There Is No Try

Oh, hey, this thing is still around.
Yes, I’ve been neglecting the place more than usual.
No, I don’t have a good reason for it.
Well, in theory I do, but in practice…
Given that it’s November, one might assume that I’ve been neglecting this blog because I’ve been busy working on my novel for National Novel Writing Month.
That’s not the case this year.  For one thing, November kind of managed to sneak up on me, so I wasn’t at all prepared to dive into writing a novel, as I hadn’t spent any time coming up with an idea for one.
However, I did start out the month deciding that I would take the diligence that I normally apply to novel writing and apply it to another project entirely.
That hasn’t really yielded any results.
I suppose that one could say that writing a novel has never really yielded any results either, but at least by the end of the month I had something to show for my efforts.
With this other project?  Not so much.
So what is this mysterious NaNoWriMo replacement, you didn’t ask, because you already got bored and have moved on to look at cat pictures or something?
Well, when I was working on the comic book birthday present for the (former) boss lady, in the interest of time – and laziness – there were some scenes that I cut from the final product, scenes that added to the narrative, but weren’t essential, and which would have required additional pages.
Additionally, in the pages that I did produce I introduced a character whose backstory is hinted at, but not told, and after it was all over I found myself thinking, “I kind of want to tell her story.”
And finally, the limited page count forced me to do a considerable amount of compression, which led to there being pages that were literally filled to overflowing with expository dialogue.
So with all of that in mind I thought, “I should expand this to tell the full story that I’d originally imagined, give the pages some breathing room, tell the backstories, eliminate some of the sillier, in-joke elements, and turn it into a proper comic book that’s available for all the world to see.  Or more likely, ignore, but still, it’d be out there in some fashion.”
So that’s what I’ve been doing all month?
Well, kind of.
In adapting the story for a wider audience, one of the things I need to do is redesign the main character, the one based on the (former) boss lady.
The reasons for this are twofold:

I have a lot of pictures of her to use as references, but not enough to cover the full gamut of expressions and poses, and given that I’m not great at extrapolating things like expressions from a reference image, I need to come up with my own character design to eliminate the need for photo references.

As part of the joke in the birthday gift comic, there are several instances in which the main character appears nude, but some element – someone’s elbow, a word balloon, etc. – obscures it, a la “Austin Powers.”  In the proper comic, those obstructions would be removed, and, given that there would be a wider audience (potentially), if I’m going to draw the main character nude without obstructions, I don’t feel comfortable having her look exactly like the (former) boss lady.

Beyond that, I wanted to try to develop a consistent, simple, and streamlined style for the art, and when I’m engaging in portraiture, the resulting image can be too heavily-influenced by the reference, which – as was the case with the birthday gift – results in inconsistent styles.
So that was the challenge:  coming up with a simplified, consistent style, and designing a character who looks enough like the (former) boss lady for it to be clear that she was the inspiration, but doesn’t look exactly like her, and to develop, for the first time in all the years that I’ve been drawing, a consistent style.
That’s the keep word:  try.
We remember what Yoda said about “try,” don’t we?
It hasn’t been going well.  All attempts at a character redesign have either looked too much like her or not enough like her, and, of course, there’s no consistency to the style.
It doesn’t help that I’m not sure exactly what style I’m shooting for.  On the one hand, I want something pretty simple and clean, but on the other, I don’t want it to look too cartoony.
So basically while I really like their styles, I don’t want to go for the full Bruce Timm or Darwyn Cooke route, thinking that maybe I’d try to compromise with something a little more like the style of Amanda Conner.
However, that doesn’t really suit the tone of the story, so I’ve found myself leaning more towards the style of Terry Dodson.  After all, as I’ve mentioned many times before, when I look at people I can see the “styles” of various comic book artists.  “He’s a Gil Kane,” I’ll say, or “She’s totally an Art Adams.”  The (former) boss lady is a total Dodson.
But then I think about some of the other works that have influenced the idea behind the character and the story, such as Fatale by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and I think that the noir style of Phillips might be a good fit as well.
And then I think about Brubaker’s latest – the advanced ads for which, by the way, were part of what pushed me to go ahead and try to do the birthday comic in the first place, as it appeared to be tapping a similar vein – Velvet, and the amazing work of Steve Epting…
So, yeah.  Even setting aside issues of talent and ability – which are significant issues – there’s the problem of just not being able to make up my mind.  It doesn’t help that for some reason my own style – or what passes for it – has kind of atrophied over the years as I’ve spent so much time drawing what I see rather than what I imagine, and for some reason the elements of it that show up in my sketches don’t really survive the process of inking and coloring.
In any case, that’s what I’ve been doing.  Or, you know, not doing, as Yoda would say.

