October 17, 2009

• Monster Re-Hash

  Okay, this has been the longest gap in which I haven’t posted.  With all the Facebooking and Tweeting these day, it is just so much easier to fire off one sentence and be done with it. 

  But to catch everyone up to speed, here’s what’s been going on since July:

  - Avery and Kori are getting bigger, ages 4 and 1 respectively.  And as you can see they  have already started driving (at Lowe’s).

   

  - The San Diego Comic Con was a HUGE success.  We were told selling a graphic novel at our price point, averaging about 15 sales for each of the 5 days would be REALLY optimistic. 

  However, we averaged about 30 sales/day for a total of 153!  Lots of our contribs were there to help with signings and draw different crowds with their respective fan bases.  Ex: Keiko Agena brought in her female ‘Gilmore Girl’ fan base who would never have given us the time of day and Kelly Hu brought in the guys who were too cool for school to give us the time of day.

  SECRET IDENTITIES is currently nearing its 3rd printing and we are most definetly getting the ball rolling on Volume II!

  Also, amongst the thousand of people at SDCC, look at who I bump into  – Jason Tobin (aka ‘Virgil’ from “BLT”)!

  - I’m providing a voice for an upcoming video game.  It’s all hush-hush but it will be this company’s largest to date. 

  At first I was only syncing my voice to a video clip of the stunt person doing all the movement and interaction.  But it was honestly one of the most challenging acting experiences I’ve ever encountered having to ‘match’ the intentions of my voice/performance with the physical traits that someone else provided.

  And the producers and casting director could tell.  So they came up with an awesome solution. 

  As you can see, we the actors are now suited up.  The tiny nodes on our suits motion capture (mo-cap) our movements into the computer.  The bar attached to my helmet has a tiny camera that records all my facial movements (as seen in these monitors) and also inserted is a tiny microphone to record my voice. 

  It’s basically like shooting any other movie but just taking care not to bump into the other actor’s face rigs or having a node fall off (which would make it look like a body part fell off in the computer) - oh, that and trying to take each other seriously in this ridiculous get up.

  The nodes don’t actually light up, it’s the light reflected from the camera’s flash.  We perform in this grid and the nodes get picked up from the red lights stationed all around us.  It was kinda cool to not have to worry about where the camera was because no matter where we moved, we were caught from every conceiveable angle!

  - And finally, I’ve been secretly drawing lately. 

  I actually used to draw fairly frequently — like the Sesame Street characters for the playhouse I made for Avery that I wrote about in this entry.

  But man, after hanging out these past few years with professional artists for SECRET IDENTITIES, it’s just humbling for a lack of a better word. 

  For example, imagine you’re doing Karaoke with some friends and all of a sudden the cast of MAMA MIA! walks in and just gets up on stage and does their thing. 

  Sure, you could keep on singing and they’re not intentionally trying to embarass you but it’s a whole different level. 

  I mean look at this drawing of prize fighter, Manny Pacquiao for a shirt our Art Director, Jerry Ma just whipped up because he felt like it a few days ago.

   And then Cliff Chiang did this awesome tribute to the late Director John Hughes – the Teen Titans as “The Breakfast Club”!

  Ming Doyle just started drawing this hilarious comic strip once a week called the “The Loneliest Astronauts“.

  And last week, Bernard Chang whipped up this live painting of Wonder Woman for charity at the Baltimore Comic Con.

  However at the same time, it’s impossible to not get inspired and WANT to draw when you see these folks in action (I witnessed Bernard draw BUMBLEBEE from ‘The Transformers’ for a kid while playing poker!!!)

  So I thought, what have I been inspired by lately? 

  Well, that’s easy… anything Apple.  Yes, I’m taking about the Steve Jobs Cult.  I am a PC to Mac convert.  It started with the iphone back in May and then I dove in and bought the 24″ iMac — so that was the jumping off point for this drawing below:

   

  The reason I chose Plastic Man as my muse is because until I get more practice in, the guy’s what I call: ‘Accident Friendly’. 

  If you’re not familiar with ‘Plas’ — he’s a superhero that can take on the shape of whatever he envisions – the only catch is that he can’t change colors or anything, so his costume usually gives him away but that’s also what makes him such a fun character.

  I refer to him as ‘Accident Friendly’ because if I happen to make his arms a different length, I can simply justify it as Plastic Man intentionally making his arms uneven — he can be anything he wants! 

  I mean, now looking at the final product  – you can see the bottom right of the ‘screen’ is not as straight as the left bottom - well to that I say, “It’s ‘supposed’ to be like that, he was in mid-shift on his way into morphing into something else!”

  • 1:33 am
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