Denizens III

These happy fellows are Dhraya's classmates in her Virtual Environments class. As we all know by now, that class was an elective Dhraya was taking as part of her majoring in engineering, and it brought her a lot of grief. The first one on the left is Brenna, Dhraya's best friend, who is majoring in Computer Science and, I suspect, was the one that talked Koori into choosing to take this class. Will we see her again? Perhaps, perhaps.

The Other Side

Is Mirrors a bad movie? Well, yes and no. Overall, it kept me entertained for an hour and a half. It was pretty intense, and while it was not scary, there were a couple of scenes that were tremendously shocking. (Think of the jaw, if you've seen it.) The movie, directed by Alexandre Aja, was suspenseful enough, and Kiefer Sutherland was likeable enough as Ben Carson to make me wish him well and see him extricate himself from the grim predicament he is in.
On the other hand, Mirrors is not exactly a breath of fresh air, and most elements in the movie were not very original. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and Sam Raimi just proved that in Drag Me to Hell, but Aja is no Raimi, and the movie suffers from it. Some of the special effects are quite bad, which really surprised me. There is a scene in which Kiefer Sutherland is apparently engulfed by flames, and I swear the fire in Gears of War 2 looks more real than that. But the worst offense, in my opinion, is the fact that Mirrors vaguely sets a series of rules for the world the story takes place in, and then violates them when it's convenient to move the story from point A to point B. In other words, the internal logic of the movie only holds true when it's convenient, and it is cast aside when there's need for something flashy or unexpected. You could argue that maybe I missed something, but I guarantee you I did not. I watched the movie with a couple of friends, and I asked them a bunch of questions regarding particular events and situations, and it took the three of us to kind of come with some semblance of a theory to somehow explain some of the developments of the film. The reason why we were having such a hard time wasn't because we're dumb, but because sometimes things happened without rhyme or reason: the plot demanded it, and it had to happen-- simple as that. Unfortunately, that's poor writing and lazy storytelling, and that is the thing that bothered me the most.

To sum it up, I would recommend that, unless you want to see Amy Smart's butt (not too unpleasant a prospect), go ahead and skip Mirrors, unless you are a scary movie buff. If you are, I think you will be entertained and little else. If you're not, though, this movie will probably come back to haunt you, and for all the wrong reasons.

Denizens II

This strange owlish creature is one of the aliens in the subway Dhraya rides to school on page five. I think she is half owl, half valkyrie, and I have a feeling this is not the last you'll see of her. Enjoy!

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

You probably know about The Bucket List, the film directed by Rob Reiner that came out last year. Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson play a couple of guys who, according to their doctors, only have six months to live. Since Nicholson has a lot of money (ironically, he owns the hospital in which he is being treated), they decide to go and do everything they always wanted to do before they died.

The acting is great, and the movie is both funny and deeply moving, with one solid scene after another. We all know how the story is going to end, but there are a few surprises waiting for you nonetheless, so go ahead and check it out if you haven't already. You will not regret it.

Denizens I

You know I like to do things the wrong way, and this is just another example of this strange mentality. After drawing lots of weird creatures in the pages of Worlds Collide, I realized I wanted to explore some of those characters a little bit more, so I started to draw several of them. Therefore, instead of designing a character and them having him show up on a panel, I had them on the panels, and then I went back and drew them individually as if I was designing them. Strange? Maybe a little. At any rate, here you have the waiter from The Meeting Place, where Dhraya takes Koori for dinner. I guess all those arms would come in handy (no pun intended) for a waiter. Enjoy!

Boring Mama

I rented this movie because I thought it was going to be really funny. I mean, since both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are funny, the movie would be funny too, right? Well, not really.

Baby Mama was amusing, and I chuckled a couple of times, but it wasn’t nearly as funny as I was expecting. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t funny at all, except for Steve Martin’s great performance. I only laughed out loud when he was onscreen playing a New Age CEO, but unfortunately he only has a very small supporting role, so those laughs were few and far between. Other than that, I actually think American Wedding might have been more entertaining. Oh, well…

Assembly Line II

I was hesitant to draw something else on this page because I really liked the way Grimlock turned out, and I thought that, unless I did as good a job with the second robot, I would spoil the picture. So no pressure, right? And all that on top of what I mentioned yesterday: how difficult it is for me to draw Transformers because they feel like buildings and technology all rolled into one neat package, and drawing both buildings and machines is something that I find incredibly hard to do.

The process was the same this second time around. After deciding I wanted to draw Wheeljack, I went online and found a bunch of pictures of the character I could base my drawing on. Fortunately, the different variations of the character don't differ too much from one another (as opposed to Grimlock's), so it was relatively easy to settle on Wheeljack's final aspect. Still, it also took me over three hours to go from pencils to markers to inks, but I am also reasonably satisfied with the results.

I had also considered drawing a third robot, which would have been either Blaster or Jazz, and I spent some time trying to fit him in the background, but it just didn't work. In the end, I settled for just drawing the last part of the picture: a screen with text, since this picture was, from the very beginning, intended as a personalized birthday card for a friend who loves Transformers.
And that's it for this picture. I hope you like it, and that you enjoyed reading about the creative process. Have a great day!