Is there anyone you can call who actually cares about you?

Today I spent three hours reading up on Transformers continuity, and it goes without saying that I'm not proud of it.  Then, about an hour into trying to calculate the travel distance between Beijing (jing jing jing) and the Wudang Mountains to work out if a jump in distance and time between scenes shown in the remake of The Karate Kid was feasible, I figured I really needed to go do some effing work.
Hence I am now balls deep in illustrating fan-fiction thrills of yesteryear so I don't get too caught up in timewasting - or "writing" as writers call it.

When I was his age I was sloshing through the jungle dodging enemy fire with nothing but a necklace of ears to talk to

The blog has lain fallow for a while now, so I thought I'd bung up my "sketchbook" for August - or at least the latter half of August - as I have of late tried to get away from filling physical notebooks with doodles as I believe it makes me lazy not having to refine or follow through on anything I jot down and then throw in a pile and forget about, and I rarely use Manga Studio even though I recalled it being great for sketching (and not freezing up with files over 7mb like Photoshop does), so I've killed a couple of birds with the one stone here and created what I think can best be described as less a sketchbook and more of a digital napkin covered in doodles.
Don't mind the big red blobs on some pages, that's just me redacting things I shall be using in some form elsewhere, and for the most part this was me keeping my hands busy while I watched tv, so I hope you shall forgive me my lack of ability with MS' colouring, lettering, or inking tools, I'm more a Photoshop man (at least for now).

You can't kick me out of Coon and Friends - I'm the fucking Coon!

Apologies for the clumsy shopping, but today there is
SNOOOOOOWWWWWWW!

I don't want to go to jail Mr Ross - they have robbers and rapists and rapists who rape robbers

Watching: Roots: The Next Generation 1-3 - not quite as essential as the first few episodes of the original series before the happy ending kicked in (where it turned into a Looney Tunes-style chase where the heroes got one over on dumb ol' whitey), but still soberingly blunt in places as occasionally such material needs to be to remind us that we've still got a way to go no matter how many teen dramas skirt with the idea of interracial romance. I'm not really a big fan of those fictions that amount to little more than a holiday in the misery of others so I feel no real need to watch the Hostels and the Saws and the Eastenders, but for some reason I made time for this and I'm not entirely sure what I make of it, possibly because it's a grim reminder best summed up not by the scene transition that moves from a politician dropping names such as Plato and Cicero whom he has studied to help create the perfect oration for his would-be constituency which cuts directly to a man bellowing the word "niggers" at the camera, but by the sight of a weary black man with faith in fairness attempting to vote only to be stymied by clever tricks perpetuated by angry morons who hiss that "things are changing" and it reminds me that rather than the ever forward momentum we assume social progress to be, we can be dragged backwards at any time by anyone small and angry enough to not notice or care about the world they now live in.
Nikita 1.01/1.02 - a little confused by this initially, as it seemed to be a remake of the film/tv series up until the flashbacks were revealed to be happening in the present day and weren't the experiences of the young Nikita but a junkie she's groomed to be her replacement/mole in the agency that created her as she plays a long game in simultaneously deconstructing it from without and within. It's quite glossy with the older Nikita in scenes where she's supposed to be cocky instead coming off as obnoxious, but the worrying subtext of women existing primarily as sex objects remains from the 1990s series, with the younger female protagonist having to be rescued from two separate rape attempts in the space of ten minutes arguably changing the subtext to plain text rather quickly. It is all a bit unconvincing in a bad way as opposed to unconvincing in a good way like The Defenders, which is not a great show but wears its thoughts on its sleeve and thus can't really disappoint you because you are watching a guy running around with his dick all but hanging from his trousers trying to have sex with a Las Vegas stripper and you know more or less everything you need to in order to judge if you'll continue watching and whatever you decide you will be correct because curve balls are not part of the show's gameplan. Nikita, on the other hand, has a heroic lead who we're supposed to cheer for because she sets someone up to be murdered and another person to be gang raped just to further her own agenda. Possibly it's going somewhere with it all and there's a moralistic message to be found at the end, but I'd at least hope there's some sort of examination of the grooming/abusive relationship between Nikita and her young protege in the pipeline.
Superman 3 - which is nowhere near as awesome as this scene might make you think it is.

