alright until she had to play a drunk. Perhaps I should be more forgiving on account of her being two years old and probably not getting tanked off her fanny that much what with the acting and stuff taking up any of her time not devoted to... erm, whatever it is girls that age get up to, presumably stuff with ponies or shoe shopping - but no, I shan't be swayed here: she plays an utterly unconvincing drunk in the same way Chris Evans plays an unconvincing anything at all, and no goddamn way is that an absinthe hangover. Do your bloody research, girl.
3 - One of the actors is called Digimon and that is fucking awesome.

Checked out Sherlock Holmes over the holiday, and it was okay. Not great, but okay.
Ritchie has shown more of an interest in the idea of mockney Brit-cool than any deep love for the cultural weight of icons like Holmes, and it does show a little in a few sequences and moments when I thought more of Viz's 'Raffles the Gentleman Thug' than the inherently patriotic bohemian distracted by his own physical cravings that served as the lynchpin of Holmsian fandom for over a hundred years now. I also felt I wasn't even imagining the homoeroticism in some instances.

As I said before, not a great film, but far from a bad one.

The odd drinking and sleeping hours of Christmas have passed and all that remains is the yearly disappointment and/or embarrassment of New Year's Eve and the very bad decisions that are made on the night. Back to scribbling and hopefully catching up with the blogging after the 'daily post' plan fell through - damn you, alcohol and good company!

because cliches become cliches for a reason, and I might not be posting tomorrow...

Only yesterday I was remarking that I'm sick of getting links to Achmed the Terrorist clips on Youtube, so today I was quite happy to find I'm not alone in my opinion.
Naturally, this just means I'm late to the party as ever - first in not knowing about Jeff Dunham, and then about wishing I didn't know about Jeff Dunham and the braying, unwashed, beer-sodden, furrow-browed inbreeds he calls an audience.

Bah!
Bloody Christmas!
Bloody flu!

Watching:
Farscape. A good show taken on its own terms, with a nice line in pushing what it can get away with on account of being niche sci-fi no-one who wasn't a fan cared much about at the time. The 'who can take more hallucinogenic mushrooms and still walk' competition was still funny, mind.
Muppet Christmas Carol. A great take on an already classic tale, it's eerily harrowing to see the image of Kermit and Miss (in this case Mrs) Piggy as grieving parents, but not half as harrowing as Michael Caine's singing.

"Embedding disabled by request"? Bollocks to that.

Just scribbling some rough cover sketches for Babble, and boy, but the flu is not conducive for the old creative energies, as it's just one strike-out bad idea after another so far.

Anyhoo... flu. Not great. Slept most of the day away today, and I know from lengthy periods of unemployment in the past that this is not a good thing to do with your time.

Don't worry - the above thumbnails make perfect sense to me! Finally finished lettering and colouring the first chapter of Babble and find myself at a loose end that I can hopefully use to clear up other commitments and projects left on the 'IN' pile.
Firstly, some killer bear pages need sorting, then the next chapter of a bit of future-robot malarky that SFX magazine described as 'Asimovian' even though that's not a real word, and some superhero-y stuff 'for kids' that kind of wandered off the 'for kids' reservation because planning ahead is not my strong point and it's basically a freeform thing that makes little senseand will probably end up as filler on this blog at some point in the near future.
All of this hypothetical work being done by the Me of the far future is, of course dependent on being awake and not needing to sleep every five minutes thanks to a headcold with all the trimmings like lethargy, nausea and aches in the extremities I've picked up, but at least I got Babble wrapped up so I can put my feet up for a bit.

Watching: A Christmassy Ted - a revisit of a Christmas standard that in Ireland is akin to the rest of the world's It's A Wonderful Life or The Great Escape, and a daft bit of whimsy tinged with self-awareness it is, too. One of my favorite lines oddly doesn't even get a chuckle from the canned laughter machine: Ted checks the newspaper to see if he's averted disaster and remarks that there's nothing about it in "the Catholic scandal supplement", and Dougal doing a funeral is always fun to see.

Otherwise just aimlessly doodling away, wrapping prezzies and playing GTA4, which I'm finally getting around to finishing well over a year since I actually got the damn thing.

Watching:
Farscape season 1 - the great TV catch-up begins! For me, this was once definitively described at some point in the past as "that thing with the Muppets? Fuck that shit!", though I always simply found it too alienating (in retrospect, possibly intentional) and impenetrable to want to follow. taken from the off, however, it's a decent enough distraction - if a bit top-heavy with Aussies (though that's an observation more than it is a criticism).

Dexter - aw. Shame that character had to go, but a good season.

Venture Bros - not as great as previous seasons, but then it had a lot to live up to. It's moved on from the whole 'death of the Jet Age' themes to growing its main characters beyond their launch concepts, which is an odd move, as for every Ben 10: Alien Force, there's an All Grown Up or Joey. It's working so far, but it's not especially funny or inventive this time around, though I'm willing to accept that I'm maybe just too familiar with the setup and had higher hopes than might reasonably have been fulfilled.

Well, looks like I'll be concentrating on the drawing a bit more than I'd have liked - my PS3 went tits-up with the red screen, and I had that many games saved and bought/saved to the hard drive I don't actually want to start over with a new machine, free replacement or not. BAH!