People don't change. They just find new ways to lie.

I hope Christmas and the New Year found you well. It was mostly quiet around these parts with the odd trip around the pubs of the town and as is traditional I have made all the usual resolutions about making more effort in various areas of my life but they sort of have to wait until I get over the whole holiday period and I will say this for The Vomiting Bug, it may be unpleasant but it is remarkably well-named. Anyway, we'll see if the resolutions hold in any way once I get up and running, though for now I'm just getting back into posting on the blog again and chipping away at the "to do" pile in between jaunts to the water closet.

That's not a heart monitor, it's a machine telling me I'm low on khakis

In non-scribbling-related news, I'll be having arsehole surgery in what passes for "the immediate future" with the sorry state of the NHS these days, but I at least have the consolation of being able to say "I'm having arsehole surgery - to cure me of being one" should the fancy take me.
I remember when we first got our local government over here and it was populated by (alleged) terrorists, it was somehow even more disappointing to see them turn into a bunch of ineffectual money-grubbing heels than if it was just your usual Tory lot on the make, as it kind of looked to me like "yeah, we killed all those people to get here, and now we're gonna close some hospitals anyway, so fuck you."

I will beat you and there will be nothing madcap or wacky about it

I fought an 8-year-old and the only reason I won is because he fell on a spike

And so to the hilariously imprecise and clumsy way Mr C goes about lettering his shit. Photoshop, as ever, is the main tool here, though I'm increasingly aware of its limitations as well as my own in this particular area. Functional seems to be the word I'm looking for, and considering that's the level of art I'm finally getting to, perhaps that's all I need, since as long as lettering is not aggressively terrible and sloppy the strip should read just fine.
More complex and in-depth discussion of the 'invisible art' of lettering can be found on Jim Campbell's blog, though I warn you the man's an unrepentant goth and must be treated with deep suspicion, caution and disdain.

Watching: Hawaii Five-0 1.5 - ah, man... Wood 'Avon barksdale' Harris, you can do better than this, surely? I like H50, but you can totally do better than this.
The Walking Dead 1.1 - based on the Robert Kirkman comic of the same name, this is fittingly downbeat and slow-paced stuff about the collapse of civilisation due to zombie outbreak, and like most zombie stories, despite the ubiquitous - some would almost say played out - nature of zombies in popular culture, nobody actually says the word zombie and even seem a bit clueless as to what the mythology entails. but it's entertaining stuff, taking necessary liberties with the source material to the point that it can get away with the talky scenes that dominate the comic and drag the pace to a standstill: here, the format supports exposition, but in many places the screen story eschews it in favor of the strengths that come with the moving image, particularly the scenes with the dude's wife instinctively shambling around their home after her death and freaking out her husband and son. It's definately one of the highlights of the new crop of shows this season - yes, even better than Hawaii Five-0 and the travesty that is The Event.
Caprica - So it's mature drama because he's made an anatomically correct sex robot that is identical to his 15 year old daughter? yeah, I'll go ahead and pass on this, thanks SyFy - but you keep on keeping it classy!

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.

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!

in Soviet Russia...

Thursday 10th September 2009

Like a luddite, I still do all my lettering Photoshop. Illustrator is the industry standard, I gather, with some outfits even using Quark Express (a functional alternative I used in my copyrighting days). I'm sticking with what I know for now, as I've already dragged the arse out of this deadline as it is.