Squeeze my lizard!

Ah, the tedious process of building pages...

Watching: Superman IV, which is not as bad as I remember, it is worse. He has Great Wall Repairing Vision now? Superman telekinesis? Humans can speak, hear and breathe in space, too - mind you, that was established as far back as Superman II, or at least the Richard Donner version, which established that people could speak in space at great an unnecessary length that even a young me found a bit illogical. Also He Man and She-Ra: the Secret of the Sword, which is the gayest thing I have ever seen, and I speak as someone who has watched gay men have sex(1). "put him in a cell - an uncomfortable one! BWAH-HA-HA-HA!" And there's this team of evil dudes with names like Hordak, Grizzlor, Shadow Witch, Leech, and Princess Adorable and we're supposed to wonder which one is going to defect to the good guys? Weak sauce, 1980s.

(1) to rule it out as an option. Never confused.

"He is thunder and wrath, fire and steel..."

Haha - fuck me. Nearly up to 365 posts! Almost a year of sketch blogging and it was pretty much a waste of time.

Anyhoo, once I espyed MS' 'new story' option where it arranges all the pages for you in one file and containing folder complete with little sidebar menu on the edge of the canvas, I decided I'd do four pages of an 8-page script in Photoshop and the other four in Manga Studio hopefully learning something as I went, seeing as how I'd opened it once before in the past, failed to import a page of pencils and never went back to it again - basically, I'd see how the pages (and apps) compared at the end. I wrote the script in something like eight minutes because I forsaw failure and didn't want anything too complex, so it's just two people talking at each other for a bit, then some stuff with a dinosaur and someone gets stabbed, but it'll do the job for an art tryout.
Anyway, for some reason, I started with page four first, and right from the off, Manga Studio wasn't making friends.

I had not a baldy about the layers and settings going in, so it was a struggle to get the thumbnailed page into MS to the point that I eventually gave up, and I still have no idea how to open a basic jpeg image all on it's ownsome, though I later discovered you actually have to import it into an open document, which is probably fair enough, as that's more or less what you'd be doing in Photoshop - importing the pencils as a separate layer. The brush settings were utterly baffling, mind, and I still have no idea how MS decides to attribute particular properties to new layers, but I now know the difference between a sketch layer (a blue 'pencil' layer which doesn't show up in exported image files) and a finished layer (a colour or black and white layer which holds the finished visual properties of the pages). The above was a first stab at a layout using the brush tool and the default settings for that, as I wanted to get cracking and could only spare an hour or two each day for drawing while I watched certain tv shows on the pc. During this, I did figure out opacity settings for layers and drawing tools, so that helped with the next step:

Making the basic panel layout.
I'd figured out the opacity thing by now, but the panels layer thing was just a confusing mess and I couldn't be arsed figuring it out as the only thing I had to watch on the pc by then was a three month backlog of Supernatural, and, to be blunt, fuck that. Instead, I used a black and white layer and the marquee tool to run up some basic panels, and that did for me. One thing I did decide to change at this stage was the layout of the comic store to something more resembling Belfast's long-gone geek Mecca Talisman (which was bought up by Forbidden Planet, then moved to a different location), as the name of the store in Turbo Katie is Forbidding Toyshop, an hilarious pun on Forbidden Planet, so I did some rough sketches and decided on a longer and thinner store layout, although until now I've just scribbled in random background details whenever I've had to draw the place, so this means I'll have to go back and redraw a lot of panels in previous strips. I also discovered the different settings for the Pen tool in MS, which I decided to use to ink the strip instead of the brush tool, which if I'm honest I'd only been using thus far because the hotkey is 'B' like it is in Photoshop and I'd probably just went there out of habit for the thumbnails.

