Things are looking up

(Ever since she was small, Mel has been looking for Mr. Right.)

I just wanted to mention that the Clarkes are expecting a new addition to their family (and no, I'm not pregnant). This past weekend I found out that my little sister Mel is getting married! Who would have thought that last week I was at the Wolfmother concert with my future brother-in-law? Wolfbrotherinlaw?

As Mum says 'When you know, you know.' Well, we all know that he's a great guy and that Mel's very happy. What can be more important than that?

And as Dad says, (about Mark) 'He must be mad.' Well, that's probably true too, but that's pretty much a prerequisite to being a part of our family.

In any case, congratulations Mel and Mark! I hope you have a very happy life together.

This is the house that Jack built

(Click on pics to see larger)

Here's some frames from a 24 Season Four promotion I have been working on for channel m this past week. We based it around the 'This is the house that Jack built' nursery rhyme and used a sing-song voiceover with tinkling music in the background.

I used a pop-up storybook style for the graphics, which lent itself to a lot of bouncing and swooping motion for the animations. A lot of work but a lot of fun too.

I even managed to talk them into doing another 10 second version, using the following rhyme:

'Jack be nimble
Jack be quick
Jack get the f--k out of there before the bomb goes off!'

Not sure how I got away with that one.

What popped up on my iPod this week

The great thing about iPods is that songs that you haven't really listened to in years suddenly pop up and become favorites all over again.

Evidence - Faith No More



My first newly rediscovered favorite song is Evidence by Faith No More (from the King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime album). This is a very film-noir-ish track with some great jazzy guitar and piano and some killer R&B type vocals from Mike Patton. A really beautiful song considering it's about (I think) a murderer being pursued by cops.

Like most Faith No More albums, the songs go all over the place - one moment you're listening to death metal, the next minute you're listening to a gospel choir. It's like listening to an iPod on shuffle.

I'm still undecided as to whether or not I want to see Patton's upcoming Peeping Tom show at the Commodore. The songs just won't be the same without the guest vocalists, but then again, it would be pretty cool to hear Mike Patton sing.

Tusk - Fleetwood Mac



Tusk by Fleetwood Mac (from the album Tusk) also suddenly became one of my favorite songs this week.

It's probably not cool to admit that you like a Fleetwood Mac song, but this is a Fleetwood Mac song that doesn't really sound like any other Fleetwood Mac song. There's strange crowd noises, menacing drums and an insanely catchy marching band riff - all building up to repeated chants of 'Tusk' at the end.

With lyrics like 'Why don't you tell me whats going on?/ Why won't you tell me who's on the phone?' it all lends itself to a fidgety feeling of rising paranoia. Must be all the cocaine they were doing at the time.

And why is it called Tusk?*

*(Update - Just found out that tusk is a slang term for 'penis'. What a tuskhead I am.)

And the Oscar goes to zzzzzz.......

Much as I love movies, I can barely force myself to sit through the Oscars. I usually end up watching it towards the end of the evening in 10 minute chunks while I'm doing something else. It was nice to see Martin Scorsese finally win an Oscar though, even if it was for The Departed. The little dude looked so happy to be finally up there! The Departed was a great entertaining movie, but it was hardly one of Scorsese's best (and a remake). Why not Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Goodfellas? Or even the underatted Bringing Out the Dead? And what was with Jack Nicholson - is Britney cutting his hair now?

To be honest, how seriously can you take the Oscars anyway? Nicolas Cage is an Academy Award winner, and now he's playing a flaming skeleton riding a motorbike (although I'll probably watch that one when it comes out on DVD).

Wolfmother

Went to see the insanely entertaining Wolfmother at the PNE Forum last night. I was a little worried at first, since the opening band, quite frankly, sucked and the sound was pretty awful. I needn't have worried though; the sound got a lot better (for the PNE Forum that is) and Wolfmother put on a good old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing rock concert. The guy has an incredible rock god voice, and though you can hear their influences (Led Zep, AC/DC, Deep Purple, etc) peppered all through their songs, they still have a powerful original sound. The show lost a little momentum about three quarters through with a little self indulgent Pink Floydesque wankfest, but it built up quite nicely to a great finale, ending with the great 'Joker and the Thief'.

