Wednesday, October 31, 2007
24 hour comics day
the impulse.
my answer.
it was thursday by the time i read that in wednesday's paper - and said, i am THERE, damnit! it was thursday night when i called. and being me, it was the last minute on friday before i finally paid up. i mean i knew i was THERE from the start but it took a bit of introspective yes/no's and some external coaxing (thank You, yes u), and saturday noon i was... THERE. a solo noob with a half-baked idea, blinking at the ungodly saturday hour.
2 months back, i interviewed 50 strangers in a day. wasn't easy, but wasn't all that hard, u put on a social mask, make small talk, get your answers, move on. but faced with 50 strangers with a shared interest....... it's different. these are people u want to know, and remember, and be remembered by. not that u get much time to talk to them at such an event. u see, everyone's always drawing.
the hour struck. nurie beside me started whipping pencil frames onto his a3 sheets (a3!!). the energy was contagious. every time i looked around from drawing was a wonder - i was THERE, with 50 other idiots, smack at cineleisure's entrance, cloaked in silent doodling passion. passion is the word. even cedric and wong, the organizers, did it as a side project.
so, about my half-baked idea - i had a beginning and ending. 6 hours later, i had a beginning and ending in pencils. and fleshing out the middle pages was proving to be a bitch. some people can do it on the fly, finished page by finished page. should i do that? maybe next time. monologuing like this in my head, at 10 hours i had 23 pages... in pencils. at 12 hours, full inked dialogue in 23 pages of pencils. midnight! out came the inks and... kilometricos. it was pure work from there. i inked by eye and instinct, brain completely turned off, not even knowing where in the story or what page i was at. i lifted the pen at 4am and cramped my little finger.
stuck to my workday standard of a ciggie every 3 hours (this way, i keep a limit of 5 per day), but while being used to caffeine and nicotine sustenance, the added adrenaline after midnight really threw me off. i started walking like jack sparrow. and then a dawn smoke with katon led to swapping sketchbooks - from where i gleaned some technique i tried out straightaway. heh.
the variety of people and styles was amazing. there were marvel muscles, flat manga, bold kiddy lines, beasts and heroes and mecha, most of those which're pure illustrations - their attention to detail is exhausting just to look at. a girl had a style similar to bone's, while another guy had real dali-inspired stuff. but the eye-opener among the people were these 2 genial, songkok-clad uncles who're probably in their 40's. respect!
and there was last-minute edwin, who kindly shared his lamp with me (it's customary to bring your own table lamp, didjaknow), and the very nice and self-confessed emo, farhana. edwin's comic is a superhero tale with an interesting twist right from the first page (plus the slap-forehead-cartoon-sweatdrop last page). farhana's one deals with fuzzy matters of the heart, featuring corn and cheese And more importantly, honest stuff that make u feel less alone and... uh, saves suicidals. also present was nst man ridzwan, whose punktual punk is hilarious. it's simple and superfai, but it keeps u laughing and turning the pages and wanting more, that is after all, the essence of a good strip.
so if u love drawing, u should really do this at least once in your life.
anyhow, 22 hours and 160 chickens later... i was done. slacking off toward the end seems to be a bad habit of mine, and the morning sun didn't help. could've been more finishing touches and background detail, but... what d'YOU think? framing, perspective, story, plot, technique, improper use of splash pages, negligent use of rulers, horrible handwriting, hens' combs too big...?
clickclickclick
my answer.
it was thursday by the time i read that in wednesday's paper - and said, i am THERE, damnit! it was thursday night when i called. and being me, it was the last minute on friday before i finally paid up. i mean i knew i was THERE from the start but it took a bit of introspective yes/no's and some external coaxing (thank You, yes u), and saturday noon i was... THERE. a solo noob with a half-baked idea, blinking at the ungodly saturday hour.
2 months back, i interviewed 50 strangers in a day. wasn't easy, but wasn't all that hard, u put on a social mask, make small talk, get your answers, move on. but faced with 50 strangers with a shared interest....... it's different. these are people u want to know, and remember, and be remembered by. not that u get much time to talk to them at such an event. u see, everyone's always drawing.
the hour struck. nurie beside me started whipping pencil frames onto his a3 sheets (a3!!). the energy was contagious. every time i looked around from drawing was a wonder - i was THERE, with 50 other idiots, smack at cineleisure's entrance, cloaked in silent doodling passion. passion is the word. even cedric and wong, the organizers, did it as a side project.
so, about my half-baked idea - i had a beginning and ending. 6 hours later, i had a beginning and ending in pencils. and fleshing out the middle pages was proving to be a bitch. some people can do it on the fly, finished page by finished page. should i do that? maybe next time. monologuing like this in my head, at 10 hours i had 23 pages... in pencils. at 12 hours, full inked dialogue in 23 pages of pencils. midnight! out came the inks and... kilometricos. it was pure work from there. i inked by eye and instinct, brain completely turned off, not even knowing where in the story or what page i was at. i lifted the pen at 4am and cramped my little finger.
