Monday, June 08, 2009 -

Yup….another post by me…..just roughly a week or so from my last post….my boss is out for a workshop in Pulau Ubin for the next three days….so as everyone can see…I’m really putting in a lot of effort to earn my keep…LOL…

This will be a post of moderate length though…..just killing some time while I answer some e-mails…..

As I’ve mentioned last post….I went on a DVD marathon while my parents were away in Yunnan and I caught a whole bunch of movies…..here’s some of my thoughts on those movies I’ve caught:


1.) The Exorcist – Hands down the scariest horror movie of all time. For a movie made in 1973, all the special effects and make-up work still holds up incredibly well.

The scene with a possessed/ rotting little girl (Linda Blair) cursing and screaming obscenities in this demonic male voice and projectile-vomiting is still disturbing stuff….especially when you watch it alone at 2-3am…hahaha


2.) Out of Sight - This Film is not high-art or anything but I really adore this movie starring George Clooney as a crook and Jennifer Lopez as a federal Marshall. Their chemistry is amazing.

Probably my favorite romantic flick….if you can call it that. It has none of that usual sappy/ feel-good shit.


3.) Sukiyaki Western Django – A Japanese Spaghetti Western guest-starring Quentin Tarantino with Japanese actors speaking their lines in English. A pretty interesting experiment. The visuals and action scenes are really solid but the overall story is pretty wonky. The female lead in the film is stunning though.


4.) The Exorcism of Emily Rose – A pretty engaging horror film/court-room drama rolled into one based on a true story. It’s not as scary as The Exorcist but it’s a smart and solid horror flick with really tragic elements.


5.) Body of Lies – I love Ridley Scott films and Body of Lies is a solid political thriller about the United States and their war against Islamic terrorists.

The film drags on in parts and some of the political commentary are not as subtle as the film-makers think (A fat, bloated and over-confident Russell Crowe is supposed to be a symbolic representative of the entire United States itself.)

6.) Australia – A film that harkens back to the epic, love stories of Hollywood…but falls short. The film is visually stunning but the story about a battle over cattle is not a particularly interesting one. Plus the film suddenly turned into Pearl Harbor 2 during the middle part.

The whole part about the racism rampant in Australia’s past was pretty interesting though and I’m sure the girls will swoon over the various scenes with Hugh Jackman in various state of undress, doing macho stuff. As a guy though, those scenes are dullsville.


Next up is Milk with Sean Penn, Obama: All access documentary and the Frost/Nixon movie….I’m really looking to the last one, heard rave reviews about Frank Langella’s performance as Richard Nixon.


Anyway, I finally had some spare time and dedicated the bulk of my Saturday to drawing my comics stuff….and I really felt like kicking myself in the ass when working on this particular comic page…

Now I’ve never had any formal drawing on perspective drawing…but through the years I kinda self-taught myself through trial and error…..this particular panel I was working on depicted a scene at the city docks with a back-shot of the character jumping down from a smoke stack with lots of buildings in the back and foreground….

After I drew the figure in, I started adding in all the buildings and the harbor; every little window, and plank of wood included in full pencils…I figured that I’ve been doing this for long enough that my natural artistic instincts will help me depict the buildings and stuff in the proper perspective…I was WRONG….

The perspective was somehow off in a weird way and everything just seemed to float in a strange way; totally screwed up the way the main figure was juxtaposed into the scene. I had to erase Every. Goddamn. Building. The Entire. Dock. The Effing Sea-line. Everything………2 1/1 hours of drawing down the drain.

I should have done the whole drawing in the old-fashioned way….but I didn’t because it was longer, harder and infinitely more troublesome….and ended up the whole thing….I should have set the Horizon sea-line and then ruled in the perspective grids and lines one by one in pencil before I proceeded to draw all the buildings in.

I know….None of you know what the hell I’m talking about, Here’s a rough Ball-point pen illustration of a much simplified cityscape to illustrate my points:


 The perspective grids are ruled in using red-ink for clarity’s sake.You see the sea line? (horizontal Line)……..the sea line is the Horizon line that all other grid lines should converge on. The other Perpective line would be the angle that you want the buildings to skew towards and the last one is just a straight vertical line.
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ALL buildings you draw should be either parallel or perpendicular to these perspective lines and they should be bigger in the foreground and smaller in the background leading towards the horizon line.
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If you follow these rules; the structures you draw will be in perfect perspective and relate to each other perfectly spatially. I didn’t because I didn’t want to erase the dozens of perspective lines away one by one after I finished drawing….just had to be a smart ass didn’t I?
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Anyway I was so exhausted with drawing everything in and then having to erase everything that I ruled in all the perspective lines and just did simple place-markings for where I wanted the buildings to be and went to bed……I then spent another 4 hrs on Sunday drawing all the buildings in great detail and finishing everything up in pencil….
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And I still got the whole damn thing to ink these few days…..which usually takes longer than the penciling. I think that’s why I draw so sporadically nowadays….its really too exhausting liao….I can only sit and draw for 3 straight hrs before my shoulders ache and my eyes start hurting ….any more drawing thereafter and the quality is going to suffer….
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A small panel that takes somebody 3 seconds to read…takes me three hours to draw….that’s no exaggeration at all…..A whole page takes an upwards of a week or more to complete, at 3 hrs a day……I’m getting too old for this…LOL
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Alright, I've spent enough time procreastinating, gotta get back to my work now…….Adios…


9:48 PM