Saturday, December 15, 2007 -

Time for yet another update...this one is going to be a relatively short one......art-related blog...I'm just going to post a new piece I did that i'm >GASP<> ....happy with?!


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I did it in one long, practically,uninterrupted session... . But before I post it....let me digress a bit and say that the new viral marketing campaign for the new Batman Dark Knight campaign is absolutely brilliant and impressing the hell out of me.....I say that with absolutely no bias...haha


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Viral marketing is a new form of marketing...its almost guerilla marketing...ignoring the usual television and print ads and using cheaper and more innovative publicity stunts that actually involve people piecing together clues to get their hands on exclusive photos or poster from the movie....


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The Second campaign was a state-wide hunt for clues that will lead up to some big reveal, where the film makers left different clues(e.g alphabets) at different spots in various states in the United States and Fans throughout the united states had to work together with people from different states had to work online to decipher the message and get their hands on a exclusive picture of the new Joker....

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After that stunt, the marketers of the film staged a more elaborate stunt, the first couple of dozen people who submitted the deciphered message previously and also their addresses were sent a big actual cake and when they dug into the cake.....they found messagse, a charger, an actual hand phone and a bag of evidence and clue that would lead them to uncovering the very first teaser poster of the Film.......which they would then post online and share with the rest of the world....check out this link for what the participants received :
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http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12526

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The whole campaign is unconventional,effective and is ramping up the anticipation for the film a couple of hundred notches......here were some exclusive pictures that were unveiled recently...
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Above is one of the latest and clearest pictures of Heath Ledger(Brokeback mountain) as the Joker.....he said that in order to get himself ready to play the Joker, he locked himself up in his hotel room for a month.....trying to come up with a suitable tone of voice and laugh for the character and wrote this diary that had a list of things that he as the Joker considered to be amusing.....apparently "Aids" was one of the things on the list....and "dead babies":......siao.....I only got one item on my list ..."Siew Yong"......hahaha

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This is the first official teaser trailer of the film that all those guys who got the cake managed to uncover....I really like it......its simple but creative....without all the crazy photoshopping they do nowadays.....and manages to juxtapose both Batman and the Joker in one image with just simple shapes,symbols and colors....

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This one is very nice......Batman standing in his office surveying his city......a little known fact is that Batman did operate out of his building:The Wayne foundation for a period of time in the 70's and it served as his part time headquarters when he decided to close Wayne Manor and the Batcave down for awhile...........

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The Joker with his back to us and a Butter knife(??!!) in his hand....either he's working part time at delifrance or he's getting ready to stab the hell outta somebody who left the Joker cards in the deck during their last game of Tai-Dee...

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The next one is my favorite poster so far.......its creepy.....
Imagine turning around and seeing this poster being displayed at one of the local bus stop while you're taking a bus in the dead of the night with no one else around......it'll be cool....hahha....it looks like The Joker is scrawling his message from the other side of the glass....


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I've seen the bootleg trailer of this film and its really good.......My Prediction for this film is that Heath Ledger's Joker is going to make an entire generation of kids scared of clowns again......as if my generation did'nt spent enough time wetting our beds after seeing Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's IT...haha

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*Here's an update.....Watch the the bootleg edition of the first 6 minutes of The Dark Knight movie featuring a bank heist by a group of clowns headed by the Joker....turns out that the bank is a storage place for the Mob and the clowns get their asses shot by the bank manager.....played by the same guy who played the psychotically relentless Agent Mahon from Prison break........cool stuff....lots of dead clowns and double crossing....hurry....Warner Bros will shut it down in no time...

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http://http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=24055665


*Ooo!Ooo!Ooo! another update! The official trailer for Dark Knight is up in glorious quicktime format.....and its pretty damn good.....Heath Ledger looks like one crazy clown with the eye shadow and white paint and lipstick smeared all over his scarred face......and I think he's got a pretty good take on the Joker's voice and insane laughter......Go forth and enjoy this glorious trailer...

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http://atasteforthetheatrical.com/deathtrap/default.htm


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Alright .....now.....back to the main item......


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Anyway about a week ago, I suddenly realized that I had only like 2 weeks to finish 4 complete and presentable drawings since its a yearly tradition that I give a complete drawing to Wenjun,Huiling,Gerald and Felix during our annual gift exchange session complete with some well-wishes or musings...anyway.....after taking a look at the pieces of work that have laid on my desk since I was in secondary school......I thought i better get my ass in gear and start cranking out some stuff...


