Monday, August 30, 2010

The Dragon With The Girl Tattoo

Hey, look! It's a dragon! And he just came from the tattoo parlor!

I know absolutely nothing about the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie; I just heard the title and thought it would be com-o-dee to reverse it. Hopefully it's not some kind of porno.

I realized halfway through the drawing that if I put a tattoo on the dragon's arm it would have to be so small that you'd never be able to see it. It didn't make sense to put it on his side or anywhere else. So rather than scrap that comedy gold of a title, I decided to magnify it in a cartoon balloon.

The dragon (and his tattoo) is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign.

I struggled mightily with the background color for this one. Originally it was a dark red, but I had to turn that layer off because it was pan-searing my eyes as I worked on it. I tried color after color and somehow they all looked good to me. I finally narrowed it down to yellow and green, and ultimately picked yellow. Here's the green version for posterity.

Sorry, no real sketch to speak of this time. I sort of drew it on the fly.

Hurricane, Schmuricane

Here's something else I've always wondered: Why do they always give hurricanes such bland, everyday names?

For example, right now Hurricane Earl is bearing down on the East coast of America. No offense to any readers out there named Earl, but you've got to admit, that's not a name that strikes fear into people.

If I was sitting in my house and the weatherman came on TV and said, "Run for your lives! Hurricane Earl is heading right for us! Take only what you can carry!" I'd shrug and go on with whatever I was doing.

Maybe more people would have evacuated New Orleans five years ago if Hurricane Katrina hadn't been named after a sexy Russian exchange student.

If they want people to take hurricanes seriously and evacuate the coastlines, they need to stop naming them Otto and Virginie* and start calling them Hurricane DESTRUKTORR or Hurricane EXTERMINUS. Now that would get the population's attention! No one would ignore a hurricane warning like that!

So here you go, National Hurricane Center. I'm sending you a revised list of 21 hurricane names for 2010 to replace your wimpy monikers (spellings are intentional):

· Annihilator
· Blastarr
· Crusher
· Destruktorr
· Exterminus
· Fearasaurus Death
· Ginormitron
· Hellsender
· Implosionator
· Jackal-gnashor
· Killotronn
· Lay-waste-acuss
· Maimakuss
· Neutralizorr
· Oblitoratorr
· Pillaguss
· Ransackulon
· Slaughteratorr
· Terminatus
· Vandalon
· Wreckkorr

Good luck during hurricane season, World!

*Believe it or not, these are actual names on the 2010 hurricane name list.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Seventh Doctor

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd start a series of vector drawings of the eleven (!) different Doctors (so far).

Sylvester McCoy played the Seventh Doctor from 1987 to 1989, and then again in 1996.

Why the large gap in time, you're wondering? Believe it or not, after an amazing 26 years on the air, Doctor Who was canceled in 1989. Much like Star Trek, it lived on in books and radio dramas for years after its cancellation. Then in 1996, the Fox Network made a deal with the BBC to try and bring the show to America. Fox produced a TV movie (that also served as a pilot episode) and brought back McCoy to briefly portray the Seventh Doctor. Near the beginning of the TV movie, McCoy regenerated into the Eighth Doctor.

Unfortunately the TV movie didn't make a big enough splash to warrant a new series. The adventures of a Time Lord who travels around in a blue box that's bigger on the inside than the outside was probably just too weird for mainstream America.

I've only seen one of McCoy's episodes. I thought he was just OK. I need to watch a few more shows before forming an opinion.

The Seventh Doctor started out as a comical and bumbling buffoon, which caused his foes to underestimate him. As the series progressed, his personality changed and he became darker and devious. His costume even changed to reflect this shift in personality, going from an off-white jacket to a dark brown one.

Unlike any of his previous incarnations, this version of the Doctor spoke with a slight Scottish accent (no doubt because Sylvester McCoy is Scots).

The Seventh Doctor's main companion was a troubled teenage girl named Ace, who insisted on calling him "Professor." Despite being a high school dropout, Ace was proficient in chemistry and carried explosives of her own making in her backpack(!).

The Doctor saw himself as something of a mentor to Ace. The producers even planned a story arc in which the Doctor would recommend her for entrance into the Prydonian Academy on Gallifrey, where she would train to become a Time Lord herself. Unfortunately the series was canceled before these events could play out.

The Seventh Doctor continued the tradition of incorporating question marks into his attire, which started with the Fourth Doctor. It's something I always found cringe-worthy. Doctor Who is the name of the show, not the character's name. He's always been known simply as "The Doctor." Wearing a question mark as a nod to the show's title always seemed a little too cutesy to me, and every time I saw it it would yank me right out of the story.

