eye socket

Re-sculpting the eye socket. Will build a quick ear and surface the nose area before converting to polys and refining in subD's. Should be a good segway into zbrush or mudbox glory.

Looks nothing like the concept sketches or how I envisioned it, but 'wok the hey' as one jolly television personality once said.

smooth shade problem

stitch this

head2

Lara Croft... Is that you?

Speaking of chicks with guns...

GERMANY LARA CROFT-epa01012351 British actress Karima Adebibe poses as 'Lara Croft' in Berlin's central train station, Germany, 18 May 2007. The 'Tomb Raider' computer game character 'Lara Croft' was developed ten years ago by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. EPA/JOHANNES EISELE

I hate patches

Doesn't even look like the concept drawing...

IJN YAMATO

A promotional film for last years Japanese film about the IJN Yamato, the largest battleship ever build. This thing was a behemoth, mounting 18" guns, the largest caliber ever mounted on a ship of the line in any navy. This film is all about celebrating past glory. But the ironic thing about it is the Yamato was never used offensively and died in a suicide attack with only enough fuel for a one way ticket to hell at the cost of several thousand of her crew. Her sister ship Musashi did not fare much better and yet another Yamato hull, Shinano, was converted to an aircraft carrier but was lost on her maiden voyage.

The film actually looks like crap with the over the top acting, uninspired direction and sappy story, but maybe worth watching for the ship.

CG stuff

Found these movie trailers that contain a few interesting cg scenes. I notice Japan has recently sunk a gajillion dollars in features films recalling the glory days of the war. Just last year a film about the biggest battleship ever built, the IJN Yamato came out. For that film they built a full scale mock up of the ships main deck. Sappy sentimentalism or revisionist jingoism? As far as I know, these films haven't done as expected at the box office.

business idea: experimental marketing (Utility poles and free speech)

Below is an interesting article from the Sunday Star about posting on city utility poles. I happened across it while chowing down on some Sunday vitels. A pleasant surprise considering I was discussing just such an idea a few days ago.

Utility poles and free speech

If it were a war, as some suggest, this would be one of its fronts: A weatherbeaten utility pole at the corner of Queen and Bathurst, hundreds upon hundreds of rusty staples clinging to its splintering girth.

They're the legacy of decades of posters announcing everything from the disappearance of a much-loved pet to a garage sale to a fledgling band's gig to, on one recent afternoon, a curious proposition to "Breathe Less, Live Longer" (from the Buteyko Breathing Association of Canada).

These are the familiar, the traditional: neighbourhood communiqués writ just large enough for locals to notice, then take or leave.

But on main arteries, like Queen, King, Yonge, College and Bloor streets, neighbourhood notices are withering beneath a flexing of corporate muscle. A recent survey: Companies like Gillette and Amp'd Mobile, blockbuster movies like The Reaping, or mega-clubs such as Koolhaus have pasted over the humble one-offs that sprout up from the grassroots.

"It's been a real shift," says Matt Blackett, creative director of Spacing magazine, which grew out of a campaign to save postering. (The magazine's first issue, in 2003, the slogan: "Freedom of speech is a thousand times more beautiful than clean lamp posts.")

But paving the way for corporate takeover is not what Blackett and company had in mind. "The ones who can afford massive outdoor advertising campaigns are the ones who do the most postering now," he says.

On every second pole on Queen, a massive baby-blue poster with bright orange lettering heralds "Freedom," a sprawling, corporate-sponsored musical event at the Guvernment. Underneath it, a handful of smaller postings are cast in darkness, invisible.

Help is at hand, at least in theory, in the city's current postering bylaw, which is in limbo until the city's new street furniture is installed. Under that bylaw, the city draws a distinction between commercial and community postering. Commercial posters would still be allowed on the new street furniture's kiosks, leaving the utility poles entirely to the community.

But with no date for the furniture set, the postering scene is in chaos. "The people I've ended up protecting are breaching all the etiquette," says Blackett.

For years, posterers jockeying for patches of pole space adhered to a common courtesy: If a rival event is current, don't paste over and don't tear down.

Then, suddenly, postering became identified with a type of urban cool that became saleable to marketers and their moneyed clients.