The pen tool I quite like, as it has a 'stroke in/stroke out' option that corrects your lines for you, giving a very clean and mechanical finish, and I just scribbled away, happily leaving in duff strokes. The top panel came out awful, as I lost the likeness on the character and screwed up the fabric folds on her costume, though it occurred at this point I'd never figured out if her costume was supposed to be shiny plasticy stuff or textured cloth so it was a bit moot. Never corrected those screw-ups, and instead rushed onwards.

Scribbled in a few blacks on a separate layer using the brush tool. This didn't turn out a very good example of what can be achieved, I don't think, but I was starting to see how I could get some decent organic-looking ink effects, albeit inking that looks like it was done with a half-dry permanent marker. I also realised that the resolution on the image was far too small, but figured it wasn't worth correcting at that stage and chalked it up to a lesson learned.

Colouring was confusing as I can't figure out how to do good solid blocks of colour and went with scribbly strokes instead, which was horrendous to look at and really garish, since I had to use absolute colour states and couldn't figure out how to burn or dodge, or add new layers of tone/highlights that would do that for me. It occurred later that I should have gone with halftones instead, or done the colouring elsewhere, possibly in Painter, which I have also never bothered to learn to use.

Lettering was a complete pain in the arse. Leaving aside the sheer bloody ugliness of the finished article, I can't for the life of me figure out how to stop MS picking Tahoma 9pt as the default font, and had to scroll through the font list each time to choose Anime Ace (though normally I go with Blambot's Joe Kubert font for my lettering needs), though it would still do the text in 9pt even though the size was set to 7pt, meaning I had to select the entire text after I was done, then resize it all at once, then change the setup of the paragraph to reflect the new text size while an increase in the leading occurred when I was doing so (and there doesn't seem to be any values to manipulate to correct this), the text can only be moved when the cursor is inside a small (unmarked) envelope around the copy and if you're outside that it changes to the hand tool that moves the entire page instead, and trying to use the balloon option on the text window was like pulling teeth, as it puts a huge distance between the edge of the letters and the edge of a balloon, and for an overly-talky strip like this one, that dog just won't hunt. Instead I had to use the good old-fashioned PS method of creating the balloons on a separate layer under the text using the ellipse and 'polyline' tools, but lettering in MS is a fucking brutal exercise going by this outing.

So there you have my first practical attempt to use MS, and while the finished page was underwhelming and I'd rather redraw the entire thing instead of paste it where anyone can mock, I'll put my hands up to its shittyness as it's only a tryout and failure is probably just as important as success when finding your feet in anything.
I can, however, see the potential Manga Studio has if I stick with it, which I will be doing between Babble pages - which I'll be starting to draw again next week - and I'll put up the finished strip as and when it's completed so those pages can be mocked too.

Watching:
Dollhouse finale - Meh. I've seen all of it now, and while there was admittedly more to it than 'child-like whores fulfill any male fantasy and occasionally something goes Wrong with the process', there wasn't that much terribly interesting about what was there. Some decent twists and the odd glimmer of potential in the death throes, but the only really interesting concept was the post-apocalyptic setting of the epilogues, and I'd rather have had a series about that instead of one where Eliza Dushku got beat up, stripped, or cried every time we were supposed to care a jot about her character. C+

Listening:
Prodigy - got me a hankering from somewhere for those old-school beats they excelled at before Fat of the Land came along and turned them into a pantomime, in much the same way that I never realised what a bunch of middle-class wankers the Manics were before Everything Must Go became a fixture in every 4x4 on a school run. Oh God, now I want to listen to Holy Bible...

Back to the thumbnaily grind for a bit, and I'm fighting my usual urge to fill backgrounds with any old shit just to fill a blank space.