At least Doctors #4 through #6 were relatively restrained and just wore question marks on their lapels. The Seventh Doctor went way overboard, wearing an obnoxious question mark patterned sweater vest, and even sported an umbrella with a question mark-shaped handle. We get it already, guys. Thankfully the creators of the revived series have seen the light, and Doctors Eight through Eleven have been question mark free.

Please forgive the ugly watermark on the illustration. I swore I would never add one to my art, because I know that 99.99% of my readers would never even think of stealing it. But earlier this year I had a run-in with an art thief who was not only stealing my work, but selling it as her own! Hence the watermarks. This is why we can't have nice things.

Doctor #7 is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign.

Stay tuned for Doctors #8 through #11!
Here's the original digital sketch of Doctor #7. The body ended up the same in the final drawing, but I tweaked the face a bit.

Skin Deep

Here’s something I’ve always wondered: How do TV shows approach actors to play what Hollywood considers to be ugly characters?

Take for example the Brady Bunch episode in which Jan meets her homely and eccentric Aunt Jenny (played by the great Imogene Coca). You remember, it’s the one where Jan finds an old photo of her aunt and is amazed to see that she looked exactly like her when she was a girl. Jan then meets her Aunt Jenny and is horrified to see that she’s now a gawky, chinless bug-eyed owl of a woman, and realizes she's destined to grow up to look just like her. Jan totally loses her $#!† at this realization and spirals into her weekly bout of depression.

What I want to know is, how exactly did the producers approach Imogene Coca for this role? Did they try the sly approach and say, “Say Imogene, we’ve got a great part here for a comedic genius with impeccable timing like you.” Or did they just come right out and say, “Hey Imogene, we need a pop-eyed troll to play the part of Jan’s hideous aunt.”

Even if the producers tried to downplay their reasons for hiring her, the entire plot revolved around Aunt Jenny’s homeliness and was riddled with references to it. There’s no way she wouldn’t have been able to figure out why they specifically wanted her.

Was Coca offended by this? Or had she grimly accepted her looks and realized that playing such parts was the only way she'd ever have a career in show business?

How do you tell someone you only want to hire them because they’re unattractive?

Did the producers of the Beverly Hillbillies put out a casting call for plain, frumpy looking bookworms to play the part of Miss Jane? How did Nancy Kulp feel, knowing that she was hired just because the producers thought she wasn't easy to look at? Did she say, "Hooray, I got the part! Hey, wait a minute..."

And what about poor Mary Beth Canfield? She was hired onto Green Acres to play a plain-looking female handyman named Ralph! That's like a double slap in the mug!

Maybe these women saw their appearance as sort of an advantage. After all, a beautiful starlet only has a few precious years to work before her skin starts to wrinkle and sag and the movie roles dry up. These character actresses never had much in the way of looks to begin with, and so could work pretty much forever. They also never had to starve themselves or alter their appearance with painful and expensive plastic surgery. When you think about it that way, they had it better than the so called beautiful people.

Still, I don't think I'd want to be a casting director.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Sixth Doctor

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd start a series of vector drawings of the eleven (!) different Doctors (so far).

Colin Baker (no relation to Tom Baker) played the Sixth Doctor from 1984 to 1987.

His Doctor was arrogant, impatient and overconfident, and maybe even a bit touched in the head. Immediately after his regeneration, he actually tried to strangle his companion Peri (although to be fair, he was suffering from post-regenerative trauma).

Some say he was a bit of a throwback to the grumpier First Doctor. His personality mellowed a bit toward the end of his run, but he always had an air of superiority about him, especially when interacting with his companions.

The show went through a lot of turmoil during his years. The BBC put the series on hiatus for 18 months and when it returned they even cut the number of episodes per season. Many fans feel Baker got a raw deal and never got the chance to prove himself in the role.

In recent years Colin Baker starred as the Sixth Doctor in a series of Doctor Who audio books. Many fans who initially didn't care for Baker's portrayal feel that he's redeemed himself in these audio performances.

The Sixth Doctor was put on trial (again) by his fellow Time Lords, accused of meddling in the natural course of the galaxy. The prosecutor at his trial was a Time Lord known as the Valeyard. It was implied that the Valeyard may be a future, evil version of the Doctor. That plot line seems to have been forgotten in the new series, and probably rightly so.

The Rani, yet another evil Time Lord, and sort of a female version of the Doctor's nemesis The Master, first appeared during the Sixth Doctor's tenure.