"That's how we sell ourselves to clients – `take a walk on the wild side with us, but know that your posters are going to be properly maintained,'" says Brian Irwin, the general manager of Grassroots Advertising, a Toronto-based company that does posters for big-name clients like Alliance Atlantis, ClearChannel and Universal Music.

Grassroots is one of a half-dozen postering companies in the city. (Grassroots, though, only posters construction hoardings, not utility poles.) Irwin estimates that the number of posters his company puts out annually is well into the hundreds of thousands. "We should be in the printing business," he said. "It's a ton of paper."

All of it, of course, pasted up in the great outdoors. "It's a huge problem," says Chris Phibbs, in the mayor's office. City crews scrape utility poles on a regular basis, with the mind to taking down the commercial postings. "Strictly speaking, they're not legal," she says. The city has the authority to charge the postering companies for the cost of removal, but rarely does so.

The city means to leave the community postings up, but on thickly layered poles, a clean scrape is usually the only option. On a neighbourhood level, some Business Improvement Associations, like those in Little Italy and Roncesvalles Village, carry out their own poster-cleansing, and tend not to discriminate between community and commercial.

Not long after, of course, the posters are back – more, brighter and bigger than before.

Irwin's posters are constantly being covered by others. "It's free rein out there," he says. "We're in a bit of a street war, to be honest."

On residential side streets, the skirmish does abate, in favour of community dispatches. "It's the lost cat ones that always get me," Blackett says. "They're extremely personal. They mean so much more to me than a huge ad for some nightclub. This is how a community talks to itself."