Watching:
24 season 8- I'm only two episodes in, but by christ you can tell Star Trek: Voyager's Brannon Braga is writing it: not a single character is spared from having to talk exposition to another, and it's not good telly. Jack is as entertaining as ever when spared this chore, obviously, lasting almost a full forty minutes in episode one before he axe-murders someone and throws the dude's bud down a stairway to his death as an afterthought. He barely notices it's happened and I'm probably imagining the look of disappointment on his face when he realises that the other guy is dead already.
Accidentally On Purpose - I've stopped watching a lot of shite in the current television season (Brothers, Hank, Flashforward, Heroes), so I'm at a loss as to why I'm still watching this. It's akin to being stabbed in the eye with a corkscrew... is the kind of thing I'd say for humourous effect, but of course it's nothing like that at all, it's just a not-very-funny sitcom that I can always choose not to watch that features an actress who left Ugly Betty to do this instead. I can't decide if that's failing up or failing down, because failing sideways isn't really failing as much as it is a steady career.
The Middle - also not terribly funny, but it does have the distinction of being one of the few new shows where I can remember the names of at least three of the cast through what I laughably refer to as my 'attention span', although Neil Flynn is a no-brainer as he was probably the most bearable part of Scrubs and it's pretty funny watching him play a part that requires him not to project an air of barely-restrained and deeply inappropriate hostility at all times, and I'm not actually sure if Eden Sher is the daughter or the eldest son, but I'm taking my victories where I can. I could Google that, but I'm not going to. It's funny in places, in fairness, and not to get too Norman Bates but there's something about Patricia Heaton's unnecessarily passive Mom that just begs to be repeatedly kicked up the arse - and in fairness life usually obliges, so possibly that's deliberate.

Reading... erm...

Thumbnails again. Looking oddly coherent this time, I thought.

Watching: ER Season 1 - I missed this first time around - it was sixteen years ago that the damn thing started - and while it's good, I'm surprised how much of it can be viewed as parody given (I assume) the series' influence on successors breeding a familiarity with its dominant tropes, but also how reliant on formula it actually is in places. The SERIOUS BUSINESS episode titles don't help me viewing it as occasionally prone to insufferable po-facedness, but it's competent stuff and a world away from the outright hatefulness and contempt for the audience displayed in the likes of Grey's Anatomy. Fantastic Mr Fox is probably my favorite film of the year so far, although, yes, it's only the 15th of January. It's not so much offbeat as it is drowned in the stylistic quirks of director Wes Anderson, like random audio cues, head-on profile shots during deadpan exchanges (common in film, but a rarity for animation), an offbeat soundtrack and a main character who's an utter dick. I have absolutely no idea what kids are supposed to make of it, but even the slightest things had me in hysterics, like Kylie's glazed expression apropos of nothing, Fox eating breakfast, Willem Dafoe's Rat (particularly his swansong), the utterly random encounter with a wolf that's shot suspiciously like Bergman would frame a portent of death and which ends in a black power salute, Bill Murray and George Clooney's random lapse into gangster cliche that degenerates suddenly into teeth-gnashing and hand-waving - sometimes it's not even the situations that are memorable but their presentation in the stop-motion form, such as the third-person chase sequences, or the tractors clawing ineffectually at Fox's home in the background of a shot in much the same way you'd expect them to in a single-take scene from a live-action film. I enjoyed it immensely and see myself watching it again.

Reading: Marvel Comics' Siege #1- I liked this story well enough seven years ago when Dan Jurgens did it in Thor, but it seems a bit flat in the retelling. Punisher Max #3 - Loved the Kingpin/Punisher shootout. Dillon and Aaron are firing on all cylinders here, and while the former has yet to display any great emotional or dramatic depth in writing these characters, he's got the tone of the previous epoch-defining Garth Ennis run down to a tee in terms of gruesome people doing horrible things in a way that's escaped pretty much everyone else who followed comics' favorite war comic-writing pretend Irishman, and it's easily one of the books I most look forward to reading each month. Ultimate Comics Spider-Man - while not terrible, this relaunched teen-friendly title feels like it's lost its way somehow. I'm not enthused about any of the mysteries or subplots, possibly because they feel a little forced in trying to break from traditional Spidey lore, though possibly it's because they feel more than a little familiar to anyone who's been watching televised sci-fi or teen dramas of late. Unoriginality does not in itself make a bad book, and UCSM is certainly readable, but less so than I'd expect or hope based on past form. LaFuente is a good artist, mind - I really like his expressive and loosly-stylised linework.