Now, about that outfit. The Sixth Doctor was saddled with the gaudiest, most butt-ugly and ridiculous costume ever created. Who thought that a predominantly pink patchwork coat with yellow striped slacks was a good idea? Baker himself reportedly hated it and wanted the Doctor to wear an all black costume. Too bad he didn't get his way.

Doctor #6 had a fondness for cats for some reason, and wore a different feline shaped pin on his gaudy lapel in every episode. Why an extraterrestrial Time Lord would have a supply of cat pins was not explained.

The Sixth Doctor continued the tradition of incorporating a question mark into his attire, something I always found cringe-worthy. Doctor Who is the name of the show, not the character's name. He's always been known simply as "The Doctor." Wearing a question mark as a nod to the show's title always seemed a little too cutesy to me, and every time I saw it it would yank me right out of the story.

The question marks continued all the way through the Seventh Doctor (who carried an umbrella with a question mark-shaped handle). Fortunately the creators of the revived series have seen the light, and Doctors Eight through Eleven have thankfully been question mark free.

Doctor #6 is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign. Originally I did my best to recreate every God-awful pattern in his costume, but it ended up looking like a blur of unappealing colors. I had to cheat and simplify his outfit somewhat in order to be able to tell what you were looking at.

Please forgive the ugly watermark on the illustration. I swore I would never add one to my art, because I know that 99.99% of my readers would never even think of stealing it. But earlier this year I had a run-in with an art thief who was not only stealing my work, but selling it as her own! Hence the watermarks. This is why we can't have nice things.

Stay tuned for Doctors #7 through #11!

Here's my digital sketch for the Sixth Doctor. I didn't change much in the final drawing.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Luke Nukerson

I noticed that I tend to draw a lot of angry looking characters. If I was a psychiatrist I'd say that indicates I have some issues with the way the world's being run. Also if I was a psychiatrist I'd be charging $100 an hour.

Luke is a vector illustration, drawn all in InDesign.

I usually post my preliminary sketches (is that a redundant phrase?), but there weren't any this time. I just sort of sketched him out onscreen.

It Came From The Cineplex: The Expendables

The Expendables, directed by co-writer Sylvester Stallone, is like a love letter to old school, 1980s action movies. It’s an enjoyable shoot-em-up, but one that felt somewhat lacking.

From the time it was first announced, the main buzz about the project was in the casting. You could even say the casting is the star of the movie. Stallone wanted it to be one giant Eighties reunion and tried to get every big name former action star in Hollywood to sign up for the project for one last big screen hurrah. Unfortunately he didn't quite succeed.

Expendables stars Stallone himself, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Stallone reportedly attempted to recruit Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris, but they declined for various reasons, leaving him to fill the rest of the slots with lesser-known stars and wrestlers and leaving us to imagine what might have been.

Schwarzenegger and Willis have very brief cameo roles, which came as a big disappointment. I can give Arnold a pass for only being in the movie for 5 minutes, as he’s busy running California into the ground, but what was Bruce Willis’ excuse? No offense to Jason Statham, but Willis really should have played his part. Was he busy on another project, or could Stallone just not afford him full time?

Why wasn't Kurt Russell in the cast? He made a movie with Stallone, so why isn't he on the team? And Carl Weathers? Surely Stallone has his email address.

The plot, such as it is, is standard action movie fare, and therein lies the problem. Once the novelty of the casting wears off, there’s just not a lot for the characters to do, other than shoot a lot. Of course that’s why you watch an action movie, but I was expecting something more.

Apart from Stallone and Statham, none of the actors seem to have much chemistry with one another. Some of the stars seem like they're uncomfortable and out of place. It seemed as if Mickey Rourke wandered onto the set by mistake, said a few lines and then meandered back off.

Dolph Lundgren is absolutely wasted as an Expendable who goes bad, disappears for three fourths of the movie, then comes back a bit at the end. Why couldn't they have given that part to one of the wrestlers I've never heard of, and given Dolph more to do?

Most of the dialog is very bland. 1980s action movies were famous for their pithy one liners ("I'll be back," etc). There's not one quotable or memorable line in the entire film.

There's plenty of hand to hand combat, blazing guns and exploding buildings, but honestly there's nothing here that we haven't seen before. Maybe we've become so used to CGI setpieces that good old fashioned 1980s action bores us?

There also seems to be a lot of filler, especially for an action movie. For instance, the totally superfluous subplot regarding Jason Statham and his breakup with his girlfriend. A good amount of time is spent on this plot and it goes absolutely nowhere. The only conceivable reason it's there is to give Statham a chance to beat the crap out of some stuntmen for a few minutes of screen time.