business idea: marketing experiment

Sydney says:
We should photocopy our work, staple it all together and sell them at the snail for 50 cents a pop
Rhody Belo says:
I think it would sell actually
Sydney says:
Actually we should do these mock up comic book covers, blow them up like posters and post them up all over the place, get people really interested. We can even set up aweb page to take subscriptions but in the end the comic doesn't exist. We create all this hype over a non-existant comic that only exists as a few nice cover posters
Sydney says:
yes fraud. The covers would look so damn cool
that everyone will be passing money over on the website
Rhody Belo says:
hahaha...good gimmic
actually you maybe on to something
Sydney says:
maybe even publish a few juicy pages. We would take the time to really embellish it. How much do you think we could take in with subscriptions alone?
Sydney says:
Just a couple of guys and some printing costs
Rhody Belo says:
maybe then we can release a comic if the hype demand gets really overwhelming
Sydney says:
true, if there is real interest we could actually make a comic
Sydney says:
if we really want to scam them, we could do a half assed job on the comic and walk away with all this money for little effort
Rhody Belo says:
yah you maybe on to something even if it doesn't take off there would be some nice art without pressure
Sydney says:
We could advertise and post on the internet to increase the hype. Hahaha, I'm sure we'd get sued if we didn't produce anything, lol
Sydney says:
but just the really nice cover posters would create the hype without having to go to a main stream publisher like Marvel
Rhody Belo says:
I like doing pip work anyways better then thinking of a story
Sydney says:
Rhody, I you don't mind my asking, why do you think Dave's comic is not doing so well? What is missing? story? art? marketing?
Rhody Belo says:
fan base and marketing
Sydney says:
maybe a bit of everything?
Rhody Belo says:
exposure too
Sydney says:
What about this? Rather than go to a publisher with an idea, create the comic first, then go to a publisher. That way, you can really embellish it without worry of a deadline
Rhody Belo says:
actually your right
Sydney says:
Really make the story and art really stand out with Craig mullins quality designs and rendered art and a really well thought out story and layouts, then go to a publisher
Rhody Belo says:
hmmm...are you good with writing?
Sydney says:
Nah, not really but I do think about it from time to time, mostly as background stories to my characters and tech designs
Rhody Belo says:
hmmm....me too
Sydney says:
I think if the focus is on quality then, you have an edge over everyone else who is publishing out there. It would have to be a labor of love tho
Rhody Belo says:
yeah...for sure
Sydney says:
If it takes an average of a day for a comic book artist to pump out a page maybe instead embellish it for a week or two per page. It would take awhile, but pay dividends in the end. It would be a true graphic novel. It would be not be considered throw away art but a true collectors art book
Rhody Belo says:
money in the beginning stages a rare...but after a while chances are fan base will pick up
Sydney says:
I think it would require hundreds/thousands of hours of working for free at least initially, consider it is a hobby or fun pastime.
Rhody Belo says:
yeah
Sydney says:
ok maybe not. Maybe when we were young and stupid, lol.
Rhody Belo says:
fun and at times work, free work, lol
Sydney says:
I just see too many comics out there that were just too rushed, it's obvious from looking at the art, what a shame. I'm sure there are fans out there that would mind waiting for better quality
Rhody Belo says:
lets do the pin up, and cover hype thing
Sydney says:
yah, that sounds like fun, We don't even need to do the subscription thing. We just paste up really hot images around town and on the web. People will wonder if it's a comic and if it is, where can I buy it? That's all we need, interest
Rhody Belo says:
create a web buzz
Sydney says:
exactly
Sydney says:
It just means getting exposure, even tho there is no product
Rhody Belo says:
even if the hype is fake at first...fake it till we make it
Sydney says:
It's better than selling posters at the comicon
Rhody Belo says:
we can do that too, Yoyo makes money at those events
Sydney says:
if we post them outside publicly and at comic book shops then we get the greater public looking at it
Sydney says:
lets face it, not every comic book fan goes to these comicons but they all go down to Queen street, they all walk on the streets.
Rhody Belo says:
your right'
Sydney says:
And not only fanboys, but everyone else who might like to read in general (non fanboys). What greater kind of local exposure is there than to have these posters posted on every street corner
Sydney says:
Only problem is printing costs, that's really expensive. We could spend a lazy summer afternoon walking all over town stapling/gluing these thing on every wall and lamp post
Rhody Belo says:
have you heard of ash can comics?
Sydney says:
ashcans are photocopy jobs no?
Rhody Belo says:
yeah, we can do a low cost version too
Sydney says:
I see rave posters all over the place, that's how they advertise, it's all by word of mouth
Rhody Belo says:
thats right
Sydney says:
Heck that might lead to T-shirts. We could create a brand without a product, a style, a look, based on the posters and everyone will be scratching their heads, where's the product? But who cares, the brand looks so cool, I want a t-shirt
Rhody Belo says:
oh that too
Sydney says:
This way we have full control, no messing around with a publisher or 3rd party shit. We could then launch a website selling these t-shirts and vinyl toys, lol. It seems more of a cash cow than the traditional way of spending ungodly hours drawing a comic book and then trying to sell half a million copies. Less work, greater potential for profit doing it my proposed way
Rhody Belo says:
yes
Sydney says:
more fun too. We could create several lines of brands, one manga, one marvel like, etc. Wow, so many comic titles but no comic in the end, just an aesthetic, that is based on comic books
Sydney says:
We have a marketing plan and a product all in the last 5 minutes, lol, haha, can't believe I thought of that just off the top of my head
Sydney says:
My only worry is the printing, cuz the posters have to look very appealing, that's the grab. They gotta be large and glossy. People have to notice it from across the street, this a form of local viral marketing
Rhody Belo says:
how they get so many of those rave flyers on the street, the quality looks pretty good for something throw away
Sydney says:
so we need to post tons of em on every street corner in the downtown core
Rhody Belo says:
see if we can put them on the store windows too
Sydney says:
yes, exactly store windows, cool clothing stores, books stores and even restaurants. The cool thing is, we can take our time producing this material in the first place. If it really picks up, we can turn it into a legit business. It's like we're generating our fanbase first, our client list
Sydney says:
Even better, we can then use this fanbase to create the comic. They can generate ideas for us. We can do polls etc. I can see this going in so many different directions, so many forms of cash milking. Then we can form our own Udon. We can call it Tofu
Rhody Belo says:
hahaha lets try it out yeah...sounds like fun
Sydney says:
Basically we're creating our own franchise. Actually for a first idea I'm thinking of creating a comic book cover using hi end 3d rendering. Instead of the traditional photoshop job. Have you seen anything like that before?
Rhody Belo says:
not really
Sydney says:
Our comic brand will have to be really funky cool, like hip hop kewl, the art will have to be really attractive but very different. I'm thinking we need to stay away from the tradition styles. If it's traditional, then people won't really think much of it. It'll just be another comic. But since we're creating a brand vision, we can go in a totally different direction. eg. totally 3D hi end renders.
Rhody Belo says:
i agree, tend to the urbanitez
Sydney says:
hahaha, this is funny
Sydney says:
You ever heard of flat eric?
Rhody Belo says:
nope
Sydney says:
Flat eric is this stuffed animal that was used in a music video, check it out on youtube. Point is, the doll became very popular despite having no product, just the image of the doll and the associated music. It became bigger than the music itself. It was used in a line of levis commercials and the dolls sold very well. It became the product.


