loonyblog.

From Sci-Fi Wire’s interview with Alan Rickman (bold + italics mine):

“I saw Helena [Bonham Carter] and Crispin Glover yesterday,” Rickman said. “They’re a mixture of the two, actually, because there’s Helena in a costume and in makeup, but her head is going to be made three times bigger than it actually is on top of the costume. I think they’re all just blinded by the color green. It must be quite something to be surrounded by that much violent green all day long, but the costumes, one or two I saw, are incredible. I’m sure it’ll be visual genius again.”

Sigh.

It sounds like Burton has decided to recreate the Tenniel style using CGI. Why would you want to do this? Why? This movie is going to wind up a horrifying freakshow.

I really, really, really want this movie to not suck, and I think Rickman is a great choice to voice the Caterpillar. But come on…that style should not be attempted in CGI. It’ll just look creepy. And this movie already has a healthy dose of the creepy.

WARNING: This post blatantly violates the rules.

Following our first bit of Civ-related artwork from Shepard Fairey and Studio Number One, we contacted Aidan Hughes, AKA Brute to try his hand at some Civ propaganda. Here’s what he came up with:

Pretty cool, huh?

You may remember Brute from his awesome KMFDM covers or other illustration work, or maybe from the terrible (but awesome looking) Doom clone ZPC from way back when. Either way, the man knows his propaganda. Check out his stuff at his official website, and look for wallpapers and posters and stuff on the official Civ Revolution website.

This has been a fun little project, contacting guys like this. We have one other Civ-art related announcement coming, but it’s more of a small thing we did for fun (it’s still pretty cool though). Stay tuned.

Oh, and as long as I’m breaking the rules, look for CivRev in US stores next week!

From the Hollywood plunders my childhood department comes the news that Tim Burton is helming a new adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. AAiW and Through the Looking Glass are collectively my favorite book of all-time. I credit them largely for turning me into the oddball that I am. And so it’s with genuine hope that I ask Hollywood, please don’t screw this up.

I’m a big fan of the Disney animated movie. Yes, it takes major liberties with the text, but it captures the spirit nicely (in some places better than others). Plus it’s a masterpiece of hand drawn animation.

So with that in mind, I have no problem creating a new movie based on AAiW, and Tim Burton seems like a good choice. Provided, of course, he doesn’t attempt to make a modern interpretation of the book, and he sticks to the source material as much as possible. Because of its oddities (and there are many), people have attempted to see things in the text that simply aren’t there. It is not, for example, a metaphor for drug use, no matter how many people want to believe the Caterpillar is smoking something wacky in his hookah.

What it is, however, is a children’s story. And any film adaptation will hopefully respect that. Don’t make it dark, don’t make it gothic, and for god’s sake, don’t make it creepy, like Burton’s own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adaptation (or the Gene Wilder version, for that matter, which I’ve never liked).

Just please, Hollywood. Don’t screw this up. Or you’ll hear from me personally.

Jeez, I’m really behind on my blog posts. The third topic for Untitled Art Thing (”Dragon”) went up on the first of the month. The results are pretty cool, so check ‘em out.

Here’s my submission, which came out okay:

I would have liked to have done it in color, but I couldn’t quite get the colors the way I wanted them to. So I reverted back to good ol’ black and white, and just strengthened the line in a few places.

The results from last month’s Untitled Art Thing are up, including my own submission. There’s some good stuff in there…some really clever text pieces, another great animation from Mike, another great audio piece by Kevin and another great illustration from Earl. Head over and check ‘em out.

I’ve got a new addition to the loonynet…announcing Untitled Art Thing. It’s a project similar in concept to ShackArt/Unsee.org, where a bunch of artists create original stuff every month on a single topic. Where we differ from that site (and DrawerGeeks before it), is that Thing has a lot more than just illustrators and photographers. We’ve got writers, an audio engineer, and so on. We accept just about anything people can think of.

Submissions from the first topic (War) are live, and there’s a pretty nice variety in there. We’ve got two poems, two prose stories, an essay, two illustrations, an animated short and an audio piece. If that’s not variety, I don’t know what is.

Here’s my submission, by the way:

So anyway, this does mean I’ve dropped out of the ShackArt project, but I like this Thing of ours. Look for new stuff on the first of every month.

And yes, we really did try and think up a name. There was no consensus, so we just stuck with the placeholder title.

Another two weeks, another ShackArt submission. This time the subject was “The Punisher.” Since I think that character is one of the lamest in the Marvel pantheon (okay, maybe not as lame as NFL Superpro), I went in a slightly different direction.

In case you were wondering, that Duke image on the left is the illustration by Mike Sanzone (who had a gallery opening this evening!) for loonygames’ “Is Duke Nukem Sexist?” article from issue 1.3. Lord knows I’m not good enough to draw that.

As always, you can see all the other submissions at Unsee.org, and I keep an archive of my own here (new URL).

The latest ShackArt topic (or at least, the latest one I participated in…I skipped the last one) is live over at Unsee.org. This one was fun, I’ll admit. The topic was “Hanna Barbera Cartoons,” a subject I know at least a little bit about.

I’m not 100% happy with how it turned out, but I ran out of time. Had I another week I would have changed it into a square composition (that weird mural shape just sort of evolved…it really wasn’t intentional), but I’m glad I was able to find room for the requisite hot chicks (Josie, Daphne), relatively well-known characters (Gloop/Gleep, El Kabong, Scrappy Doo) and a couple of lesser-known characters (characters from “Help! It’s the Hair Bear Bunch!” and Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, two shows that I’m not sure anyone but me remembers).

There’s a cross-section below…for the full image head over to Unsee.org or my personal ShackArt gallery at loonyphotos.

For the record, if you’re wondering why Jabberjaw is leering at Josie, just remember that his short-lived series was one of the few HB shows about bands solving mysteries (and let’s face it, for a while, they were all about bands solving mysteries) in which the hot chicks were downright shrill.

And yes, the apology to Dan DeCarlo is sincere. Both of the sexy poses are lifted right out of classic DeCarlo drawings. Can you blame me?

The second round of ShackArt images has been posted at Unsee.org, including my own. The theme this time around was “robots”, and there are some pretty clever entries. Mine was an interesting experience…I haven’t worked in color in god only knows how long. It’s been at least ten years, and even then, I’ve never liked color (as should be obvious from my various black and white only websites). Still, I think this came out pretty well all things considered.

Give yourself +10 geek points if you can name all 11 heads (the one he’s holding is just generic, as are the two pinkish blobs).

The next topic is “death”. I have no idea what I’m going to do for that yet. So many possibilities. If you’re ever curious, I’ve started a gallery over at loonyphotos which will contain all of my various entries.

Oh, and now that I’ve used up both possible WarCraft III references, I promise to stop with that. I’ll have to come up with some other theme to milk for headlines.

Completely lifting the idea from DrawerGeeks, a bunch of shackers have gotten together and started Unsee.org, a ShackArt collective. The concept is the same as DrawerGeeks…every two weeks artists get a new theme and the previous entries get posted. The first subject was “new year”, and here are the results.

Considering that I haven’t inked anything in god only knows how long, mine didn’t come out half bad. I’m not sure how many of these I’m going to be able to do (especially since I’m starting grad school in a couple of weeks), but it’s definitely a fun idea, and I just don’t get to draw very often anymore.

The new theme is “robots”. Nothing’s coming to mind yet, but I do have two weeks to come up with something.

P.S. Happy new year!