I'm being very hard on the movie, but only because with a cast of action movie icons, I expected much, much more. It’s not a terrible movie, it just could have been so much better. I'm gonna have to give it a C.

Frankenstein 010: Frankenstein Papercraft

Another entry in my 100 Frankensteins Project! Hey, I'm up to #10! At this rate, I'll get to 100 right about the time I go to the Old Illustrator's Home.

This time I decided to go three dimensional and make a papercraft Frankenstein. I didn't really have much of a plan when I started making this. I drew the front view of the of him first in InDesign, then deconstructed him and added the sides and back pieces. I got kind of carried away on the size. I didn't realize how big he was until I started building him. He's almost 11" tall! He looked a lot smaller on the monitor. I couldn't fit everything on one sheet of paper, so I had to spread the parts out over two.


I printed him out and built him to see if there were any problems with the design. I was sure I'd need to make some tweaks. I was shocked when everything fit together fine on the first try!
I was afraid he wouldn't stand up by himself, since he's so top heavy and has such skinny legs, but he stands just fine on flat surfaces (as long as you don't stomp around too much).


Feel free to download, print and build your own. I recommend printing it on card stock if you have any. Use an X-Acto knife to cut out the pieces. Scissors are too bulky. It's your choice as to whether to use glue or tape to put him together. Ideally glue would look better, but I built mine with invisible tape and it looked just fine. I tried to put the seams or joins in the back as much as possible so that they wouldn't show from the front.
You can see the first papercraft monster I did here. It was a lot simpler and less elaborate than Frank. I learned a lot about making papercraft figures from this first one.

Photo of Paper Frankenstein next to a big-headed goon for scale.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

It Came From The Cineplex: Predators

I haven't posted any movie reviews for a while. That's because this has been a miserable summer at the movies. Other than a few bright spots like Toy Story 3 and Inception, there just hasn't been much worth seeing. It's been the Summer of Meh.

I did enjoy Predators though, so let's get on with the reviewing.

The Predator franchise has been ailing for years now. After the awesome first movie, we were treated to a so-so sequel and then two poorly made Alien vs. Predator movies. Luckily, producer Robert Rodriguez (Desperado, From Dusk Til Dawn, Spy Kids) stepped in as producer in an effort to get the franchise back on track.

Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal (Vacancy, Armored) went back to basics, as Predators is pretty much a remake of the first movie, even though its technically a sequel. Its even got the same "boy's club plus one woman" cast as the original. Still, it's better than any of the previous sequels and one of the few bright spots in the theaters this summer.

Arrrr! There be spoilers here!

We get right into the action as the movie opens with mercenary Royce (a newly beefed-up Adrien Brody) falling through the sky, unconscious. He wakes up just in time (or it would have been an even shorter movie), figures out where he is and luckily for him, notices he's wearing an odd looking parachute.

Once on the ground, he encounters the rest of the characters, who've all arrived the same way. The cast is like a laundry list of stereotypical mercenaries; there's a Russian Spetznaz special forces soldier, a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, a Nigerian rebel, a death row inmate, a South American freedom fighter, and even a Japanese Yakuza. Oh, and Topher Grace, of TVs That 70s Show, is there as well, for some insane reason. Needless to say, the group is all suspicious of one another, and hijinx, as they say, ensue.

The various mercenary characters are all pretty cliched, but that's par for the course in an action movie, and in this case actually helps move things along quickly.

The group is then attacked by some alien-looking wolf things, and they finally realize they're not on Earth. They've all been brought to an alien hunting ground planet, and are being hunted by... something.

We finally get some new info on the Predator culture; specifically that there are more than one type, and that they don't all get along.

Adrien Brody makes a surprisingly decent action hero, as he snarls his way through the proceedings. Lawrence Fishburne, however, turns in a bizarre, Gollum-like performance that adds absolutely nothing to the plot.

Topher Grace has a surprise revelation late in the movie; his Milquetoast character was brought to the hunting planet because he's secretly a serial killer. That was kind of a cool twist, but then the movie turns around and ruins it, as it has Grace take time out from being hunted to try and serial kill Isabelle, the only female in the cast. It made absolutely no sense and jerked me right out of the movie with its weirdness.

Also, for a movie called Predators, it barely earns it's plural title. There are a total of four Predators in the entire movie. That's all, four. I was expecting more. A lot more. I'll get into that some more in a minute.