Loosely thumbnailing chapter two of the GN and waiting to see if there are any significant edits requested before I start drawing (on account of my monstrously slow pace since Christmas, mainly). My thumbnails are ludicrously messy and difficult to decipher for anyone but me, though I'm sure some would argue the end product doesn't improve by much. Those people I punch in the face.
Reading: 2000ad - well, Dredd's always good with John Wagner at the helm, but everything else is a mish-mash of stuff I'm not terribly enthused about these past two weeks. The drawback of the anthology format, I suppose. Judge Dredd Megazine has the distinction of featuring Tank Girl, a strip that convinced me for the first time ever that I don't need to read every part of an anthology book just because I've paid for it, a feeling that then extended to Bato Loco, a horrible strip about a Latino stereotype played for "laughs". I'll be charitable and assume I'm not the target audience. I am the target audience for the possibly certifiable Al Ewing's Tempest, however: fresh from his kung-fu battle to the death with a cyborg panda crimelord last issue, Tempest is pressganged into helping spring Stan Lee - the deadliest man alive - from Iso Block 666, and the over-all-too-quickly episode ends with some Judges jumping into robot suits and getting given a shoot to kill order, because what the most ruthless police force in creation (whose members are basically Green Berets thrown out of the army for being too rough) really need is to be given a stompy robot with huge guns and then told not to restrain themselves like they usually do.
Watching: The Good Wife - taking an oddly sinister turn of late, with an initially ludicrous conspiracy subplot making me a bit paranoid about almost every character on the show who gets a speaking part to the point I'm thinking "What is that nanny up to? Who does she work for?" Well played. CSI Miami never fails to disappoint in referencing modern pop-cultural phenomena (this week it's a singing teen starlet named after an American state who wears a horrible blonde wig onstage) , but always excels in getting across just how reactionary, right-wing and conservative its makers are, and this week also how shallow their reading of any given trend - but then what should I really have expected of a show whose commentary on a GTA analogue was "You get bonus points for raping the cashier during a bank robbery"? Castle remains enjoyable fluff, but this week featured one of the lead actresses from Charmed (one of the few fantasy shows I cannot watch no matter how hard I try and which has actually made me physically cringe while watching it on those occasions I've made the effort) and it sort of brought me down. Castle's partner is hot, though - but his daughter needs a haircut badly. Bangs with ginger hair - hard to pull off as an adult, impossible as a teen.

Reading Scott Pilgrim, I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm not really that into it.

It's taken a while longer than usual for this to sink in because the book is maddeningly full of things which I find both awesome and criminally underused elsewhere, especially pop-cultural references that directly comment on the story rather than existing only as scatological cutaways - ala the Family Guy stable of animated comedies - that go nowhere beyond referencing something from the creator's youth.

I think the biggest wall for me is Scott and his circle of friends, who are kind of uninteresting and lacking any kind of emotional depth. Certainly there are tropes and character traits that I recognize in others of my generation, but I think I need more than something that only 'touches base' - or at least which feels like there's a little more depth to the characters - to be truly invested, but O'Malley's character voices are consistent and it's easy to get into the groove of reading them, so I'll definately finish the story when Volume 6 comes out - though to be honest, I've only ever given up on two comics that I can recall.
Earth X because it was boring me and I just didn't care to see the end, and that issue of Chuck Austen's New X-Men where an emo angel sang an emo song (after having sex with his fifteen year-old girlfriend in front of her mother, naturally) and it took up several pages at the very back of the comic and I literally stopped reading with something like half a page to go. Oddly, I gave up on Ultimate X-Men in much the same way around the time Ultimate Sinister came into it and Rogue was trying to bang Iceman - I can't recall the specific moment I found it too dull to continue reading as it had all just run together by that point and I don't even know if I finished the issue I was reading when I reached the decision to stop. The Mark Millar stuff that preceded it was big dumb fun that set the bar too high for his clones to adequately reach, I guess.

If you cast your eyes down the page to yesterday's post, you'll notice I've done absolutely nothing between then and now in terms of drawing. I could blame sundays, but my PS3 keeps crashing so videogames cannot be my scapegoat. I'm just lazy and that resolution about getting my shit together seems wise, if potentially over-optimistic.