:tanks:

As stated last week, in the hopes of sparking my getting into more gallery shows, and just sparking my creativity in general, I intend to create something for an upcoming show in a comic store, of all places. So it shouldn't be surprising that the theme is "superheroines." Also as a challenge, I didn't choose an obvious character, I pondered using Battle Angel Alita or Zatanna (Death from Sandman would've been way too obvious), but decided to go with Tank Girl.

Definitely not typical of my usual subject matter - shaven head, surly mood and expressions, cigarettes - but we'll see what I can do with it. Also part of the challenge is to not ape the original artist but bring something of my own to it. My first few sketches, I certainly didn't make her surly enough. I even re-watched the movie version, which I felt got a rougher reception than it deserved. I thought they did a pretty good job, considering, but since the comic is often so random and anarchic, Hollywood felt the need to force a plot, timeline, and characters that often threatened to make it more serious than it should be. Casting Ice-T as a mutant kangaroo was movie gold, though.

I also feel I need to not make it overly complicated, as one idea was (maybe still is) to have some sort of wreckage behind or near her, probably aircraft. And the process of research for this brought to light again the blessing and curse of our information age, so many choices, maybe too many. I definitely fell down the Google image search whirlpool for a good hour there, looking at plane crash photos. And with safe search off, the most unlikely images still sneak in (there's not even a plane in that photo!).

I'm sure I'll show my age since I recall having to do research for assignments in illustration class. In libraries, trying to find reference photos, without the aid of an internet search, often running on hunches that it'd be in this book or that, or my sometimes frightening visual memory (I recall somebody needing an image of a poodle skirt for something, and I vaguely recalled finding it somewhere amongst the photos on the "Grease" soundtrack album). But at some point I have to stop researching and work more from my imagination.

:reboot:

I can't speak for other artists, but often in my case artwork is never really finished, it's just done "enough," or in danger of too much re-working. I can recall a comic I did called "Bleed for Me" that I re-did several times. Still not sure if the end result was the best. But it's either redo it again or go on to other things from there.

Case in point, I find myself still thinking about or re-reading those awful dog stories I went over in a previous entry. Partially because it's like a different person did them and I am trying to recall the state of mind I was in when I did them...besides being young and confused (as opposed to older and confused like I am now). Also looking at the art and writing and wondering if it were done better, could it work now? Even though at the very core it's about dogs being killed in many ways. Alien dogs, okay, but dogs drawn in an intentionally cartoony way.

One thing on my eternal list is a manga-style series, I just need a story, perhaps this could be it. I've seen some good horror manga and also some surreal humor ones (I LOVE FLCL!). Could be, could be...

Anyways the spaniels keep finding their way into my sketchbooks lately. One of their aspects is that they breed like rabbits, so I offer both apologies and none for the following:

:dog days:

As threatened/promised last week, I'm going to talk about these wicked little stories I created when I was younger that I recently thought of and managed to unearth. Lucky for me (?) I kept damn near everything I've drawn and written, no matter how embarrassing it may look now.

A good part of my youth was spent making my own comics, one was a major one that I started after seeing "Star Wars," in which I borrowed from nearly everything I read and saw, comics, movies, and TV shows, one reason why it'll never be published. It was also never finished - high school got in the way, and then college, and then real life - but I know how it ends in my head, at least. They do get an ending. I'll go over that comic some other time.

But around the same time, I'd say when I was 13 or so, I started writing and illustrating these vicious little stories in which these little dogs which I called spaniels, even though they were really crudely drawn at first, that met many bloody and gruesome ends. It seems that I even kept meticulous notes on it, thinking that some day somebody would be interested. Hell, I had all these plans for several volumes of stories, and animated movies, I even chose songs for the soundtrack, and designed video games based on them. Quite the dreamer I was.

The nearest I can tell about the genesis for this was my being a cat person, and at the time there were these "humorous" books out about "101 uses for a dead cat," which I guess offended me enough to retaliate against the obvious. I made these dogs SO stupid that they almost invited death. They would get frozen with fear, whine and sweat (not something dogs normally do, but it made sense in a cartoon sense). But killing off cute little doggies is a bit of a hard sell, I'll admit, so a weird sort of mythology developed around them.

Turns out these are not normal dogs, but alien ones dropped off on our planet, from a planet called Strax where they were bioengineered, but they soon overpopulated (they have two day long gestation periods and breed like rabbits - the males are horny little bastards) and threatened their planet with deforestation (they were herbivores, although in some stories I had them degenerate into cannibalism of their own kind). Which gave (I thought) valid reason for the slaughter of them. The original stories were about the different kinds, due to wherever they were dropped off and "too stupid to leave." Tree, arctic, cave, city and, for some reason, English spaniels.

Looking at these now I cringe at the bad writing and crude drawings, but hell, I was only 13! But I did see improvement as I went on. The city spaniel story, meant to be the last one of the "first" volume, was pretty well-written, I thought. The second volume, which was meant to be about the final "death hunts," never got written, they were more storyboards for imagined animated movies. Seeing both "Watership Down" and "Heavy Metal" clearly inspired me. The third volume was supposed to take place on their home planet of Strax. I only got one story done, basically sketched out but never fully illustrated, but I read it now and the black humor in it still makes me laugh.

It's called "Friendship," and I even found the original story idea, written on the back of some school vocabulary test:

1 - two pups are separated in woods 

2 - both find the same female a year later

3 - they fight over female for two days

4 - pups are born, and they apologize

5 - bomb destroys them all

I don't know, something in me really liked building it up to a sappy ending only to yank it away in the end. There is foreshadowing in the final one so that the bomb doesn't literally come out of nowhere.

I also gave them foul little mouths, it seems. I've no idea why I drew it on such crappy paper, though. I guess this was meant to be a rough draft. I have other pages pacing out the story better, but they're even sketchier, pencil-wise. Oh so many unfinished projects in my life.

So who needs subtlety?

Like I said last week, I'm lucky no authority figures or parents saw these back then, they'd probably put me away. Then again, the stuff that kids today can see accidentally online pales in comparison, I suppose.

:not disney:

It's gotten later than I thought tonight and there's not enough time to write what I wanted to. So, instead, a peek of what I was going to write about and hopefully next week...some rather bizarre comics and stories that I wrote in my misguided youth, which, looking at them now, I am lucky that no authority figures saw at the time. Surely a disturbed young boy, they'd think. Best to put him away.