It's not perfect, but it's a decent and entertaining action flick, and better than any of the previous Predator sequels, and it's way better than most of the garbage smelling up the theaters this summer. I give it a solid B.
____________________________________________________

Before I go, I have to mention the Predators trailer. It is one of the most extremely misleading trailers I've seen in many a day.

First of all, the trailer makes it seem like Lawrence Fishburne is the star of the movie. He is not. As I mentioned earlier, he's in the movie for a total of ten minutes, tops. If I were a Fishburne fan, I would have been extremely disappointed with his skimpy screen time.

Second, and most importantly, at the end of the trailer, there's a scene where Adrien Brody is suddenly covered in twenty or so of the Predator's distinctive laser targeting sights. Given how much havoc even one Predator wreaked in the first movie, my first reaction upon seeing this scene was, "Woah, how's he gonna get out of that? I have GOT to see this movie now!"


Imagine my disappointment at finding out that that scene doesn't appear in the actual movie. Oh, the scene's there all right, but instead of seeing Adrien Brody being covered with twenty laser sights, he's targeted by a measly one. As I mentioned earlier, there are only four Predators in the entire movie. That's a little less than the twenty that the trailer promises.

Producer Robert Rodriguez even admitted in an interview that the multi-target scene was created specifically for the trailer, in order to give you a feel of the tone of the movie. Just what tone would that be, that it's more exciting than it really is? It's a Predators movie, for cripes sake! We already know what the tone of it is, and we've known since 1987. We don't need any tone setting from the trailer.

It's false advertising at best, a bald-faced lie at worst.

It's the same as seeing a commercial for a Lexus sedan, but when you order one they deliver a Yugo to your driveway. If the trailer promises twenty Predators, then that's what I want to see, not four.

Studios have been using these "Trailer Only Scenes" for years now, but this is one of the worst examples I've yet seen. It needs to stop here and now. If not, soon we'll see trailers promising Brad Pitt as the star, but we'll end up getting Pauly Shore.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

The Fifth Doctor

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd start a series of vector drawings of the eleven (!) different Doctors (so far).

Peter Davison played the Fifth Doctor from 1981 to 1984. He was the youngest actor to portray the Doctor at the time, a record which stood until Matt Smith (the Eleventh Doctor, and current holder of the youngest record) came along.

I really enjoyed Davison's performance, placing him just slightly behind Tom Baker as my second favorite of the old series.

The Fifth Doctor was more serious and moody than the previous incarnation. He was even prone to occasional outbursts at his companions.

Unlike the Third and Fourth Doctors who both had extensive wardrobes, the Fifth Doctor wore the same cricket player’s outfit for his entire run.

So what's up with the celery stalk, you're probably asking yourself? In the episode The Caves of Androzani, the Doctor claimed he wore the celery because it would turn purple in the presence of certain gases to which he was allergic. He also claimed it was "an excellent restorative where he comes from." How Time Lords became familiar with the medicinal properties of Earth celery is left to our imaginations.

In the 2007 mini episode Time Crash, the Fifth Doctor and the Tenth Doctor briefly cross paths. Doctor #10 pokes fun at #5s celery stalk, saying, "Brave choice celery, but fair play to you. Not a lot of men can carry off a decorative vegetable."

The Fifth Doctor’s Tardis got a little crowded inside, as at one point he had three companions traveling with him. There was Tegan, an Australian airline stewardess, Adric, a teenage boy genius from another dimension, and Nyssa, daughter of an alien nobleman. I have to admit I had a crush on Nyssa back in the 1980s.

The Master, the Doctor’s evil Time Lord nemesis, returned during Davison’s run. The Master is an evil Time Lord, bent on conquering the universe (naturally) and destroying the Doctor. He hadn't been seen since the Jon Pertwee (Doctor #3) era, when the actor who portrayed him, Roger Delgado, was killed in a car accident. Anthony Ainely portrayed the regenerated Master.

It was great to have the Master back at first, but the writers began using him way too much, until he was in virtually every episode. There'd be some alien villain menacing the Doctor, and invariably he'd turn out to be the Master wearing a mask. After a while he began suffering from overexposure. He's a character who works best in small doses.

The Fifth Doctor teamed up with four of his previous incarnations in the episode The Five Doctors. Well, sort of. Tom Baker (#4) declined to participate, and only appeared in stock footage. William Hartnell (#1) had died a few years prior, and so the First Doctor was played by Richard Hurndall. Still, it was fun to see all the various Doctors and their companions interact.

I wonder: Since some of the Doctors are no longer with us, and the rest have greatly aged since their first appearances, would anyone be interested in an "Eleven Doctors" episode with the older Doctors played by new actors?