As their website says, 'The true rebirth of the power trio is upon us.' Whoa.

Because you can never have enough songs about unicorns, here's a cleverly 'defaced' version of White Unicorn. Clearly done by the kind of guy who used to draw penises in his schoolbooks when he was a kid. I like the part where the drummer starts drumming with fish.

Speaking of photos...

I've decided to abandon my A Shutter Darkly photo blog in favor of uploading my photos to my Flickr page. I'm really addicted to Flickr now - it's a great way of viewing photos and illustrations by others, as well as getting some wonderful feedback. If you're into shutterbuggery (!) this is the site for you.

You can view my Flickr page here.

S is for Sylvia

One of my photos was featured on the great weekly Beyond Robson photo feature this week. You can see the feature here.

If you're a fan of Vancouver, you should check out the Beyond Robson blog once in a while. Lots of great articles, reviews and photos by people who love this city as much as I do. Visit Beyond Robson here.

Edward Scissorhands

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Here's an illustration I did yesterday of Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. Like my Kill Bill illustration, I did the outlines and colors in Illustrator and the shading in Photoshop. In all, it took me about two and a half hours.

Edward Scissorhands has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. If you haven't seen it recently, you should really check it out again. Considering that he's covered in makeup and has very few lines of dialogue, Johnny Depp gives an incredibly funny, poignant and heartbreaking performance. I've often thought that Depp would have been right at home in the age of silent movies. Some of his quirkiest characters, like Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka and Captain Jack Sparrow, rely on a very physical, almost ballet style of acting, topped off with broad reaction shots and double-takes. Even with the sound turned off, his performances are always interesting to watch. And yes, you're right - for a straight guy, I do think I have a small crush on Johnny Depp.

In any case, here are the source images I used for the illustration:

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

All in all, a very relaxing Sunday afternoon. Read a little, drew a little, went for coffee and then took some pictures down at the beach.

Gung Hey Fat Choi!

From the Master of the Macabre to the Margrave of the Marshes

I finished Stephen King's Cell a couple of days ago. A fairly entertaining read, though it never quite kept the momentum going after the action packed opening. It suffers in comparison to King's other post-apocalyptic novel The Stand; both depict a group of misfit strangers coming together to make sense of a world gone horribly wrong. At the core though, is a rather sweet story about a man's search for his son. King is very good at exploring the father-son relationship (albeit in pretty gruesome circumstances) - just look at The Shining or Cujo or Pet Sematary. For what is basically a 'zombies ruling the world' novel, it ends in a surprisingly intimate way. I've heard that Eli Roth, director of the nastily entertaining Hostel, is making The Cell into a movie. Should be one hell of a gory movie. Yay!

I'm now two chapters into the John Peel autobiography, The Margrave of the Marshes, which I borrowed from my Dad last week. Peel was a DJ on BBC Radio 1 from 1967 until his death in 2004. He helped boost the careers of everyone from T Rex to the Sex Pistols to Pulp to The White Stripes. Since I'm more interested in the 'music' part of his life, I thought I'd find his memories of his earlier life pretty boring. I needn't have worried though - it turns out that he's a really funny and entertaining writer.

'I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette, and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't.'

Sketches

Some quick character sketches that I've just started for a short (2 minute) Tim Burtonesque animation that I have in mind. The plotline so far is a sad little goth girl getting carried away from a rainy city by her umbrella. Not more than that I'm afraid. It's all in my head, now I just have to start working on it. I'm planning on doing it in After Effects once I have everything figured out.

An inconceivable truth

The Chinese government does its part to keep the country green by painting the side of a mountain in south west China. You can read the full story here.

Found on pixelsurgeon.