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So after brainstorming for daws on what to draw for whom, I finally got off my duff and started drawing.....I took 3 days to finish Wenjun's drawing since it was the first drawing and I needed to warm up, I spent the next two days drawing Huiling's...finished two pieces in two days because I wasn't very sure about the first drawing I did ...sometimes I like it quite a bit sometimes it looks off to me so I redid one which I was happy with....then two days later I did Gerald's drawing.....never drew that character before so I spent a few hours trying to draw the character's face based on any animation model sheets or references I could find and then I drew it in one long session.....and lastly I drew Felix's one....I did'nt know what to draw him so as usual I drew him what I wanted...hahaha


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Anyway the piece I'll post here is not some sneak peek at their Christmas drawings...its just a drawing I did for myself since I finished all their drawings way before schedule...and I needed to detox myself from drawing all those cutesy crap and just draw something endlessly bleak and dark to perk myself up....haha


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Its a drawing of.......Batman (Who else??).....and I think its one of my best drawings of him to date....it captured what I wanted.....this piece is just dripping with ink....the whole paper is soft from the amount of ink I slapped on the drawing........I don't think I'll be topping this drawing anytime soon....


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The picture is drawn in Frank Miller's Sin City style which I've been studying since 2001.....I usually draw Batman in three different styles.........my normal everyday style which is a conventional-looking Batman with all the muscles and cross-hatching and six packs.....my animated style, which I spent two years studying and practicing and can draw with my eyes closed nowadays...haha... and the darker, Charoscuro Sin City style Frank Miller uses which I thought is perfect for a character like Batman....and its the most bloody difficult to master



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I first Read the Dark Knight Returns when I was 10 years old and the image of Batman riding in Gotham city on a horse during a nuclear winter after Russia detonated a warhead above America is seared in my brains........so I wanted to do my own iconic take of Batman riding on jet-black horse alone in the night....


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Below is a close-up shot of the horse only.......I wanted it to be semi-menacing so I left his eyes white....




Next is a close-up of Batman right atop the horse.......his eyes are always piercingly cold and emotionless......almost demon-like....I put in the streaks of lightning for dramatic effect and because it serves to provide an explanation of why the character is so dramatically-lit in an otherwise black sky....oh and those little slits of rain are a BITCH to draw......hahaha....
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On a side note.....I drew this drawing when it was raining cats and dogs outside my house.....and it put me in the perfect mindset to finish this drawing.....

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For this kind of drawing style.......even after looking at the completed pencil drawing, I have no idea how the final picture will look like until I start laying down large chunks of ink......

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So its fun...its like excavating......I slowly add in large chunks of inks and watch how the drawing slowly come together before my very eyes....I draw in a full figured horse and batman very roughly with muscles and limbs and everything and in the inking stage I start to start omitting all kinds of pointless detail and lines......to make it as abstract as possible but maintaining just enough clarity that at the end of the day......you can look at this picture and still tell its supposed to be a picture of Batman ridding a horse.....

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If you look clearly I don't actually draw a complete hand or a leg or a head........I just merely visually suggest the presence of a hand and as the viewer you feel up the blanks mentally....but you don't see 5 fingers do you? you're just manipulated to think you're seeing a hand.....based on the limited visual info provided...

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And the last step.....I get my mum to look at the picture and tell me what she thinks it is........if she can tell what is in the drawing despite the abstract nature of it then the drawing is successful because my mum usually dunno how to make heads or tails of the stuff I draw....hahaha

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There you have it.............The Dark knight and his trusty steed.....


Its one of the rare pieces that I'm actually happy with when I was done........I can't believe that this page was completely white and blank before I'm started but when I was done....80% of the whole piece of paper was covered in ink....

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I've always liked the solitary nature of Batman.........he's like the ultimate loner......I tried to convey that with him riding alone in the dark......with the rain beating down on him.....there's this line from the movie Taxi driver written by Paul Shrader that sums up my feelings on Batman....

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Robert Deniro is Travis Bickle, a cab driver and as he walks alone in New York across the homeless,destitute and a sea of prostitutes......he's utterly alone despite living in a city of millions.....like God is playing a big cosmic joke on him.....and he mutters this great line:

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"I am God's lonely man."

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Its a Nice Movie.....haha...very uplifting and inspirational......in fact it inspired the 1981 assasination attempt on the President of the United states....the shooter wanted to assasinate the President like Robert Deniro did in the movie because he wanted to impress Jodie Foster who was also a character in the movie......LOL....

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Lastly..........we have a comparison shot of the previous picture I drew in this style.......





I like how the lightning from the new picture is actually striking at the same angle as the previous drawing was.......it's unintentional though and the lightning itself doesn't actually link up in both pictures.......I thought this drawing is slightly more successful then the previous one......even Darker and even more abstract......almost like a bangla crossing the road at 4 am when the lights are out...hahaha

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Anyway that is it for now............Christmas is around the corner.......and I forgot that after finishing 4 drawings.......now I gotta come up with another 4 goddamn Christmas messages that's supposed to fill-up an A4 sized paper attached behind the drawings.........each personalized and you-niquelly different....must be long and semi-meaningful and relate to the person....what a chore......BAH HUMBUG!!!

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Alright I'm off......cos I seem to be spreading more Christmas Jeer then cheer......hahaha......this year if anybody wants to make a special request for me to draw them a particular character or make any changes to their drawings, or if you just like me to add in more snow in the background.......then all you gotta do is stand underneath a mistletoe......so you can Kiss..................Both Sides....Of My Ass!!!hahaha.....

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Well......that's all folks....Good night one and all......



5:31 AM