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I was excited about whats coming up in Chapter Two. I wanted to show it off without giving anything away. So, here's the teaser with a few key cropped images I plucked out from several pencilled pages of the next chapter:
DH
In addition to finishing the pencils for chapter two, (more on that in a later blog) here are the pencils for an image I've been working on. With the cheerleaders man-handling the dinosaur, its basically the reverse of the picture with the girl dangling from the T-Rex mouth. Its also a variation of an actual scene that will be in the comic at one point...
I went to the San diego Comic Con this Friday and Sunday and had a blast. (see my facebook photo album) Saw some famous people (Mark Schultz, Danny DeVito, Jerry Trainor, Mark Hamil, Billy Dee Williams, Matt Groening) and got some good loot (a battlestar galactica t shirt, comics, manga). My buddies and I sported our DRC T shirts, handed out DRC stickers and it was on like Khan. My approach was to avoid the long lines for hand outs from the big companies. As much as I wanted to get a free thundercats sword, I had no desire to stand in line for an hour to get one. In fact my favorite moments of comic con are always meeting face to face with the creators from the smaller companies. The highlight of this year for me was meeting Mark Schultz, the artist behind Xenozoic Tales, aka Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. 
On Friday, I picked up a book of his drawings, and brought it by his booth on Sunday for an autograph. He offered to personalize it and was very cool about it. In return, I gave him a couple of stickers for DRC. He liked it. In particular he liked the dinosaur spaceship design, "If a dinosaur would ever fly its own spacehip, that's what it would look like" he said. He also thought the girl I drew dangling from the T-Rex mouth was "lovely". After that, anything else that happened at Comic con would just be icing on the cake. I met some other comic creators and tried to push my comic on them: I met Bobby Rubio, formerly from Pixar, and picked up a autographed copy of his super cool Alcatraz High (bobbyrubio.com, alcatrazhigh.com) He agreed that Dinosaurs Robots and Cheerleaders were three things he liked. I spoke with Dan Mendoza (toxic candie.com) creator of Zombie Tramp. I met the creators of Archaia's Werewolf comic, Feeding Ground (archaia.com), and the creators of the web comic carpechaos.com, and the creators of Scarlett Huntress (smcomics.com) I also met with the cool dudes at Red 5 Comics and picked up a couple issues of Atomic Robo (my favorite) to complete my collection. The only down side to the whole event was I never found a Starbuck series two action figure, or got to see Katee Sackhoff, who I knew was there this year, but I couldn't justify staying past 10 at night to get a glimpse of her at the Batman Year One screening, not to myself, or more importantly, my wife.
I saw the final Harry Potter movie this weekend with my kids in IMAX 3D. One word: epic. The problem with Harry Potter movies is if you read the book, you either know whats going to happen, or will be disappointed they changed something. But they played it just right: changed a few things to make a better movie. Not a moment was wasted. After over a decade of movies to set this one up, they jumped right into things. Before I knew it, they were breaking into Gringott's. I think someone who is not familiar with Harry's world will still enjoy it because its one long spectacle of magical battles. The one pause in the action was my favorite part: revealing Snape's secret. It was beautifully done. This was the best HP movie, (as it should be since its the best of the books), and the perfect finale.
Whew. This summer is rough on your wallet if you're a geek. My ranking of the summer movies so far: 1. X-Men 2. Harry Potter 3. Transformers 4. Thor. Still have to squeeze in Captain America and the San Diego Comic con. More of both of those later...
DH
I've been working on a new drawing that I could use to replace the current cover page on the website. Here's my first attempt to color it in. Still needs some polishing, and I'm not sure if its better than the cover I'm currenly using. There are some parts I'm really liking though. Need to ponder this some more......