I wonder if it plays mp3s?

Here's the new 2010 Olympic three-year countdown clock that was unveiled yesterday at the Vancouver Art Gallery amid protests from community activists.

I can definitely see the point of the protesters, but I am kind of looking forward to having the Olympics in our city. How can we really pass up the chance? Personally, I think people should be protesting the clock itself. It looks like a giant cellphone or some kind of sci-fi bomb. If it starts flashing red, I'm getting the hell out of there.

Ad spaces

Go here to see some clever examples of ad campaigns incorporating everyday objects from the surrounding environment. It's not in English, but you'll get the drift.

Found on newstoday.

Police report

Apparently The Police are in town rehearsing for an upcoming world tour - their first since breaking up in 1984. Here's their performance from The Grammy Awards this past Sunday night. Can you believe that Andy Summers is 65 now?

Matisse would be proud

A rather beautiful dreamlike commercial for, of all things, an insurance company. I wish I knew what the song was - it's very effective.

No CGI was used at all:

'To ensure the 'floating' through the air of the advisors looked as natural as possible, we've put the actors in a harness and we've hoisted them into the air. To do so, we had to make a hole in the umbrella's - so that the cables could go through them and pull them straight up. One of the casting criteria was 'no fear of heights' - as you can imagine. Depending on the shot, we've had one or more actors dangling above Rotterdam.'

From the pod to the cell

Finished reading JPod today, which I really enjoyed. I like reading Douglas Coupland, because he's so good and so 'local'. In this book, he covers everything from the gaming industry, grow-ops, people smuggling, Hollywood North and condo-development. You can't get more local than that.

The book is about a group of corporate drones working at a gaming company based in Burnaby (a thinly disguised Electronic Arts). In one of the sideplots, they are asked to introduce a kid-friendly turtle character into an already well-into-production extreme skateboarding game. It's just one of the books many examples of how creativity is often stifled by corporate mentality. I think anyone who's worked in a so called 'creative' position can relate to having a 'turtle' thrown into their project at the last minute:

'Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life's routines. It's the trade-off so that we don't have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it. When we were younger, we'd at least make a show of not being fooled and leave copies of Adbusters on our desktops. After a few years it just doesn't matter. You trawl for jokes or amusingly diversionary .wav files. You download music. A new project comes along, then endures a slow-motion smothering at the hands of meetings. All ideas feel stillborn. The air smells like five hundred sheets of paper.

And then it's another day.'

Don't let that quote fool you though - it's also a really funny book.

Anyway, from corporate zombies, to good old-fashioned horror zombies, I started reading Stephen King's Cell ('Your number is up!' and 'There's a reason cell rhymes with hell!' read a couple of the blurbs.) I felt I was due for something mindless and trashy. Plus I've always had a soft spot for zombies - I'll watch any movie with 'dead' in the title.

In it, everyone using a cellphone suddenly receives a signal that transforms them into bloodthirsty maniacs. The first chapter alone is gory, scary and funny - all at the same time. You've got to hand it to King; he never runs out of things to write about. In another few years he'll probably be writing about killer coffee tables or something. Your shins are no longer safe!

Pop Levi

One of my favorite songs at the moment - Blue Honey by Pop Levi. I've always been a fan of that glammy Roxyziggyrex kind of sound. The video has a very cool "James Bond opening credits" feel too.

A complete write-off

Well, this weekend was a complete write-off. I woke up with the flu yesterday and have spent the entire weekend napping and getting buzzed on Neo Citran. Too bad, since I was planning on seeing Pan's Labyrinth, which is getting great reviews, or catching the photography exhibits currently on at the VAG.

Anyway, hope I'm feeling better tomorrow. I have a huge presentation due on Friday, so can't really afford to take any sick days.

A lot of time on his hands

Guido Daniele is an incredible body painting artist with a series of hand-paintings depicting various animals and birds. You can see more at his website, www.guidodaniele.com.

Here's another one of an eagle:



Found on ventilate.