Pain In The Ass(amundo)

For a while now my laptop has been misbehaving - I place the blame for that squarely on the N-Trig touch screen and its shitty drivers; it's not content to just not work itself, it has to keep other things from working as well - so I decided to do a clean install of Windows 7.
I'm actually going to be buying a diffeent tablet to replace it come bonus time, but I'd like to get it to work in the meantime, and given that it's not that old and, theoretically, at least, could be a decent laptop, I'm inclined to try to sell it. In order to do that with a moderately clear conscience, it would be good to know that it can actually be made to work.
(So far, so good, as I have avoided even attempting to install the N-Trig drivers)
As anyone who's ever done a reinstall knows, the post-install process involves downloading lots and lots of updates, which can take a lot of time - and which require a lot of reboots - even with a really fast Internet connection.
Sometime late yesterday afternoon I was standing around wating for the latest round of updates - that's the other thing: installing one update often necessitates installing an additional update - and, bored, I picked up the "Clipper Magazine" - a coupon book - that was sitting on my table.
I saw a coupon for a place called Johnny Rockets, which is a 1950s-themed diner. I've eaten there a few times, as there's one near a theater that Scott and I like.
I realized that it was probably a bad idea to go to a restaurant near a theater on a Saturday night, but I was hungry, nothing I had at home appealed to me, so I found myself considering going, even though it was against my better judgment.
Eventually I decided to give in, and so I put on some proper clothes (as opposed to my lazing about the house clothes). As I usually do when venturing out into the world, I'd spiked my hair in the morning when I'd ventured out to run my usual Saturday errands, but as the day wore on, the spikiness had abated ant it just kind of sad. So I wetted it and reshaped it a bit. Then I put on my Chuck Taylor's, and moved to grab my jacket. It was a very windy day - gusts up to 60 MPH - so I opted for my heavier, biker jacket, which is impervious to wind.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and realized that, with my slicked hair, tight black T-shirt, leather jacket, jeans, and "classic" Chuck Taylor's, I looked like some sort of sad "Fonzie" wannabe.
And I was going to a place with a 50s theme.
"You are," I said to myself, "fucking ridiculous. Why don't you roll up a pack of smokes in your shirt sleeve while you're at it?"
Still, I didn't feel like changing, and this wasn't about going out to be social. I was just hungry.
"Fuck it."
So I headed out - ignoring the voice in my head that kept asking me if I was going to start saying "Ayyyyyyyy!"and pointing out that I'm actually less cool than Potsy and Ralph - and, eventually - traffic was moving slowly because "ZOMG it's WINDY!" - I arrived. As is my wont, I just picked the first random parking space I could find, since I'd rather walk a long distance - even in the wind - than drive around obsessively looking for the perfect parking space.
I certainly wasn't going to try the parking garages located on either side of the theater, as I could see that they were pretty well packed, so it made sense to go the more sparingly-used parking lot.
This put me a fair distance away, but oh well.
In any case, I approached the restaurant and found that I should have heeded my instincts. The place was actually overflowing.

Also Me: Now what, Fonz?
Me: STFU.

I considered my options and remembered that there was this pizza place that was okayish nearby - the area is full of shops and restaurants - and decided to check that out.
Just as packed.
Even though I wasn't in the mood for Chinese, I checked that place out. No dice.
Ultimately, I only had two options that weren't filled to overflowing with families, teens, and young couples. One was California Tortilla, which, just, no.
The other was Subway.
On principle, I wasn't about to go to Subway, because if I'd wanted Subway I could have picked something up earlier in the day from the one right next to the comic shop, or I could have walked to the one near my house. I wasn't about to drive for 20 minutes and then walk the same distance to get Subway as I would have walked if I'd stayed in Leesburg.
Defeated, I kept walking and made my way to the Harris Teeter, thinking that maybe I could find some decent pre-made meal in their deli or something. I grabbed something that looked like it could be good (Note: It wasn't), then picked up a few other little things that I needed. All the while there was the piercing sound of a wailing baby who had been crying the whole time I was there. The sound actually seemed to get louder and more nerve-fraying the farther away I got from the baby.
Then I made the long trek back to my car, past giggling teens and happy families and couples enjoying their evening out, and I thought about how much of a hassle it had all been just to go out to get a quick bite to eat a restaurant, and how much more of a hassle it all had been when you consider that I didn't even manage to do that.