stuck to my workday standard of a ciggie every 3 hours (this way, i keep a limit of 5 per day), but while being used to caffeine and nicotine sustenance, the added adrenaline after midnight really threw me off. i started walking like jack sparrow. and then a dawn smoke with katon led to swapping sketchbooks - from where i gleaned some technique i tried out straightaway. heh.
the variety of people and styles was amazing. there were marvel muscles, flat manga, bold kiddy lines, beasts and heroes and mecha, most of those which're pure illustrations - their attention to detail is exhausting just to look at. a girl had a style similar to bone's, while another guy had real dali-inspired stuff. but the eye-opener among the people were these 2 genial, songkok-clad uncles who're probably in their 40's. respect!
and there was last-minute edwin, who kindly shared his lamp with me (it's customary to bring your own table lamp, didjaknow), and the very nice and self-confessed emo, farhana. edwin's comic is a superhero tale with an interesting twist right from the first page (plus the slap-forehead-cartoon-sweatdrop last page). farhana's one deals with fuzzy matters of the heart, featuring corn and cheese And more importantly, honest stuff that make u feel less alone and... uh, saves suicidals. also present was nst man ridzwan, whose punktual punk is hilarious. it's simple and superfai, but it keeps u laughing and turning the pages and wanting more, that is after all, the essence of a good strip.
so if u love drawing, u should really do this at least once in your life.
anyhow, 22 hours and 160 chickens later... i was done. slacking off toward the end seems to be a bad habit of mine, and the morning sun didn't help. could've been more finishing touches and background detail, but... what d'YOU think? framing, perspective, story, plot, technique, improper use of splash pages, negligent use of rulers, horrible handwriting, hens' combs too big...?
clickclickclick
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
information is free!
we came back from dinner, and a while later hy was watching a rachmaninoff clip. o.O? said he had the scores too, just to gawk at. o.O?? gave me this site to download classical scores. holyfuck! so off the top of my head i went for moonlight sonata, which given my near-2 decades on the piano, i am ashamed to say i've never gotten hold of. hooray. quite a collection on that site. searched for another one off the top of my head, a faure nocturne, a 7-pager i think u can get at woh fatt for 90+ ringgit. pdf, right-click-save-as! this is the information age, people!
oh u probably want this too, he says. scores from anime soundtracks, transcribed by fans. without further thinking, i searched cowboy bebop, piano bar I. nada, oh well. jazzy piece that i suppose is kinda hard to transcribe, been meaning to find it since i first heard it. wouldn't hurt for another google, so i keyed that in again for the 394th time, and no immediate results. there was this link to a youtube wannabe though, wouldn't hurt, and right there in that description box... was a link... to the pdf. this is the information age, people!
there's another clip of yoko kanno herself playing solo live, a compendium of CB tunes... and there's another pdf of that exact rendition. that makes 3!
i must've been there grinning at my inner geek for 2 hours. smoked my plans to come home early and watch afro samurai. meng mentioned it last night, i remembered i had it, and distributed it to ch and tay. tay finished it last night, ch this afternoon, and it'd also made its way to hy and wh, who've probably finished it too by now. granted i got it from lay, but seeing how it came from my hd and i still haven't started on it, the irony's a bit too much. but it's all good. sharing is caring, hey? this is the free media age!
tomorrow looks kinda busy, then again that's what they said yesterday. these 2 days been kinda slack, so i wonder why i still come home after midnight - And forgot to remove my contacts too, yesterday. gonna sleep off my vampire-red eyes now.
oh u probably want this too, he says. scores from anime soundtracks, transcribed by fans. without further thinking, i searched cowboy bebop, piano bar I. nada, oh well. jazzy piece that i suppose is kinda hard to transcribe, been meaning to find it since i first heard it. wouldn't hurt for another google, so i keyed that in again for the 394th time, and no immediate results. there was this link to a youtube wannabe though, wouldn't hurt, and right there in that description box... was a link... to the pdf. this is the information age, people!
there's another clip of yoko kanno herself playing solo live, a compendium of CB tunes... and there's another pdf of that exact rendition. that makes 3!
i must've been there grinning at my inner geek for 2 hours. smoked my plans to come home early and watch afro samurai. meng mentioned it last night, i remembered i had it, and distributed it to ch and tay. tay finished it last night, ch this afternoon, and it'd also made its way to hy and wh, who've probably finished it too by now. granted i got it from lay, but seeing how it came from my hd and i still haven't started on it, the irony's a bit too much. but it's all good. sharing is caring, hey? this is the free media age!
tomorrow looks kinda busy, then again that's what they said yesterday. these 2 days been kinda slack, so i wonder why i still come home after midnight - And forgot to remove my contacts too, yesterday. gonna sleep off my vampire-red eyes now.