NOTES

-Urban gallery, a form of art, 24 hour exposure
-We decide content instead of others
-Various artistic styles
-You've been punked sort of feel
-stickers, post cards
-Traditional comic business model sux because there are so many middle men and so much work for such little exposure and no profit.
-Similar to how movie posters generate hype, but this time, no product, sort of like a marketing experiment.

-marketing company that posts funky stickers around town for client businesses

-A business model that has potential to generate revenue from various venues instead of a single income source that could dry up.

-Good way of leveraging existing portfolios.

-Lots of high end art out there that never sees the light of day. Mostly found on industry and user specific websites.

-Problem, it is too local? Not enough of a market to support such an idea?

-With a few artists, each producing a new piece every other month, we'd have one poster per month.

-poster could encourage people to send a text message over their cellular phones or an email addy. Or a web page url. Tear off tabs under each poster?

-Web page could sell larger better quality versions of the poster. paypal setup.

feet

legs

Threw down some circle primitives and skinned them, hence the tubular look, no muscle definition yet. Wanted to check the proportions on the legs. I had to lower the knees a whole knee length and thicken the legs.

lomo

Playing around with trying to embed wmv files. I think it turned out well. I came across these videos 5-6 years ago and thought they were pretty hip in a crude sort of way. Two amateur gaijin videographers in Tokyo walking around with their lomographs macking on chicks and chillin' in Shibuya. They went on to host a gallery exhibit of their work in Japan. (blog: HERE)

BRIEF HISTORY OF LOMOGRAPHY
During the 70s Japan began mass producing cheap yet very high quality cameras. Not to be outdone, Mr Panfiloff, Director of the powerful LOMO Russian Arms and Optical factory, decided - every respectable Communist should have one too, and thus was born the LOMO KOMPAKT AUTOMAT for the pleasure and glory of the Soviet population. It was essentially a really bad copy of it's Japanese counterpart. Nevertheless, the Soviets and their Socialist playmates in Vietnam, Cuba and East Germany snapped happily away throughout the nineteen eighties.

Weakened by dirt cheap, battery-powered imports from Asia, the LC-A's popularity eventually waned, and was available only at quirky, old-school camera shops. It was at an establishment such as this, where a group of Viennese students happened upon the adorable camera, and bought a couple for fun. Back on the resplendent streets of Prague, they zipped through the first few rolls of film: shooting from above and through their legs, shooting from the hip, and even sometimes looking through the viewfinder.

Back in Vienna they soon had the whole bag of film developed at the trusty corner supermarket (super cheapo!) and received a real surprise: Thousands of small, amusing, sad, garish shots of their little tour, wonderful focused and unfocussed images fresh from life in the Czech Republic. The images were amazing, dazzling all those present with a crushing sense of excitement - the likes of which they had never felt before.

Soon, the best sources (and worst-guarded security posts) of the former Eastern Bloc were employed for the clandestine import of these little wonders. The Lomographic Society (Lomographische Gesellschaft) was soon founded in Vienna, with the aim of spreading the message of LOMOGRAPHY throughout the globe.

Truly, the whole progression was more spontaneous and hyperactive than could have ever been planned - a vibrant community grew without bounds; driven by the insatiable thirst for wild, vibrant, shocking images.

Since then, this POS excuse of a camera has gone on to become that fashion item that no discerning hipster can live without with it's cheap plastic body and unpredictably garish color output.