This

Any regular reader of Threshold who pays attention - though I think that with a description like that we're getting into the realm of Cryptozoology - has likely noticed that I frequently post pictures in which I talk about how I'm viewing the end result as a failure - even if I think the picture looks good - because I've once again failed to render an image in the style I was shooting for.
If you've ever cared enough to wonder - and now we're veering into straight-up fiction and fairy tales - what that elusive style is that I'm talking about, I give you an answer: this.
Not so much in terms of the line work, but rather in terms of the shading.

Maybe Not An Epic Fail, But A Fail Nonetheless

The notion that the advent of the Internet, and, more specifically, the World Wide Web, has dramatically altered the way we do, well, almost everything, has become something of a truism.
While the validity and accuracy of much of it is an open question, there is a vast wealth of information literally at our fingertips, and if you want to be successful in the 21st Century in a wide range of professions, having a basic understanding of how to sift through all of that information is essential.
I’ll get to my point in a minute, but before I do, I want to take this opportunity to share an anecdote that relates to my point.
While watching Heath Ledger’s mind-blowing performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight, I noted some mannerisms and vocal tics in one scene that reminded me more than a little of Jimmy Stewart.
(That may seem like an odd thing to say, but trust me, it worked, and was entirely appropriate for the scene in question.)
However, at the time, while I recognized the similarity, I could not, for the life of me, think of Jimmy Stewart’s name.
I could picture him, imagine his voice and his delivery of lines, think of the titles of movies he was in, and even recall Jim Carrey’s impersonation of him in a Saturday Night Live sketch. But I just could not remember his name. One of those all-too common (and increasingly common) “brain fart” moments.
Because the theater effectively blocks cell phone signals, I couldn’t break out my phone and fire up IMDb to find his name. Unlike many people, I haven’t totally abandoned my pre-Internet methods for recalling information (taking my conscious mind off the task and letting my brain work at it in the background, asking someone), and was able to pull his name out of somewhere before we left the theater.
However, if I hadn’t remembered it on my own, I would have immediately looked it up on the Internet.
Which brings us that much closer to my point, but first, a couple of pieces of information.
Last week, I watched the 2007 movie No Country For Old Men, which was based on the 2005 novel by author Cormac McCarthy.
The character of Harvey Dent/Two-Face, portrayed by actor Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight (As Scott pointed out, he did a great job, but couldn’t help but be overshadowed by Ledger. Also, the Two-Face effects were mind-blowing, just like the rest of the movie.) was introduced in Detective Comics #66 in 1942. Two-Face had previously appeared on the big screen in the 1995 movie Batman Forever, portrayed (execrably) by actor Tommy Lee Jones (who also starred in No Country For Old Men, coincidentally enough).
(Bonus geeky trivia: When introduced, Harvey Dent’s name was actually Harvey Kent. It was later changed to avoid confusion with a more famous character appearing in comics published by DC.)
Now, I managed to find all of the above information (except the Harvey Kent thing, and Tommy Lee Jones being in Batman Forever; I already knew that) about publication dates in a matter of minutes through quick searches on the Internet.
Finally, we start to approach my point.
On Friday I read a review of The Dark Knight in which the reviewer, in desperate need of something negative to say, stated that one of his major complaints about the movie was Two-Face’s habit of leaving life or death decisions up to chance, in the form of a coin toss. This was, the reviewer stated, clearly derivative of a similar habit of a character in No Country For Old Men.
And here’s my point: Two-Face, along with his coin-tossing gimmick, was introduced in 1942. No Country For Old Men was published in 2005.
So, my question to the reviewer is, “Umm…WTF are you talking about?”
Okay, so not everyone is a comic book geek, but surely the reviewer – it’s his job to watch movies, after all, and one would assume that even before getting into that line of work he watched a lot of movies – saw Batman Forever, which, despite all its many flaws, did include the coin toss gimmick, back in 1995, or at least sometime before 2007.
But more to the point, one would assume that before making such an assertion, he would have made sure he was correct, which, as pointed out above, would have been astonishingly simple via a quick search of the Internet.
Obviously such a mistake seems trivial to the non-geek segments of the population, and honestly, it is, at least in the context of the review itself, but it does lead you to wonder just how widespread this lack of fact-checking extends, and to speculate as to the kind of lazy, sloppy work being done by people who should be adept at fact-checking and finding information even without the advantages offered by the Internet.
So, in closing, I have just one thing to say to the unnamed reviewer, using the parlance of the medium that he proved himself so inept at using: FAIL!