Doctor #5 was the first one we saw who occasionally wore reading glasses, although again in the Time Crash episode, Doctor #10 states that Doctor #5 didn't really need them, but instead wore them to look "clever."

The Fifth Doctor continued the tradition of incorporating a question mark into his attire, something I always found cringe-worthy. Doctor Who is the name of the show, not the character's name. He's always been known simply as "The Doctor." Wearing a question mark as a nod to the show's title always seemed a little too cutesy to me, and every time I saw it it would yank me right out of the story.

The question marks continued all the way to the Seventh Doctor (who carried an umbrella with a question mark-shaped handle). Fortunately the creators of the revived series have seen the light, and Doctors Eight through Eleven have thankfully been question mark free.

Doctor #5 is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign. The likeness and costume ended up being easy this time, but the colors were a real challenge. The Fifth Doctor's outfit is all whites and off-whites, so I had to cheat some of the colors a bit just to get things to show up.

Please forgive the ugly watermark on the illustration. I swore I would never add one to my art, because I know that 99.99% of my readers would never even think of stealing it. But earlier this year I had a run-in with an art thief who was not only stealing my work, but selling it as her own! Hence the watermarks. This is why we can't have nice things.

Stay tuned for Doctors #6 through #11! I'm really not looking forward to #6, with that awful, complicated costume of his.
Here's a digital sketch I did of the Fifth Doctor.

ACK!

This week Cathy Guisewite, creator of the Cathy comic strip, announced she's ending the strip after 34 years. Thirty four long, lonnnnnnnng years.

Hallelujah. At last our long national nightmare is almost over.

I've never understood the appeal of the Cathy strip. I know, I'm not the intended audience and I'm not supposed to get it. But I don't understand why women like it. It's packed full of the most tired and stale female cliches there are: Cathy thinks she's fat, she can't find a man (early on anyway), she has a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear, she can't find a bathing suit that fits, and on and on.

Maybe women look at Cathy and think, "Oh, that's so true! She's just like me." I would think they'd just find it insulting.

If you don't think Cathy is cliched and insulting to women, then imagine if a man wrote the strip. He'd have been tarred and feathered or worse before the end of the strip's first week. But because a woman writes it, I guess that makes using cliches that were old in the 1940s OK.

Worst Paying College Degrees: You Can Probably See Where This Is Going...

Yahoo recently ran an article listing the Top 20 Worst Paying College Degrees. Here's the list below:

Worst-Paying College Degrees in 2010
College Degree Starting PayMid-Career Pay
1. Child and Family Studies$29,500$38,400
2. Elementary Education$31,600$44,400
3. Social Work$31,800 $44,900
4. Athletic Training $32,800 $45,700
5. Culinary Arts $35,900 $50,600
6. Horticulture $35,000 $50,800
7. Paralegal Studies/Law $35,100 $51,300
8. Theology $34,700 $51,300
9. Recreation & Leisure $33,300 $53,200
10. Special Education $36,000 $53,800
11. Dietetics $40,400 $54,200
12. Religious Studies $34,700 $54,400
13. Art $33,500 $54,800
14. Education $35,100 $54,900
15. Interdisciplinary Studies $35,600 $55,700
16. Interior Design $34,400 $56,600
17. Nutrition $42,200 $56,700
18. Graphic Design $35,400 $56,800
19. Music $36,700 $57,000
20. Art History $39,400 $57,100

Coming in at #18 is Graphic Design. Hey, that's me! My degree made the list! Hooray! Oh, wait...

This graph would have come in handy back when I was actually in college. Of course back then things may have been different, but somehow I doubt it.

I'm going to have to dispute their "mid-career pay" of $56,800, because I'm sure not seeing any amount like that. I guess I must not have reached my mid-career yet.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Fourth Doctor

I'm a big fan of Doctor Who, so I thought I'd start a series of vector drawings of the eleven (!) different Doctors (so far).

Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor from 1974 to 1981, the longest tenure of any actor so far. With his bug eyes, manic grin, curly mop of hair and trademark endless scarf, he's the Doctor best known to most Americans. Probably due to all those PBS fund-raiser marathons.

The Fourth Doctor tended to distract foes with his odd behavior. He could be befuddled, aloof and somber all at once.

He also had many interesting companions, including fan favorite Sarah Jane Smith (who actually debuted in a Third Doctor episode), Leela (sort of an alien cave woman), K-9 (his trusty robotic dog) and Romana, a fellow Time Lord (Time Lady?) from the Doctor's planet of Gallifrey.