Ever since I saw the preview of Transformers 3, with the giat robo worm tunneling into a buliding while people inside screamed in terror, I knew I had to see this movie. As the tepid reviews came rolling in, my excitemet died down a little. Perhaps, I thought, it would be another Transformers 2, with a few awesome moments strug together by an incoherent story. I went into this just expecting cool robot action with a passable story. I was pleasatly surprised by Transformers 3. The story itself was actually decent. The new girl who replaced Megan Fox did a good job, and to anyone who thought her character was usless, I'd point out that she used her brain to single handedly save Optimus and therefore the world by the end of the movie. I like Shia's character, Sam, the nerd who refuses to be treated like a nerd. While a lot of the story was entertaining, some of it felt like it should have been saved for the DVD deleted scenes reel. In fact, at one point I felt there hadn't been enough robot action, until about half way through, when it really picked up and never let go from then on. The second half of the movie was one ridiculously awesome action scene after another, including the robo worm scene, which was great despite possibly breaking several laws of physics. If it looks cool, the physics don't matter. All in all, a great spectacle of a movie that should be seen on the big screen. So why did it get such harsh reviews from critics? I have theories: Its sort of hip among critics to bash Michael Bay. Especially when he makes movies with a lot of explosions, special effects, and that make the military look good. (I saw a review that called Bay a war monger. Really? So any movie director is a war monger if there's action in it?) That is one of the things I like about Transformers movies: the human military aren't useless against the evil robots; they get some good licks in, especially in this one. Instead of the cliche movie military who just want to nuke everything, the military in Transformers is smart and effective. There is a good chunk of the movie that is just the humans battling the Decepticans with out any Autobot help. There's a great scene where Sam (almost) singlehandedly takes on Starscream. Another reason for bad reviews: some criticism is justified. Some of the plot lines seemed unecessary. It seemed like it might be important that they mentioned his girlfriend had a brother who went off to war. It wasn't. John Malkovitch's character was in some funny scenes, but didn't contribute much else. There are too many characters trying to be the funny/quirky one. Still the humor was better this time around and the special effects were unbelievable. I'm actually thinking it might have been better than the first one. Definately better robot vs robot battles (and BTW to critics who say the battles were too confusing, its not our fault you can't keep up) so if you judge this just on the amount of giant robots beating the crap out of each other, this one wins. Which leads me to my request to Michael Bay:
Dear Mr. Bay,
I understand you are finshed with Transformers movies. Please consider as your next project Dinosaurs! Robots! Cheerleaders! I think this is right up your alley and I can tell you get it. You know giant robots, explosions, and hot chicks equals entertainment. Thank you for your consideration.
Just picture it: DRC: A Michael Bay film. Starring Katee Sackhoff
:)
DH
Here are a couple more 3D computer images from Frank. This time with a dinosaur shaped pilot. Notice the very important tail sticking out of the back. I'm loving this!
My boy Frank Gauthier came up with this amazing 3D computer model of the Dinosaur attack ship:
If you take a look at the Gallery you'll also see some awesome 3D art he did of my Tinn Man robot.
Frank, keep 'em coming. And take a look at the previous post: you'll see that the dino ship is actually rounded on the bottom, not flat. How does it land, you may ask? Who said anything about landing?
DH
And now a brief discussion on Dinosaurs Robots Cheerleaders and Feminism. As much as I try to avoid politics (people are not capable of being rational while talking politics) I should at least address the portrayal of women in comics.
Some may look at DRC and just dismiss it as "male fantasy". First of all, yes, it is. Thats kind of one of the points of the comic: to combine boyhood fantasies in ridiculous ways. But if a male fantasy is either the hero saving the girl, or a sexy heroine who can kick butt, is that so horrible? Either way, its about protecting women. Furthermore, there's nothing wrong with portraying attractive women, as long as there's more to them than that.
Which brings me to the other side of the coin. Male fantasy is okay, (Twilight is basically female fantasy- nothing wrong with that) but it shouldn't be insulting to the female audience. There's certain things I won't do with DRC. No contrived story lines to get the girls out of their clothes. Sure they wear cheerleader outfits (that are less revealing than a lot of real life cheerleader uniforms, or Wonder Woman's original costume for that matter) and it will be explained why they still wear them well into the Dinosaur invasion. Also, I wanted to make sure each cheerleader is an individual. I didn't want them to be a group of shallow airheads, or for the reader to be hoping to see them get eaten by dinosaurs. I want them to care about each girl. With that I present the names of each cheerleader labeled on the pencil drawing I'm working on, followed by something interesting about each one:
Jenny: the heart of the team. The most motivated of the group. She has a physical handicap she had to overcome to be here.
Amber: Of all the cheerleaders, she fits in the least. She has unusual reasons for becoming a cheerleader
Ashley: Her fun loving attitude may lead to problems...
Nikki: Sweet, a little boy crazy, and an expert in her field of study. Think of "Kaylee" from Firefly.
Molly: The leader. Already introduced in a previous BLOG entry. She's hell on wheels, but suffers a tragedy early on in the invasion.
Looking at the picture, I think of two things: 1) I love the look on the Dinosuar's face, and 2) the occasional skirt blowing up is perfectly realistic: it happens in real life, plus its still not Wonder Woman's costume.
DH
Here's a full colored in version of a panel I've posted before in different stages of completion (pencils, inks, partial colors)
I used this picture to try out different colors on Nikki's uniform. I think this is the unifom color I'm going with.
DH