Back To Your Regularly-Scheduled Threshold Department:
Despite being exhausted by The Dark Knight, I found myself pretty wired when I got home Thursday night, and so I had a difficult time getting to sleep, so when I got home on Friday afternoon I decided to take a nap.
In addition to allowing me to get some rest, the nap also allowed me to improve my vision slightly; Thursday had been my night off for my gentle molding lenses, so on Friday my vision lacked some of the clarity. So I wore the lenses while I napped, and woke up to find myself seeing much more clearly, which was a must for 1. Night driving and 2. Movie watching.
I wore the lenses again that night when I went to bed, and woke up on Saturday to discover that my left eye was extremely irritated. This prevented me from going out and doing some of the things I’d intended to do, and interfered with my plans for doing any work on new images for the Heroic Portraits Gallery, though eventually the irritation eased up and I was able to do some of that.
Naturally I didn’t wear the lenses last night, but this morning I found that my left eye didn’t care; it was just as irritated as it had been yesterday morning.
Not sure what’s up with that. It seems to be fine now.
(As a total unrelated aside, as I write thins I’m listening to the song Sunspots by Nine Inch Nails, and it seems abundantly clear that Trent decided to use an electric hand mixer– as in the kitchen appliance – to provide some of the music.)
Apart from doing some work on Gallery pictures last night and today (they should be up in the Gallery soon, for the curious among you), I haven’t done much.
I watched the movie Renaissance last night, which is an animated French film – dubbed into English with current Bond Daniel Craig providing the voice of the main character – that was done almost entirely in high-contrast black and white, with a few bits of gray and even fewer bits of color.
The story was okay, but it was the stunning visuals that really made it worthwhile.
Even though I was evidently won over by the Watchmen trailer, I should note that I do have a few complaints. I’m not sure that I like the fact that Snyder is applying his slow-motion/fast motion technique from 300 to the action, as it’s not really a good fit, and seems sort of, inappropriate.
Also, I’m not thrilled about the costumes. They’re altogether too modern-looking, and in some cases stray way too far from the original designs. For example, while she does look very sexy, the Silk Spectre, as she appears in the movie, would more properly be referred to as the Latex Spectre.
Anyway, I think I’ll round out this entry with the latest installment in the series I call Why is Jon So Quiet?

Why is Jon So Quiet?
Because nobody cares.
Given my ramblings earlier in this entry, this one seems especially appropriate.
The other day when I was waiting for my lunch order over at the café, I sort of zoned out and stood there staring into space.
Someone I knew came up to me and said, “Good morning!” in an effort to steer my consciousness back onto this plane of existence. She then added, “Wake up!”
In response, I said that I was simply lost in thought.
She didn’t ask what I was thinking about.
(For the record, I was thinking about the acclaimed/controversial comic book series Preacher. Note: Wikipedia appears to be down; look it up your damn self.)
Years ago, a friend once said something to me that went something like, “Nobody is as interested in the things you’re interested in as you are.” I think he also added that if I’m not interested in something, it’s almost as though, for me, that something doesn’t exist. I’m not sure if he said that part or not, as I wasn’t particularly interested in what he was talking about...
In any case, if the person who had stirred me from my thoughts on Preacher had asked me what I had been thinking about – and the fact that she didn’t is something that will be discussed in a future installment – she would have been bored shitless if I started talking about my thoughts on Garth Ennis’ over-the-top caricature of the idea of the inbred, Southern redneck, or how the series was in large part an exploration and examination of the mythology of America, both in terms of the myths within our culture and the myths about our culture, and she would have quickly made a mental note: Never ask Jon what he’s thinking about.
So why am I so quiet? Because you aren’t interested in anything that I want to talk about.
Really, it’s a lack of common ground with the greater mass of humanity. When engaged, I’m perfectly willing to listen to things that other people have to say, even if I’m not particularly interested, but most people aren’t that willing to return the favor, or at the very least, they aren’t willing to do it well; it’s usually immediately apparent when I’m talking to people that they aren’t really listening.
So honestly, why bother? If I’m just going to bore you with what I’m talking about, it seems easier to just not bother talking at all.
Now if only I would take this same approach to Threshold entries…