According to legend, the Fourth Doctor's ridiculously long scarf came about by accident. The BBC sent a box full of various yarns to a local seamstress to knit into a scarf. She supposedly got carried away and used ALL the yarn, resulting in a 16 foot long scarf. The studio was about to cut it in half, but Baker reportedly saw it and liked it, and the rest is history.

Like Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, the Fourth Doctor didn't limit himself to just one outfit. He had at least four different costumes during his time on the series. I drew him in the one I like best.

Near the end of Baker's run, the creators began incorporating a question mark into the Doctor's attire (on his shirt collar), something I always found cringe-worthy. Doctor Who is the name of the show, not the character's name. He's always been known simply as "The Doctor." Wearing a question mark as a nod to the show's title always seemed a little too cutesy to me, and every time I saw it it would yank me right out of the story.

The question mark tradition continued all the way to the Seventh Doctor (who carried an umbrella with a question mark-shaped handle). Fortunately the creators of the revived series have seen the light, and Doctors Nine through Eleven have thankfully been question mark free.

Doctor #4 is a vector drawing, drawn all in InDesign. Toward the end I was cursing that frakin' scarf and all its stripes. I did my best to make the stripes screen accurate, but I had to fudge a little to get them all to fit. That's a bag of the Doctor's trademark "jelly babies" that he's holding.

Please forgive the ugly watermark on the illustration. I swore I would never add one to my art, because I know that 99.99% of my readers would never even think of stealing it. But earlier this year I had a run-in with an art thief who was not only stealing my work, but selling it as her own! Hence the watermarks. This is why we can't have nice things.

Stay tuned for Doctors #5 through #11!

Here's one of many, many, MANY sketches I did of Tom Baker. Since he seems to be the most popular Doctor here in the States, I wanted to make sure I got him right. Although you'd think a face like his would be easy to capture, it took a ton of sketches to get it right in this simplified style. This one wasn't quite right, and I ended up changing it a lot in the final drawing.

When I need reference for the various Doctor's outfits, I just check out my Doctor Who action figure shelf. Some of them are hidden behind others in this photo, but all eleven of them are there.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Another Weekend, Another Horror Convention

A couple weeks ago I went to the Sixth Annual Fright Night Film Fest in Louisville, and I met some more horror movie icons.

It was a pretty good show, except for the part where the hotel's air conditioning system went on the blink and the temperature in the convention hall shot up to 95 degrees or so. Geeks + heat + enclosed space = bad news for everyone.

One of the celebs I met was Tom Atkins. His name might not be a household word, but if you've seen any movies in the last 20 years you'll definitely recognize his face.

He was in Night Of The Creeps, one of my favorite movies. If you've not seen it, it's worth checking out. It's got aliens, ax murderers, zombies... you name it, it's in there. Tom Atkins plays a washed up, burned out detective who always answers his phone with his sarcastic catch phrase, "Thrill me."

In addition to Creeps, Mr. Atkins has been in a ton of other things, including Lethal Weapon, Halloween III, Creepshow, The Fog (the original), and a couple hundred TV shows.

He was pretty nice, and seemed genuinely interested in talking with us. Some actors get the whole "meeting the fans" thing, and some don't. Tom Atkins is one who definitely gets it.

Now that I think of it, I've met a lot of celebrities at conventions over the years, and the horror stars are consistently the nicest of the lot. It seems like the worse their onscreen personas, the nicer they are in real life.

I also met David Emge. Again, you may not recognize the name, but if you call yourself a fan of zombie movies, you'll definitely recognize him-- he was Flyboy in the original Dawn Of The Dead. His portrayal of a zombie at the end of the film set the bar for cinematic zombies for decades.

Mr. Emge is originally from my city of Evansville, so we had that in common. He was also very nice and spoke with us for quite a while, asking how things were back home. Oddly enough, two of his Dawn of the Dead co-stars, Ken Foree and Gaylen Ross, are from Indianapolis, making it the Hoosierist zombie movie I know of.

Here he is in a pensive moment from Dawn Of The Dead.

And here he is as possibly the most famous movie zombie ever!

Bizarro World

I saw this headline today on CNN.com.

Apparently at some point last night I accidentally slipped into some sort of alternate dimension; one where nations are ruled with iron fists by aging actresses and skinny supermodels.

I'm hopeful I'll be able to locate and return to my home dimension soon.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Don't Say The Zed Word!

Have you ever noticed that in virtually every zombie movie ever made, the writers go out of their way to never actually mention the "Z" word? It seems to be an unwritten law in Hollywood. George Romero's Dead movies always call them "those things." They do say it in Shaun Of The Dead, but they make a joke about how they shouldn't say it.

Why this is, I have no idea. If you make a zombie movie, why not call them what they are?

Anyway, here's a vector drawing of a zombie, er... I mean one of "those things."

Drawn in Indesign. Including the engraved-look brain.

By the way, I've been drawing in vector a lot lately, and I always use InDesign. Even though it's made for page layout, it's got most of the same drawing tools that Illustrator has, and I'm more familiar with it.

I recently decided that I should probably learn to draw in the more conventional Illustrator program, so I fired it up and started fiddling around, and was appalled to find out that there's no "Paste Into" function. You have to create masks for objects that you want to appear inside other objects, which can quickly become needlessy complicated.

What a crock! InDesign's "Paste Into" function is easy to use and elegant in its simplicity. Why can it, a page layout program, so effortlessly do something that Illustrator, a drawing program, can't? Adobe, I demand an explanation.

So I guess I'll continue to use InDesign from now on for vector drawings.

Here's the original version of the zombie, in an odd and static pose. I didn't think this was working, so I scrapped everything but his head and shirt and started over. That's today's art lesson, kids. Don't fall in love with your art. It can always be improved upon.

Originally I had the zombie against a blood red background, but I started playing around with colors and decided I liked the green better. Here's the red background for comparison.

BADvertising

Get a load of this billboard for local Mexican restaurant Hacienda. It features a nurse displaying a desert dish that consists of an enormous cookie topped with three scoops of ice cream and drizzled with chocolate syrup.

Some overpaid corporate genius at Hacienda's headquarters got the bright idea to name this desert, "Code Brown." Oh, how I wish I could have sat in on the marketing meeting for this promotion, just so I could find out how this idea ever got out the door.

As everyone knows by now, many hospitals use the "code" terminology to alert the staff of an emergency, without alarming the public. The meanings of the codes vary from hospital to hospital, but generally they go like this:
Code Red: Emergency
Code Blue: Cardiac arrest, bring the crash cart
Code Brown: Patient has soiled themselves, bring a mop and bucket
What would possess a company to use that terminology on their restaurant billboard? Especially one promoting chocolate?

And lest you think it might have been an innocent mistake, my boss pointed out that the obviously fake nurse in the ad is named "Tina LaDuttie." That's "LaDuttie," pronounced like "doodie." That pretty much proves it was deliberate.

Some friendly advice for the Hacienda marketing team: Customers generally don't care to think about poo while they're eating Mexican food (though they'll be thinking about it all too soon the day after). Especially chocolate covered Mexican food. Perhaps next time you should pick a name for your desert that doesn't remind people of an uncontrollable bowel movement.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Dino-Sore



Dear Science:

Please stop ruining dinosaurs.

signed,
The World

Man, Science, you just can't seem to leave dinosaurs alone, can you? Every year you come up with some new discovery that makes them more boring and less cool to millions of bright-eyed, enthusiastic kids world-wide.

First you told us the world's most famous dinosaur, the lovable, bumbling Brontosaurus, never actually existed. What we all thought for years was a Brontosaurus was really the much less appleaing Apatosaurus. You told us that an overzealous archeologist made up the Brontosaurus by sticking a skull from a different species on the neck of a nearly complete Apatosaurus skeleton. Way to go, Science.

Then you told us that Raptors (which you didn't even know existed until about twenty years ago) really had feathers. I don't know about anyone else, but I like my dinosaurs to be scaly and bald. I don't want to know that they were really just giant chickens. Once again, well done, Science.

Now you're telling us that my all time favorite dinosaur, the Triceratops, technically never existed. The Triceratops, according to you, is merely the juvenile form of the vastly less interesting and nowhere nearly as cool Torosaurs, which no one has ever heard of. Apparently as a Triceratops aged it morphed into the Torosaurus, which had longer horns that pointed in a different direction and a smooth, non-frilled head crest.

Sure, they look a lot alike, but Triceratops has a coolness that Torosaurus just lacks. So thanks. Thanks a lot, Buzzkill, I mean Science. You just HAD to wipe out my favorite dinosaur, didn't you?

What I don't understand is why couldn't they have switched it around and said that the Torosaurus never existed, and was the adult version of the Triceratops. Didn't think of that one, did you, Science?

Hey Science, maybe you should lay off the dinosaurs for a while, or at the very least keep your discoveries to yourself. You do realize that childhood interest in dinosaurs accounts for about 98% of museum attendance, right? By constantly de-coolinizing dinosaurs the way you're doing, you're going to discover yourself right out of a job. Go build some more supercoliders or something and leave the dinos alone.
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